Page 47 - Appreciative Leadership

20 Appreciative Leadership

• Positive power is working with other organizations leveraging
resources to generate positive outcomes. It represents partnerships
and collaborations. If the right people are at the table, they can make
decisions and move things forward for the greater good. All can be
stronger. This is especially important right now for nonprofi ts.

• The result of positivity is that it brings up the whole group and we

can sell more. We can actually measure it in sales performance.
I am sure it must work for other functions too.
• I like to host “advances” rather than “retreats.” When I took over
as manager, I took my whole department to the top of Pikes Peak
for an advance, to get a new view. We didn’t plan our work; we
planned how we would support each other as a team. It’s been fi ve
years now, and we are the most supportive and high performing
team I have ever worked with. We are powerful.

And finally, positive power was depicted as a characteristic of the
whole organization. Participants suggested that a work environment,
the way business is done, and even the culture of an organization can

all be models of positive power. They also noted that it takes work to
keep up the positive because there is a societal bias toward negativity:

• We treat positivity as our normal way of doing business. It is
important to our success. If an employee gets chewed out and is
in a negative mindset, he or she will miss the next sale when a
new client walks in the door. Being negative is a hole we all have
to keep digging ourselves out of. We all have to keep on top and
rolling in the spirit of positive power.
• We have a culture of positive power. It had to be developed and
maintained, and it had to be required and expected of everyone in
the organization. We had to overcome the societal negativity that
is out there. As leaders, we constantly give employees affi rmation
about what they are doing right and how they are doing it. Even
if it is small, we build incrementally on the things that people are
doing right. Soon it becomes the experience they have of work.