133. Positive Organizational Psychology For Innovative Humans with Dr. Kim Perkins
What Does It Mean to Change?
We use the word “change” so often, and we don’t always clarify what that means.
Change doesn’t have to be heavy or negative. Change can be filled with opportunities to find joy, to learn, to laugh with others and to explore what is possible.
In the current climate, the words positive and organization can feel like they don’t belong together. But the reality is, positive change within organizations is possible, and we have an opportunity to reimagine the relationships between employees, and organizations or companies.
Kim Perkins joins Erica to discuss positive organizational psychology and how that shows up in the work she does, and they get into the nitty-gritty of shaping change within organizations.
In this article:
How positive organizational psychology can help us reimagine work
Why creating change sometimes means doing less
How focusing on forward momentum can hinder systemic change
Why we perceive change as loss and how to cope
Keep the dialogue going:
DEI work can be infused with joy and positivity! Join Pause on the Play® The Community this month and be part of the discussion on voting with your dollars and how to make supporting brands and businesses that align with your values a fun, joyful process.
Join us at pauseontheplay.com/community
This article is based on a Pause On The Play podcast episode called Positive Organizational Psychology For Innovative Humans with Dr. Kim Perkins.
Meet Dr. Kim Perkins
Kim Perkins holds a Ph.D. in positive organizational psychology. A former journalist and pro athlete, Kim, and has worked with leaders at cutting-edge tech and entertainment companies. Her first book, Winner Take None, about the role competition, plays in our lives, will be out in May 2022.
Kim says that part of what has driven her in her life and her work is the feeling that “we have to go deeper in order to solve some of the issues before us.”
Defining Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is “the study of optimum experience.” Kim says that positive psychology focuses on answering the question of what good is, what we want to have more of in our lives, and how that can be optimized.
At the same time, she says, “it's a really difficult thing to say that this is what good is for all of humanity based on just our little sliver of Western respondents to psychology.”
An example of this challenge, Kim notes, is in gratitude practices.
Research shows that for many people, developing a gratitude practice through journaling or just reflecting on a couple of things they’re grateful for from that day, can help them feel better and more connected. But for others, it can actually contribute to feelings of helplessness and depression by focusing on instances of others’ largesse or happenstance.
Can We Do More Than Punch a Clock?
Kim says she was drawn to applying positive psychology in organizations from growing up watching her father struggle as a Black entrepreneur.
She wanted to know if her father came “from a very defensive place where he had to constantly have his elbows out in order to operate,” because it was his personality or because it was a fact of how businesses run.
Growing up in the Midwest, too, she says “people generally did not love their jobs….People kind of put in their time and left and that was the culture.”
Those formative experiences with work culture led her to question if work was just something we have to put up with, or if there was a way to bring “more of the changes that we want to see in the world and the way we want to live in it.”
Reconsidering What Change Can Mean
Erica says that she sees the word change–what it means, what it could mean–getting watered down with overuse and unclear intentions.
She asks Kim, given that change is the basis of so much of what she does, what change means to her.
Kim agrees that change is an overused word. “I think that an American way of looking at things is that change is almost like a holy good, you know? You're supposed to always be growing and always be changing and always be doing more and more and more.”
But she says the answer is often to do less.
“What I'm asking people to do in coaching is to actually do less, to actually chill out for a minute.”
She says she’s seen dramatic changes in people’s wellbeing from learning to pause, and those shifts carry into their work and the way they approach their organizations.
Erica says she notices that often when people focus on change, they get caught up in the idea of change being about forward momentum, about leaving something behind or becoming more of something.
But she notes that often, reconnection with things that we have forgotten or left behind is necessary for change.
Kim agrees that our society’s focus on moving up takes away from our ability to be in the place we are, which she says “is part of the only way we’re ever going to start reconnecting and coming together and making systems that serve us rather than us constantly serving these systems of exchanging resources.”
Erica adds that the rhetoric of if you’re not growing, you’re dying also contributes to a lack of consideration for the kinds of systemic change that actually benefit everyone, rather than the optics of change.
Kim says that she sees this often in the tech companies she works with where, “there's kombucha on tap every three feet and you have no time to do anything except this job ever.”
Change As Gain Instead of Loss
Erica says we stand to gain so much collectively when change is made from a place of equitable practices, but so often people focus on what they think they could lose and fail to make impactful change at all.
Kim notes that this is a prime example of cognitive bias. “We think that we're making a rational decision, but it's actually really emotionally motivated and we can't see it. And loss aversion is pretty much the number one cognitive bias.”
Because of this, she says, we do have to approach change by dealing with the perceived losses and that may include a kind of grieving or memorializing process for old ways of doing things.
She gives the example of a company knowing they need to adjust their strong hierarchical structure to allow younger employees to offer fresh ideas but resisting the change because they perceived it as losing power, position and identity they’d earned.
“If you looked at it on paper, you'd say this is not really giving up power. This is just, you know, the tiniest little bit of symbolic power, perhaps, but that has so much hold over people.”
Kim says that these kinds of changes can become struggle points both in older companies and as businesses grow from a small group of founders into organizations that require processes and a certain amount of bureaucracy to function.
Erica asks Kim how we can cope with perceived losses in the change process.
Even for seemingly minor changes like switching messaging software, Kim says it’s necessary to allow people time to adjust to the idea, make sure they understand why the change is being made and that the reason is clear and sensible, and to allow people the opportunity to grieve and say goodbye to the old way of doing things.
She also says that it is inevitable that some people will grumble and resist the change, but to try to put your focus on the people who are enthusiastic and open, rather than getting bogged down with the naysayers.
“If we want to get the full picture of what's going on, we always have to go look for the positive intentionally or else our attention will [always be drawn] by the negative.”
Erica adds, “If we know what matters to us, then it's easier for us to be like, well, this value matters to me, and so, therefore, I can see that this supports that. I feel good about that. Let me follow that.”
Kims says that consciously identifying your values and connecting changes within your organization to them is key to not getting run by fear, habit and tradition.
Who Do You Want to Be?
Kim says if people take one action after this discussion, she wants them to think about who they want to be. Not in terms of position or even impact on others, but from the inside out.
“What kind of experiences do you want to have? What do you want the feeling that you’re getting from what you’re doing to be? That is kind of a route that you can come back to so that you can compare it to see if you’re getting that out of your activities, rather than just working on the externals.”
Guest Contact and Bio:
Kim Perkins holds a Ph.D. in positive organizational psychology. A former journalist and pro athlete, Kim, and has worked with leaders at cutting edge tech and entertainment companies. Her first book, Winner Take None, about the role competition plays in our lives, will be out in May 2022.
Facebook: @ThisIsKimPerkins
LinkedIn: @KimPerkins1
Keep The Dialogue Going
DEI work can be infused with joy and positivity! Join Pause on the Play® The Community this month and be part of the discussion on voting with your dollars and how to make supporting brands and businesses that align with your values a fun, joyful process.
Join us at pauseontheplay.com/community
Resources:
India Jackson also interviews Kim Perkins this week on the Flaunt Your Fire podcast. They discuss healthy versus unhealthy competition and meta-gaming as a fuel to create joy within your brand and your work culture.