The Lucifer Effect - the power of organisational culture

The bizarre and terrible events at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq caused social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University to re-examine the famous and controversial prison experiment he conducted at Stanford in 1971.

In his talk on ‘The Lucifer Effect’, an unusual topic for a positive psychology conference he discussed how the experiment got out of hand:
Young men had been assigned to play the role of guards and inmates in a simulated jail in the basement of a campus building, but the participants took their play acting so seriously that the scheduled two-week experiment had to be aborted at the midpoint, after the student guards had begun to psychologically and physically abuse the student prisoners.

Reanalysing the experiment, in the light of other events and two decades of social psychological research. He concludes that all of us are susceptible to being drawn over to the dark side, because human behaviour is determined more by situational forces and group dynamics than by our inherent nature.

Thus it is horribly easy to create situations and systems in which good people cannot resist the temptation to do bad things. But, on a more hopeful note, we can just as readily design systems that bring out the best in people and organisations.

Zimbardo demonstrates that organisational problems don’t originate with ‘bad apples, but ‘bad barrels’ and specifically bad ‘barrel makers’ – leaders who wittingly or not create systems in which participants are encouraged to do wrong or which minimise the potential for contribution.

Triumpha’s view is that whilst Zimbardo’s work discusses what seem to be extreme events, the organisational implications of this research should not be ignored. It sheds light on issues such as peer pressure, reluctance to speak the truth to leaders (power), the desire that people have to belong and hence the pressure to conform and be ‘liked’. These same organisational forces hamper an organisation’s capacity to innovate, to solve problems, achieve goals, meet challenges and compete.

It is therefore critical that leaders create organisational cultures which unleash the talent and contributions of all, where information flows freely, no one fears the consequences of speaking up and specifically by broadening the perspectives that leaders are exposed to reduce the potential for group think and build engagement throughout the workforce for what needs to be delivered.

What can the science of happiness offer the world of work?

1. Relative to their less happy peers, happy people earn higher incomes and have jobs with greater autonomy, receive more favourable appraisals from their managers , suffer less burnout, have fewer absences and help their colleagues more. (Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. A., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.)
2. Positive emotions increase resistance to the common cold. (Dr Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University)

3. Barbara Frederickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina has also shown that:

• Negative emotions tend to constrict thoughts and actions, which become limited to a few narrow options aimed at remaining ‘safe’.
• Positive emotions expand the scope of our vision, helping us to become more flexible in our thinking and behaviours able to see the wood and the trees
• When people feel positive emotions, things that divide people – melt away
• Just as negativity sparks downward spirals that can lead to misery, depression and illness, positivity sparks upward spirals that open people’s minds and build their resources for handling life’s demands and promotes health
• Whilst the experience of positive emotions is often far milder than negative emotions, they are the key to rebounding from adversity and building resilience.
• A ratio of positivity to negativity of 3 to 1 is the tipping point that predicts whether people flourish.

Does Executive Coaching Really Work?

You would expect with the considerable monies spent on executive coaching that there would be solid evidence that coaching works. Until fairly recently however there has been little robust research into its effectiveness. At the recent IPPA conference, Dr Anthony Grant, Director of the Coaching Psychology Unit at the University of Sydney highlighted some of the most important research findings:

• Coaching can enhance resilience and workplace wellbeing & facilitate goal attainment (Grant, Curtayne & Burton, in press)
• It is insight not self reflection that is related to goal attainment and well being. Coaches must help their coachees to focus on developing insight, rather than merely self reflecting. Action and insight are the key words here.
• Asking questions that focus on the solution as opposed to questions that focus on the problem is more effective.
• Both approaches increase insight and self confidence in solving the problem, reduce negative emotions and people report that they have moved closer to their goals (goal approach). However the solution focussed approach produced more positive emotion and led to a greater understanding of the nature of the problem.

Triumpha’s view is that by combining coaching with psychometrics it is possible to ‘get to the heart’ of things and generate insight more quickly than by using coaching alone. In particular during times of organisational change using approaches which tap into ‘positive’ emotions and energy can release the needed creativity and resilience to sustain performance over time.

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