John Paul Stephens

Relationship Quality and Virtuousness Emotional Carrying Capacity as a Source of Individual and Team Resilience

Virtuousness in organizations involves individuals and teams being resilient, or bouncing back from setbacks in ways that allow them to adapt and grow. In two studies, we focus on emotional carrying capacity (ECC), wherein relationship partners express more of their emotions, express both positive and negative emotions, and do so constructively, as a source of resilience in individuals and in teams. Study 1’s findings indicate that ECC is positively related to individual resilience and that ECC mediates the link between relationship closeness and individual resilience. Study 2’s findings indicate a similar pattern for resilience at the team level: ECC is positively related to team resilience and mediates the connection between trust and team resilience. Together, these studies provide insight into how emotional expression in relationships is a key mechanism in explaining resilience, a foundational element for the pursuit of long-term virtuousness for individuals and for teams.

The Reflected Best Self field experiment with adolescent leaders: exploring the psychological resources associated with feedback source and valence

This study provides a preliminary examination of the efficacy of the Reflected Best Self Exercise. We conducted a field quasi-experiment with 108 adolescent leaders assigned to a 2 × 2 design: (1) valence of feedback (i.e., strengths-only versus strengths and improvement-oriented) and (2) source of feedback (i.e., professional (e.g., teachers, coaches, bosses) only versus professional and personal (e.g., friends and family)). By ANOVA, support was found for the hypothesis that feedback from the combination of professional and personal sources is associated with more positive emotional, agentic, and relational resources than feedback from only professional sources. Little support was found for the hypothesis that strengths-based feedback generates more positive emotional, agentic, or relational resources. Limitations, implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

The Aesthetic Knowledge Problem of Problem-Solving With Design Thinking

In this essay, we examine how aesthetic knowledge defines design thinking and also poses a challenge for many organizational systems. Design thinking is one problem-solving approach that addresses problems where multiple and conflicting interests must be met by perceiving the holistic quality of the interconnections across such interests. However, there has not been a clear declaration of what is at the core of design thinking. The direct engagement of the bodily senses in design-thinking methods points to the importance of aesthetic knowledge for problem definition and solution generation. Organizational systems, however, often occlude the role of the body at work, and therefore of aesthetic knowledge. Drawing on structurationist theory, we make suggestions for how organizational systems might adapt to more effectively generate and use aesthetic knowledge and tackle increasingly complex problems.

Leading a Group through Feeling: Teaching by the Movement of Learning

Abstract In this chapter, I re-frame leading in organizing as teaching and identify physical movement as a core mechanism through which leaders are sensitive and responsive to the progress of their group’s learning. To demonstrate this, I analyze interview data with choral and orchestral conductors in terms of Sheets-Johnstone’s (1999/2011) four qualities of movement: tension, linearity, amplitude, and projection. These four qualities serve as a grammar or set of basic categories to better understand how and why leaders move in certain ways in relation to their followers, for the sake of the latter’s learning and the collective ability to accomplish organizational goals. The ability to categorize conductors’ physical movements and the movement of the ensemble’s learning can help practitioners and scholars to assess the congruence between the two. With this grammar in hand, leaders can better assess and articulate what kinds of movements can be performed when, in order to guide the progress of their group’s collective learning.