the importance of positive law firm leadership
Earlier on, I wrote a series of posts on positive psychology - the scientific study of human happiness – and the related field of Positive Organizational Scholarship (pdf) - a branch of the organizational sciences focusing on “the dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster vitality and flourishing in employees, make possible resilience and restoration, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance.”
This topic duo has kept my attention over time and I often question how law firms might employ some of the relevant field work in redressing employee disengagement, discontent and depletion. As it’s done before, Harvard’s Working Knowledge forum again sheds some significant light on this question. In an article called The Power of Ordinary Practices, researchers share the results of a recent study on the ways business leaders “can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance” of the “knowledge workers who are carrying out the [day-to-day] work of the organization.”
According to the piece, a key discovery the researchers made is that workers’ performance is tied to their “emotions, motivations, and perceptions about their work environment.” These feelings, in turn, are “powerfully influenced by particular daily events” on the job. Positive feelings generated in the workplace lead to “more flexible, fluent, and original thinking” that “can carryover, [via] an incubation effect, to the next day.”
Because of their regular interactions with the knowledge worker population, leaders are the linchpins for generating or squelching the positive sentiments underlying employee happiness and productivity. So, the researchers advise, leaders need to understand how “ordinary, trivial, mundane” things they do in the regular course of business “can have an enormous impact” on an employee’s daily experience and performance.
The article goes on to cite “five leader behaviors that have a positive influence on people's feelings.” Among these five positive reinforcers are: providing emotional support; giving positive feedback on their work; and publicly recognizing people for good performance.
This topic duo has kept my attention over time and I often question how law firms might employ some of the relevant field work in redressing employee disengagement, discontent and depletion. As it’s done before, Harvard’s Working Knowledge forum again sheds some significant light on this question. In an article called The Power of Ordinary Practices, researchers share the results of a recent study on the ways business leaders “can influence the motivation, creativity, and performance” of the “knowledge workers who are carrying out the [day-to-day] work of the organization.”
According to the piece, a key discovery the researchers made is that workers’ performance is tied to their “emotions, motivations, and perceptions about their work environment.” These feelings, in turn, are “powerfully influenced by particular daily events” on the job. Positive feelings generated in the workplace lead to “more flexible, fluent, and original thinking” that “can carryover, [via] an incubation effect, to the next day.”
Because of their regular interactions with the knowledge worker population, leaders are the linchpins for generating or squelching the positive sentiments underlying employee happiness and productivity. So, the researchers advise, leaders need to understand how “ordinary, trivial, mundane” things they do in the regular course of business “can have an enormous impact” on an employee’s daily experience and performance.
The article goes on to cite “five leader behaviors that have a positive influence on people's feelings.” Among these five positive reinforcers are: providing emotional support; giving positive feedback on their work; and publicly recognizing people for good performance.
