_3 Positive Organizations

Are your employees eager to work for you each and every day? Few leaders can answer this question with a confident yes. Here’s a tip to help you be one of them. This technique enables you to adjust your practices so they support the leader you want to be and helps you reinforce the behaviors you want to see. Equally important, it keeps you accountable for the behaviors you are encouraging in others.

In both his opening and closing addresses at the 1st World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association (WCPP), Dr. Martin Seligman challenged the community to meet an ambitious goal:…

While walking to join a few friends yesterday evening at dusk, I passed through a lush green park in the center of Philadelphia. I was lost in my own head, contemplating the many interesting topics presented at the First World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). As I stepped softly through the grass in the approaching darkness of the evening sky, a light suddenly caught my eye. Waist-level beside me, hovering in the summer air, was a firefly.

When did we start calling kids “self-motivated” if they responded to someone or something outside themselves? Doesn’t the word “self” mean that it comes from the individual himself? Is someone truly self-motivated if they are doing something to get a reward from someone else? Teens who are not top students may appear to be unmotivated when we look only at their school performance.

I have had the good fortune of being born into a large, Italian family, for which I am utterly and completely grateful…. Communitas is a ritual-building process that inspires and revitalizes while reaffirming relationships within a community, state University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. According to Anthropologist Victor Turner, building communitas is an essential step to activating a community to healthy family functioning, healthy child development, and other dimensions of well-being.

There has been a widespread discussion on whether or not positive psychology is effective from a business perspective. There are strong links between positive psychology and organizational performance, many captured in work in the field of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB). Here I summarize a longer, recently published paper.

Why is it that we are so fearful to talk about love at the office? Let’s explore love at the office as a good thing for a minute, and before you lift your brow, no, I’m not talking about having a love affair at the office. I am rather suggesting that those who experience care and companionship in their work environment have a sustainable, competitive advantage over those who don’t.

This is the third article about the conference at Claremont Graduate University on January 24, 2009 around the two questions, What works in positive social sciences? How can we influence social change for the betterment of society? This article summarizes the afternoon sessions on organizational life and business and concludes the series with the end-of-day panel where afternoon presenters were asked to give their parting shots.

When we change ourselves, it is important that we invite those in our spheres of influence into the new possibility we have created for ourselves. This invitation comes with energetic and joyful dialogue with others about our visions, hopes, needs, values, and desires.

Think about the leaders you’ve followed in the past. Which one has had the most positive influence in your life? What three words best describe what this person contributes to your life? In a recent study bringing more clarity on this complex topic, Gallup interviewed over 10,000 people and asked them the two questions you’ve just answered.

At the end of 2008, Daniel Goleman published another paper with Richard Boyatzis about Social Intelligence (SI) and Leadership. They define social intelligence as ‘a set of interpersonal competencies built on specific neural circuits (and related endocrine systems) that inspire others to be effective.’ SI may rock the fields leadership and management, just as Emotional Intelligence did 10 years ago.

Let’s make this December a creative challenge: an opportunity to invent new rituals for being with family and friends.   In the throes of this recession, many of us are…

On the night of the presidential election, I lounged and chatted on a cozy couch with friends in a Philadelphia apartment…. … Within moments… there were hundreds of people joyfully and peacefully making their way down the middle of the road. Just watching them, hugging as they went, and listening to the buzz of energy audible through the closed window sent chills down my spine. There was a profound sense of human connection.

American public schools have been under increasing pressure since the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. That pressure has ratcheted up continuously over the last quarter century. This post is about the most effective leadership for school systems under pressure from No Child Left Behind from a positive psychology perspective.

What better time than now, when the struggling economy – and the stress that often accompanies it – is not only taking a toll on our financial wealth, but also on our psychological and physical health, for the Positive Psychology Forum to take place: One-day conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC on Wednesday, November 19th – focusing on Health and Positive Psychology. (DISCOUNT inside the article.)

It keeps beeping, interrupting even the most focused thoughts and conversations: the call waiting signal.  Do you answer? Hope the sound will go away? Hope that voicemail will pick it…

What would it mean for your business if you could improve productivity by 30%?

Now imagine you could achieve these productivity gains without ever having to spend a dime. Also imagine that this productivity improvement is so simple that virtually every manager could implement it starting today – no costly training or certification programs required. Would you try it? Of course you would – you’d be crazy not to.

I have been privileged this week to speak to the Affordable Housing Conference of the Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State. They invited me to lead a workshop on managing energy, helping people avoid burnout for themselves and for their staffs.