The other day I found a link to a book review on Twitter. The book is called Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive. It provides summaries of research about persuasion and how to be successfully persuasive. One study in particular had me thinking about an approach to change and innovation that I am very interested in. The summarized study concluded that ads that quoted negative behavior en masse reinforced the negative behavior in individuals. In the study, visitors to a national park were exposed to two different signs.  The first sign stated that large amounts of petrified forest had been previously taken away and to please not remove any pieces. The second sign simply said that visitors should not remove pieces of the forest.  The first sign tripled the amount of theft because it portrayed the theft as a common occurrence. The same effect was realized when an ad targeting women voters mentioned the number of women who didn’t vote previously. The attention given to the negative behavior reinforces that it is socially acceptable and increases the occurrence of the behavior.

I found this to be an interesting insight for leaders to think about, especially when faced with the need to make a team intervention, work with a continually evolving team, or introduce change into a team. I was reminded of an approach to change called Appreciative Inquiry. In the simplest of terms, Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approaches change from a positive standpoint.  Rather than looking for what is not working, AI encourages those involved to think about what is working and how to intensify that effect. The AI approach seeks to bring out the best in people and their organizations. (For more in-depth information about AI, see the Appreciative Inquiry Commons.) Perhaps an AI approach to virtual team leadership could help minimize negative behaviors in a team that is having or facing difficulty by focusing on positive interactions and outcomes and reinforcing them, rather than pointing out trends of negative behaviors. This may be an especially useful method in virtual teams in which people don’t know each other well or depend heavily on technology that can obfuscate meaning of complex messages (such as using email to send sensitive or ambiguous information). Basing interaction in an AI framework for tasks such as an after action review may relieve some defensive reactions in team members when something doesn’t go according to plan and strengthen team unity through concentrating on what went right.

I’d love to know if anyone has experience using AI in teams or organizations and lessons learned from the experience.