Learning from Success

The authors draw on their extensive experience as consultants and trainers in large companies in the UK and abroad, revealing an approach that has clearly proved inspirational to their clients. Find what works and do more of it Find what doesn't work and do something different Find and use resources Build on successes Take great care to simplify issues as far as possible, but no further • See reviews of 'The Solutions Focus' at Amazon.co.uk • Learn more about this topic at The Solutions Focus Website • See related sections below: APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY and SOLUTION-FOCUSED THERAPY

Synopsis: What do your people at work and your spouse and kids at home have in common with a five-ton killer whale? This work explains that both whales and people perform better when you accentuate the positive. It shows how using the techniques of animal trainers - specifically those responsible for the killer whales of SeaWorld - can supercharge your effectiveness at work and at home. It explains the difference between "GOTcha" (catching people doing things wrong) and "Whale Done!" (catching people doing things right). (Amazon.co.uk)

Review: Marcus Buckingham and Donald O Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths proposes a unique approach to managing personnel: focus on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. Effectively managing personnel--as well as one's own behaviour--is an extraordinarily complex task that, not surprisingly, has been the subject of countless books touting what each claims is the true path to success. Following up on the coauthors' popular previous book, First, Break All the Rules, it fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximiser) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organisation" by capitalising on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it. (extract from Amazon.co.uk review)

Synopsis: Compiles scientific evidence that optimism is vital to overcoming defeat and exhibits how readers can learn the habit of optimism necessary for a successful and happy life.

Book Description: What really makes people glad to be alive? What are the inner experiences that make life worthwhile? For more than two decades Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied those states in which people report feelings of concentration and deep enjoyment. His studies revealed that what makes experience genuinely satisfying is ‘flow’ a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to complete absorption in an activity and results in the achievement of a perfect state of happiness.Flow has become the classic work on happiness and a major contribution to contemporary psychology. It examines such timeless issues as the challenge of lifelong learning; family relationships; art, sport and sex as ‘flow’; the pain of loneliness; optimal use of free time; and how to make our lives meaningful. (Amazon.co.uk) You can explore Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's ideas about flow for free at http://www.deepfun.com where Dr. Fun (Bernie DeKoven) interviews 'Mike' about 'flow'.

Synopsis: Over and over, major multinational companies have found that their previous successes did not teach them how to be consistently successful. They routinely discard successful processes instead of studying and replicating them in other parts of the organization. Why? This text seeks to explain the reasons, with the author suggesting that they are just following the path of least resistance as determined by their organizational structure. The text also adds a missing piece to management literature, the structural causes of success and failure, and explains how to redesign the organization or team for success. (Amazon.co.uk) Bruce Elkin says it is the best book ever on crafting organizational strategy. Read his full review

Appreciative Inquiry:
Change at the Speed of Imagination
Jane McGruder Watkins, Bernard J. Mohr

Book Description: For the past 15 years the authors have worked closely with colleagues to develop the emerging issue of Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a process for fostering positive and strength based change, as a theory and practice that can be used by OD professionals and managers/leaders of organizations, groups and communities. They have seeded the AI process across the globe and are now seeing a continually increasing interest in its use. In the light of 15 years of practice adapting AI to many cultures, types of organizations, and multiple "presenting issues," this is now a proven process that OD consultants, organizational leaders and managers, and the academic community are finding eminently innovative, energizing, and useful. Synopsis: This title combines theory, an explanation of the reason that Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is transformative, and practical designs for various kinds of AI/OD interventions paired with case studies where the interventions have been used successfully. The book includes a complete explanation of AI from its historical and theoretical roots to its practice and impact in organizations presented in the context of the rapidly changing environment in which we live and work. (Amazon.co.uk)

From the back cover: The importance of Appreciative Inquiry goes beyond business to include family life and relationships. Human systems and organisations move in the direction of what they study, and study in every and all areas involves the process of asking questions. The sooner the right questions are asked, the sooner the right answers are obtained. This book enumerates the generic questions that are central to the discovery phase of the Appreciative Inquiry process and are the keys to bringing out the best in any organisation.

Extract from one of many reviews at amazon.co.uk: The authors effectively challenge the old paradigm of "cause and effect" as the best approach to problem solving, demonstrating instead a "theory of no theory" in which every case is treated on its merits. They draw on their extensive experience as consultants and trainers in large companies in the UK and abroad, revealing an approach that has clearly proved inspirational to their clients. In organisations, they argue, no problem happens all the time, so try focussing first on those times when things are going well. Do more of what you have identified that works, and see what happens. See more reviews of 'The Solutions Focus' at Amazon.co.uk Learn more about this topic at The Solutions Focus Website

Book Description: Experience AI... is valuable for anyone engaged in an individual, team or organizational change process. It invites you to share in a conversation around the power and efficacy of embedding Experiential Learning models, tools and techniques into Appreciative Inquiry in order to accelerate positive change, motivate teams and individuals, generate buy-in and engage people at all levels. By sharing and learning from experience, people attain the high levels of rapport, empathy, trust and mutual understanding necessary to risk and embrace change together. When integrated into each stage of an Appreciative Inquiry, Experiential Learning supports and illuminates the AI process, making AI "come alive" for all stakeholders. When designed into an AI process, experiential learning allows participants to actually experience "the best of what exists" (Discovery), creates opportunities for organizational "peak experiences" (Dream), provides opportunities to experience, practice and refine provocative propositions (Design), and builds critical mass as change is cascaded throughout the community (Destiny). (amazon.com) Book Review: Also see this detailed book review by Roger Greenaway which includes a comparison with Bill Krouwel's 'Outdoor Management Development'. Experience AI is available from Amazon.com or The Taos Institute or the authors at Executive Edge, Inc.

Appreciative Leaders:
In the Eye of the Beholder
Marjorie Schiller, Bea Mah Holland, Deanna Riley
Book Description: This 200-page volume presents a model of Appreciative Leadership based on twenty-eight interviews, fifteen of which are included in the book. This small but comprehensive sample reveals the outstanding characteristics of appreciative leaders and their predominant behavioral attributes. The ways appreciative leaders engage in their daily practices are outlined in detail. "This is a landmark book, " according to Jane Watkins, an originator of Appreciative Inquiry. "It is an invaluable contribution to the literature that addresses the critically important question: What kinds of leaders will shape the radically different organizations called for by our constantly changing environment?" (amazon.com)
"May this daring book open new options in your leadership, and help us all expand our constructive capacity." David Cooperrider

Appreciative Leaders is available from Amazon.com or from The Taos Institute

The Appreciative Organization
by Harlene Anderson, David Cooperrider, Kenneth J. Gergen, mar Gergen, Kenneth Gergen, Mary Gergen, Sheila McNamee, Diana Whitney
Book Description: The founders of the Taos Institute have pooled their substantial resources to create a vision of a powerful and humanly nourishing form of organization and to share practices for bringing this organization into being. Based on their diverse experiences in organizational life, the authors are unanimous in their view that the appreciative construction of meaning is essential to the efficacy of an organization and the fulfillment of its participants. In clear and direct language, the volume treats the challenges of decision making, leadership, group functioning, personnel evaluation, and the relationship of the organization to its context. Bold ideas are developed, examples described, and multiple suggestions developed for creating the appreciative organization.
This volume will be of special significance to consultants and organizational members who wish to see the key elements of appreciative inquiry realized in the everyday working of the organization.

The Appreciative Organization is available from Amazon.com or from The Taos Institute

Appreciative facilitation emphasises what works well and pays attention to success and achievement. At its simplest, it involves catching students at their best moments and providing positive feedback about what they did or said. Alternatively you can invite positive comments from participants for each other following a group exercise. Or just ask, 'What is working well?'. Cheri Torres brings together her enthusiasm for appreciative facilitation and mobile ropes courses in 'The Appreciative Facilitator' (Torres, 2001). Her handbook includes summaries of key research supporting appreciative facilitation, such as the 'Pygmalion Effect' ('As the teacher believes the student to be, so the student becomes') and how watching videos of your own successful performances leads to much greater improvements than watching videos of your mistakes. Appreciative facilitation draws on ideas and principles from Appreciative Inquiry (an approach to organisation development) and Solution Focused Brief Therapy ('Be careful what you attend to. What you focus on expands.'). Appreciative facilitation fits well with outdoor education, both as a source of techniques and as a philosophy.

Synopsis: This book represents an addition to the literature on brief therapy. "Solution Talk" is a term Furman and Ahola use to refer to a constructive and agreeable manner of talking with people about problems. A conversation dominated by "solution talk" rather than "problem talk" is characterized by an atmosphere of mutual respect and is likely to focus on the future rather than the past, on resources rather than shortcomings, on success and progress rather than failure, and on solutions rather than problems. (Amazon.co.uk)

Product Description: Authors Peter De Jong and Insoo Kim Berg present an interviewing skills text with a unique solution-focused approach. This unique approach views clients as competent, helps them to visualize the changes they want, and builds on what they are already doing that works. Throughout the book, the authors' present models for solution-focused work, illustrated by examples and supported by research. (Amazon.com)

Book Description: The book examines the challenges that the furious pace of change in today’s world have brought and provides every manager with strategies to facilitate a successful, dynamic, creative, effective workforce. Backed by sound, up-to-the minute psychological theory this book is also highly practical and is packed with validated tools and techniques for enhancing life experience and work performance. This book will equip the reader with usable, effective, proven techniques for improving, communication, collaboration and co-operation at work. It will teach the reader how to become a ‘manager coach’ and to lead themselves and their team with confidence. (Amazon.co.uk)

Synopsis: After giving a history of brief therapy and describing the basic philosophical assumptions, the authors concentrate on ways of intervening that are common to all brief therapists, including framing, pattern, paradoxical, metamorphical, hypnotic and family interventions.

Synopsis At a time when the accepted standard treatment for alcoholism is long-term and expensive - and still has a high rate of failure - solution-focused therapy, as developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, in the US, puts into practice the most recent thinking and research in an elegant, brief and cost-effective model. This book outlines the model in an easy to read, step-by-step and engaging fashion, illustrated with numerous case examples. (Amazon.co.uk)

POSITIVE THINKING

THE BEST OF THE ACTIVE REVIEWING GUIDE by Roger Greenaway

Synopsis: Move over Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Optimal Thinking has become the successor to positive thinking. Hailed by academia and the media as "the essential step above positive thinking," Optimal Thinking empowers us to be our best in any circumstance. It stops us from settling for second best! (Amazon.com) Available from optimalthinking.com where you can view the contents and learn much more about the subject.

Maximize your talents, resources, and time. Make the most of every opportunity and achieve optimal personal and professional satisfaction. The successor to positive thinking, Optimal Thinking is the mental tool you need to achieve your ultimate life. This revolutionary, life-optimizing book shows you just how simple it is to sweep past the ordinary and even the extraordinary into the world of the highest and best. You will never settle for second best again! (Amazon.co.uk)

Synopsis In the face of increasing levels of depression affecting American children, the author teaches parents and educators how to instill optimism, resilience, and confidence in their youngsters. (Amazon.co.uk)

More books and resources about Positive Thinking