Optimism Exercise

[Anonymous]

Hi All,
I wonder if there’s an opportunity to use Martin Seligman’s ABCDE model of optimism to help a team understand how pessimism and optimism work, how they impact the team and for individuals within a team to use in exploring their own optimism and pessimism.
Here is the model, which seems to be designed for individual use, but I think can be helpfully used at individual and team level. Some of the language is a bit “clunky” but it’s potentially a neat process:

Adversity: a situation or event which is triggering a pessimistic response e.g. new targets, new boss, acquisition etc. Could be anything…

Belief: How the adversity is interpreted. This should be thoughts, NOT feelings e.g. these targets are much higher than last year, we have no chance of achieving them; I know the new guy’s reputation – he’s going to be very hard to work with; they are a much bigger company than we are, they are sure to be better etc

Consequences: What you did, how you acted or behaved AND how you felt e.g. We feel overwhelmed and incompetent, we’ve been unable to influence our targets which are unreachable; We’re worried that the new boss is going to change everything, not take account of our strengths, make life difficult for us and create a terrible working environment; We won’t compare well with the acquiring company’s people and will face redundancy etc

Disputation: Conscious effort to argue with yourself and dispute your beliefs. Interrupting the habitual thought pattern about the adversity and your beliefs about it. e.g. How were the targets developed? There may be an opportunity to influence them still. With some changes we may still be able to achieve them, actually, we need a new challenge; the new manager may have some interesting new approaches and experiences, we may have become a little too inward looking in recent years, this could be an opportunity to learn; we’re actually pretty good at what we do, we’re open to suggestions for improvement, it’s good to be flexible and see what the new company brings etc

Energization: the outcome or effect of redirecting thoughts and attention e.g. Let’s see how much flexibility there are in these targets and then agree exactly what we need to do to achieve them. Let’s focus on what we can do; Let’s prepare some data for the new manager on what we’ve done, our achievements and where we think we can still learn. Let’s talk with her/his current team and find out as much as we can about him/her; Let’s get involved in the acquisition integration as much and as quickly as we can, let’s find out as much as we can about the acquiring company – its strategy and culture and then evaluate how well we fit the portfolio etc

This could be a neat framework for reviewing the team’s response to historical adversity, upcoming adversity and for a look at individual responses by breaking the team into 2s or 3s to work through past and future challenges….

[Author]

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