Facilitate Proceedings » Positive Thinking http://facilitate.com/blog Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:46:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 The Magic Number That Helps Teams Flourish http://facilitate.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/the-magic-number-that-helps-teams-flourish/ http://facilitate.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/the-magic-number-that-helps-teams-flourish/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:21:58 +0000 Danuta McCall http://facilitate.com/blog/?p=636 The Magic Number Now, Losada and Fredrickson hypothesized that people or teams with a positivity ratio (ratio of pleasant feelings to unpleasant feelings) that meets or exceeds a specific threshold would be also characterized as flourishing. Losada studied a large group of business teams during their annual strategy meetings, tracking statements made in the meetings as positive, negative or neutral. He then measured the performance of these teams and determined that there is indeed a positivity ratio, and it’s (drum roll, please)... ]]> I was patrolling my corner of the blogosphere when I came upon a post that referenced research by psychologists Marcial Losada and Barbara Fredrickson about how positivity impacts team performance. Experiments have shown that positive affect (positive sentiments, attitudes and emotions) makes individuals, teams and organizations flourish – that is function optimally. People and teams who flourish are more flexible, resilient, creative and intuitive. On the opposite side, languishing teams exhibit narrow thinking, boredom, cynicism.

The Magic Number
Now, Losada and Fredrickson hypothesized that people or teams with a positivity ratio (ratio of pleasant feelings to unpleasant feelings) that meets or exceeds a specific threshold would be also characterized as flourishing. Losada studied a large group of business teams during their annual strategy meetings, tracking statements made in the meetings as positive, negative or neutral. He then measured the performance of these teams and determined that there is indeed a positivity ratio, and it’s (drum roll, please)…

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