The author talks about how a plague of positive thinking is permeating our society, from medicine to business, and is even contributing to our financial crisis.

A friend sent this article to me over the holidays (click on link above or read the first few paragraphs below). I haven’t read Barbara’s latest book. Have others? Is this a trend that you’ve seen?

Barbara’s critique of “positive thinking” seems similar to those around Appreciative Inquiry (AI). The AI approach departs from deficit based change models and takes an approach that seeks to create change by mobilizing around the strengths of a community or an organization.

A number of trainers are delivering a brand of AI that encourages “positive” thinking and discourages or frowns upon “negative” thoughts. I believe this is a misapplication of AI and one that can lead to a number of bad outcomes, from blaming the victim to an organization being disconnected from its own reality.

At its core, AI asks individuals and organizations to focus on “generative” ideas. That is different than “positive” ideas. In generative thinking, the people in an organization are encouraged to look at what is going “right” and move toward it. In their book Appreciative Inquiry: Change at the Speed of Imagination, Jane Watkins and Bernard Mohr, state that “…the greatest value comes from embracing what works.” In application, that may mean “what works” is collecting data on and reviewing the negative feedback that an organization gets from its constituency, customers, employees, or citizens (in the case of government).

Another way to understand generative thinking as opposed to other approaches is that generative thinking looks at both the problem and solution as a whole, composed of desired outcomes and a roadmap on how to achieve them. All of us can get stuck in complaining, without making any forward movement. By framing our problems with the solutions that are already working, we create movement that builds on those things that are working right.

As Watkins and Mohr point out, “AI suggests that by focusing on that image of health and wholeness, the organization’s energy moves to make the image real.” The change effort is bound to fail If this is done without the acknowledgment or the inclusion of data on the challenges or unhealthy issues within the system. Simple positive thinking alone is not a solution.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s interview on her new book begins…

“When Barbara Ehrenreich went to be treated for breast cancer, she was exhorted to think positively; and when she expressed feelings of fear and anger, she was chided for being negative.

Ehrenreich, the author of 16 books, including Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, which examine the blue- and white-collar job markets, took on what she sees as an epidemic of positive thinking in her new book: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.”