Positive Psychology at Work:

How to Build Positive Communication and Increase Performance

Cameron (2008a) describes organizations with positive communication patterns as those where affirmative and supportive language replaces negative and critical language. These are organizations that exhibit an ‘abundance’ of positive comments. Positive comments engender positive feelings and positive feelings enhance connectivity. This connectivity between people is the means by which resources flow and coordinated action takes place. In turn, it is this co-coordinated exchange that facilitates higher productivity and higher quality performance through the formation of social capital and the creation of synchronism. Synchronism generally refers to the keeping of time together. In organizational terms it refers to the presence of simultaneity and coordinated action. It describes the phenomena whereby people are able to act in synchronization with each other, to act in concert, without elaborate command and control mechanisms. One of the facilitating processes is probably the presence of high quality connections, which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 7. Figure 4.1 illustrates how these different features fit together. They explain the relationship between positive communication and high performance. It would seem that the circle could start with an increase in positive comments in the organization, a change that it should be within the power of the organization to make. Cameron (2008a) offers two pointers for how to ...