Permission to slack
I have been on vacation for the past two weeks or so. This has meant that my email has piled up, and so has the reading that I’ve wanted to do. Normally I would sit down and plow through it all, but this time, I’m giving myself permission to slack off a bit.
Some might take exception with the phrase “slack off”. In fact, I do too. “Slacking off” has a very negative connotation to it. So let’s rephrase – it’s about savouring and enjoying. Instead of just plowing through my emails and newsletter updates, I’m going to read them slowly, thoughtfully and meaningfully. Joyfully. Intelligently. Savourishiously.
And possibly write about them. There is a theme of articles that I’ve been saving – about positive psychology in the workplace. Look for some blog posts coming soon!
In other news, I’ve been reading Switch by Chip and Dan Heath – really amazing book! A lot of great positive psychology principles embedded with change management and organizational culture. A great bringing-together of many different elements! Highly recommended.
Positive organizations and workplaces
Click on the image for more information about happy employees and productivity from Pepperdine University.
One of the big questions in Positive Psychology today is how to get more of this good stuff – research and applications – into workplaces. There seems to be a stumbling block in that the words “positive psychology” don’t resonate with business, and the people who would make the purchasing decisions around positive psychology services aren’t feeling the love.
A few articles that have crossed my inbox recently illustrate how positive psychology principles, no matter the name or label, actually improve business productivity and workplace wellness - all of which is good for the bottom line.
The Times Live (out of South Africa) recently reported that workplace happiness is not only possible, but also desirable. JobCrystal looked at which employers are considered the best to work for, and where employees are the happiest. Turns out there is a strong correlation, and this has important implications for attracting and retaining key talent. This only makes sense: would you want to apply for a job at a company with a burn-out depressive reputation? Probably not. And certainly not if you were a key player with stellar qualifications and references! You’d be looking for an “employer of choice”: one that has a positive corporate culture and helps individual employees achieve their goals.
As Kevin Laithwaite, Managing Director at JobCrystal succintly says:
“It is clear that the companies that focus on gaining staff buy-in for company-wide goals and objectives, at the expense of meeting employees’ individual career goals, are going to find it difficult to hold on to top talent. The two go hand in hand in terms of attracting and keeping star performers.”
Yet businesses may still ask, what about the bottom line? What’s the point of helping individual employees be happy and meet their individual goals if it doesn’t help us profit? (Well, there is an implicit assumption in there that businesses only care about their profit, but we’ll leave that for another day…)
The Guardian (UK) reported that, amazingly enough, happy employees actually do work harder! This may also smack of the blindingly obvious – at least to anyone who has ever been an employee – but it seems to get lost in the management world. Harken back to Taylorism and early attempts to deconstruct management by treating assembly line workers as cogs in the machine who could only perform repetitive tasks and were punished for any deviance. No wonder unionization was important in the early industrial years! One could argue that one conclusion from the Hawthorne experiments is that paying attention – even very slightly positive and curious attention – to factory workers increases productivity. Positive psychology principles in action in the workplace!
To continue with The Guardian article:
A team of economists has now produced research that suggests there are clear links between workers’ happiness and their productivity.
The team, led by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School and a leading authority on the relationship between economics and mental health, said its research has important implications for the worlds of politics and business.
“We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity,” the team said. “Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.”
Please note: CAUSALITY. This means that an increase in happiness CAUSED an increase in productivity.
The article goes on to explain the research, and concludes that a boost in happiness from watching a 10-minute comedy clip resulted in a 12% productivity increase. Those who watched the comedy clip, but did not report increased happiness, did not increase productivity.
What to make of this? I’ll conclude with the researchers’ final quote:
“If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications.”
Indeed, they should.
The image at the top of this article links to http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/081/performance.html - a very intriguing article by Dr. Charles D. Kerns at Pepperdine University, talking about how employees can and should address both workplace performance AND happiness.
Celebrating great writing and sharing ideas
I’m in the midst of writing my final Capstone submission for my MAPP (Master of Applied Positive Psychology) program at the University of Pennsylvania. I can’t believe the hundreds of research papers that I’ve scoured and reviewed, in order to come up with my own paper. It will eventually be posted on the Scholarly Commons and I will announce the link when that is available.
In the meantime, I’m extra-appreciative of excellent writing and how other positive psychology practitioners – those using the research and philosophy of positive psychology to enrich the “real lives” of people, organizations and societies – are able to share their ideas widely.
Two examples:
Paula Davis-Laack is a lawyer who is using positive psychology to help those in the legal profession. Her company, The Marie Elizabeth Company, is all about empowering “strengths-based and resilient living”. Her writing may be aimed at those in the legal profession, but her wisdom is something we can all learn from. Today’s celebration for Paula is special as she was published in the Wisconsin Lawyer , the official publication of the state bar of Wisconsin. When a publication like that is paying attention, you know it’s important!
(I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention someone who has been inspirational to Paula, and also to me, Dan Bowling. Dan is also a lawyer, but a really really nice one – though he never shies away from controversy and debate. Dan was recently interviewed by the ABA journal, the journal of the American Bar Association. If you want to see the reaction to his article, conduct a search for “vibrant stew” and “Dan Bowling” and see what bubbles up…)
The second example is someone I’ve actually never met in person, but I have been in constant awe at his ability to apply research and write clearly about the most convoluted ideas. His contributions and generosity are impressive. Jeremy McCarthy works in the spa industry, which I would think is perfectly suited to positive psychology – it’s all about flourishing and knowing that other people matter. Jeremy blogs at The Psychology of Wellbeing and his articles are always well-written and bring a smile to my face. Today’s celebration for Jeremy is that his reach just got a big boost from About.com, perhaps one of the most-referenced websites for anything you want to know anything about. Kudos to Jeremy!
Of course, there are many many more practitioners out there writing and sharing great ideas about the application of positive psychology. If you know of any blogs or newsletters, please send them my way! I’d love to highlight them. A well-deserved toast to you all.
Not just good work
In my continuing series of blogs and websites that I find interesting, inspiring and worth sharing:
Even the name of the blog is highly evocative: Box of Crayons. Doesn’t that just sound like fun? All those different colours, all those different ways of drawing the world, all those different paths to imagination and possibility? I have become a big fan of Michael Bungay Stanier and his quest for Great Work.
I first became aware of Michael (please, may I call you Michael?) when I reviewed his book Find Your Great Work. It is a quirky bit of genius, about the size of a cocktail napkin, filled with solutions to stop the busywork and get on with the “work that matters”. I was so taken with the book that, after I reviewed it, I asked if I could keep the copy and it’s been a staple on my bookshelf ever since (right alongside Daniel Pink and Peter Block, among others…). Michael’s accomplishments and contributions to the discovery and creation of “great work” are too numerous to list here, so I encourage you to head to his blog and see what’s on top. One day, it’s a Carlos Santana video, and another day, it’s an interview with academic and thought leader Roger Martin. His posts are always informative and entertaining, and although he doesn’t reference positive psychology research directly, I can sense it there, lurking in the background, substantiating his insights and connections.
Although I don’t always have the time to listen to Michael’s great interviews, I enjoy his postings enormously. They bring colour and light to each day. Great work abounds!
Can you go home again? The fun may be in the trying…
You’ve probably heard the saying, “You can never go home again”. There is another saying that I much prefer: “You can’t walk on the same path twice”. The idea is that the path isn’t the same path the second time, and, I would add, you aren’t the same person the second time either. So my fun today was trying to walk on a path that I hadn’t set foot on in over a decade – a return to the high school where I used to teach.
A new path
Before getting my MBA and working in Organizational Development, I taught high school for several years. For those of you who don’t know, I used to teach high school French in a public education system where French was mandatory from grade 4 to grade 9. I taught grade 9. This means that those students really knew that they hated French and never wanted to take it again. Admittedly, some students loved French and would continue to take it through to the end of high school, but, for the majority of those students who sat facing me in September, I was the only thing standing between them and no more French classes – ever.
I now say that nothing scares me – I can face down a classroom filled with French-hating 13-year-olds any day. Nit-picking hostile Executives have nothing on them.
So while the path I chose today did not take me into a French classroom, it did take me to the scene of the crime – the building where I taught my French classes – and where I had not taught in over a decade. Could I go “home” again? There were a lot of good memories in that building – great students, fun lessons, amazing teaching colleagues, great administrators, involved parents, fantastic extra-curricular clubs, and so on.
A lot has changed in the interim, and I got lost right from walking in the front door – which is now the side door of the building. The renovations and additions have been so impactful that the school has actually changed address, and the front door now opens onto a different street. Thankfully, there were friendly signs pointing the way to the main office.
Once in the newly-built main office, I tried to convince a front-desk secretary that I wanted to see the list of teachers and timetable – to see who was still there that I would know. She gave me the blank stare that simultaneously communicated, “Are you crazy?” and “I am the gate-keeper and no one is getting hold of that list without my say-so…” While I tried to remember the names of my teaching colleagues, one of them just happened to walk into the main office – at that very moment! I love the synchronicity of the universe…
Well one teacher took me to another who took me to another … and on and on it went for a fun-filled hour of meeting up with my old colleagues one by one. I like to think that I added a little unexpected surprise to each person’s day, and we certainly exchanged hugs and brief positive memories. One teacher will be retiring at the end of this month, and I was so glad to be able to see him and wish him well personally before he moves out of his teaching career. He has positively touched many lives and enriched them all with his wisdom, knowledge, humour and heart.
The path is not the same. I am not the same. And it wasn’t the same home. But it was a great trip and I’m so glad I took the leap to find my way through the labyrinth and trust that it would work out.
I’m interested in hearing about your own journeys: What path holds fond memories for you? What path would you walk on again if you could? And how would you like to savour and honour that path?
