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A Passion for the Positive

Leaders can make the mistake of focusing only on one thing: the immediate bottom line. If you're like most leaders, you likely find yourself facing downsizing, decreasing sales, falling stock value and unacceptable financial results. As a result of the economic downturn, you and your company have switched into survival mode.

Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) at its very root helps unlock human potential – latent energy or opportunities – typically not utilized in the workplace. Leading positively helps unleash the positive energy and optimism organizations and individuals need to excel in a new and different way.

Exceed recently caught up with U-M Executive Education Professor and co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship – Kim Cameron – to capture his thoughts on leading in trying times and the power of POS in action. We're positive the outcome will get you thinking.

Exceed: Do you have any advice for organizations currently in survival mode?

Professor Cameron: In trying times, it is almost impossible to ignore the negative, but that doesn't mean leaders should forget about or table the positive for when times are better. The power of the positive is needed now more than ever. I encourage leaders stop and think about how to foster long-term, positive results within their organizations. I can tell you upfront – focusing on the negative will get you and your team nowhere.

Exceed: Why POS?

Professor Cameron: Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) focuses on organizational virtuousness: forgiveness, trust, optimism and compassion. It emphasizes actions that go beyond the "do no harm" credo found in most ethical codes of conduct, and builds on what I like to refer to as "positive energizers."

Energizing others elicits peak performance from them – they are more likely to dedicate themselves to your projects, to devote their discretionary time to you and provide you with information and resources. So, in a very difficult environment, prescribe positive energizers. Supplement the pain by focusing on positive opportunities – abundance – and unleash potential for others to flourish in ways they might not traditionally have discovered.

Exceed: What tangible results have you found through your research?

Professor Cameron: Hardcore bottom line results. My research has shown that implementing positive practices yields desirable financial results. In examining 28 financial services organizations, we found that when scores improved from one year to the next in measures of positive practices and organizational virtuousness, six measures of financial performance, including revenues, sales and return on investment, also improved. Customer retention and employee loyalty were also significantly related to the implementation of positive organizational practices.

Exceed: How can leaders harness the potential of POS?

Professor Cameron: Take a hard look to see where you can start making a difference. By understanding the drivers of positive behavior in the workplace, organizations and individuals can flourish. In our Positive Leadership programs, we provide prescriptions for leaders to help foster virtuousness within their organization. Examples include:

• Positive Culture Change: A technique to help your organization transform its culture toward abundance and positive deviance.
• Positive Energy Networks: A tool to identify positive energizers and the positive energy network already existing within your organization, along with hints for capitalizing on this energy network.
• Fundamental State of Leadership: A set of techniques that lead individuals from a normal state of functioning to a state where leaders are internally-directed, externally-open, others-focused and purpose-centered.
• Job crafting: A set of processes individuals can use in their jobs to enhance its meaningfulness, increase satisfaction and promote thriving.

Learn more about upcoming courses in Positive Leadership at U-M Executive Education and see what a positive impact it can have on your organization's results. For more information on Professor Cameron's research findings visit www.bus.umich.edu/Positive/.

Have a question you'd like to ask the U-M Executive Education faculty?  Send us an e-mail at kcalandr@umich.edu and the answer to your question could appear in an upcoming issue of Exceed.

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