How Leaders Can Empower Teams to Flourish and Create Big Change at Work with Gretchen Spreitzer

Ashish Kothari:

Gretchen, I am so excited to have you with us on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for joining us.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Ashish Kothari:

Gretchen, you've spent decades studying what makes people come alive at work and flourish. I know as a McKinsey partner, when I started on this journey, I wasn’t actually looking for happiness. I was looking for a way out of my fear and anxiety and wondering why I was struggling.

When you think back, what was that moment—or set of things—that made you curious about how people flourish at work versus just survive at work? What was the origin story behind the beautiful body of work that you and so many others have brought into the world?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Thank you for that question. It was fun to reflect on that. My father was a sociologist, so I always had an interest in organizations. He didn’t study work organizations; he studied sports and medicine. But it got me thinking about the role of people in work organizations.

In sociology, there’s a construct called positive deviance. Most sociologists study the negative side of deviance—what’s wrong with society, what’s not working, drug use, other negative behaviors. But there’s also a smaller side of sociology that focuses on positive deviance: people who defy expectations, who beat the odds, who do things beyond what others expect.

I’ve always been interested in that idea—the underdogs who overperform, who make a big difference through small moves. Like the inspirational characters in movies who conquer the world even though they’re just one small person.

I came to the University of Michigan for my PhD, and one of the first people I met was Bob Quinn. He studies deep change and transformational leadership. I started working with him, he was very inspiring, and one of the things he studied was how people make important changes in their life when something significant happens—maybe a divorce, a death in the family, an illness, or getting fired from a job.

But a lot of his work showed how life events transform people, and I thought that was inspiring but incomplete. Here I was, a person in my mid-twenties, and I hadn’t had major life events like that, and it made me wonder: how can people without a traumatic life event also change their lives for the positive?

That led me to study empowerment, and later thriving at work. Not just bouncing back from difficulty, but proactively making positive changes.

That brought me to the Center for Positive Organizations, where I’ve had the chance to work with amazing faculty and doctoral students. They’ve lifted me up in my research and practice.

And now, as a teacher, researcher, and leader at the Ross School of Business, I get to apply what I’ve been studying and understand its complexity in the real world. It’s really full circle—from growing up with a sociologist father to being in a leadership role myself.

Ashish Kothari:

 I think it’s an amazing story. That concept of positive deviance really comes through in all of your work. Even though I didn’t know the term at first, I think Viktor Frankl was talking about it in Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

He was describing positively deviant men. Under those conditions, someone who comforted others or gave away their bread embodied that spirit. Many people have studied the darkness of that period in humanity, but fewer have studied the rare individuals who showed that light and what made them that way, what shaped them, and what became of them and all of that.

But it’s amazing, and thanks to you. You have a whole field around this.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Thank you. And I think in that story you just shared, sometimes we think about positive deviance as these heroic things like Mahatma Gandhi did or other people who are changing the world. Sure, those are examples of positive deviance.

But as you recognized, it’s also the small, everyday moves that really matter. You talked about comforting people in the concentration camp. With students or colleagues, it can be simple acts—really asking “How are you doing?” and meaning you want to hear the answer. It’s those small things.

One of my colleagues had a birthday last week. I could have just said happy birthday, but instead I brought her a small bouquet. She was touched that I took the time. Small things like that can shift people’s mindset in everyday situations. Small moves matter. They build on each other and magnify over time.

Ashish Kothari:

I’m going to go there next. Because I completely agree, life is in little moments, and it’s those moments that matter.

We were at a Conscious Capitalism dinner last week, and one of the participants said, “At our company, we celebrate our managers once a week and tell them we love them.” Someone else asked, “Do you not love them the rest of the weeks in the year?”

Why can’t we celebrate people every day? Why not look for the good every week? It’s the small things people do. We notice when someone doesn’t do something, but we often miss when they do.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Yes. And I think another thing to consider is how we remind ourselves to keep doing those sorts of things.

Maybe it’s a practice like a weekly ritual that helps, but what can we do in the moment? I wear this bracelet—it says “See the good.” On days when I need a little extra support, I look down at my wrist and remind myself, “Okay, this is a difficult situation. How can I see the good in it?”

I also have one that says “Strength.” My two daughters, who are in their twenties, wear the same bracelet. If one of us is having a bad day, we’ll send a photo of it to each other with the message, “I’m sending you strength right now.”

Why do I say that? It’s like these little artifacts help us keep the right perspective. Hopefully we build habits so it comes naturally, but sometimes we need an extra nudge, something to remind us of keeping that perspective, that mindset to do the little bit.

Ashish Kothari:

You built that, right? The bracelet—you didn’t buy it?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Well, this one is one that somebody gave to me.

Ashish Kothari:

But you could build one. That could be an invitation: go create something meaningful for yourself or for others. Think about what season you’re getting into and what is something you want to remind yourself and others? And just have it as a reminder so it’s actually there.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Yeah.

Ashish Kothari:

I think that’s brilliant. Visual cues are so powerful. Otherwise, we can slip into living below the line, running on fear, scarcity, and busyness. That’s the default. These little reminders are pick-me-ups.

What are some other small acts, tiny things you’ve seen in your work that have powerful effects? We talked about appreciation, gratitude, and seeing the good. What else should people keep front and center to create positive workplaces?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Yep. So one tool we’ve developed at our Center for Positive Organizations is the Reflective Best Self Tool.

Ashish Kothari:

 One of my favorites.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Yay! We’re executing it with 300 people in an organization in two weeks. At its core, it helps people see their unique strengths and contributions across work and non-work situations.

Participants ask colleagues, friends, family, old coaches, or teachers to share stories of times when they made a distinct contribution—when they made a difference to others. We help them compile those stories and synthesize them into a set of strengths that capture who they are when they’re at their very best.  So it's not their everyday self, it's when they're operating at their very best.

Why am I telling you about that? Because I think those stories are so powerful and life-changing. When someone tells me about something I did 20 years ago that still resonates with them, it stands out.

So what can we do as leaders, colleagues, and friends to give each other that kind of feedback? Where we don’t have to wait for a tool to do this. We can share feedback every day.  What can we do every day to share with those that we interact with? Something about how we're seeing them when they're at their best.

Sometimes, we just do things like “Nice job, great presentation.”  That's okay. But what's even better is to say something that really stood out to you, something that was meaningful to you about what they did, and to take a minute to either say it or write it down, send an email.

I love something that’s handwritten. If you could see what’s behind my monitor, I keep handwritten notes people have given me that say “ I really appreciate what you did last week,” or “what you did in that presentation really stood out to me.”

And I am guessing that many people keep those kinds of acknowledgements because they’re too rare. We don’t get them that often. But how much of an uplift that can be. Knowing that something small I do makes a difference to others motivates me. It helps me realize I can do more with less.

It’s like a way to help make a bigger difference without having to add a whole new repertoire to what I’m doing. The small acts of giving people authentic feedback are a way to make a bigger difference to us.

Ashish Kothari:

I love that. Amy Young and I ran the Reflective Best Self exercise for a team at Danone, and it was transformative. These were people under a lot of stress, questioning their worth, wondering if something was wrong with them. Seeing how others viewed them was so powerful.

I have another story. We did a shorthand version of that with the executive leadership team at Crocs. We closed the session by inviting each person—uncomfortably—to step into the center of the room. Their colleagues were asked to share: “The light I see in you is…”

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Ooh, I like that. “The light I see in you.”

Ashish Kothari:

Yes. Sharing what they bring, who they are, how we see them, and why they’re special. Some people had tears in their eyes. Others felt embarrassed. But the effect carried with them.

In all the research I did at McKinsey, one of the things every person craves is to be valued and seen. The Reflective Best Self exercise, and moments like this, create opportunities for people to stop and see themselves reflected. That can be transformative.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Yeah. Well, we just had a retirement event on Wednesday night a couple of days ago, and those are the times when we tend to talk about people. Like, “Fred, you made such a difference to me, and you made this organization different.”

We say all these wonderful things, and that person thinks, “Wow, I never knew any of that.” Why wait until somebody retires, or why wait for the eulogy? Instead, look for ways to do that sooner—where we can lift people up.

We don’t know where anybody happens to be on any given day. They might feel really down, wondering, “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” or “I don’t know if this is the right organization for me.” One small act, like lifting somebody up and saying, “Here’s how you’re making a contribution,” could be life-changing to them and to the people they interact with.

If I am that dark cloud, that black hole, and I take that home with me at the end of the day, everything feels wrong. If I go home lifted up, then I’m lifting up the people for the rest of my life too. The way those things magnify and create momentum is not just for the person receiving the feedback but also for the others who interact with them.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. I get so curious about this, Gretchen. If we look at the data around workplace thriving, only 20% of people are thriving at work. Especially on the frontline—it’s actually 15%. In our McKinsey research, it was 85% of leaders, but only 15% of the frontline.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Wow. Yeah.

Ashish Kothari:

 Twenty-two percent of people are burned out. Sixty percent experience stress daily. Twenty to twenty-five percent are actively disengaged. The rest are somewhere in the middle—at an activity that consumes the majority of our waking hours, a big chunk of our adult life.

I’m curious, though nobody’s researched this: how much of the current mental health crisis—at work and in the world—is actually originating from miserable people creating miserable conditions for others?

Kids are doing worse, divorces are high, polarization is high. I’m curious how much of this is because 80% of us are suffering, and we’re carrying it everywhere. The world we are creating is one of pain and suffering.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Mm-hmm. This reminds me of something from about 20 years ago here at the University of Michigan. We’re very interdisciplinary, and we encourage different parts of the university to interact.

A physician reached out to us at the Center for Positive Organizations. He said, “I help people with chronic pain. I’ve done everything I can with treatments and drugs to help people overcome chronic pain. I’ve been only somewhat successful. People are still suffering and struggling. I think the world of work is the biggest barrier for me to get people really healed or overcome that chronic pain.”

We actually had a conference with him about the link between chronic pain and how people experience work. You’re onto something. Work has a powerful effect not only on people’s mindset but also on their bodies—what they’re taking in.

We sometimes describe work as “the grind.” And it grinds down people day after day. When I’m teaching MBA students or executives, they often say, “I think I just need to find a new organization because I feel like such a victim.”

One thing we try to do is help people feel empowered to start making small changes. We can’t change the whole organizational culture, but in the unit we’re in, we can make adjustments. We can build a coalition with others who feel the same way, create change agency in our own team, and start making positive momentum.

Sometimes we call these bright spots. This is where positive deviance comes in. There are always bright spots—people who don’t have power or titles but who see possibilities to improve how the organization functions, how people are treated, and how colleagues interact. Even in an organization that isn’t optimal for thriving, you can begin to change things in your part of it to make a difference.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. I agree with you. It’s sometimes a hard message, but it’s an important one.

Our focus in the work we’re doing is actually on the “middle.”

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Mm-hmm.

Ashish Kothari:

 Not just leaders, but the middle. The center of gravity of organizations is in the middle. If you want to change an organization, you can start with leaders and yes, those effects trickle down. But if you change the middle, empower the middle, and help them build the core skills to be positive energizers—to change what they can—the effect can be massive.

The research is clear. Two years ago, the McKinsey Health Institute studied drivers of holistic health and burnout. What was exciting, and also depressing, was this:

When it comes to health and burnout, only about 28% is under an individual’s control. The rest—72%—comes from job, team, and organizational-level demands and enablers. But here’s the exciting part: the organizational layer was only 10%. That means managers can make a difference.

As a manager, I can do job crafting. I can communicate differently, build high-quality connections, operate from resilience, redesign how we meet, and create flexibility and autonomy. I don’t need others’ permission. If that’s true, then we don’t have to wait for the top of the house to do the change.

It would be amazing if senior leaders get on board, but even if they don’t, as a leader—even if you only lead a team of one—you have more effect on that person you are leading than a therapist, and you can make a difference.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Mm-hmm. A lot of times people think, I have to wait for it to start at the top, or I need to find a new organization. Those are options, but they miss another one that’s right in front of them.

You can be a role model. If others see you job crafting, they might feel inspired to do the same.

We had a staff member in our executive education group in a lower-level position—not a manager. She has a passion for succulents. She noticed that when we had custom groups of executives, we had beautiful flower arrangements. But for open enrollment groups, where the budget was tighter, there was no natural beauty in the room.

She wanted to bring her passion to work. So on those weeks without flowers, she brought in succulents the day before. They became a wonderful conversation piece. People said, “These are so unique and different.” It led to conversations about her passion.

She didn’t try to take credit. She just wanted to bring warmth and light to people and share something she cared about. She didn’t need permission. She empowered herself to bring something positive into the workplace.

Ashish Kothari:

That's such a beautiful story, and that's where I want to turn to next. Your research started with empowerment, and I think empowerment, especially in today's context, is so important. There’s a lot of conversation around hybrid work. Leaders feel that if they let people decide where they work, they lose control. Individuals feel the other side of it.

In our current context of how people are working, what are some things leaders can do to truly empower their people? It can be around where they work, but also empowering them to go above and beyond what is considered “this is your duty, stay in your lane.” Empower them to take actions, empower them to run experiments. What have you found, Gretchen, as some of the key things that enable that to happen?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 The stimulus for my research on empowerment came when a large Fortune 50 organization was working with us. They wanted to empower the whole middle level of their very hierarchical organization, and these middle managers were saying, “Why are you trying to empower us? You need to empower our bosses. They’re the ones that are disempowering to us.”

One of the messages was: just telling people they’re empowered isn’t going to get there—“We want you to be empowered.” So we started interviewing people and asked them to tell us about times when they felt authentically empowered, whether in the current organization or another aspect of their work life.

We found that people were empowered when there were four dimensions. The first is a sense of meaning. People are more likely to initiate empowered behavior when they believe their work has meaning—when they care about it. That’s the engine of the empowerment process. If you ask people to be empowered to choose the color of paint on the wall, or to do something that doesn’t matter, that won’t create momentum.

The second is a sense of competence or confidence—that they have the skills and ability necessary to have a voice, to try new things, to take action. Related research at the time looked at organizations going through downsizing. They would say to the survivors, “Now you are empowered to do the work of those who used to be here.”

People thought, “What? I don’t know how to do their job. You might be empowering me, but I don’t have the skills and abilities to do that work well.” Meaning is the engine, but people need to feel they have basic skills and ability to take action.

The third is self-determination—feeling they have the autonomy to make decisions about how to do their own work. Often when we think about empowerment, we think about giving autonomy or delegating work. As you can see, that’s just one of four dimensions.

The last is a sense of impact—that the person is making a difference in the larger system they’re part of, whether it’s their team, unit, or the larger organization.

Earlier, when you mentioned mattering or feeling valued, that’s what this is getting at. People are more likely to act in empowered ways when they believe the work they’re doing will make a difference to the larger organization.

Any one of these can be a starting point. I like to think about meaning as the engine, but any of the four can give you leverage to move toward empowerment.

In today’s environment—with uncertainty in the global context and hybrid work—empowerment is more difficult. We don’t always see each other and have those chance hallway interactions where you can show people they matter or learn from each other and mentor each other.

One of the biggest findings about the downside of working only remotely—not necessarily hybrid, but only remote—is that people can be just as productive, but the mentoring part isn’t happening.

Because people aren’t interacting in the same way—observing, learning vicariously, asking questions. It’s harder to do that when you have to say, “Hey, can we get on Zoom for a few minutes?” versus running into somebody by the water cooler and starting a conversation.

Ashish Kothari:

I love it, and I think it’s critical today. It was important when you were researching this originally, but now even more so. The only thing that is certain is that the pace of change will keep increasing—and not linearly, but exponentially.

The only way organizations can respond fast is if we push empowerment and decision-making from the center—away from slow structures—to the fringes, where every person understands meaning, knows where they’re going, feels we are investing in skills, and has the ability to make decisions, especially which ones they can make. Recognizing and valuing them—showing that what they’re doing matters—is a must. It’s more important today than ever.

It’s also more important in the context of the AI revolution we’re seeing. You can try to roll AI out top-down and eliminate jobs. But if you want to maximize the potential of AI, you have to help people find meaning. You have to upskill them and say, “I trust you to use this to become more human, to increase your productivity.”

And if you have an organizational North Star—a sense of why—then you can say, “If I have 30% more capacity, earlier I could only reach a thousand customers with my base, but maybe I can reach 1,300 now,” versus saying, “I should need 30% fewer people now.”

Those are two very different approaches, and most people are going with the first one because they’re not empowering people. They’re not running the business for meaning; they’re running it for short-term profit. They want to hold all the decisions because they don’t feel they can trust people with decisions.

Fundamentally, in my head, I’m saying, You’re just a resource. You don’t matter. What you do doesn’t matter. You’re replaceable.

I think there’s a reason why 95% of AI pilots are failing.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

It’s like many kinds of change in organizations. People resist if they don’t feel like they’re part of the implementation, part of the rollout.

One analogy we’re finding helpful as we work with students and companies at the University of Michigan is to see AI not as a replacement that takes over things, but as augmenting—as a member of the team, adding value in ways we can’t do as quickly or as comprehensively. It can aid decision-making and enhance what we’re doing.

I was just in a workshop earlier today about teaching using AI. People were lamenting, “Students can get all the answers to the cases—this is terrible. How do we teach in this world of AI?”

Then someone said, “AI can help you write very personalized, customized cases in the moment that students will really have to think through. Instead of depending on Harvard to generate cases we’ll use for 20 or 25 years, we can write something customized and time-appropriate.”

Look for the opportunity instead of just seeing the threat. If we wait for senior leadership to figure out where the threats and opportunities are, we’ll move really slowly. If we empower people to see opportunities and share them with each other, that’s powerful.

Here at the University of Michigan, students are often the ones seeing the opportunities, and we’re learning from them about how we can build more AI. It’s not just the faculty or the dean figuring it out. It’s happening in a very collaborative, spontaneous way. We have to be open to that.

Ashish Kothari:

We have to be open. Talking about learning from teachers, you’ve written a lot about that, and I think leaders can take a page from educators—from teachers.

I love that some of the leading work around flourishing and other topics is being led out of education departments. The common vernacular in “people stuff” is we train people. No—we don’t train people. We can educate them. We can help them in different ways.

I’m curious, Gretchen: what’s one lesson from the classroom that you would invite leaders to almost shamelessly steal in helping their people flourish?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

Yes. Here is where I'm going to be inspired by my older daughter. She is a first-grade school teacher, and we often talk about challenges and opportunities that we both face in our classrooms. She just started a new year with a new class, and one of the things I'm always so impressed by is how—coming back to my bracelet—she sees the good in each one of her students.

And it's a different good for each student. It's not the same good. Some students are real helpers. Another student brings good energy to the classroom. Another student is very disciplined. She looks for where the good is and then helps them uplift, helps them bring more of that to the classroom.

What she notices is that as she's sharing that feedback with the class, she sees other kids doing it for each other as well. “The energy's kind of low right now. Hey Charlie, we need you right now.” And he'll do something silly that gets everyone in a better mood.

Leaders are teachers. Leaders are coaches. Leaders are people who see the good—see the strengths—and know how to bring those to life in their students, in their people, and how to get their students, their people, to recognize it in each other as well.

Ashish Kothari:

I love that. Your story reminded me of one of my clients we are working with right now. It's MUFG, it's Mitsubishi Union Financial Group. And my friend—she’s the equivalent of a CAO; they don't call her a CAO, but she has all of that.

Her team is pretty cool. She's done such a great job—so proud of her. They have 15 people, and they basically know each one's unique strength—what they are really good at.

Even though they belong to different functions—one’s over data, one’s over tech, one’s over facilities, one’s over procurement—when they’re navigating problems, they use the human side of the strength and will send somebody from a completely different group: “Because you're really good at figuring out when the path is ambiguous, go into this meeting or come with me because you'll help me.”

I think that's what you're talking about. If we know what we are good at, as a team we can think beyond roles, beyond functions, beyond swim lanes, to say: how do we, as humans, leverage each other's strengths in powerful ways? I don't think many people step back and think about strengths that way, and pull teams that way. So that's beautiful.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

 Yeah. And then also think about how strengths are dynamic; they're not static. People can keep developing those strengths and enhance them or see how they work. Maybe the strength works really well in challenging times. How could it also work in times of change or in times of calm? How could you bring that? Help people further develop and deepen those strengths as well, so that they're not just… it’s powerful.

Ashish Kothari:

 I love that. Over the last 20 years, you have taught so many leaders, you have researched so many companies. I would love to hear—can you share one story, Gretchen, of a team or a company that really nailed flourishing, that is doing so many things that others can look at and say, “If they can do it, so can we”?

Gretchen Spreitzer:

I'll answer that in two ways, Ashish. One is that I do think there are bright spots in every organization. One of the cool things about looking for the bright spots in your own organization is that you can really see the possibility that it can occur here. Our job is to spread it, rather than always looking out and saying, “The grass is greener over there. I want to bring it,” and then, “It doesn’t work here for X, Y, and Z.”

The importance is looking internally at that positive deviance—those bright spots—to see where we're already thriving in our organization. Are there clues about how we could spread that or magnify it?

The second answer is that it’s always a little bit hard because you see an organization today and it seems like it's doing well, and then something happens in the environment or the leadership changes. Organizations are not static either.

For example, we used to use Southwest Airlines as an example of a positively deviant organization. And now they're struggling. Is it because they did those other things—those positive things—over time? No. It's that the environment changed. Leadership changed. It wasn't because what they were doing was weak in some ways. It's that they didn't adapt.

But I will say one organization that is inspiring to me is a local organization here in Ann Arbor called Zingerman's. They have what they call a community of businesses. They have a very successful deli that’s been in existence for decades.

Everybody is always asking, “Hey, we want a Zingerman's Deli in Chicago,” and “We want one in Cleveland,” and “How about one in Boulder?” The founders said, “We don't want to be on the road trying to replicate franchises. We want to make a big difference here in Ann Arbor. We want a way to empower our people to bring new ideas for new businesses in our community of businesses.”

Over the last 20 years, they now have a bakehouse that bakes the bread, a creamery that makes the cheese for their sandwiches, a coffee roaster that makes the coffee, and a roadhouse with comfort food different from the deli.

They have a training company that brings the Zingerman's culture—you can sign up and do classes there. An employee might have an idea for a new community of business, pitch it to the governing body, and it could be the next business.

Talk about empowerment. Success and growth can come from the original businesses, but also from the great ideas of employees. They also pay a living wage. You're not going to get a cheap sandwich, but you know employees are well taken care of, paid well, and treated well.

Ashish Kothari:

I would love to do a case study on them. I know you've done it, but I want to tell their story. The other one I found—I'm sure you're familiar with this—the person who clued me onto that was Rich Menlo Innovations.

These evergreen companies that are part of the Tugboat Institute. I read that book last weekend called Another Way, and I found it so inspiring. I literally read it in one day because it mirrored what I'm trying to build the Happiness Squad around.

It’s got these seven principles they highlighted, and what's cool is many of them are 100–200 years old. To your point about Southwest being only 50 years old—what are the businesses that have stood 100–200 years?

What they were finding were these seven things at the heart of them, and I loved them. They were all purpose-driven; purpose was first. They put their people first—from Barry Waymiller to so many others.

Bob Chapman's book Everybody Matters—that was the book I also read. They all were profitable. Profit is not why a business exists, but a business can't exist without profits. It's a not-for-profit and it'll die. They were all private. They chose to remain private.

They chose to—Zingerman's—because they said, “Capital markets: you can't fight gravity if you live on Earth. You can't fight quarterly pressures to drive profits if you are traded on the NASDAQ or the Dow,” because it's out of your control.

They chose to remain private. They chose paced growth. They said there is a natural pace at which a business can grow and fund from within. That paced growth is important because if you grow too fast, you can't grow your culture and make sure it's uniform. This notion of paced growth. They also had pragmatic innovation. And the last one was perseverance—the determination and willingness to move through.

I love those stories. If we study those companies—from Wegmans to Enterprise to Radio Flyer to the SaaS Institute—I bet we will find not all pockets, to your point, that are this magic world, but more pockets where people are flourishing and guided by these ethos. That's the kind of story I'm trying to get people to see. But I loved your inspiration when you answered with the first part: don't look out there. Look here, because you will find more here. You might look out there and say, “I'm not like that, and I don't have that,” but when you look within, you have people, units, functions that are doing something different. Go learn from them.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

The other thing—we talked about the Reflective Best Self, where people share stories about a time an individual was at their best.

We could also do Reflective Best Organization: go to customers, vendors, employees, former employees—“When did you see your organization at its best? When was it really thriving and flourishing? When was it achieving more than what was expected?” That is a powerful exercise for identifying those bright spots—or those bright times—in an organization's existence.

Ashish Kothari:

 I love that, Gretchen. Thank you, my friend. This has been an amazing conversation. I’ve taken so much away—from empowerment, from this Reflective Best Self for individuals as well as organizations, this notion of looking for greatness within, finding strengths among our people, and actively creating opportunities to develop them. I’ve learned so much. Thank you for literally birthing a field, growing it, and now leading it. You all convene over a thousand researchers.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

And thank you for spreading it with us, for being a partner with us. We really appreciate that. We're definitely kindred spirits. 

Ashish Kothari:

It’s my honor. It’s a real privilege. Thank you.

Gretchen Spreitzer:

I'll end with: Go Blue.

Ashish Kothari:

 Go blue.