MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

Coaching session using the Positivity Ratio.Take two minutes to complete the Positivity Self Test now. Your score provides a snapshot of how your emotions of the past day combine to create your positivity ratio.

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Objectives

01. Positivity Ratio: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Emotion Importance: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Workplace Emotions: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Positive Emotions: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Negative Emotions: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Emotional Triggers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Emotional Control: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Group Emotional Intelligence: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Emotional Culture: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Increasing Positivity: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Resilience: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Team Performance: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. Positivity Ratio: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Emotion Importance: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Workplace Emotions: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Positive Emotions: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Negative Emotions: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Emotional Triggers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Emotional Control: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Group Emotional Intelligence: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Emotional Culture: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Increasing Positivity: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Resilience: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Team Performance: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Positivity Ratio.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Emotion Importance.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Workplace Emotions.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Positive Emotions.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Negative Emotions.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Emotional Triggers.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Emotional Control.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Group Emotional Intelligence.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Emotional Culture.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Increasing Positivity.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Resilience.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Team Performance.

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Introduction

Control your energy instead of your time.

Steve Wanner, a partner at Ernst & Small who is 37 years old, is well-liked and married with four young children. He was working 12- to 14-hour days when we first met him, always felt weary, and struggled to completely engage with his family in the evenings, which made him feel guilty and unsatisfied. He had trouble sleeping, didn’t find time to work out, and rarely ate healthy meals; instead, he would grab a snack while he was on the go or sitting at his desk.

Wanner’s situation is not unusual. The majority of us increase our work hours in response to increasing demands at work, but this will eventually have an adverse effect on our physical, mental, and emotional health. As a result, there is a decline in employee engagement, an increase in distraction, high rates of turnover, and skyrocketing medical expenses. Over the past five years, the Energy Project has provided consulting and coaching to numerous large enterprises, working with thousands of executives and managers. These CEOs tell us they’re working harder than ever to keep up with things and that they increasingly feel like they are reaching their breaking point with startling consistency.

The fact that time is a limited resource is the main issue with working longer hours. Another matter entirely is energy. Energy, which in physics is defined as the ability to operate, originates in humans from four basic sources: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. By establishing specialised rituals—behaviors that are deliberately repeated and meticulously organised, with the objective of making them unconscious and automatic as rapidly as possible—energy can be methodically extended and routinely renewed in each.

The fact that time is a limited resource is the main issue with working longer hours. Another matter entirely is energy.

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Organizations must change their focus from getting more out of people to investing more in them in order to motivate and enable them to bring more of themselves to work every day. This will effectively reenergize their workforces. Individuals need to take responsibility for changing their energy-draining activities regardless of the situation they find themselves in in order to recharge.

Wanner’s life was changed by the routines and habits he developed to better manage his energies. He gave up drinking because it was keeping him up at night and set an earlier bedtime. Because of this, he awoke feeling more refreshed and inspired to work out, which he now does virtually every morning. He shed 15 pounds in less than two months. He now has breakfast with his family after working out. Wanner continues to put in hard hours at work, but he often rejuvenates himself in the process. He normally goes outside for a morning and an afternoon walk, and he gets up from his desk for lunch. He is more at ease and able to connect with his wife and kids when he gets home in the evening.

Simple rituals like this can be established to produce impressive benefits throughout businesses. We put a group of workers through a trial energy management programme at Wachovia Bank and then compared their output to a control group’s. In terms of a number of financial criteria, including the amount of loans they produced, the participants beat the controls. Additionally, they reported significant improvements in their interactions with customers, their commitment to their jobs, and their level of pleasure.

Wachovia’s Linking Capacity and Performance

The majority of large firms make investments in the knowledge, competence, and skills of their workforce. Few contribute to the development and maintenance of their capacity—their energy—which is frequently taken for granted. In reality, increased capacity enables more to be accomplished in less time with better involvement and sustainability.

How Energy Renewal Programs at Wachovia Increased Productivity

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Employees at Wachovia Bank who took part in an energy renewal initiative performed better than a control group,…

Participants were also questioned about how the programme affected them personally. It improved their relationships with clients and customers, according to 68% of respondents. Seventy-one percent of respondents claimed that it significantly or noticeably improved their performance and productivity. These results supported a wealth of anecdotal data we’d gathered about the success of this strategy among executives at other big businesses like Ernst & Young, Sony, Deutsche Bank, Nokia, ING Direct, Ford, and MasterCard.

The Emotions: Energy Level

Regardless of the stress they are under from the outside world, people can increase the quality of their energy when they are able to better manage their emotions. To do this, people must first become more conscious of their emotions and the effects those emotions have on their productivity during the course of the workday. Most people are aware that their performance tends to be at its highest when they are feeling upbeat. They find it shocking that when they are feeling any other way, they are unable to lead or perform successfully.

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We are unfortunately not physiologically able to sustain intensely joyful feelings for extended periods of time without intermittent recovery. When faced with constant demands and unforeseen difficulties, people frequently experience negative emotions (the fight-or-flight response) several times during the day. They start to feel nervous and insecure, perhaps angry and impatient. Such mental states sap people’s energy and lead to conflict in their interpersonal connections. Clear, logical, and reflective thought are also all but impossible when experiencing fight-or-flight feelings. Executives have a higher ability to control their reactions when they learn to identify the circumstances that make them feel bad.

Expressing gratitude to others, a ritual that seems to be as helpful to the giver as it is to the receiver, is a strong one that fosters happy emotions. It can be delivered orally, in writing, via email, phone call, or in-person interaction, and the more exact and thorough, the more powerful the message. Like other rituals, the likelihood of success is greatly increased by designating a specific time to carry it out. Ben Jenkins, vice chairman and president of the General Bank at Wachovia in Charlotte, North Carolina, included his ritual of appreciation into the allotted period for mentoring. He started scheduled frequent lunches or dinners with his employees. Previously, he had only met with his direct reports to offer them annual performance reviews or to receive monthly updates on their financial success. He now prioritises praising their achievements and conversing with them about their lives and objectives during meals rather than their immediate job obligations.

Finally, by learning to alter the stories they tell themselves about the events in their lives, people can learn to nurture positive feelings. Conflicted individuals frequently play the victim, attributing their issues to other people or outside forces. Understanding how the facts of a situation differ from how we interpret those facts can be powerful in and of itself. Many of the individuals we work with have found it to be a revelation that they have a choice in how they interpret an event and that their story has a significant impact on the feelings they experience. Without downplaying or rejecting the realities, we instruct students to provide the most upbeat and personally empowered narrative they can in any given circumstance.

By learning to alter the narratives they tell themselves about the events in their lives, people can learn to cultivate positive energy. We instruct them to tell the most upbeat tales we can.

The best method to change a tale is to look at it from one of three new perspectives, all of which are different from the victim’s point of view. For instance, while using the reverse lens, individuals ask themselves, “What would the other person in this conflict say and in what ways might it be true?” They question, “How will I most likely evaluate this issue in six months?” using the long lens. They question themselves, “Regardless of how this issue turns out, how can I develop and learn from it?” using a broad lens. Each of these perspectives can assist individuals in consciously cultivating more joyful emotions.

When Sony experienced many battery recalls in 2006, Nicolas Babin, head of corporate communications for Sony Europe, served as the lead person for calls from reporters. Over time, he grew more and more worn out and discouraged by his duties. He started figuring out methods to tell himself a more empowering and positive story about his role after completing the lens exercises. He says, “I realised that this was an opportunity for me to build stronger relationships with journalists by being accessible to them and to increase Sony’s credibility by being straightforward and honest.”

The Mind: Energy Concentration

Given all the responsibilities that executives must juggle, multitasking is often seen as necessary, but it actually reduces productivity. Distractions cost money. Switching time is the phenomena whereby the amount of time required to complete the primary activity rises by as much as 25% when attention is briefly diverted from one work to another, such as pausing to answer an email or accept a call. It’s much more effective to give your complete attention for 90 to 120 minutes at a time, break truly, and then give your full attention to the following task. These work sessions are referred to as “ultradian sprints.”

People might develop rituals to lessen the many disruptions that technology has introduced into their life once they become aware of how difficult it is for them to focus. We begin with a practise that makes students confront the effects of daily distractions. People remark that when they try to finish a difficult work but are frequently interrupted, the experience feels a lot like ordinary life.

Focusing systematically on tasks that have the most long-term leverage is an additional strategy for mobilising mental energy. If more difficult work isn’t specifically scheduled into their calendar, individuals frequently put it off or rush through it. The CEOs with whom we work have probably found that choosing the biggest issue for the following day each evening and making it their top priority when they wake up is the most effective focus ritual. As many people do, Jean Luc Duquesne, a vice president for Sony Europe in Paris, used to respond to his e-mail as soon as he arrived at work. He now makes an effort to focus on the most crucial subject for the first hour of each day. At 10 in the morning, he discovers that he frequently feels as though his day has already been productive.

The Human Spirit: Meaning and Purposeful Energy

When people’s daily job and activities are in line with the things they value most and that give them a feeling of meaning and purpose, they are able to access the power of the human spirit. They usually feel more upbeat, have better concentration, and show more endurance when the work they’re doing matters to them. Unfortunately, corporate life’s high expectations and quick speed allow little time for thought on these matters, and many individuals aren’t even aware that meaning and purpose can be sources of energy. Indeed, it is likely to have little effect if we attempt to start our programme by emphasising the human spirit. Participants don’t fully understand how attending to their own deeper needs has a significant impact on their performance and job satisfaction at work until after they have experienced the usefulness of the rituals they build in the other dimensions.

Jonathan Anspacher, a partner at E&Y, found it exhilarating and instructive to simply have the chance to ask himself a series of questions about what truly meant to him. He advised us to ask ourselves, “What do you want to be remembered for?” and to be a little self-reflective. “You don’t want to be known as the crazy partner who put in such long hours and caused his team to suffer. Can you come to my band’s show when my kids phone and ask? I want to confirm that I’ll attend and that I’ll sit in the first row. I don’t want to be the dad who enters the room, sits in the back, checks his Blackberry, then gets up to answer the phone.

The three categories of doing what they do best and enjoy most at work, consciously allocating time and energy to the areas of their lives they deem most important—work, family, health, and service to others, and living their core values in their daily behaviors—are necessary for people to access the energy of the human spirit.

It’s crucial to understand that your best qualities and your favourite activities aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive while trying to figure out who you are and what you enjoy doing most. Even when you excel at something and receive tonnes of compliments on it, you might not actually enjoy it. On the other hand, you can love doing something but not have a talent for it, in which case putting up the effort necessary to succeed is not worthwhile.

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We invite programme participants to think back on at least two professional experiences from the previous several months during which they felt effective, effortlessly absorbed, inspired, and fulfilled. This will help them identify their areas of strength. Then, we ask students to analyse those events to determine precisely what motivated them in such a positive way and what particular skills they were using. Is being in command or engaging in creative work more energising, for example, if leading strategy seems like a sweet spot? Or is it practising a skill that naturally comes to you and makes you feel good? Finally, we ask participants to create a ritual that will motivate them to engage in more of precisely that kind of work activity.

There is frequently a comparable gap between what individuals say is important and what they actually do in the second category, investing time and attention to what is important to you. Rituals may be able to bridge this gap. Spending time with his family was the thing that meant most to Jean Luc Duquesne, the vice president of Sony Europe, yet it frequently got squeezed out of his day when he gave it any serious thought. So that he could concentrate on his family, he established a ritual in which he switches off for at least three hours every evening when he gets home. He admitted to, “I’m still not an expert on PlayStation,” he said, “but according to my youngest son, I’m learning and I’m a good student.” When Steve Wanner commuted home, he used to talk on his cell phone all the way to his front door. Now, he has a designated location 20 minutes from his home where he finishes calls and puts his phone away. In order to be less focused on work and more available to his wife and kids when he gets home, he relaxes for the remainder of his drive.

Many people find it difficult to live out their primary principles in their daily activity, which falls under the third category. Most people move through life at such a rapid speed that they rarely take time to reflect on their values and goals. As a result, they allowed outside pressures to direct their behaviour.

We don’t advise people to state their values openly because the outcomes are typically too predictable. As an alternative, we try to elicit them, in part by using unintentionally illuminating questions like, “What are the attributes that you find most repulsive when you see them in others?” People accidentally reveal what they stand for by expressing what they can’t tolerate. For instance, if you find stinginess to be particularly offensive, generosity is certainly one of your core values. Consideration is probably a high value for you if you are particularly offended by rudeness in others. Similar to the other categories, creating rituals can aid in bridging the gap between your current behaviour and the values you aspire to. The practise can be to terminate meetings you run five minutes earlier than usual and purposefully arrive five minutes early for the meeting that comes next if you find that thoughtfulness is a core value but you are consistently late for meetings.

People can make significant progress toward reaching a higher feeling of alignment, pleasure, and well-being in their life both on and off the job by addressing these three categories. These emotions themselves are a source of good energy, and they encourage participants to stick with rituals in other energy dimensions as well.

Only to the extent that firms encourage their employees to adopt new behaviours will this new method of working become widespread. We have discovered, sometimes painfully, that not all business leaders and organisations are willing to accept the idea that employee personal rejuvenation would result in higher and more long-lasting performance. Renewal initiatives require strong backing and dedication from senior management, starting with the primary decision maker.

Several hundred leaders at Sony Europe have adopted the concepts of energy management. More than 2,000 of their direct reports will go through the energy rejuvenation programme throughout the course of the following year. Since Fujio Nishida, it has been more socially acceptable at Sony to take short breaks, exercise during the day, check e-mail only at specific times, and even inquire about the stories that irritated or impatient coworkers are telling themselves.

Changes in behaviours, communications, and rules are all part of organisational support. Many of the businesses have constructed “renewal rooms,” where people may go frequently to unwind and refuel. Some provide discounted gym memberships. In some instances, managers will gather teams of workers for lunchtime exercises. To guarantee that people have at least one hour completely free of meetings, one organisation implemented a no-meeting zone between 8 and 9 am. Senior executives at various firms, including Sony, decided to cease checking email during meetings in order to make them more productive and focused.

Many businesses have created “renewal rooms” where individuals can frequently go to unwind and replenish.

Success can be hampered by a crisis attitude, for example. Organizations that experience just enough pain to be eager for new answers but not enough to be utterly overwhelmed make the best candidates for energy renewal programmes. The senior team at one company, where we had the active support of the CEO, couldn’t tear themselves away from their focus on immediate survival despite the fact that taking time off for renewal might have allowed them to be more productive at a more sustainable level. The company was under intense pressure to grow rapidly.

In contrast, the team at Ernst & Young completed the procedure effectively during the busiest time of the tax season. They practised controlling their emotions by breathing or telling themselves other stories, with the approval of their supervisors, and they alternated moments of intense concentration with restorative pauses. The majority of the group members said that they had never felt less stressed than they did throughout this busy season.

Today, corporations and their employees have an implicit agreement that each will make every effort to get as much from the other as possible, as quickly as possible, and then move on without looking back. That is, in our opinion, mutually destructive. Instead of becoming enriched, both the individuals and the organisations they work for become deprived. Employees are becoming more and more stressed out. Organizations are compelled to accept workers who aren’t totally engaged and to continuously hire and train new employees to take the place of those who opt to depart. We propose a new, clear contract that is advantageous to all parties: To help them create and maintain their value, organisations invest in their employees across all facets of their lives. People react by bringing their entire multidimensional energy to work every day. The worth of both rises as a result.

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Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Positivity Ratio

The definition of positivity and how it can change people’s lives are presented by Fredrickson in her 2009 book Positivity. At the time, research indicated that the ideal level of positivity for high-functioning teams, partnerships, and marriages was about a 3:1 ratio (this is sometimes referred to as the Losada Ratio). According to Fredrickson, having a roughly equal amount of good and negative emotions helps people reach their highest levels of resilience and well-being. The talks on how a positive frame of mind might improve relationships, health, relieve depression, and widen the mind were sparked by this scientific discovery, which was revolutionary.

The three to one positive ratio

Because of the beautiful and hard-wired design of your neural system by nature, negativity lasts longer than positive. According to research, it takes three positive experiences to make up for one negative one. For every ripping negative emotional experience you go through, at least three sincere happy emotional experiences that lift you are required, according to Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, a happiness researcher at the University of North Carolina. By using what she refers to as the 3-to-1 ratio, you may create a cooperative relationship between your survival mind and your flourish mind. According to Fredrickson, being positive does not include adhering to the axioms of “grin and bear it” or “don’t worry, be joyful.” “Those are just surface-level wishes. Optimism goes further. It includes every pleasant emotion under the sun, from admiration to love, laughter to joy, and everything in between.

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Chapter 2: Emotion Importance

In business, feelings have a terrible reputation. We’ve been trained to think they have less validity than thoughts. It’s not personal, it’s simply business, as we all know. This claim argues that objective facts trump personal feelings. However, as emotions are an integral component of the human experience, it would be foolish and impossible to exclude them from judgement, interaction, and decision-making.

Recent research (paywall) demonstrates that cognition and emotions work together to shape intention and behaviour. Humans evaluate a situation simultaneously on the cognitive and emotional levels. These evaluations lead to:

1. A feeling of well-being

2. A list of goals for the person’s behaviour in the future

In other words, the mind processes both thought and emotion, deciding if the circumstance is favourable or unfavourable, and then deciding how to respond. In terms of how it relates to business, there are two key conclusions from this neuroscience research:

1. The brain does not manage cognition and emotion separately.

2. Employee goal-setting and organisational outcomes are significantly impacted by the intentions that emerge (through the assessment process).

Consider the following scenarios: A coworker (and friend) is abruptly fired; you are given an impossible task; or the project you firmly believe in is shelved after months of work. The most frequent negative emotions felt at work are worry, unhappiness, frustration, and rage, therefore any of these circumstances could leave you feeling one of these ways.

Whether you realise it or not, these feelings may make you feel threatened, and that feeling may cause you to use less of your free time, be less kind to your coworkers, consider leaving the company, or second-guess your support for it or its leaders. Detrimental emotions can have negative effects that must not be ignored. They have an effect on a company’s bottom line in addition to your energy quality.

On the other hand, Barbara Fredrickson’s research on positive emotions demonstrates that positive affect not only predicts future happiness and success, but also reflects present safety, contentment, and achievement. Positive emotion cultivation over time (at least a 3:1 ratio) has a “broaden-and-build” effect on the person doing it. Positive emotion expression makes room for new opportunities, abilities, relationships, and knowledge.

It begs us all to pay more attention to it since work is rife with opportunities for emotion and because employees make decisions with both their perceiving hearts and their reasoning heads.

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Chapter 3: Workplace Emotions

Although it can be simple for managers to dismiss feelings at work, doing so can have serious repercussions. It goes without saying that feelings are important in the job. Stress, anger, or other negative emotions can impair a person’s ability to function at work and interact with others. It’s critical for managers to understand these feelings and how to handle them. Managers can cultivate a healthy work environment for their team and support their success by comprehending and acknowledging the significance emotions play in the workplace.

Why Are Emotions Important at Work?

It may be possible to predict workplace outcomes by looking at the emotional climate there. Here are some basic ways that workplace emotions impact an organisation:

• Top talent is attracted to a happy workplace because it fosters higher retention rates and loyalty to the business in addition to attracting the best candidates.
• It’s possible to have too much of a good thing, which can impair critical thinking and decrease productivity.
• Stress has been demonstrated to have a negative impact on memory, attention, impulse control, and mental flexibility. Because of this, organisations that overly enforce rules or overlook the need of establishing a healthy emotional culture may find that their employees are less productive.
• Burnout is supposed to result from low morale at work over an extended length of time. Emotional depletion leads to burnout. This may be a result of a variety of professional problems, including a sense of being devalued at work, a lack of influence, or a lack of teamwork among teammates.
• Positive feelings promote innovation: People are more likely to come up with fresh ideas when they feel free to express themselves and are encouraged to take chances. And those ideas are more likely to be turned into successful goods or services when they are greeted with encouragement and enthusiasm.

What Does Emotional Intelligence Look Like at Work?

The capacity to recognise and control one’s own emotions as well as those of others is known as emotional intelligence (EI). Self-awareness, empathy, and self-control are all necessary. EI involves comprehending and controlling feelings, as opposed to conventional intelligence, which is centred on cognitive abilities.

Emotional intelligence can be a useful tool in the job for managing relationships, handling challenging talks, and resolving conflict. People with emotional intelligence are better equipped to foster a supportive and fruitful work environment.

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Chapter 4: Positive Emotions

Negative emotions, such as worry, dread, and sadness, have a long history of being linked to physical and mental health problems. Recent research, however, emphasises the advantages of positive feelings including happiness, joy, awe, and gratitude that were previously underappreciated.

The relationships and effects of having pleasant emotions have been the subject of a wave of research during the last fifteen years. It is obvious that people who experience pleasant emotions frequently do better at home and at work, even if researchers are still trying to understand the precise mechanisms that connect positive emotions to these crucial outcomes.

As a result, corporate wellness initiativ