Monthly Archives: February 2023

Arts, Psychology

Appreciative inquiry

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

WHAT exactly does appreciation mean? And what are we doing when we appreciate something? The interesting thing about the verb “to appreciate” is that it has several meanings which are relevant to our wellbeing:

Meaning 1: to be grateful or thankful for

Meaning 2: to recognise the value or quality of something

Meaning 3: to increase in value

Exploring the importance of gratitude, or by focusing on appreciation from a personal perspective, are relevant issues. This article concerns itself with looking at appreciation from a whole system perspective.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process for implementing and achieving change which was developed in the 1980s by two American academics, David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva. Although it predates Martin Seligman’s launch of positive psychology by over a decade, it is often drawn under the same umbrella. In short, AI is a strength-based approach to managing change.

Most change methodologies, whether personal or organisational, tend to start from a negative perspective – you identify what the problem is first, analyse it in detail and then find a solution. One unique attribute of the AI process is that it begins with a positive perspective. In other words, you start by looking at what is currently working well, and build on this information to develop a better, more effective and successful future.

The essence of the AI approach is that focusing on what works well generates the enthusiasm, energy and engagement necessary to recreate the positive and deal with the negative far more effectively than the traditional approach of focusing on the negative alone.

AI is built on five separate principles:

. “Words create worlds”, i.e. reality is not an objective fact, it is a subjective experience. This means that we can change how we view the world, and how we feel, by changing the way we describe our experience, and the stories we tell.

. Asking questions starts the process of change.

. Our individual experience is a story which can be reinterpreted and told in different ways.

. We can create positive change effectively by creating positive images of the future.

. An in-depth review of what went well and what is working now is significantly more enlightening than merely analysing what went wrong.

As its name suggests, AI is about appreciating or valuing the best – whether the best of ourselves, our families, the organisations we interact with, or the places we live in and so on. It’s also about promoting further exploration and discovery through being curious and asking questions. This requires us to be open to new possibilities, and creative about making the best of them.

How AI works

Before looking in more depth at the four-stage process of AI, a word of warning: it’s easy to be persuaded that change is a linear process, along the lines of “do X, get Y”. However, if you aware or have been engaged in organisational development or change management, you will know that it’s never that straightforward, otherwise the vast majority of change programmes wouldn’t fail. The beauty of AI is not just that it uses a simple four-stage process but that it approaches change at a systemic level, that is, it works on the relationships and routines that enable the system to work as it currently does.

This is why David Cooperrider insists on having the “whole system in the room” in order to make change. In practice this could mean a vast number of organisational stakeholders working on the same issue at the same time. Cooperrider himself has facilitated over 750 Nutrimental Foods employees and stakeholders in one room (a warehouse). New web technologies enable tens of thousands of people to participate – IBM’s “jam sessions” are a good example of this participatory process. It may sound chaotic, messy and unrealistic, but once the logistics are sorted out and the rules of engagement are clear, the AI approach to change not only sparks innovation, collaboration and engagement, it is quicker, more energetic and more effective than traditional top-down approaches.

The Four Stages of AI

As a change process, AI has four separate stages which begin once you have identified your “affirmative topic”, sometimes also called the “positive core”. In other words you don’t begin your appreciative inquiry by thinking about the problem that you want to solve, but by focusing on the positive future that you want to create instead.

You might have a goal, say, to diet or give up smoking. Rather than focusing on “stopping smoking” or “losing weight” you might think about saving money, becoming fit, healthy and more energetic, or being able to wear a new item of clothing. Exploring that goal in more detail, you might describe this positive future image of yourself as one in which you have a spring in your step every day, or by being able to run around the park with renewed energy.

Reframing business goals can be done in a similar way. Rather than focusing on “improving your management skills”, which implies a lack, you might re-frame the objective in terms of “becoming an inspirational leader”. The idea behind this positive re-frame is to find something to work towards. Approach and avoidance goals are critical in such strategies. Avoidance goals are goals with negative outcomes which we should work to avoid. The word “negative” can also mean different things in different contexts, including disliked, undesirable, painful and harmful.

Once you have identified your affirmative topic, you can proceed to stage 1.

Stage 1: Discovery – What’s Best?

The discovery stage of AI involves asking further positively-framed questions about your affirmative topic, and reflecting on the answers that you come up with. If you’re working with others, discovery also involves sharing positive stories related to the topic. Through being curious and asking questions, you begin to create a landscape which will enable a more positive future to emerge.

Scenario: Imagine you’re feeling demotivated and in need of some inspiration. You’re fed up with the organisation you work for, but you want to recapture the positive elements of the role that so inspired you to take up this career in the first place. You would like to reignite the sense of excitement you had when you first joined the company or organisation.

Try asking yourself the following questions and jot down your responses in your wellbeing journal:

. Think about your recent experiences. Recall a specific incident or event that made you feel extremely satisfied. Describe it briefly, including your role in it and how you felt.

. What initially attracted you to join this profession/engage with this organisation/do this role?

. Without being humble, what do you most value about yourself?

. What do you feel are the most important qualities and strengths that you bring to your role?

. In what ways does your role contribute to the organisation’s success?

. Think of someone else in a similar position who you consider to be a role model. What does he or she do that you would like to emulate?

Your responses written down in your wellbeing journal will start to lay the foundations for creating a vision in which your role is fulfilling, engaging and energising.

Stage 2: Dream – What’s Next?

This is where you create a positive and compelling vision of the future, which will be based on the descriptions and commentary revealed by the discovery stage. It answers the broad question, “What might be?”

If the discovery phase is about identifying “the best” of what you want, and what you most value, the dream phase is about projecting this image into the future, envisioning something which will be even better and starting to create the conditions where this future might start to exist.

Think forward to a future date, maybe six months from now, when you now feel both satisfied and motivated, and you have a real energy and excitement about what you are doing.

What is now different? How has your performance changed? In your wellbeing journal, write down three things that have happened to realise these changes?

Psychologists use what is known as the so-called “miracle question”. This helps their patients visualise clearly what this positive future looks and feels like, as well as to start to imagine the part they will play in it.

The miracle question is this:

Imagine that in the middle of the night, when you are fast asleep, a miracle happens and the problems you have been having are solved just like that. But since the miracle happened in the middle of the night, nobody tells you that it happened. When you wake up the next morning, how will you notice that the miracle has happened? What will be different?

You might like to reflect on the miracle question for a few minutes, and note down your responses in your wellbeing journal.

Stage 3: Design – How Might We?

In stage 3 of the AI process you concentrate on answering the question, “How can it be?” Remember that AI differs significantly from other change methodologies in that it is rooted in positive images of the past rather than its problems and difficulties. This point is significant, since it helps to ensure that the vision you create in stage 2 is grounded, yet both challenging and motivating. Supporters of AI often like to say that you get more of what you focus on.

Putting this into context, focus on your image of the future role that you most want, and ask yourself the following questions and record your answers in your wellbeing journal:

. What exactly is happening?

. What are you doing differently?

. What parts of your role would you keep? What would you let go? What would you do differently? What new things would you do?

. Who else is involved? What part are they playing in supporting you? What are they saying or doing?

. What does this positive future look and feel like, in detail?

Stage 4: Destiny – What Will We?

This is where you start the practical work of turning your vision into reality. In AI theory, focusing on the positive creates its own momentum, and when it’s used in an organisational setting, people will spontaneously progress the topics that they’re passionate about. In practice, it may require a project manager or “AI champion” to keep all the developments on track.

The important message for readers to take away is that there is no one right way to carry out this stage, hence “destiny”. Organisations which adopt an AI approach to change frequently develop the capacity to improvise – spontaneously developing and improving by always building positively on what went before.

In Summary:

. AI is a way of making change which is motivational, inspirational and energising.

. AI is often used within organisations, can be used by people to explore relationships, and by individuals to instigate personal change.

. AI is used by public and private organisations the world over, including Wal-Mart, British Airways, Boeing, the US Navy and the United Nations Global Compact.

. AI has been around since the 1980s, but it’s still widely accepted as a key positive psychology change tool.

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Psychology, Research, Science

Brain entropy

NEUROSCIENCE

Intro: A new research study helps to measure levels of consciousness

“OUR brains produce more entropy when we are awake than when we are asleep.” The finding from a research study could lead to better ways to measure the consciousness of people who appear to be in a coma.

Entropy is a measure of disorder, and in our universe, everything tends to move from less disorder to more over time. For instance, breaking a coffee cup increases entropy. While this breaking can happen in many ways, you never see a broken cup spontaneously reassemble itself and therefore decrease its entropy.

Electrical signals in our brains can also produce entropy as part of processing and transmitting information, such as the visual signals from our eyes. Researchers at the Paris-Saclay University in France wanted to determine whether our brains produce more entropy when we are awake or when we are asleep.

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 15 people in different states of consciousness: while each person was awake and in three stages of sleep, from light to very deep.

To calculate entropy, the research team used a model that was previously developed from studying the pathways that electrical signals can follow inside of the brain. The different routes help reveal the different processes they can carry out, and each of those processes produces different amounts of entropy. From this, the researchers calculated entropy production for each person in each state of consciousness. The findings suggest that entropy decreases as people fall deeper into sleep. In the state of deepest sleep, people’s brains, on average, produced 25 per cent less entropy than when they were awake.

This now gives researchers and scientists a way to quantify consciousness. A person whose brain shows the same amount of entropy production in an fMRI study as someone who is deeply asleep is likely to have the same types of processes happening in their brain and to be at a similar level of consciousness.

This new method could potentially be used to quantify the consciousness of people in comas or eventually help to diagnose people with locked-in syndrome, who are conscious but unable to communicate with the external world.

Previous research has linked consciousness to entropy. Some fMRI studies, for example, have indicated that states of very altered consciousness, such as those induced by psychedelic substances like psilocybin, result in an increase in entropy of the brain itself – meaning that it is harder to predict its overall electrical state – and not just the entropy different signals produce.

Understanding the state of awareness of people that are minimally conscious has long been an area of scientific study. However, it isn’t yet clear that entropy production is an unambiguous mark of consciousness.

For example, dreams can happen in deep sleep – a time of low entropy – but they reflect a high level of consciousness. As such, dreams could actually increase entropy production in the brain, but the study carried out by researchers didn’t consider this.

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Arts, Psychology, Science

Wellbeing theory: accomplishment and achievement

 POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Martin Seligman’s most recent theory of wellbeing contains the new component of “accomplishment”. It’s a broad category, covering everything from achievement, competence and success to progress towards goals and mastery at the highest possible level. These concepts have been studied individually in psychology for decades – but collecting them together under the heading “accomplishment” within positive psychology is new.

Positive psychologists don’t always agree on definitions of happiness and wellbeing, nor what should be included in wellbeing theory and what should be left out. Seligman’s original model of “authentic happiness” consisted of three components: positive emotions, engagement and meaning. In the intervening years, scientific research and debate inspired him to revise this by adding two further components to wellbeing theory, relationships and accomplishment.

Accomplishment is included as one of the facets of wellbeing because like the other components, it is something that humans pursue for its own sake. Even though we all know people who are high achievers for extrinsic reasons, such as increased power, status or pay, accomplishment per se is intrinsically motivating. Nurturing accomplishment on its own or together with any of the other four facets, says Seligman, will lead to higher wellbeing.

There are various techniques in psychology that can be used to increase your sense of accomplishment. One of these is known as the “accomplishment anchor”. With this, you can use your past successes to give you confidence, spur you on to greater achievements and give you a boost of positive emotion when you need a little psychological pick-me-up. This is an idea adapted from positive psychologist Barbara Fredrickson.

How to increase your level of goal achievement

According to Seligman’s theory, achievement can be summarised as follows:

Achievement = skill x effort

He suggests that the skill and effort elements have certain characteristics which are needed for higher achievement:

. Speed of thought. According to wellbeing theory, if you have already acquired a lot of relevant skills or knowledge about a particular task, you won’t have to waste brain power on the basics. This leaves you more able to think quickly, and with time left over to devote to planning, checking and being creative. These, of course, are the hallmarks of performance excellence.

. Rate of learning. Clearly the faster you learn, the more information and knowledge you can acquire per hour spent on the task. In terms of achievement and accomplishment, this will also put you ahead of the game.

Becoming an expert

In terms of effort, research by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues suggests that it takes a minimum of 10 years (or roughly 10,000 hours) of deliberate practice in any subject to become an expert. By “deliberate practice”, Ericsson doesn’t mean practising those things which you already know how to do, he means putting sustained effort into the things you can’t do very well, or even at all. In other words, in order to become an expert, you must put yourself outside of your traditional comfort zone, which requires substantial self-motivation and self-discipline.

Since very little is currently known about how to increase our speed of thought and rate of learning, the one thing we can all do to improve our rate of accomplishment is to spend more time on deliberate practice.

Becoming an expert in a particular field, Ericsson and colleagues recommend two tips:

. Find a coach or mentor who can provide the level of challenge and critical feedback necessary to keep improving your skills.

. Spend time observing a “master” at work, then utilise or use similar techniques that were used.   

The role of competence

Competence is one of the psychological facets which increases self-motivation, goal achievement, and wellbeing. When it’s accompanied by perseverance, competence makes a good recipe for accomplishment at any level, big or small. When psychologists speak of competence, it implies being confident and effective in what we do.

There are several strategies you can adopt to increase your competence in a particular field. One way is to get regular constructive feedback about how you are performing. The feedback might be inherent in the activity: you can tell straight away whether or not you’re playing the piano or playing a game of squash well, for example. Or you may have to wait for results or seek feedback from someone else.

Another way to increase your competence in relation to your goal is to find ways to improve your skill-set. You could do this by gradually making the goal more challenging, so that you have to strive a bit harder every time you do it. People naturally shy away from stepping outside their comfort zone, but remember, this really is the only way to learn new skills. When feeling uncomfortable, remind yourself that this is a sign that you have the opportunity to learn something new.

A third method is to undertake specific skills training. You might do this in your own spare time or through an organisation. As Ericsson suggests, you could find a role-model to emulate.

Those are some of the ways that will help to improve your competence, and increase the probability that you will tread the accomplishment pathway to wellbeing. Effort and persistence are so essential for goal achievement.

Indeed, research in psychology suggests that regardless of innate talent, considerable effort is required to become an expert. Continual practise is a key ingredient.

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