Rise & Research

Jon McNaughtan on finding purpose in the workplace, cultivating leaders and the power of a handknit blanket.

By Texas Tech University

February 3^rd, 2026

Welcome to Rise & Research where cutting-edge discoveries are made as accessible as your morning coffee. This monthly feature offers a closer look at the transformative research happening on our campus. Pull up a chair as we talk with faculty who are pushing boundaries while creating opportunities for the next generation.

In this installment, Lucy Greenberg sits down with Jon McNaughtan at The Toasted Yolk to discuss organizational development and leadership.

I open the door to The Toasted Yolk on Milwaukee Avenue and step inside. The heat is a reprieve from the cold winter morning.

I’m meeting Jon McNaughtan from Texas Tech University’s College of Education to talk about his research in organizational development. He has spent the last 10 years at Texas Tech teaching in the higher education administration program, but is also a sought-after consultant who’s worked with Fortune 500 companies around the world.

McNaughtan has spent his academic career studying positive organizational scholarship. Which, in a nutshell, means learning from things that go right, rather than what goes wrong. His insight and infectious confidence have benefited hundreds of burgeoning leaders.

The extrovert has clearly found his calling in life. He is the kind of person who doesn’t know a stranger, and that’s clear as he walks through the door, shaking hands with me, my colleagues and the waitress.

Today, he’s agreed to meet me for breakfast at one of his favorite spots. It's a quick drive from his house and not too far from school drop-off for his four kids. He often orders the eggs benedict but this morning he chooses the Toasted Yolk breakfast – toast, eggs, bacon and hashbrowns. Straightforward, yet inviting, like him.

Two people sit across from each other in a diner booth, engaged in conversation. A window behind them displays the word

Q: Can you give us a definition of organizational development and why you're so interested in it?

A: Organizational development is how organizations evolve and how the people within them evolve. I’ve been a part of many communities and organizations throughout my life, and I’d never really thought about how similar they were.

That’s what organizational development is about – helping people to understand that each organization, while it has unique features and unique challenges, has a lot of consistency in terms of how people feel connected – how people feel a sense of belonging, how a healthy culture is built. There are a lot of things that are the same, and so organizational development is all about asking what the principles are for building organizations that last, that are healthy and can make a difference in the world.

Q: Within organizational development, there is a specific field of study called positive organizational scholarship, which you’ve spent a lot of time researching. Can you tell us about it?

A: Twenty years ago, most of the literature and research was all about the problems with organizations and how we fix them.

Around 2001, there was this boom of positive psychology. Several organizational scholars, two of whom I’ve interacted with – Kim Cameron and Bob Quinn – realized they could apply this to organizations. They realized we can learn from what’s going right as opposed to what’s going wrong. And in organizational development, unfortunately, that’s what had become the focus. So, positive organizational scholarship is capturing what is going well and learning how to recreate that.

Q: Can you share an example of positive organizational scholarship in action?

A: After the terrorist attacks on September 11, airlines were affected in a massive way. Not only did it cancel travel for a period, but it also made a lot of people wary to travel again.

Airlines saw this coming and immediately laid off tons of people. Southwest Airlines, on the other hand, stated they were not going to lay off anybody, which was a huge risk. They kept people that didn’t work for a while. But because of that, they were the first airline to return to pre-9/11 revenue. They made it back faster than any other competitor.

For me, this has always been a great example of what happens when you put people first. In positive organizational scholarship we take a step back from focusing solely on the numbers and we realize that our actions and communication have a tangible effect on people. So when we say we will sacrifice revenue for our employees, they work harder and care more. When we are honest and create opportunities for people, they rise to the challenge.

Q: Does something different happen in the brain when we learn something through positive reinforcement versus negative reinforcement?

A: There is neuroscience behind it. There’s another great researcher out there, his name is Shawn Achor, he wrote a book called “The Happiness Advantage” and he presents some research on mirror neurons, which posits that the experiences we have, the way people interact with us, is what we mirror back to them.

So, if somebody comes in and they’re really upset, it’s hard for us not to respond in kind. Your brain is just mirroring what you’re seeing. When we talk about leading with positivity, or positive organizational leadership, we’re trying to lead the way we would want to be led.

Q: Can you explain the power of positive versus negative feedback?

A: There are several pieces of research showing that for every one negative thing you say, it takes five positives to balance it out. I think the principle there is sometimes misconstrued, because people think, “Oh, that means I need to say five positive things all the time so I can say my negative things.”

I think the better principle is the power of the negative.

If I give a critique, I need to understand there will be staying power with that. So, I don’t want to say something negative off the cuff. I don’t want to say it in anger. I want to be intentional with the critique I give, and I want to lead in positivity. When I give that critical feedback, I have to understand its power. I also have to spend time supporting people to work through any feedback I give.

Q: Is there a moment from your consulting career that’s stuck with you?

A: I was working with an organization once, a large one whose name we’d all recognize. I was visiting with their logistics division online, and we were having a conversation that wasn’t going anywhere. People really weren’t engaged. So, I changed the direction of the conversation to why they come to work.

Suddenly, one of the managers unmuted their microphone and got on camera and said, “The reason I’m here every day is because of everyone else in this room.” His voice started to break a little. He said, “My wife got cancer three years ago.” He reached over and he pulled out this picture of him holding an afghan. He said the guys in the room had helped make it for his wife.

He said that changed his why. It became about everyone in the room. What was amazing is how, suddenly, everyone else opened up because of the little bit of vulnerability this man shared. When we open up at the right time, in the right space, in the right way, it can change the whole conversation.

Q: What would you say to someone in leadership who has been taught that being positive or vulnerable means people won’t respect them?

A: Being demanding is not usually the only characteristic of who someone is as a leader. If it is, it lends itself to employees leaving and a challenging work environment. There might be a short-term gain in using negative reinforcement, but the long-term effect can be destructive.

The late General Colin Powell wrote a book called “It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership.” In it, he basically says this: everywhere you go, you bring your weather. If you come into a room and you’re angry, it not only affects those people, but they get rained on, and then they take it back to their people, and on and on.

There’s a cascade effect. The question you must ask yourself is, “Is the way I’m acting the way I want everyone else to act?”

"When we open up at the right time, in the right space, in the right way, it can change the whole conversation."

Q: What brought you to Texas Tech?

A: When I looked at the position Texas Tech was hiring for in 2016, it was in the higher education administration program, but they wanted somebody who did organizational scholarship, and I thought, “This is perfect.” They also wanted somebody who taught online, and I had that experience, so it was a perfect fit.

Q: What keeps you at Texas Tech?

A: It’s the people; I really love the people I get to work with, both in my college, but in other colleges as well. The second thing is that Texas Tech has been good to me. Lubbock is a good place to live and our kids like it here. They’re happy, they’re healthy. There are a lot of good opportunities for me to do my research and my family feels supported.

Q: For prospective graduate students, can you tell us about the higher education administration graduate program?

A: Anybody who works in higher ed who is looking to learn more about their industry – this is the program for you. We have a certificate in leadership and a certificate in student advising along with a master’s and a doctoral program. Whatever it is you do, consider whether it’s something you could do within the context of education.

Q: For those who are interested in learning more about positive organizational scholarship, are there resources you’d recommend?

A: Sure thing, I’d recommend “Practicing Positive Leadership” by Kim Cameron, “Give and Take” by Adam Grant and “The Best Teacher in You” by Quinn et al.