Spark Brilliance (eBook)

Introduction

“It begins with you.”

This might not be exactly what you want to hear when you’re having an emotional breakdown in a coaching session, but that day, it was the beginning of a seismic shift for the person who was hearing it.

I’d been working one-on-one with Lauren for several months. Like so many leaders I count as clients and friends, Lauren was whip-smart, snappy, ambitious, the kind of person who’d always raised her hand first and run headlong into the fray in life. A forty-two-year-old single mom and Ivy League grad, she was funny and wise, charismatic and competent. Her career as a top executive at a Fortune 500 software company had been set on a steep upward trajectory; in the span of five years, she’d gone from mid-level employee to the leadership team. She’d risen to the challenge of each new level she unlocked with passion and determination. She wanted to be the best strategist, the most productive collaborator, the most effective leader. And for a while, she was.

Then, somewhere along the way, something shifted. She didn’t notice it until her once-steady footing suddenly began to feel shaky.

One day, there was an oddly biting comment from a coworker, the next day a whisper behind her back from another. A direct report quit, citing a lack of fulfillment.

The wind was changing, so subtly at first that it had taken her by surprise.

“I used to love all my coworkers, my peers. It used to feel totally different. I don’t know what changed.”

Lauren had sought out my coaching to help with what she perceived as an altered reality, a workplace where the people who had once been open, eager creative partners had become competitors. With each new promotion she’d achieved, the distance between people she’d once felt so connected to felt like it had widened more and more. Her former peers had become territorial and distrusting, guarding their information where they’d once shared, withholding cooperation where they’d once opened their arms to her.

She knew that this was partly the normal course of rising in the corporate ranks. The higher she climbed the pyramid, the fewer roles there were at each level, creating competition for those higher-level roles where once it had seemed like there was room for everyone.

Even though she recognized this scarcity effect, the feeling of being seen as an outright threat was new to her. And it was stressing her out.

Worse, it was stressing her team out. Everyone felt the discord, the bad vibes. With the leadership team of the organization stuck in a downward spiral of competitiveness and mistrust, many of the employees were beginning to mirror its effects in their work and interactions. Productivity dipped; engagement was evaporating. The energy of the workplace had taken a sharp dive, like bubbles dissipating from a can of soda left to go flat.

It’s not fun anymore, Lauren kept hearing, both in formal check-ins and overheard lunch conversations.

She felt a panicked sense that she was failing her own team, the people she led and cared so much about. She went into detective mode, determined to find the problem and fix what was wrong. I can’t do anything about the leadership culture, but at least I can lead my own people. The more she tried to find the reason things felt like they were falling apart, the more desperate she became.

“Why can’t I see what’s wrong? What am I supposed to do?” These were the questions I heard from her over the months we worked together. Before my eyes, she seemed to fade more and more into herself with each session we had; the once vibrant, energetic brunette lost her glow. Her stress and unhappiness were like a cloud around her that got darker as the weeks went on.

Until that day, when the cloudburst I’d been anticipating finally happened.

Lauren had signed on for our video session, looked straight into the webcam, and announced stoically, “I think I’ve decided to quit.” Then she immediately burst into tears.

It wasn’t the first time or even the hundredth time I’ve held space for a client while they spent several minutes sobbing out the worry, the fear, the stress and disappointment of it all. Being a leader, after all, often feels isolating. It can feel like there’s no one else with the same pressures, burdens, and responsibilities.

I let Lauren take the time she needed to feel the feelings. I’ve learned over many years of coaching clients that it’s crucial to be quiet and listen fully while they pour it all out.

“I hate how I’m feeling,” she said brokenly. “I’ve worked so hard to get here, and I don’t want to give up, but I hate how I feel. I’m so unfulfilled. I hate how I’m showing up. This is not how I work. This is not who I am.”

When the clouds began to lift, she looked at me, wiping away the last of the rapidly drying tears, and asked the crucial question.

“What do I do?”

And I replied, “Think positive!”

No, I didn’t. But that’s where a lot of people’s minds go when they hear the term Positive Psychology, so I thought I’d get it out of the way right off the bat: this isn’t a book about positive thinking. Lauren wasn’t going to be helped by trite encouragement to look for the silver lining, see the sunny side, and so on.

This is a book about brilliance.

Brilliance in all aspects of our experience as leaders: our relationships, our talent, our performance, our outlook.

Brilliance in our work, that is amplified when we come together as a team.

Brilliance that begins with one spark.

What Lauren wasn’t seeing, what was so obscured by the unhappiness, stress, and fear, was the enormous opportunity and potential of her situation. Her team was falling apart, and it was because they were following her lead. Her perspective, that something was wrong with the workplace, that friends had become adversaries, that trust was in short supply and collaboration was a distant dream, was what her team was mirroring.

I broke the hard truth to her.

“It begins with you.”

But that hard truth was also her greatest opportunity.

Her team was following her lead. It was in a direction she didn’t like, yes, but the important part was that they had followed her there, and they would follow her in a new direction.

If she could change her perspective, she could lead them back to brilliance.

Where It Begins

Positive Psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living.

This is a short definition of a field that is more defined by its broadness and potential than by any attempt to contain it within a few succinct words. What I love about this definition is that it is itself open and far-reaching, making space for a multitude of interpretations, endless avenues of impact.

However, my own work in motivation, communication, executive coaching, and team dynamics over the past two decades has shown me that pinning down a singular definition of Positive Psychology is a bit of a losing game. It’s also not the point; Positive Psychology is premised upon expansion, not reduction.

So, how do I define Positive Psychology when asked by friends, colleagues, and clients? The simple answer is that I don’t. I prefer to describe it.

Picture a line of numbers with zero in the middle, negative numbers to the left, and positive numbers to the right. When we typically think of our “baseline” as individuals—our sea level of happiness, performance, engagement, and perspective—we place it at zero on the line. When we’re feeling low in these areas, we dip below the baseline into the negative numbers.

Traditional psychology is the study of those dips, and the practice of healing by bringing people out of the negative numbers back up to their baseline. That’s the goal: equilibrium, sea level.

But there’s an infinite stretch of positive numbers extending past baseline. How does one keep moving forward?

Positive Psychology is the study and practice of the positive numbers. To me, it’s not an alternative or contrast to traditional psychology; rather, it’s a continuation of its impact, the “what’s next” sought by a person who has achieved equilibrium. The absence of negative doesn’t equal positive; the absence of sickness doesn’t equal health. When it comes to your mindset, the absence of sadness doesn’t equal happiness. When it comes to your team, the absence of poor performance doesn’t equal great performance. Neutral is merely the starting point where great things become possible—not the final destination.

And yet so often, we’re stuck in neutral. I see this day after day, not only in my work but with people in my life as well—everyone from friends to family to strangers in the grocery store. I see behaviors and attitudes that suggest a belief that neutral is all we can hope for. Surviving, not thriving. Happy is quite a reach; let’s just get to not sad and call it good, okay?

The father of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, carved out the field in the late 1990s as a rebuttal to that idea. President of the American Psychological Association at the time, Seligman introduced a focus on “building what’s strong,” not just “fixing what’s wrong.” After coauthoring with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi the foundational paper on this idea, “Positive Psychology,” in...