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When Does Growth Really Stop? (Part 2)
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When Does Growth Really Stop? (Part 2)

written by Donald Officer

Part 1 ended with a question about whether human beings are capable of holistic growth throughout their adult years, just as children learn to expand their perspectives during the early years. In Part 2, I contend that the passing of youth does not leave us confined to learning only very specific grownup skills for which a capacity is already in place. We can go beyond skill training to growth.

Kegan and Lahey give us existence proofs, three very different corporate cultures where continuous personal growth is the norm, with all that entails.

An Expanded Model of Development

Kegan’s three stages. Click for larger image.

In the late eighties, Robert Kegan noticed that some people essentially plateau in early adulthood, while others undergo a whole range of learning that offers more than new skills or knowledge acquisition. Not only do these people come to know more things over the long haul, but like Piaget’s children, they grow to know differently. It’s not just how much more they know. It’s also the different ways they come to know.

Kegan simplifies Piaget’s early childhood categories into an impulse-and-reflex-driven beginning and a needs-and-wishes structure later in childhood. At this point, others in the child’s world are recognized more for the impact they have on the child’s self than as unique persons in themselves. This is where the Kegan theory gets interesting. We recognize lingering bits of under-cooked initial relationship styles among colleagues, neighbors, and public figures. For some of us, these immature styles persist or return at moments of stress well into adulthood. Mentally and emotionally, if not physically, we may exercise the Peter Pan option.

Growth, the invisible kind, is a choice. True, it is hardly surprising that the desire to overcome the awkward interactions of adolescence generally drives most of us to achieve the socialized mind of post-adolescence. Many people settle for that. You can carve out a decent enough life if you can just get along.

More aware of others’ needs and the intricacies of relationships, the expanding self-authoring mind begins to understand the world as a system. Confidence in personal identity leads to willing accommodation and appreciation of others.

In Kegan’s estimation the fifth order, the self-transforming mind, is unusual in individuals under 40, usually deepening with passing decades as awareness expands of differences in identities, ideologies, and systems. This often comes with the acquisition of fuller life experience. Be cautioned though, at this level you really have to want to go there! Do these qualities, taken as a whole, not look like the embodiment of positive psychology’s PERMA formula?

What Do These Stages Look Like in Organizations?

Anyone familiar with the recent history of work and the framework of modern organizations will see that a common shared assumption about workforce members imitates Piaget’s flat line. If you can do the job and fit into the culture, you are not expected to change beyond a few necessary new skills and adjustments. Their acquisition is not always easy, but except along a narrow band, few companies pose true stretch goals. Unless you are slotted for leadership, get used to staying up-to-date on technology and whatever trends HR tells you are currently important, but don’t hope for much beyond that.

Where is lifelong development happening?

Adult learners, we are told, are only interested in knowing what they need to know to get the job done now. We are told to call what can still be mastered training. The theory behind it is called androgogy. Development, at best, should be preparation for the next job.

However, Kegan and Lahey, armed with an awareness of possibilities across the full spectrum of a career take a very different view using a positive, growth-oriented mindset. Most encouraging for those of us who recognize the possibilities of positive psychology in the world of work is that several organizations are already practicing a deliberately developmental approach with all their employees. In Kegan and Lahey’s book, An Everyone Culture, the three companies showcased exhibit not only positive individual results by every important measure, but also exemplary organizational outcomes.

The authors describe the three organizations as deliberately developmental organizations (DDOs), but apart from that key designation they differ extensively. Next Jump is an exceptional e-commerce tech company, Decurion is immersed in multiple branches of cutting edge cinematic entertainment, and Bridgewater Associates operates two hedge funds controlling $165 billion in global investments. While each of these businesses represents a vastly different knowledge pool, the level of excellence required to keep each of them operating at the top of their game requires similarly unrelenting investment in the development of individuals as well as team centered interpersonal and transformative understanding. Without a DDO mindset it can’t happen.

Bridgewater Associates

DDOs in action – adapted from An Everyone Culture – Click to see larger image.

You may have heard of Ray Dalio and his best-selling book, Principles. Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater Associates, a Wall Street firm that weathered the great recession without serious losses. Bridgewater is credited by the Economist for making more money for its investors than any other hedge fund in history. But if you read Principles or watch Dalio’s TED talk you will learn that he considers Bridgewater’s real achievement to be the creation of a culture of radical transparency made possible by deep mutual trust, an outcome of deliberate development.

Next Jump

The same fearless attitude born of unwavering commitment to psychic safety leads Next Jump staffers to continuously ask, “What opportunities will there be to practice my backhand?” insider code for overcoming each individual’s greatest difficulty. The supportive Next Jump culture creates a robust safety net permitting everyone in it to take on steep challenges that teach deep self-knowledge. This kind of learning may be humbling, although it is assuredly bonding.

Decurion

Likewise, process unfolds in Decurion known for its axioms or tested company values.

Decurion’s axioms are statements about how we choose to view and live our lives. They are decisions about how we act together. They reflect a choice to see wholeness and possibility rather than separateness and trade-offs.

“Decurion’s purpose is to provide places for people to flourish. We believe that every human being has something unique to express. Flourishing is the process of living into one’s unique contribution and expressing oneself fully. It is the process of becoming oneself. We seek to create the conditions for this through our work. And by demonstrating the efficacy of our practices in generating financial and developmental returns, we hope to inspire and guide other companies in making work more profitable and more humane. In this way, we seek to change society for the better.”

Their shared beliefs may explain why Decurion holds together despite continuous forced acceptance of a staggering diversification of every kind imaginable in a business where creativity is lifeblood and would have fractured most other firms.

There are others…

You can look outside the organizations referenced in An Everyone Culture for more instances of cultures where the person is considered as important as the work. You will find them. Daniel Coyle’s recently released, The Culture Code is a great guidebook for creating them.

In another recent LinkedIn post, Adam Grant reproduces a transcript of his conversational podcast with The Daily Show writers. Grant observes that informality, trust, irreverence, and “burstiness” (well-timed and well-tolerated interruptions) move the high-pressure process forward. The comedy writers’ banter (unchanged when host Trevor Noah steps into the room) is a dynamic form of brainstorming that is actually productive.

Obviously not every successful organization practices the integral deliberative development that Kegan and Lahey find so distinguishing. Not every organization can. What is clear, is that if more of our organizations do not realize how important lifelong development is to everyone at work, genuinely achievable career satisfaction and meaning for all will be very hard to come by, and the organizations themselves will miss important opportunities.
 

 

References:

Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2016). An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization. Harvard Business Review Press.

Kegan, R. (2013). The further reaches of adult development. RSA Talk.

Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Bantam Books.

Dalio, R. (2017). Principles: Life and Work. Simon and Schuster.

Dalio, R. (2017). How to build a company where the best ideas win. TED2017.

Decurion (2014). Our Philosophy. Web page.

Dunbar, M. F. & Zurer, R. (2016, November 6). How to profit by helping your workers be their best selves. Conscious Company Media.

Grant, Adam (2018, April 27). The Daily Show’s secret to creativity. LinkedIn post.

Photo Credit: Flickr via Compfight with Creative Commons licenses
Kegan’s 3 stages from Library of Concepts. The three most relevant stages of human development nowadays (Kegan 1/3).
Bovee and Thill
DDO picture source

June 22, 2018 0 comment
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When Does Growth Really Stop? (Part 1)
BusinessChange

When Does Growth Really Stop? (Part 1)

written by Donald Officer

Imagine

What if a company did everything in its power to create a culture in which everyone, not just selected people identified as high potential, could overcome their own internal barriers to change and use errors and vulnerabilities as prime opportunities for personal and company growth?

We can imagine organizations where serious personal and organizational growth are broadly distributed, but such organizations are few and far between. More common are small businesses or teams working in industries where something drives the members to seek a close consensus. Think of platoons in a war zone or creative units producing quality products for demanding customers.

Falling Short via Deliberate Deception

Because short-term mindsets often prevail, work cultures are none too supportive of development on the job. New hires are expected to come fully trained, given the buyer’s market for employment. On the other hand, employers are usually suspicious of the career intentions of overqualified recruits settling for work outside their fields. Psychologist Adam Grant recently posted a cartoon to his LinkedIn page showing a job interviewer advising an overqualified candidate to come back when he’s forgotten a few things. With this short-term focus, well established principles like learning transfer from one skill set to another are easily dismissed, while techniques like coaching are customarily reserved for managerial elites.

Managing how we are perceived

Many of the reflexively discouraging ways we operate in business, government, and non-profits have consequences for the future. How is that? Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, research and business practice collaborators for 30 years, published An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization in 2016. In this book, they make the pointed observation that most of our organizations underperform for the same embarrassing reason, “…nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is paying them for – namely, covering their weaknesses, trying to look their best, and managing other people’s impressions of them.” Not exactly a strengths-based path to optimum performance.

In such a necessarily deceptive cultural environment, it is difficult to assess how much of the effort expended is directed to the real business of the organization. It is also hard to pinpoint and address the critical pain points in the operation. Such a state of affairs will taint every explicit statement of encouragement or acknowledgment since such language will not be trusted and may serve to mask more negative or suspicious feelings.

Gamification for Greater Engagement?

One approach to addressing suboptimal organizational climates is to frame the issue as employee engagement. Surveys suggest disengagement hovers over about two thirds of the workforce. Could management make the daily grind more enticing or at least more bearable? One technique is gamification, using an element of competition to keep things interesting. The playground could be virtual, board based, physically interactive with movement through shared spaces (embodied as facilitators like to say) or involve any of a number of forms of mental jousting.

Flight simulator

The idea behind gamification is to take the worker’s mind out of a frustrating, sometimes not so safe, office setting into a temporary world where dysfunction is not a real hazard. This is a bit like using a flight simulator, which come to think of it, is classic gamification. Gaming methodologies have merits by making work feel less like school and more like recess.

Other popular and positive tools for resetting engagement include mindfulness with its short track to flow and the whole suite of positive deviance tools listed in valuable books like Profit from the Positive, Awakening Compassion at Work, or Grateful Leadership. Happier and more respectful workplaces are necessary for optimal satisfaction or performance. However, as necessary as positive infusions are, they are not sufficient to achieve the best results.

Hygiene and Purpose

Management theorist Frederick Herzberg discussed what matters in our work decades ago. Foreshadowing the science of flourishing that combines hedonia with eudaimonia. Herzberg developed a two-factor theory to explain employee satisfaction as a prerequisite for full engagement, distinguishing between hygienic and motivating factors. Herzberg’s point was that staff would not be happy for long without basic needs being met, such as adequate wages and key benefits. However, even if these hygienic needs were satisfied, employees would not stay engaged indefinitely if they lacked a deeper sense of purpose.

Where does that purpose come from? It could come from a deep commitment to the job’s importance or through the crafting of the job by the current job holder to meet a personal standard of meaning. It might also come from being part of a larger social enterprise such as building a worthy institution or fighting a just war. These are meaningful ends, but they might not reach the high bar of fulfilling individual purpose.

What Does the Growth Curve Look Like?

This is where Kegan’s theory of lifelong development comes into play. But to understand it we need to look at the work of an important developmental psychology pioneer.

Children making sense of the world

Early in the 20th Century Swiss biologist and psychologist, Jean Piaget, started to observe children systematically, starting with his own, as they attempted to make sense of the world. He saw that through interactions with their surroundings they developed explanation frameworks. He also noted that while children were absorbent learners, only after experience accumulates and is assimilated could the young fully accept abstract concepts typical of later ages and stages.

Piaget’s scheme begins with what he calls the sensori-motor stage of infants and toddlers, proceeding through to the formal operations level of mid adolescence. Here, says Piaget, cognition reaches its final form as the individual is now capable of deductive reasoning. If this model were shown as a linear graph, we would see a flat line starkly indicating no meaningful growth after early adulthood. While teenagers might endorse this model as they assess their elders, does it really jibe with the evidence?

Is development a flat line after adolescence?

Great work was done by Erick Erickson who mapped out the challenges life imposes as crises lead to developing maturity. Likewise, researcher Albert Bandura has documented how people continue to learn throughout their lives by watching one another and recognizing how they shape the environment even as they are shaped by it. So, there is refinement to look forward to, but is there growth?

In Part 2, we will look closely at how the growth proposition has actually been put to the test in three existing real-world companies with solid results which are heartening for organizations, managers, employees, customers, and society. In Kegan and Lahey’s deliberately developmental organizations (DDOs) everyone is expected to grow and to find new strengths while interacting with equally committed colleagues on parallel journeys. It may sound idyllic, but it’s tough and gritty as well as intensely rewarding.
 

 

References:

Primary:

Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2016). An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization. Harvard Business Review Press.

Supportive:

Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Bantam Books.

Elkind, D. (2013). Piaget’s Developmental Theory: An Overview. Film.

Erikson, E. H. (1959). Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: International Universities Press, Inc.

Grant, A. (2018). The Daily Show’s Secret to Creativity. WorkLife TED podcast transcript. LinkedIn post.

Greenberg, M. & Maymin, S. (2013). Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business. McGraw Hill.

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snydermann, B. B. (1993). The Motivation to Work. Transaction Publishers.

Umlas, J. (2012). Grateful Leadership: Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results. McGraw-Hill Education.

Worline, M. & Dutton, J.(2017). Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power That Elevates People and Organizations. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Photo Credit: Flickr via Compfight with Creative Commons licenses
Facade: Managing how we are perceived courtesy of mharrsch
Flight simulator courtesy of lam_chihang
Children making sense of the world courtesy of Colegio Jean Piaget
Line with bird courtesy of R.H.Sumon™

June 20, 2018 2 comments
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Well-being for Working Mothers
AllBusinessHome and FamilyPositive FeelingsRelationshipsTaking Action

Well-being for Working Mothers

written by Frawn Morgan

Martin Seligman is a force. He is a force for change, a force in positive psychology, and a force to be reckoned with. As a student in his Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at Penn, I was in awe of him. In October 2016, I asked the question whether there was a correlation between depression in adolescents and whether their mothers worked outside the home. I felt singled out when he responded, “Someone really should investigate that.” I knew he had thrown down the gauntlet.

Gauntlet

The gauntlet thrown down

I pick up the gauntlet

I had been a mother who worked outside the home. Beginning 3 weeks after my oldest was born in 1977, and with the exception of 2 years when I chose to home school my younger two children in grade school, I had worked continuously. That’s roughly thirty years as a working mother of 3 children who were, between the oldest and youngest, 13 years apart. One of my children struggled dramatically with depression during adolescence, and the other two may have struggled as well, just not in an obvious way. So this question was important to me personally. It was also important to me as I contemplated my encore career supporting working mothers in their quest for well-being.

Like many working mothers, I spent years on the bottom on the career ladder. While I was a single mother, I worked as a bookkeeper by day and bartender by night. I worried I wasn’t spending enough time with my son, even though he was cared for by relatives and loving friends. I worked diligently through the challenges of climbing the ladder in the male-dominated field of real estate development, with my efforts resulting in achieving ever more responsible senior management and executive roles, culminating in my role today as the managing partner of my firm.

By the time I got to MAPP, I wanted to find a way to mine my work experience for gems that I could use to help other working mothers. Seligman’s gauntlet fit nicely into that goal.

Where on the career ladder?

How did people around me respond?

My question was not a popular one. Many of my classmates were unhappy with my choice of topic, secretly fearing that I might find a correlation that could derail the hopes of women who want both to work and to have children. Seligman acknowledged that this was a challenging and unpopular topic, even telling me one afternoon that I could “expect to be crucified.” Even so, he never let me off the hook and continued to prod me to investigate the correlation, which he strongly believes exists.

Seligman was challenging me to investigate whether or not children of working mothers are predisposed to depression because he has a historical interest in attachment theory. He is not alone. I found several studies that speculated on similar themes, several listed in the reference list below.

What was the search like?

I started delving into the literature only to come up empty. There were no studies to examine this correlation, and scant longitudinal data to support any reliable form of analysis. I was stuck and frustrated. I had made the commitment to investigate this for my capstone project, and I kept hitting dead ends. I spoke with several researchers including legends in the field of adolescent mental health and family dynamics, and still came up empty. I had more than one revered psychologist tell me no correlation existed. I persisted, determined to find something that I could write about.

I read everything I could find on depression in children whose mothers worked. I interviewed working mothers I knew. I examined the work of several noted psychologists on family dynamics.

What did I find?

Working mother and child

What began to emerge was something I had not expected. It appeared that children of mothers with rewarding careers were actually doing quite well, according to Bianchi, Wills and Bauer. While the children seemed to be doing well, the working mothers also seemed to be doing better than might have been expected, finding a sense of meaning and accomplishment in their work that had a positive impact on their well-being. The children of these working mothers seemed to benefit from their mothers’ well-being, even though their mothers were putting in 8 (or more) hours on the job and away from them.

I did uncover a dark side, however. Children with mothers who are depressed, working or not, are at a much greater risk for adolescent depression. The really disturbing part is that maternal depression is rising.

I had found a correlation; it just wasn’t exactly the correlation I was expected. There is a well-documented correlation between maternal depression and adolescent depression described by a number of researchers.

Now What?

With maternal depression on the rise, I decided to concentrate my research on how working mothers were dealing with the stresses of their multiple roles and how the children of working mothers were actually faring. This wasn’t the study Seligman was hoping I would do, but it did fit nicely into my personal goal of increasing well-being for working mothers.

Seligman recently reminded me that I didn’t do the study we first talked about that afternoon in October. To me, it was impossible to do that analysis with the level of integrity I felt it deserved, due to a lack of existing data and a very real lack of time. It was, after all, a capstone and I had a finite amount of time and energy. I remain committed to using my education along with my thirty years’ experience as a working mother to understand how working affects the well-being of mothers and to develop tools to help working mothers cope on a day-by-day basis, or even a minute-by-minute basis.

Now on to making a difference

If I were thirty, I would make understanding the connection between working mothers and adolescents with depression the focus of my doctoral research and career, but at the encore stage I want to cut to the chase! Well-being for working mothers now!

 

If I can, even in a small way, help working mothers find well-being on a daily basis and thus ameliorate their risk for depression, then I can mitigate, even if only in some small way, the depression risk for their children.

One thing I knew as a working mother was that there was never enough time in the day to do everything I wanted or needed to do. As a result, I didn’t make time for my personal well-being. I don’t think I was clinically depressed, but I may have been dealing with chronic depressive symptoms for as many as thirty years. Anything I can do to change that experience for working mothers today is my focus.

What I learned during my MAPP experience is there are simple mechanisms that working mothers can deploy to improve their daily experience. To me, that is incredibly exciting! I am developing simple tools to share with working mothers everywhere, and in doing so, help them find well-being and share these gifts with their children, energizing a cycle of well-being that protects both working mothers and their children from the risk of depression. I plan to launch a web site soon with

Thank you, Seligman, for throwing down the gauntlet and challenging me to explore these critical questions. There is still much work to prevent maternal and adolescent depression. If my small part helping working mothers find well-being improves the experience of even one working mother, I will consider my efforts successful.

My site, wellbeing4workingmoms.com, has just been launched. Please visit to learn about the hacks I’ve mentioned.
 

 
References:

Morgan, F. (2016). Having it all – Career, Motherhood, and Emotionally Healthy Children: Helping Working Mothers Protect their Children from the Risk of Depression. MAPP Capstone, University of Pennsylvania. Abstract. Complete paper available on request to the author.

Morgan, F. (various dates). Articles on well-being for working women posted on LinkedIn.

Barnett, R. C. (2004, May/June). Women and multiple roles: Myths and reality. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 12, 158-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10673220490472418

Barnett, R. C., & Baruch, G. K. (1985). Women’s involvement in multiple roles and psychological distress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(1), 135-145. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3541.49.1.135

Bianchi, S. M. (2011, November). Family change and time allocation in American families. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 638, 21-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002716211413731

Garber, J. (2006). Depression in adolescents: Linking risk and prevention. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 31, S104-S125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2006.07.007

Goodman, W. B., Crouter, A. C., & FLP Key Investigators (2009, July). Longitudinal associations between maternal work stress, negative work-family spillover, and depressive symptoms. Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Studies, 58, 245-258. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2009.00550.x

Holmes, E. K., Erickson, J. J., & Hill, E. J. (2012). Doing what she thinks best: maternal psychological well-being and attaining desired work situations. Human Relations, 65, 501-522. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0018726711431351

Liss, M., Shriffrin, H. H., & Rizzo, K. M. (2012, October). Maternal guilt and shame: The roles of self-discrepancy and fear of negative evaluation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 22, 1112-1119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10826-012-96873-2

Luecken, L. J., Suarez, E. C., Kuhn, C. M., Barefoot, J. C., Blumenthal, J. A., Siegler, I. C., & Williams, R. B. (1997, July-August). Stress in employed women: Impact of marital status and children at home on neurohormone output and home strain. Psychosomatic Medicine, 59, 352-359.

Pound, A., Puckering, C., Cox, T., & Mills, M. (1988). The impact of maternal depression on young children. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 4, 240-252. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1987.tb00679.x

Schepman, K., Collishaw, S., Gardner, F., Maughan, B., Scott, J., & Pikles, A. (2011). Do changes in parent mental health explain trends in youth emotion problems? Social Science & Medicine, 73, 293-300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.05.015

Sweeting, H., West, P., Young, R., & Der, G. (2010). Can we explain increases in young people’s psychological distress over time? Journal of Social Science & Medicine, 71, 1819-1830. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.08.012

Thapar, A., Collishaw, S., Pine, D. S., & Thapar, A. K. (2012, March 17). Depression in adolescence. The Lancet, 379, 1056-1067. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S01406736(11)60871-4

Wills, J. B., & Brauer, J. R. (2012). Have children adapted to their mothers working, or was adaptation unnecessary? Cohort effects and the relationship between maternal employment and child well-being. Journal of Social Science Research, 41, 425-443. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.10.004

Wolkind, S. (1985). Mothers’ depression and their children’s attendance at medical facilities. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 29, 579-582. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0022-3999(85)90066-2

Photo Credit: Flickr via Compfight with Creative Commons licenses
Gauntlet courtesy of John McCloy
Low on the career ladder courtesy of Instagram: @jbedrina
Working mother and child courtesy of GSCSNJ
MUM in the sand courtesy of Andreas-photography

June 18, 2018 7 comments
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The Passion Paradox
AllMotivationPathway 3 "Meaning"Taking Action

The Passion Paradox

written by Kim Wimmer

How Using Our Talents in Service of Others May Help Keep Obsessive Passion in Check

Passion Gone Awry

I have this friend who felt called to express herself through the performing arts. She’d always wanted to be a great actor and singer. She spent the first 30-something years of her life in service to that calling. She made countless sacrifices at great cost to her personal relationships, financial stability, health, and well-being. She had a career that, to many, looked like a big success. But to her it was never enough.

Audition Judge

Excruciatingly often, she’d been told that she was going to be the next big thing. She studied and trained harder. She dieted and highlighted her hair. What was preventing the Hollywood gatekeepers from anointing her the new it girl? Who knows? The Hollywood audition process is a black hole for feedback.

As she started making up stories about all of the things that must have been wrong with her, her love for performing began to dwindle. She began to dread her auditions and became depressed and despondent. One day on a stage in Las Vegas singing to an indifferent crowd of several thousand people, she found herself unable to let go of the image that she’d developed a meaning-shaped hole in her soul.

Have you ever had one of those how-did-I-get-here-and-who-have-I-become realizations? Pursuing a passion-based career, perhaps regardless of the industry, generally results in some loss of agency. It means no longer doing the things we love entirely for the intrinsic satisfaction of doing them. Making a living from a passion requires external validation in order to pay the bills. The dependence on approval from others can lead to burnout or depression. How could we dedicate ourselves to doing what we love most and somehow manage to eradicate all of the joy, engagement, and meaning that inspired our endeavors in the first place?

Harmonious vs Obsessive Passion
Click to see larger image.

Harmonious versus Obsessive Passion

Maybe the answer is somewhere in that murky transition from harmonious to obsessive passion. Vallerand distinguishes the two by how we internalize the passion within our identity. Harmonious passion comes from autonomous, intrinsically motivated desire, while obsessive passion demands outside validation. It’s ego-driven and consumes everything in its path.

Spoiler alert—the “hypothetical friend” is actually me. Thankfully, through a series of unexpected opportunities gifted by a benevolent universe, I became a professor of acting at a performing arts college and discovered, quite unexpectedly, that I experience tremendous meaning and satisfaction in teaching.

Student volunteering

My college students were qualitatively different from the actors I had taught in Hollywood. I think that the primary difference is that these students self-selected for a college program that gave them opportunities to make a difference in the lives of at-risk youth through an arts education outreach program. With each incoming class, I have witnessed this experience prove to be life-changing for students. I began to remember my own experiences of using my talent in service that happened long before my career eclipsed all else.

I couldn’t help but wonder if service might be a key to meaning, well-being, and the maintenance of harmonious passion. It was clear that through this service learning opportunity, my students were using their love for performing as a tool for connection, compassion, inspiration, and real impact on the lives of others who desperately needed to know that they mattered. It turns out that mattering is important both ways.

Another student volunteering

Stepping Outside Ourselves

Unlike other altruistic behavior like donating blood or writing a check, volunteering is highly associated with:

  • Elevated happiness
  • Better physical and mental health
  • Improved access to social and psychological resources
  • Increased self-reported happiness while countering depression and anxiety

What’s more, by using their talents in service to others, my students’ service learning experiences provided the following benefits:

  • Buoyed self-efficacy, self-esteem, and confidence
  • A positive outlet for dealing with stress, feelings of alienation, or guilt
  • A strong sense of meaning and purpose

Another student volunteering

Person-Activity Fit for Volunteering

However, volunteering is not a one-size-fits-all proposition; the type of volunteering we do matters. Consistent with Lyubomirsky’s research on the importance of person-activity fit with positive interventions, robust research on volunteerism suggests that the helper’s benefits will vary based on the degree of fit between the volunteer’s needs, motivation, and type of service work performed. In other words, an actor might derive more meaning from volunteering to help children with incarcerated parents express themselves through performing their own show than organizing a book drive.

Here’s where it gets very interesting. Musick and Wilson argue that volunteer work is elevated in significance among populations whose other roles have been diminished, such as the elderly. What about those performing artists stuck in the audition loop who continue to offer their creations only to have them unceremoniously dismissed? If volunteering benefits populations whose roles have been diminished, what effect might it have on those who are at risk of abandoning their passion-based careers? It could give them an outlet to share their gifts, where the gifts may actually have a positive impact on others.

More volunteering

When a passion becomes a calling and that calling leads to a career, the forced reliance on another’s permission to practice it can be soul-crushing. Volunteering provides an eye-opening reality check and has been shown to reinforce volunteer gratitude for what they have in comparison to what the receivers of their gifts may lack. The resulting outward focus is a powerful reminder that other people matter. Of course, the primary purpose of volunteering is to uplift others in need. It is a welcome consequence that volunteering can greatly benefit the giver as well as the receivers.

Maybe the boost in positive affect, renewed passion for craft, and a revitalized sense of meaning from using our talents to benefit others could also help us maintain harmonious passion. By providing a pathway for passions to be practiced in service of other people, rather than only in service of our careers, volunteering could be a protective factor against burnout and depression.

 

 
References

Wimmer Totty, K. (2016). The Resilience Compass: How Mindset, Skills-Development, Self-Compassion, Service, and Community Empower Actors to Bounce Back, Reclaim Their Passion, and Live Their Purpose. MAPP capstone, University of Pennsylvania.

Borgonovi, F. (2008). Divided we stand, united we fall: religious pluralism, giving and volunteering. American Sociological Review, 73(1), 105-128. Abstract.

Borgonovi, F. (2008). Doing well by doing good: The relationship between formal volunteering and self-reported health and happiness. Social Science & Medicine, 66(11), 2321-2334.

Follman, J., & Muldoon, K. (1997). Florida learn and serve 1995–96. NAASP Bulletin, 81, 29–36.

Giles, D. E. Jr., & Eyler, J. (1994). The impact of college community service laboratory on students’ personal, social, and cognitive outcomes. Journal of Adolescence, 17, 327-339.

Giles, D. E., Jr., & Eyler, J. (1998). A service learning research agenda for the next five years. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 73, 65–72. DOI: 10.1002/tl.7308

Hodgins, H. S., & Knee, R. (2002). The integrating self and conscious experience. In Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 87-100). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Books.

Lyubomirsky, S., & Della Porta, M. D. (2010). Boosting happiness, buttressing resilience. In J. W. Reich, A. Zautra, & J. S. Hall, Handbook of Adult Resilience, (pp. 450-464).
 The Guildford Press.

Lyubomirsky, S., & Layous, K. (2013). How do simple positive activities increase well-being? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 57-62.


Musick, M. A., & Wilson, J. (2003). Volunteering and depression: the role of psychological and social resources in different age groups. Social Science & Medicine, 56, 259-269. Abstract.

Peterson, C. (2012). Other people matter: From birth to death. Psychology Today Online.

Piliavin, J. A. (2003). Doing well by doing good: Benefits for the benefactor. In C. L. M. Keyes & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived, (pp. 227-247). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Snyder, M., Clary, E. G., & Stukas, A. A. (2000). The functional approach to volunteerism. In G. R. Maio & J. M. Olson (Eds.), Why We Evaluate: Functions of Attitudes (pp. 365–393). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Thoits, P. A., & Hewitt, L. N. (2001). Volunteer work and well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 42(2), 115-131.

Vallerand, R. J., Paquet, Y., Philippe, F. L., & Charest, J. (2010). On the role of passion for work in burnout: A process model. Journal of Personality, 78(1), 289-312.

Wheeler, J. A., Gorey, K. M., & Greenblatt, B. (1998). The beneficial effects of volunteering for older volunteers and the people they serve: a meta-analysis. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 47, 69-79.

Whiteley, P. (2004). The art of happiness: Is volunteering the blue-print for bliss? Press release: London: Economic and Social Research Council.

Williams, R. (1991). The impact of field education on student development: Research findings. Journal of Cooperative Education, 27, 29–45.

Yates, M., & Youniss, J. (1996). A developmental perspective on community service in adolescence. Social Development, 5, 85–111.

Photo Credit: Most of the images are used courtesy of the The Young Americans®.

From Flickr via Compfight with Creative Commons license
Audition Judge courtesy of ORTB

May 30, 2018 1 comment
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Announcement: Webinar with Alex Goldfayn, author of <em>Selling Boldly</em>
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Announcement: Webinar with Alex Goldfayn, author of Selling Boldly

written by Senia Maymin

ANNOUNCEMENT:  On May 24, we will have a Positive Psychology News webinar featuring Alex Goldfayn, author of Selling Boldly: Applying the New Science of Positive Psychology to Dramatically Increase Your Confidence, Happiness, and Sales.

Alex Goldfayn, author of Selling Boldly

Alex Goldfayn is the CEO of Evangelist Marketing Institute, LLC, a revenue growth consultancy for clients who want to grow quickly. Alex’s average client grows by 15-20% in their first year of working with him.

He is among the top-rated and most requested sales speakers in the world, motivating sales teams, managers, executives and owners to take simple action which will grow their business. Alex delivers more than 50 keynotes speeches and workshops on sales growth per year.

Alex’s latest book is called Selling Boldly: Applying the New Science of Positive Psychology to Dramatically Increase Your Confidence, Happiness, and Sales.

He also wrote The Revenue Growth Habit: The Simple Art of Growing Your Business by 15% in 15 Minutes Per Day.

 It was selected as the sales book of the year by 800-CEO-Read and Forbes called it one of the top 15 business books of 2015.

Alex lives in the Chicago area with his wife and eight-year-old twins, and it’s immediately obvious to everyone that Alex’s wife, Lisa, who raises the kids and feeds Alex, works much harder than he does!

 

WHEN: May 24 at 2PM ET
WHERE: Zoom webinar
CONTENT: Alex Goldfayn discusses his book, Selling Boldy

 

What questions do you have for Alex?  Leave them for us in comments below so we can ask them on the webinar!

For questions, please email admin@positivepsychologynews.com.

Q: How much does this webinar cost?
A: It is completely free!

Q: What will the format be?
A: One hour:

  • 40 minutes of PPN Q-and-A with Alex on Selling Boldly
  • 20 minutes of your Q-and-A for Alex

This will be a highly interactive webinar. Be at your keyboard and ready to type in questions and comments and answers to Alex’s questions!

 

When:  24 May 2018 @ 2:00pm ET
Where: Online – view the webinar anywhere!
Price for the webinar – FREE

Register

Click here for more information.

You can view our previous webinars on the PPND-TV YouTube channel

May 17, 2018 0 comment
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