“The Magic Ratio”
Posted by Oliver Nyumbu
December 6th, 2008
It would appear that some managers feel that unless they are telling you off, giving you some unattainable goal or generally being negative they are not managing you. There is almost the fear of being so positive that difficult issues are left to fester. In many cases this fear is justified but that still does not give a leader or a manager the licence to attack and undermine the very performance they seek to promote.
The intentional use of strengths to leverage up leaders’ performance (and that of those they lead) requires that we do more than correcting mistakes – self-evidently, fixing mistakes is not the same as harnessing strengths. Similarly, avoiding failure is not the opposite of pursuing and achieving success. These are different jobs that all leaders need to do.
Just in case you are wondering why I chose, “The Magic Ratio” for the title for this post. I chose it because, reading Tom Rath’s book How Full Is Your Bucket made me realise I could be far more constructive in my interactions. I am grateful to Rath for this challenge. Here is how he puts it:
“Positive psychology experts are finding that the frequency of small, positive acts is critical. John Gottman’s pioneering research into marriages suggests there is a magic ratio of 5 to 1 - in terms of our balance of positive to negative interactions. Gottman found that marriages are significantly more likely to succeed when the couple’s interactions are near that 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative. When the ratio approaches 1:1, marriages “cascade to divorce”.
In a fascinating study, Gottman teamed up with two mathematicians to test this model. Starting in 1992, they recruited 700 couples who had just received their marriage licences. For each couple, the researchers videotaped a fifteen-minute conversation between husband and wife and counted the number of positive and negative interactions. Then based on the 5 to 1 ratio, they predicted whether each couple would stay together or divorce.
Ten years later, Gottman and his colleagues followed up with each couple to determine the accuracy of their original predictions. The results were stunning. They had predicted divorce with 94 percent accuracy based on scoring the couples’ interactions for fifteen minutes. This ration is critical in the workplace as well. A recent study found that work groups with positive to negative interaction ratios greater than 3 to 1 are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio. Fredrickson and Losada’s mathematical modelling of positive and negative ratios however also suggest the existence of an upper limit: things can worsen if the ratio goes higher than 13 to 1.
While this book focuses primarily on ways to increase positive emotions, it is important to note that we don’t recommend ignoring negativity and weakness; positivity must be grounded in reality. A “Pollyanna” approach in which the negative is completely ignored can result in a false optimism that is counter-productive and sometimes downright annoying. There are times when it is absolutely necessary to correct our mistakes and figure out how to manage our weaknesses.
But most of us don’t have to worry about breaking the upper limit. The positive-to-negative ratios in most organisations are woefully inadequate and leave substantial room for improvement.”
How do these ideas resonate with you? And, if any of this chimes, what do you think you might do to act on this information?
