Presenter
Jerry Sternin
Key Takeaways
- 1.Traditional, expert-driven change models often fail because they are perceived as foreign and subsequently rejected.
- 2.The Positive Deviance (PD) approach identifies and amplifies successful but uncommon behaviors already existing within a community.
- 3.Solutions derived from within a group are more likely to be accepted and sustained because they are culturally appropriate and accessible.
- 4.Leaders can apply PD by observing for internal 'bright spots' and creating forums for these positive deviants to share their strategies.
- 5.The PD method fosters psychological safety by celebrating internal experimentation and successful deviation from established norms.
- 6.This approach has been successfully applied to diverse problems, from public health to educational performance and organizational challenges.
The Problem with Expert-Driven Change
Traditional models for driving individual, social, and organizational change often fall short. When external experts introduce strategies that are "not invented here," these solutions are frequently rejected. Much like a human immune system fighting off foreign matter, communities and institutions tend to resist ideas that are not generated from within their own cultural context, dooming many well-intentioned, top-down initiatives to failure.
A More Sustainable Path: The Positive Deviance Approach
The Positive Deviance (PD) approach offers a powerful alternative for creating sustainable behavior and social change from the inside out. This methodology is founded on a simple but profound belief: in every community or organization, there are individuals or small groups whose uncommon but demonstrably successful behaviors enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, despite having access to the exact same resources.
How Positive Deviance Works
Instead of imposing external solutions, the PD approach focuses on identifying these "positive deviants" and then engaging the broader community in a process to discover and adopt these successful, internally-developed strategies. By building on existing successes within the system, the solutions are, by definition, accessible, culturally appropriate, and sustainable.
This internal focus builds resilience and fosters a deep sense of ownership over the change process.
How Leaders Can Apply Positive Deviance
Leaders can leverage the PD approach to solve complex organizational challenges and foster internal innovation. This involves a shift from directing to facilitating discovery:
- Observe and Inquire: Actively look for individuals or teams who are successfully navigating challenges that others struggle with. Systematically observe and interview these 'bright spots' to understand their unique practices.
- Create Forums for Sharing: Establish platforms—meetings, workshops, or internal communities—where positive deviants can share their strategies, allowing others to learn from and adapt these successful behaviors.
- Empower Ownership: Foster an environment where employees feel empowered to experiment with new approaches and share their successes without fear of reprisal.
- Facilitate Replication: Help document and disseminate these successful internal practices to enable wider adoption throughout the organization.
Fostering Psychological Safety and Innovation
The Positive Deviance approach is particularly relevant for cultivating psychological safety. By its nature, it validates and celebrates internal experimentation and successful deviation from traditional norms. This encourages employees to share innovative practices without fear, creating a more agile and adaptive organization capable of solving its own problems.
Proven Across Diverse Fields
The PD approach is not just a corporate strategy. It has been effectively applied to a wide range of global challenges, including:
- Child malnutrition (as the "PD/Hearth Model")
- Condom use among commercial sex workers
- Neo-natal mortality
- Trafficking of girls
- Educational performance
This session, featuring Jerry Sternin, explores the Positive Deviance (PD) approach, a powerful methodology for fostering sustainable behavior and social change from within. It highlights why traditional, expert-driven models often fail by presenting solutions perceived as external to the group, and instead champions identifying and amplifying successful, albeit 'deviant', practices already present within a community or organization.
What you'll learn
- Understanding Positive Deviance: Discover the core principles of the PD approach, focusing on the belief that solutions to complex problems often already exist within a system.
- Identifying Uncommon Behaviors: Learn how to find individuals or groups exhibiting 'uncommon' but successful practices despite having the same resources as their peers.
- Driving Internal Change: Grasp strategies for facilitating change by leveraging existing internal successes, ensuring solutions are culturally appropriate and accessible.
- Psychological Safety in Innovation: Understand how the PD approach inherently fosters psychological safety, allowing individuals to share and scale practices that deviate from the norm without fear of reprisal.
- Real-world Applications: See how PD has been effectively applied to diverse challenges, from health crises to educational performance and organizational transformations.
Who this webinar is for
- Leaders and managers looking for sustainable approaches to organizational development and change.
- HR professionals interested in fostering internal innovation and addressing complex behavioral issues.
- Community organizers and social change agents seeking effective, bottom-up methodologies.
- Anyone interested in the dynamics of behavior change, problem-solving, and leveraging intrinsic group strengths.
- Individuals committed to creating environments where new, successful behaviors can emerge and be celebrated without external imposition.
Why it matters now
In an era of rapid change and complex challenges, relying solely on external experts for solutions can be slow, costly, and ineffective. The Positive Deviance approach remains crucial because it empowers organizations and communities to find and scale their own best practices. This internal focus builds resilience, fosters ownership, and ensures solutions are deeply embedded and sustainable, directly addressing current needs for agile and adaptive strategies. It's especially relevant for cultivating psychological safety, as it naturally encourages experimentation and learning from internal successes rather than imposing external dictates.
How leaders can apply this
Leaders can apply the Positive Deviance approach by actively looking for individuals or teams who are successfully navigating challenges that others struggle with, despite having similar resources. This involves:
- Observation and Inquiry: Systematically observing and interviewing employees to identify 'bright spots' – successful but uncommon behaviors.
- Creating Forums: Establishing platforms for these positive deviants to share their strategies and for others to learn from and adapt them.
- Empowering Ownership: Fostering an environment where employees feel empowered to experiment with new approaches and share successes without fear.
- Facilitating Replication: Helping to document and disseminate these successful internal practices, enabling wider adoption within the organization.
- Building Psychological Safety: Naturally enhancing psychological safety by validating and celebrating internal experimentation and successful deviation from traditional norms.
About this session
Key takeaways
Watching this webinar gives you grounded, practical perspective on Psychological Safety. Expect ideas you can use in leadership conversations, not abstract theory, drawn from Jerry Sternin's direct experience.
Who this is for
CHROs, HR business partners, talent leaders, executive coaches, organizational development practitioners, and senior leaders who are responsible for respect inside their organization.
Why it matters now
Workforce expectations, hybrid work patterns, and AI-driven change keep raising the bar on culture and leadership. Sessions like this help leaders make smarter, more evidence-informed decisions about Psychological Safety.
How to apply it
Use the ideas here to challenge a current assumption on your team, design a single concrete experiment in the next 30 days, and bring one finding back to your leadership group for discussion.
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