All Positive Business Conference Early Bird registrants will have the opportunity to participate in the Reflected Best Self Exercise™ (RBSE). Early bird registration must be completed prior to April 1, 2025, to participate.
Extraordinary
All of us can recall our own extraordinary moments; those moments when we put our best self into action in the world. We can strengthen our best-self portrait with insights reflected back to us from significant people in our lives. Colleagues, friends, family members, and others have different perspectives on who we are at our best, and offer unique and valuable insights into the ways we make contributions.
The Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE) is a personal development tool that helps you see who you are at your best, engaging you to live and work from this powerful place daily. Created from research at the Center for Positive Organizations (Ross School of Business, University of Michigan), the RBSE has helped thousands of executives, managers, employees, and students discover new potential. Unlike most other feedback tools, the RBSE isn’t limited to self-assessment. It invites people from your life and work to share stories of moments they feel they’ve seen you at your best, surfacing what few of us become aware of otherwise. The RBSE enables you to gain insight into how your unique talents have positively impacted others and gives you the opportunity to further leverage your strengths at work and in life.
What does the RBSE involve?
Beginning on April 1, 2025, via our online platform, you’ll identify the storytellers you want to invite to share stories of when they’ve seen you at your best. We’ll collect these stories on your behalf, compiling them in a Best Self Report that you’ll review for the first time on Monday, May 12, prior to the Positive Business Conference. During the conference, you will have the opportunity to attend a working lunch with other RBSE participants and an RBSE coach who will help you create your Best Self Portrait and chart a plan for putting more of your Best Self into action as you live and work.
What Research Supports the RBSE?
1. BEST SELF PORTRAITS
Research shows that the portrait of who we are at our best is compiled over time based on how we understand the strengths, contributions, and enduring talents that we bring to the situations in our lives, based largely on our perceptions of how others, including family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, see us.
2. BROADEN AND BUILD
The experience of seeing oneself at one’s best through the eyes of others unleashes powerful positive emotions such as hope, joy, and gratitude, that are demonstrated to broaden people’s mindsets and shift their actions, creating openness to new ideas, new projects or endeavors, and new possibilities for the future.
3. HIGH-QUALITY CONNECTIONS
The RBSE links us with valued others in our lives. Research documents the powerful need human beings have for enduring, affirmative personal connections that provide a sense of belonging and serve as sources of support.
4. SELF EFFICACY
Seeing who we are at our best unlocks a belief that we can make things happen through our own efforts, fostering our initiative and drive and fueling our sense of efficacy to persevere in the face of difficulty.
5. PROACTIVE CHANGE
The RBSE helps us see the kinds of tasks, relationships, and places that bring out who we are at our best, making us more likely to proactively seek out and create the situations that sustain us living and working from our best daily.
6. SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING
The opportunity to see ourselves at our best through the eyes of others taps into vitality, energy, and engagement that fuels optimal performance, creativity, healthy functioning, and sustained well-being.
Who developed the RBSE and what research exists about it?
The Reflected Best Self Exercise (RBSE) is grounded in Positive Psychology and Positive Organizational Scholarship and has been used by over 26,000 people at world-leading universities and Fortune 500 companies. It was developed by Robert E. Quinn, Jane E. Dutton, and Gretchen M. Spreitzer of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and Laura Morgan Roberts of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
