Thursday, September 20, 2012
Passing on a Positive Legacy - Leadership Wired - John Maxwell
September 2012, Issue 2
“There is a choice you make in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you.” ~ John Wooden
A legacy isn’t something over which we have no control, like the shadow that follows us down the sidewalk. Rather, we can choose the way in which our influence will remain once we’re gone. Here are a few suggestions for how you can purposefully pass-on a positive legacy.
1. Integrate a daily focus with a long-term perspective.
Leaders who have an enduring influence keep one eye on the compass and the other eye on the clock. That is, they look ahead without losing sight of what needs to happen each day. They give their best to activities and appointments, or the daily doings of life, while not forgetting their orienting vision and values.
2. Establish a direction that is clearly observable.
When your time on this earth draws to a close, people will describe your life in a single sentence. Pick it now. Be intentional about the sort of influence you want to have on the world around you. I live each day with my legacy statement at the forefront of my mind: “John Maxwell added value to leaders who multiplied value to others.” Being aware of how I want to be remembered gives me perspective on what’s truly important.
3. Develop a network of meaningful relationships.
Leadership is influence, and relationships are the foundation of leadership. Throughout life, I’ve heeded the Law of the Inner Circle: “Those closest to me determine the level of my success.” Perhaps nothing is more predictive of your legacy than the quality of people surrounding you.
4. Commit to a positive learning attitude that guarantees growth.
Personal growth is linked to a teachable disposition. My friend and mentor John Wooden liked to say: “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” I credit my growth as a leader to a set of learning attitudes that I developed early in life.
My Learning Attitudes
a) Everyday I will learn something.
b) Everyone will be my teacher.
c) Every experience will be a learning lab.
d) Every opportunity I will ask questions.
e) Every time I will apply what I’ve learned.
5. Continually experience inner renewal.
Since the cares of life easily crowd out space for reflection, it’s essential to schedule time to think. By itself, experience doesn’t teach us anything; it has to be evaluated. Learning to pause allows growth to catch up with you. My motto is that “you cannot travel without until you’ve traveled within.” In other words, you won’t have transformative influence on the world until you’ve been transformed yourself.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Each of us has received thousands of blessings that we did nothing to earn. Being a legacy-minded leader is an intentional way to give back out of gratitude for what we’ve been given.
This article is used by permission from Leadership Wired, John Maxwell's premiere leadership newsletter, available for free subscription at www.johnmaxwell.com/newsletters.
Legacy - Quotes - Leadership Wired
September 2012, Issue 2 • Quick Quotes
QUOTES
"LEGACY"
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."
~ Woodrow Wilson
"[What matters most] is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind."
~ Branch Rickey
"The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope."
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you."
~ Shannon L. Alder
This article is used by permission from Leadership Wired, John Maxwell's premiere leadership newsletter, available for free subscription at www.johnmaxwell.com/newsletters.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The Secret to Health, Performance and Success: The Positivity to Negativity Ratio - Envisia - Kenneth Nowack
September 9, 2012
What’s the question?
Is there a universal ratio (P/N) of positive to negative communications, interactions and behaviors that predicts individual health, longevity, performance, relationship success and how team’s perform?
Across different disciplines, researchers continue to find an interesting relationship between “positive to negative” expressions of thoughts, attitudes and behavior that seem to predict things as diverse as how long we will live to how effectively teams function and product great results. This is sometimes referred to as the positivity to negativity ratio. Here are a few examples:
Longevity in Life
Handwritten autobiographies from 180 Catholic nuns, composed when participants were a mean age of 22 years, were scored for emotional content and related to survival during ages 75 to 951. The autobiography was to contain no more than two to three hundred words and should be written on a single sheet of paper. The nuns were asked to include place of birth, parentage, interesting childhood events, schools attended, influences that led to the convent, religious life, and outstanding events.
Their study revealed that the nuns whose autobiographies contained the most sentences expressing positive emotions lived an average of seven years longer than nuns whose stories contained the fewest. Further, lifespan increased by 9.5 years for nuns whose autobiographies contained the most words referring to positive emotions and by 10.5 years for nuns who used the greatest variety of positive-emotion words.
Positive Feedback
When we use 360-degree feedback assessments we always include at least 1-2 open-ended questions at the end of the questionnaire asking raters about perceived strengths to leverage and behaviors the leader can do more, less or differently to become even more effective. Smither and Walker (2004) analyzed the impact of upward feedback ratings as well as narrative comments over a one-year period for 176 managers2.
They found that those who received a small number of unfavorable behaviorally based comments improved more than other managers but those who received a large number (relative to positive comments) significantly declined in performance more than other managers. This is the only study I know of that has found that qualitative feedback in 360 interventions might actually be disengaging and demoralizing to participants if the ratio of positive to negative feedback is low.
Marriage/Relationship Longevity
John Gottman (1994) followed 700 couples for 10 years and found that when there was less than a 5 to 1 positive to negative interactions in a videotaped interaction of fifteen minutes it predicted subsequent divorce with 90% to 94% accuracy3.
He has observed couples for over 30 years, at his apartment-style laboratory, the “love lab” at the University of Washington. A Positive-to-Negative Ratio of 0.8 or less is a strong indicator of divorce with the most corrosive behaviors including:
• Criticism: Expressions indicating a defect in one’s partner’s personality (example: “You always talk about yourself”). Contempt: Expressions of superiority (example: “You just can’t get things right).”
• Defensiveness: Expressions of righteous indignation (example: “It’s not my fault that we’re always late—you are the one holding us up”).
• Stonewalling: Emotional withdrawal from interaction (e.g., ignoring the other individual).
Criticism predicted early divorcing (an average of 5.6 years after the wedding) and emotional withdrawal and anger predict later divorcing (an average of 16.2 years after the wedding).
Psychological Well-Being/Life Satisfaction
Fredrickson (2005) examined students’ month-long diaries and the positive/negative ratio of emotions seemed to differentiate those who were languishing from those who were high in psychological well-being4. She found that students who expressed a ratio of 3 times as many positive emotions than negative emotions reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness than the other students.
Team Effectiveness
Over the years we have run developmental assessment centers that always have at least one leaderless group exericse. We can easily observe the differences between groups that appear to function effectively from those who don’t based on the communications and interpersonal behavior of the group members–not how smart any individual is or the collective experience or technical expertise of the members.
Recent studies have established that teams with positive to negative interaction ratios greater than 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio (Things can worsen if the ratio goes higher than 13 to 1). Marcial Losada brought 60 management teams into a simulated board room where they could hold actual meetings5. Behind mirrors, researchers observed and coded every statement made by each individual on three scales:
1. Positive statements (support, optimism, appreciation) versus negative statements (disapproval, sarcasm, cynicism).
2. Self-focused statements (refer to the person speaking, the group present, or the company) versus other-focused statements (references to a person or group not part of the company).
3. Inquiry (questions aimed at exploring an idea) versus advocacy (arguments in favor of their own point of view).
Losada also measured something he called connectivity or how attuned or responsive the team members were to each other. Finally he gathered data on three dependent variables: profitability, customer satisfaction, and evaluations by superiors, peers and subordinates. In the study, positive to negative ratio (P/N) was measured by counting the instances of positive feedback (e.g. “that is a good idea”) vs. negative feedback (e.g. “this is not what I expected; I am disappointed”).
Overall, high performance teams had a P/N ratio of 5.6, medium performance teams a P/N of 1.9 and low performance teams a P/N of 0.36 (more negative than positive).
Taken together, it seems that the secret to individual and team health and productivity might be as simple as accentuating the positive to negative ratio of emotions and behaviors and being aware of when our own self-talk and expressions seem tilted in the wrong direction.
I will have to ask my wife, who is registered dietitian, if this ratio also applies to healthy eating….Be well….
1. Danner, D., Snowdon, D., & Friesen, W. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 804-813 [↩]
2. Smither, J. & Walker, A.G. (2004). Are the characteristics of narrative comments related to improvement in multirater feedback ratings over time? Personnel Psychology, 89, 575-581 [↩]
3. Gottman, J. M. (1994). What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum [↩]
4. Fredrickson, B. L. & Losada, M. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60, 678-686 [↩]
5. Losada, M., & Heaphy, E. (2004). The role of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams: A nonlinear dynamics model. American Behavioral Scientist, 47, 740–765 [↩]
Access Article, Source, And Great Ongoing Content: http://results.envisialearning.com/the-secret-to-health-performance-and-success-the-positivity-to-negativity-ratio/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ResultsVsActivities+%28Results+vs.+Activities%29
“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.”Here’s the answer: at least 3:1 to 5:1.
Mark Twain
What’s the question?
Is there a universal ratio (P/N) of positive to negative communications, interactions and behaviors that predicts individual health, longevity, performance, relationship success and how team’s perform?
Across different disciplines, researchers continue to find an interesting relationship between “positive to negative” expressions of thoughts, attitudes and behavior that seem to predict things as diverse as how long we will live to how effectively teams function and product great results. This is sometimes referred to as the positivity to negativity ratio. Here are a few examples:
Longevity in Life
Handwritten autobiographies from 180 Catholic nuns, composed when participants were a mean age of 22 years, were scored for emotional content and related to survival during ages 75 to 951. The autobiography was to contain no more than two to three hundred words and should be written on a single sheet of paper. The nuns were asked to include place of birth, parentage, interesting childhood events, schools attended, influences that led to the convent, religious life, and outstanding events.
Their study revealed that the nuns whose autobiographies contained the most sentences expressing positive emotions lived an average of seven years longer than nuns whose stories contained the fewest. Further, lifespan increased by 9.5 years for nuns whose autobiographies contained the most words referring to positive emotions and by 10.5 years for nuns who used the greatest variety of positive-emotion words.
Positive Feedback
When we use 360-degree feedback assessments we always include at least 1-2 open-ended questions at the end of the questionnaire asking raters about perceived strengths to leverage and behaviors the leader can do more, less or differently to become even more effective. Smither and Walker (2004) analyzed the impact of upward feedback ratings as well as narrative comments over a one-year period for 176 managers2.
They found that those who received a small number of unfavorable behaviorally based comments improved more than other managers but those who received a large number (relative to positive comments) significantly declined in performance more than other managers. This is the only study I know of that has found that qualitative feedback in 360 interventions might actually be disengaging and demoralizing to participants if the ratio of positive to negative feedback is low.
Marriage/Relationship Longevity
John Gottman (1994) followed 700 couples for 10 years and found that when there was less than a 5 to 1 positive to negative interactions in a videotaped interaction of fifteen minutes it predicted subsequent divorce with 90% to 94% accuracy3.
He has observed couples for over 30 years, at his apartment-style laboratory, the “love lab” at the University of Washington. A Positive-to-Negative Ratio of 0.8 or less is a strong indicator of divorce with the most corrosive behaviors including:
• Criticism: Expressions indicating a defect in one’s partner’s personality (example: “You always talk about yourself”). Contempt: Expressions of superiority (example: “You just can’t get things right).”
• Defensiveness: Expressions of righteous indignation (example: “It’s not my fault that we’re always late—you are the one holding us up”).
• Stonewalling: Emotional withdrawal from interaction (e.g., ignoring the other individual).
Criticism predicted early divorcing (an average of 5.6 years after the wedding) and emotional withdrawal and anger predict later divorcing (an average of 16.2 years after the wedding).
Psychological Well-Being/Life Satisfaction
Fredrickson (2005) examined students’ month-long diaries and the positive/negative ratio of emotions seemed to differentiate those who were languishing from those who were high in psychological well-being4. She found that students who expressed a ratio of 3 times as many positive emotions than negative emotions reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction and happiness than the other students.
Team Effectiveness
Over the years we have run developmental assessment centers that always have at least one leaderless group exericse. We can easily observe the differences between groups that appear to function effectively from those who don’t based on the communications and interpersonal behavior of the group members–not how smart any individual is or the collective experience or technical expertise of the members.
Recent studies have established that teams with positive to negative interaction ratios greater than 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio (Things can worsen if the ratio goes higher than 13 to 1). Marcial Losada brought 60 management teams into a simulated board room where they could hold actual meetings5. Behind mirrors, researchers observed and coded every statement made by each individual on three scales:
1. Positive statements (support, optimism, appreciation) versus negative statements (disapproval, sarcasm, cynicism).
2. Self-focused statements (refer to the person speaking, the group present, or the company) versus other-focused statements (references to a person or group not part of the company).
3. Inquiry (questions aimed at exploring an idea) versus advocacy (arguments in favor of their own point of view).
Losada also measured something he called connectivity or how attuned or responsive the team members were to each other. Finally he gathered data on three dependent variables: profitability, customer satisfaction, and evaluations by superiors, peers and subordinates. In the study, positive to negative ratio (P/N) was measured by counting the instances of positive feedback (e.g. “that is a good idea”) vs. negative feedback (e.g. “this is not what I expected; I am disappointed”).
Overall, high performance teams had a P/N ratio of 5.6, medium performance teams a P/N of 1.9 and low performance teams a P/N of 0.36 (more negative than positive).
Taken together, it seems that the secret to individual and team health and productivity might be as simple as accentuating the positive to negative ratio of emotions and behaviors and being aware of when our own self-talk and expressions seem tilted in the wrong direction.
I will have to ask my wife, who is registered dietitian, if this ratio also applies to healthy eating….Be well….
1. Danner, D., Snowdon, D., & Friesen, W. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 804-813 [↩]
2. Smither, J. & Walker, A.G. (2004). Are the characteristics of narrative comments related to improvement in multirater feedback ratings over time? Personnel Psychology, 89, 575-581 [↩]
3. Gottman, J. M. (1994). What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum [↩]
4. Fredrickson, B. L. & Losada, M. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60, 678-686 [↩]
5. Losada, M., & Heaphy, E. (2004). The role of positivity and connectivity in the performance of business teams: A nonlinear dynamics model. American Behavioral Scientist, 47, 740–765 [↩]
Access Article, Source, And Great Ongoing Content: http://results.envisialearning.com/the-secret-to-health-performance-and-success-the-positivity-to-negativity-ratio/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ResultsVsActivities+%28Results+vs.+Activities%29
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