5

EXAMPLES OF POSITIVELY ENERGIZING LEADERSHIP

This chapter highlights four examples of positively energizing leadership and its impact on organizational performance. In each case the positive energy displayed by the leadership team was not the only factor that produced outstanding results, but it was certainly a key element in accounting for performance that, in some cases, far exceeded expectations. In each example, the leader of the organization did not have the power or authority to mandate a desired change or strategy himself or herself. Positively energizing leadership was among the only resources available.

The cases are Laureate, Saudi Telecom, the Business and Finance Division at the University of Michigan, and Tecmilenio University. These examples were chosen because they represent diverse types of organizations facing very different circumstances, but each was influenced by positively energizing leadership that exemplified the positive attributes enumerated in the previous chapters.¹

LAUREATE

An example of the impact of positive energy at the top of an organization occurred in the world’s largest university consortium, Laureate (which, in 2017, owned 69 universities in 12 regions throughout the world). At the time, Laureate had more than 1 million students and approximately 135,000 staff members. These institutions of higher education are located in Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, India, and Africa, and several are considered to be the most prestigious in their respective nations.

The CEO and the president of Laureate (respectively, Eilif Serck-Hanssen and Ricardo Berckemeyer) determined that positive leadership would become the core principle on which innovation and culture change would be based in the future. These two leaders had previously been exposed to positive leadership principles through association with Jim Mallozzi, highlighted in the introduction to this book. They were aware that Laureate was facing significant financial pressures as well as senior executive turnover. It was clear that the status quo was not a viable strategy for future success.

Senior leaders in this worldwide organization—including presidents, chancellors, and chief academic officers of the various universities throughout the world—were brought together for a three-day intensive workshop. The workshop centered on reviewing the empirical research that established the credibility of positive leadership and, in particular, illustrated the power of positive energy in accounting for institutional improvement. In addition, examples of practices that fostered positive energy were reviewed.

As part of this workshop, participants identified “positive energizers” in each of the 12 geographic regions of the world in which Laureate operated. Positive energizers were defined, in this instance, as individuals who convey enthusiasm, engender positive relationships, help other people flourish, and can be relied on to uplift and elevate the climate of their units. Attributes discussed in table 3.1 of chapter 3 in this volume were shared, and together, these senior executives identified a group of 46 individuals they deemed to be positive energizers.

These energizers were brought together for a three-day intensive workshop on positive leadership and given a 90-in-90 Challenge. The challenge was to infect 90 percent of all Laureate staff members throughout the world with positive energy in 90 days. To be infected meant that individuals could teach or explain to others what positively energizing leadership is, and they would have attempted a 1 percent improvement aimed at demonstrating positive leadership.

No centrally prescribed agenda was mandated for how the 90-in-90 Challenge was to be approached, and energizers were free to address the task in whatever ways they felt appropriate. Among the activities implemented by these various groups are those listed in resource 2 at the end of the book.

In 90 days, 93.3 percent of the 135,000 staff members had been infected, and more than 120,000 hours of training and workshops had been conducted. Forums, seminars, celebrations, task forces, classroom instruction, coaching, physical symbols, and theatrical productions were developed to accomplish the task. In follow-up surveys conducted after the events, 95 percent of participants indicated that they would recommend this training to others, and 98 percent indicated that they gained new knowledge on how they could enhance their institution’s performance. Figure 5.1 shows the results of a worldwide survey of employees after the 90-in-90 Challenge. On each dimension, scores improved over the three-month period.

An important part of the initiative’s success was the personal examples set by Serck-Hanssen and Berckemeyer. They made their calendars publicly available so they could be held accountable for the amount of time they dedicated to the positive leadership initiative. They wrote gratitude notes to employees each week. The incentive and recognition systems were updated to reflect positive energy principles. They were clearly demonstrating attributes of positively energizing leaders mentioned in chapter 3 such as sharing plum assignments, role-modeling problem solving, focusing on opportunities as much as the obstacles, clarifying meaningfulness, and utilizing a large number of positive energizers throughout the world. Positively energizing leadership from the top was unequivocally part of the formula for success.

In addition to the overall institutional strategies that were implemented worldwide, 14 different experiments were conducted to assess the impact of positive practices and positive energy on students in classrooms. In several Laureate universities across three continents, instructors in different disciplines were invited to participate in an investigation of positive practices in the classroom. Fourteen faculty members volunteered to participate in the study.² These instructors agreed to implement a variety of positive practices in their classrooms and to model positive energy—again, with no prescribed curriculum or approach. The disciplines in the study included accounting, analytic design methods, architecture, art, economics, education, human resources, nutrition, physiology, and statistics.

Instructors were exposed to principles of positive energizing and positive leadership in a workshop. They were then asked to incorporate whatever practices they desired in their classrooms. Data were collected comparing the positive leadership classes with the classes taught by the same instructors the year before. Figure 5.2 provides the comparisons.

Compared with the courses taught by the same instructors the year before implementing positive practices in their classrooms, three classes in a university in India (upper-left chart in figure 5.2) showed student satisfaction scores almost a full point higher on a 1–5 scale. In another analysis of six different classrooms at the same university (upper-middle chart), average student test scores and grades were 7 percentage points higher, and student attendance (upper-right chart) was 10 percentage points higher. In four separate classrooms in a Spanish university (lower chart), average student test scores and course grades were a half point higher on a 10-point scale after exposing students to positive leadership and positive energy.

These were not rigorously controlled experiments, of course, and clearly a variety of other factors could have been at play in accounting for the results. The outcomes do suggest, however (as did the Laureate senior executives in follow-up interviews), that positively energizing practices had a nontrivial impact on the institutions and on students in the classroom, even across different academic disciplines and national cultures.

SAUDI TELECOM

A second example of the impact of positively energizing leadership comes from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy ruled by the royal family of Al Saud. It has become clear that the oil resources that drive the country’s economy will eventually run out and that the carbon-based economy on which the country relies (mainly oil and gas revenues) will need to be supplanted by a digitally based economy. The approach that Saudi Arabia took to begin this transformation was to privatize a government ministry, change it into a nimble, forward-looking, for-profit business, and then use this transformation as the exemplar for the nation’s economic and cultural modernization.

The government ministry selected to be privatized was Saudi Telecom (STC), the telecommunications provider for the kingdom. Its successful transformation, as it turned out, depended to a large degree on the positively energizing leadership of Khaled H. Biyari, who was appointed CEO in 2015.

Within five years, STC became the leading national provider of telecommunication services in the Gulf region and was operating 11 subsidiaries in eight countries. Market capitalization doubled while competitors’ market cap decreased by about 50 percent. Brand value grew from $2.8 billion to $6.2 billion, and STC is now one of the top three brands in the Middle East. STC’s High Potential Development Program was awarded “Best Talent Program in the Gulf” by the Arabian Society for Human Resource Management in 2018. Scores on McKinsey Consulting firm’s organizational health indicator were initially among the lowest in the world in 2013, but they soared from 33 on a 100-point scale to 71, the largest five-year increase in McKinsey’s database.

How did Biyari lead such a dramatically successful transformation in STC? His positively energizing leadership was universally lauded by employees as the key to STC’s success.³ In particular, Biyari’s leadership was characterized by three key attributes associated with positive relational energy: helping others flourish through fostering personal growth, recognizing and expressing appreciation for others’ contributions, and demonstrating openness to feedback for self-improvement (attributes also characteristic of leadership humility).

Helping others flourish. As just one example of this positively energizing initiative, Biyari instituted the role of “health doctor” in each of STC’s units and assigned one health doctor to each senior leader. These individuals were not medical doctors looking after physical health; rather, health doctors were charged with helping to improve organizational health and leadership effectiveness. Their role was to provide each senior executive with ideas for how to be a more positively energizing leader. Corporate funding was provided for health doctors to implement ideas and identify needed changes, and they were given total freedom to make suggestions and initiate improvements.

Biyari commented, “We are trying to change leaders into listeners.” One health doctor—a volunteer who, in each unit, supplemented his or her normal job responsibilities with the health doctor role—was assigned to shadow each general manager or vice president. Each of these senior leaders received ongoing suggestions for personal development and for organizational advancement.

Appreciating others’ contributions. Instead of developing and disseminating a vision statement and list of corporate values from the office of the CEO, Biyari held multiple workshops throughout the firm in which he asked employees: Who do we want STC to be? What are the values that we want to characterize our company? What is the best company we can imagine? From these workshops, 57 values emerged from employees. Employees in STC had never before been given the opportunity to help craft the ideal organization and its future, but holding these workshops provided a different kind of message from Biyari: “Our best intangible asset is people engaging and caring for one another.”

Biyari’s team reduced the list of 57 values to the following five core themes:

• Customer first: “We serve our customers passionately—external and internal.”

• Innovation: “We capture the new and deliver it to our markets.”

• Lead with agility: “I am an agile leader who performs in a changing world.”

• Build trust: “I say what I think, do what I say, and do it well.”

• One STC: “We collaborate to deliver STC’s vision.”

Biyari himself then supplemented this list of values with an additional one. From his perspective, the list omitted a direct focus on employees, so he superimposed the value “Employees First” as the foundation on which all others values rested. Biyari reported that in practical terms, this meant changing human resources from “guardians of the firm” to “we care about you” representatives. He created a weekly CEO blog emphasizing and highlighting the variety of Employees First initiatives being implemented.

These initiatives took a variety of forms. For example, coffee, tea, and water were free for employees rather than having employees pay for their own. All furniture, working spaces, and bathrooms were remodeled and upgraded, and employees’ workspaces became modern, clean, and comfortable and had positive themes. Attractive common spaces were developed that included decompression locations with games, puzzles, books, and comfortable seating where employees could relax and get off-line for a period of time.

Importantly, Biyari created a learning academy, the STC Academy, dedicated to developing world-class leadership and helping to develop the positive culture change initiatives. All leaders within STC attended workshops and development sessions taught by university faculty members from throughout the world. The quality and effectiveness of the training were so high that, even when given a choice to attend training from the world’s best universities, STC employees selected the STC Academy as their preferred source.

Openness to feedback. Biyari’s fundamental approach to positively energizing leadership was captured by his statement “If you can touch people’s hearts, and help them believe by listening to them, they do incredible things.” Biyari instituted regular visits to employees’ and customers’ offices, a first for STC. This led other vice presidents and general managers to do the same, so that the norm at STC is now for senior leaders to conduct regular visits to subordinates’ work spaces to encourage feedback. The guiding question asked by these senior leaders during their visits is “What would you like your leaders to do better?”

Biyari also made the decision early in his tenure to attract female employees. Traditionally, men and women did not work together in Saudi Arabia; in 2016, fewer than 10 of STC’s 17,000 total employees were women. To attract more women, Biyari directed the construction of a separate building available only to women so that they would feel safe and comfortable at work. By 2018, more than 300 women were employed at STC, and that number has continued to grow. Female employees were given a voice in company policy and strategy, and a female-only building is no longer needed.

Of course, not every decision and action taken by Biyari was accepted without controversy or resistance. The cultural norms in Saudi Arabia still have a great deal of influence over the way organizations operate. Biyari’s leadership was extraordinary, however, in challenging the traditional patterns of leadership typical of a Saudi governmental culture. He demonstrated that positively energizing leadership, including expressing humility, getting personal, trusting others, and being genuine and authentic, can, indeed, be successful across multiple countries and cultures.

BUSINESS AND FINANCE DIVISION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

The Business and Finance Division (B&F) at the University of Michigan consists of approximately 2,700 employees in six diverse areas: facilities and operations (e.g., custodial, grounds keeping, bus drivers), finance (e.g., auditing, budgeting), investments (e.g., portfolio management, endowment), information (e.g., data management, analytics), human resources (e.g., benefits, counseling), and shared services (e.g., computer systems, payroll). Forty-five different organizations report to the head of the division. Managing such a diverse and loosely coupled entity presented a major challenge. The division served as a hub for complaints and dissatisfaction in the university.

The head of B&F also served as the executive vice president as well as the chief financial officer of the university. A new leader, Kevin Hegarty, was hired from outside the university to lead the division, and soon thereafter, he embarked on a culture change initiative focused on creating a positive organization. The intent was to help staff members at all levels believe that what they do matters, and that they can make a positive difference.

One major initiative in which Hegarty engaged was to bring together the leadership group of approximately 175 leaders in the top four levels of B&F. He shared with this group positive leadership principles and the concept of positive energy. The group agreed to collectively encourage the entire division to implement a 90-in-90 Challenge. The challenge involved identifying a group of 160 positive energizers across the B&F division and charging them with the task of infecting 90 percent of the division’s employees with positive practices in 90 days. In this case, infecting meant to expose 90 percent of B&F staff to the principles of positive leadership and engage them in at least one related positive exercise within 90 days. In addition, staff members are invited to join the 1 percent positive change club by personally committing to one positive practice.

Senior leaders and the volunteer positive energizer group engaged in daylong forums and workshops to learn about positive leadership and positive energy and to begin to plan their interventions. No specific activities were prescribed, and individual departments created their own strategies to accomplish the challenge. A sampling of the activities that occurred during the 90-day period are listed in resource 2 at the end of the book.

A central website was established for sharing ideas and asking for help, as well as a site where energizers could download resources, templates, and other materials. Positive energizers were encouraged to share highlights of what was going well—a.k.a. bright spots—via a central email location. Four main areas of activity were targeted: building positive relationships, creating purpose and meaning, focusing on strengths, and fostering positive communications.⁴

In a survey of the positive energizers at the outset of the challenge, 96 percent expressed confidence in being able to apply positive practices, and 94 percent were already trying new positive initiatives with their departments. After the completion of the 90-in-90 Challenge, not only did B&F exceed the 90 percent goal for infecting employees, but dozens of unique and innovative activities were implemented as part of the challenge. The year before the intervention, about 500 unique initiatives had been attempted throughout B&F. The year after the intervention, the number had increased to more than 1,400 initiatives. (See resource 2 for a list of some of the initiatives implemented in the 90-in-90 Challenge.) Moreover, an employee opinion survey indicated a substantial improvement in the organization’s climate compared with the results from two years earlier (see figure 5.3).

Source: Used with permission of Kevin Hegarty, EVP-CFO, University of Michigan.

Even in this loosely coupled system with employees ranging from bus drivers to pipefitters serving in campus tunnels to counselors for addiction problems to individuals managing millions of dollars in financial investments, the intervention that focused on positive practices appeared to knit the unit together and achieve results that had not been experienced before. Hegarty’s message to the division upon completion of the 90-in-90 Challenge illustrates his positively energizing approach:

TECMILENIO UNIVERSITY

Tecmilenio University in Monterrey, Mexico, was established to help make higher education, especially technical education, available to a broader portion of the Mexican population. Between its founding in 2002 and the year 2010, Tecmilenio gradually increased enrollments to about 3,000 students. After these first few years of successful operation, however, Tecmilenio’s enrollment began to decline. In 2010, for example, enrollment totaled 3,120 students; in 2011, enrollment was 2,991 students (–4%); and in 2012, enrollment had fallen to 2,844 students (–5%). The university had developed a reputation as being a low-cost, second-class institution, and annual staff turnover averaged almost 100 percent. Student retention was only 40 percent.

The president of Tecmilenio, Hector Escamilla, determined that to turn the institution around would require a dramatically different strategy than had been pursued in the past. He hired several key staff members to help him develop and achieve this new strategy. Between 2012 and 2016, the Tecmilenio staff aggressively sought exposure to positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship⁶ to create a foundation for a complete transformation of the university. Hector attended conferences around the world to become well versed in positive leadership.

This exposure led Hector to develop a new model for the university where students, staff, faculty, and alumni would pursue personal and institutional well-being and happiness as the primary outcomes of their higher education experience. Tecmilenio’s formal mission was stated as “We prepare people to flourish, have a purpose in life, and prepare the skills that can help them achieve their purpose in order to benefit society.”

This new university vision—to create the world’s first well-being and happiness university—was based on three primary characteristics: (1) a customized education experience where students could choose up to 40 percent of their coursework (which provided substantial flexibility to pursue marketable competencies); (2) a learning-by-doing approach supported by a competency-based education model, co-op semester, laboratories, faculty members from industry, and industry advisory boards for the campus; and (3) providing practical tools that produce well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness in the entire Tecmilenio University as well as the Monterrey, Mexico, community. The goal was to reflect positive principles in all facilities, messages, products, services, rituals, and behaviors associated with the institution.

Hector organized 12 teams that included representatives from each of the major stakeholder groups of the university (e.g., students, staff, faculty, alumni, corporations). As a result of an appreciative inquiry process,⁷ teams were charged with developing strategies to achieve the following “how might we” questions:

• How might we increase the positive environment that keeps our students motivated and engaged throughout their studies?

• How might we create day-to-day experiences that are consistently positive for our students?

• How might we define and implement the behaviors associated with a culture of well-being that is lived by all stakeholders of Tecmilenio?

• How might we engage parents to become more committed to living their lives in a way that is consistent with the principles of positive organizational scholarship and positive psychology?

• How might we ensure that all subcontractors to the university interact with us according to the principles of positive organizational scholarship, positive psychology, and our ecosystem of well-being and happiness?

• How might we design and implement our culture so as to be the best place to work for staff and teachers?

• How might we define and implement a set of behaviors we expect our teachers to adopt as they interact with all our stakeholders?

• How might we develop a strong alumni network peopled with those who continue to support the school, each other, and society as a whole?

• How might we define and measure activities that align with the individual elements of our ecosystem?

• How might we ensure that teachers and staff feel a sense of responsibility for the well-being of the students?

• How might we develop positive deviance in our alumni who will challenge and lead society for the better?

A variety of positive practices were implemented in pursuit of these questions. For example, all students at Tecmilenio are now required to register for two semester-long classes: one on positive psychology and one on positive organizations. All faculty members and staff members engage in two courses on the same topics and must earn a certificate in those two areas. The campus ecosystem was redesigned so that rooms are named with positive terms (e.g., compassion room, thriving room, innovation room) rather than room numbers. The menu in the cafeteria was changed to reflect positive eating habits and physical well-being. A gratitude wall and interactive spaces were created in the central administration building. A happiness week is now sponsored for the entire Monterrey community. An alumni association was created and gathered 100 inspirational stories representing the achievement of happiness and well-being of Tecmilenio graduates. Ongoing and frequent assessments are conducted to measure the well-being and thriving of the community, the institution, and the university’s members. Weekly leadership meetings are conducted to review the empirical data gathered on positive aspects of the university’s functioning.

In addition, all students receive a personal coach or mentor in their first two years at Tecmilenio, and with the assistance of that personal coach, they develop a purpose-in-life statement during their first semester on campus. This statement is revised during the students’ second year, and during their senior year, students put the statement into action by engaging in a full-time, 480-hour co-op (internship) project. This project requires students to create an intervention for the organization in which they conduct their co-op assignment. The intervention has two primary purposes: (1) to fulfill the student’s purpose in life and (2) to apply a positive organizational change in the employing organization itself.

The results of implementing positive practices and operationalizing a positive philosophy at Tecmilenio have been dramatic. In the five years since the initiative was begun, not only has enrollment increased more than 11 percent per year, but it has reached 60,000 students as of this writing, with significant revenue growth. As a private university, Tecmilenio produced a return on investment of between 20 and 40 percent, approximately four times the return of the stock market at its best.

Table 5.1 exemplifies the results of Tecmilenio’s transformation at the end of the 2018 academic year.

TABLE 5.1
Indicators of Tecmilenio’s success in 2018

Hector Escamilla himself became a worldwide advocate for positive leadership and positive energy. He sponsored research projects on his own campus in which outside experts investigated the practices and outcomes associated with positive leadership. He addressed associations and conferences all around the world to perpetuate the principles of positive energizing leadership. He and his university have infected multiple Mexican institutions, including the country’s largest banking system, with the positive leadership message.

CONCLUSION

Many additional examples are available that document the effects of positively energizing leaders in facilitating the success of their organizations even in challenging and difficult times. In each of these examples, the success of the organization was not due solely to the leader at the top, of course; but in each case, positively energizing leadership unlocked resources that are often ignored or unmanaged. Most importantly, the focus of these leaders was on unleashing the often-untapped positive energy that resides in the organizations themselves and that can create results that no single person could dictate or direct. The kinds of innovative activities and procedures that were implemented across these and other organizations have been extraordinary and exciting. Truly, positively energizing leaders in these instances inspired members of their organizations to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.