Page 45 - Getting to the Heart of High Performance

take advantage of the situation or become too compla-
cent. What’s ironic, though, is how difficult it is to find

people who say they personally respond best to negative
rather than positive treatment. In fact, 99 percent of
people polled say they would prefer a more positive

work environment. 7

A long-running research program with implications for
management has been conducted by a psychologist
named John Gottman. His research involved hundreds of

couples who had just received their marriage licenses.
While each couple interacted for 15 minutes, observers
counted the number of positive versus negative
exchanges between the two people. Then the researchers

predicted who would divorce. Decades-long follow-up
studies produced stunning results, revealing that the
researchers had achieved 94 percent accuracy in predict-
ing which marriages would fail. The basis for the initial

forecasts was that couples who had fewer than five posi-
tive interactions for each negative interaction would be
at risk for splitting up, and the projections proved amaz-
ingly accurate. 8

A New Leadership Priority: Build the Psychological Balance Sheet 29