Show all articles in this section

Happiness is…building a positive organisation

AUTHOR: Deborah Tarrant   DATE: 03.03.06   ISSUE 1, 2006

These are three of the key findings from the emerging field of positive psychology, the new science focussing on individuals’ strengths rather than weaknesses, that’s transforming the way organisations manage people.

Levels of engagement and meaning at work and, to a lesser extent, positive emotions directly relate to productivity.

Illustration: Gregory Baldwin

According to Professor Martin Seligman, founder of the positive psychology movement, an abundance of research broadly is showing clear relevance for how organisations select and develop people – in particular, managers and leaders.

Since 1998, when the field of positive psychology was formally established, its momentum has resulted in numerous robust research projects being conducted across the world with findings that support its central tenets.

Professor Seligman gave voice to the concept of Positive Psychology when he chose it as the theme for his year as President of the American Psychological Association in 1997. With the intention of adjusting the focus of psychology from mental illness to mental health, he has raised millions of dollars to fund scientific research into the pursuit of happiness showing that it can be lastingly increased. Along the way, he has convened gatherings of hundreds of eminent psychologists to discuss the principles and possibilities for positive psychology and provided thought leadership to the new movement.

Professor Martin Seligman is founder of The Positive Psychology Movement.

Today, Professor Seligman is the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where his current work is the study of Total Life Satisfaction, exploring the significance of positive emotion, engagement and meaning on life generally, and in the workplace.

Early indicators from longitudinal studies now being conducted in United States corporations, insurance companies and defence services are showing levels of engagement and meaning at work and, to a lesser extent, positive emotions directly relate to productivity, reports Professor Seligman.

Uplifting performance
Key to the field of positive psychology is the identification of six ubiquitous core virtues – wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence – which are common to all cultures and provide the basis for 24 ‘signature’ human strengths. With the support of the growing body of research, Professor Seligman believes that everyone possesses several ‘signature’ strengths and focussing on these can deliver inspiration, elevation, confidence and optimal performance.

While the study of positive psychology began with individuals, evidence of its significance and application in organisations and team environments increasingly is linking the positive practices to improved performance.

Key to the field of positive psychology is the identification of six ubiquitous core virtues – wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence

The concept of Positive Organisational Scholarship emanating from the University of Michigan’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business focuses on the dynamics in organisations that lead to developing human strength, producing resilience and restoration, fostering vitality, and cultivating extraordinary individuals. Described as “positive deviance”, the work is based on the premise that understanding how to enable human excellence in organisations will unlock potential, reveal possibilities, and facilitate a more positive course of human and organisational welfare.

Outstanding among the research is the work of associate professor Barbara Frederickson who won the first Templeton Positive Psychology Prize for her theoretical work on positive emotions, claiming they have a grand evolutionary purpose in building reserves that may be used when threat or opportunity presents. In contrast to constrictive negative emotion, the positive mindset is expansive, tolerant and creative or innovative.

Not only do positive emotions undo the negative ones, but they are contagious, fuel resilience, broaden thinking and build resources, trigger optimal functioning, creating “a chain of increasing organisational impact”, Frederickson argues.

Crucial to the positive psychology movement also is the work of Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, currently Director of Quality of Life Research Centre at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, on ‘flow’. Defined as a gratifying state of deep effortless involvement in which the individual loses their sense of self, flow occurs when challenges mesh well with abilities, or strengths, reports Seligman in his book, Authentic Happiness. People work optimally if they are in a state of flow. Jobs should be designed to create more flow by allowing people to use their strengths every day, he says.

Organisational impact
Programs to build resilience into organisations through the applied practice of positive psychology are already underway in trailblazing global and Australian-based organizations.

In a 70 nation survey of signature strengths, Australians and New Zealanders ranked similarly to US participants – highest on kindness, fairness, honesty, gratitude and open-mindedness, while their lowest rankings were in religiousness, zest, prudence, modesty and self-control.

Positive psychology is ultimately about building the optimal working environment

However, organisations have different rank orders, says Professor Seligman. “It’s important for organisations to find the strengths that matter in niches. For example, they might look at the strength profile for eager marketers within that particular organisation, and select and train for that specific profile.”

Jan Elsner is a Melbourne-based psychologist who has been working as a management consultant and executive coach with Australian Top 100 companies. Elsner uses the principles of positive psychology in human capital initiatives and believes that positive psychology is ultimately about building the optimal working environment.

The new approach abandons the traditional causal analysis of problems in favour of creating a positive environment through building on personal attributes and relationships. Her groundbreaking cultural transformation work with fellow consultant, Amanda Horne, involves building the optimism of senior and high potential individuals in some of Australia’s largest organisations by focussing on their engagement, meaning and capacity to fulfil their potential as leaders.

“Where the old system of competency-based performance management, using such tools as 360 degree reviews, falls down is in its focus on the gaps or deficits in individuals’ capabilities, rather than their strengths,” points out Elsner.

Amanda Horne uses the principles of positive psychology in her executive coaching.

By building on strengths, positive psychology is reinforcing an individual’s capacity for resilience. “When faced with a difficult situation, there’s the capacity to bounce back. It’s optimising potential in a way that’s generative and constructive,” Elsner says. “We know if we build the positive, the negative looks different, and what may have appeared overwhelming from one mindset doesn’t look that way through a positive lens.”

Building resilience
Professor Seligman explored the relationship between optimism and resilience in his book, Learned Optimism, which reported reliable ways of identifying optimistic and pessimistic people.

Optimists and pessimists differ in three domains:

• Who gets depressed and who doesn’t when bad events occur. Pessimists are two to eight times as likely to get depressed, Professor Seligman reports.
• At work, in school or on the playing field, optimistic people try harder and are more resilient.
• The physical health of optimistic people is significantly better.

“Measuring optimism and pessimism is the best tool for predicting resilience,” he insists.

So should organizations employ only optimists? It depends on the task, he says. “In some jobs, that’s certainly true. For people who are marketers, sales people and in visionary roles, it’s clear that optimism is crucial. On the other hand, for safety engineers or CFOs a controlled measure of pessimism is preferable,” he says.

Professor Seligman advocates flexible optimism, depending on the demands of the situation: “Optimists work in roles that require trying harder and overcoming obstacles, where the cost of failure is small. If the cost of failure is catastrophic, then it’s important to be a moderate pessimist.

Measuring optimism and pessimism is the best tool for predicting resilience

“Organisations have reached the limit in testing for skills and talents,” suggests Professor Seligman. He believes a combination of strengths and talents together will deliver success. “If you have the talent of Mozart and you are completely pessimistic about your talent to write music, then you’re not going to write great music. It’s the combination of talent and optimism that has been shown to deliver results.”

Positive psychology at work
Positive psychology has broad social applications. Recently economists have acknowledged the need for indices to measure contentment and satisfaction, where their previous measures of national wellbeing have been in dollars earned or Gross Domestic Product.

The rise of the new science in the workplace is the recognition that we’ve come into a new phase because economic rationalism has not delivered, says AGSM’s Professor of Management Roger Collins.

Research cited by Professor Seligman empirically debunks the correlation between money and happiness. “Work life is undergoing a sea change in the wealthiest of nations as a consequence,” he says. The urgent emphasis on employee retention issues is the result of people searching for more satisfying work.

Increasingly, talented and highly qualified individuals will select roles based on how much ‘flow’ they can achieve at work. Flow is achieved by designing jobs around signature strengths or choosing employees whose strengths present a good fit for the role. Professor Seligman urges managers to allow employees to re-craft their work “within the bounds of their goals”.

For positive psychology to have an impact at the organisational level, the top tier executives or senior managers need to recognise that these principles hold a significance for financial performance, Professor Collins believes.

"To be most effective in organisations, positive psychology needs to become a virtuous cycle."

Photo: Professor Roger Collins

“To be most effective in organisations, positive psychology needs to become a virtuous cycle enabling the value proposition built by the executive around conditions of work, job design and the culture of the organisation to create conditions where people can be contented, happy and excel.

“It should be expressed not only in the behaviour and words of the senior managers, but also in organisational policy. This is because policy provides the context for managers to use the approach at the local level, setting up teams and redesigning jobs to create the virtuous cycle that delivers good experiences at work,” advises Professor Collins.

While applying positive psychology systemically will bring the greatest success, he says, individuals also can make moves towards changing the design of their work to use signature competencies and thereby increase wellbeing and contentment.

Further information Online www.authentichappiness.org www.reflectivehappiness.com Reading Authentic Happiness, Martin E.P. Seligman (Random House Australia) Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman (Random House Australia) What You Can Change and What You Can’t?, Martin Seligman (Random House USA Inc.) Good Business, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hodder & Stoughton) Compact disc Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Simon & Schuster Audio)