Revaluing Ordinary Moments with Laura Morgan Roberts

How do people shape a positive self-concept in diverse workplaces, and how can feedback influence its content? In this seminar, Professor Laura Morgan Roberts of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business will delve into these questions by presenting data from a positive feedback intervention. Morgan Roberts’s research with colleagues from the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship supports the value of recognizing and appreciating ordinary moments (rather than heroic acts) that signify meaningful contributions to members of work organizations, schools, families, friendship circles, and broader communities. These studies suggest how positive feedback interventions help people to develop broader, more relational self-concepts while also disrupting gender stereotypical self-narratives. Based on this intervention and other research, Morgan Roberts points to the power of relational affirmation in strengthening positive identities and relationships across difference.

Laura Morgan Roberts is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. She has also served on the faculties of Harvard Business School, Antioch University and Georgetown University, and is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at her alma mater, the University of Michigan. As an organizational psychologist, she focuses on the science of maximizing human potential in diverse workplaces, using generative practices that promote human flourishing. She has co-edited three books: Race, Work and Leadership; Positive Organizing in a Global Society; and Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations.