Supercharging organisations through positivity
The well-being of the workforce is always under the microscope.
What can make employees thrive whilst achieving the overall goals and aims of a company?
What can keep them motivated and consistent?
What can keep an organisation functional, rather than dysfunctional?
Being more positive could be the answer.
In the early 2000s, a new science — Positive Psychology — was developed by Martin E.P. Seligman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and Christopher Peterson who investigated the key drivers that make people flourish and perform better.
While Positive Psychology covers many disciplines and areas, many scholars and practitioners have focused on maximising the benefits of five factors they consider essential to happiness and well-being: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment (often known as PERMA).
Michele Buonaiuto, Transformation Leader and a senior consultant in Positive Leadership and Agile, gave us the lowdown on how this can work practically for organisations.
By recognising the significance of psychological well-being and implementing practices that support positivity, organisations can unlock their full potential and witness remarkable improvements in performance, satisfaction, and overall success. Embracing positive principles is not only beneficial for individuals but also leads to substantial positive outcomes for teams and organisations as a whole.
Before diving into the mechanics of Positive Psychology and its principles, it is important to understand where your team stands today.
What phase is your team operating in?
A lot of departments and organisations are usually operating in four phases: Chaos, Structure, Agility and Positive Agility.
Usually, when agile consultants like Michele are brought in, the teams are operating in the Chaos stage – one where teams are operating under high stress, low productivity and producing low quality.
However, even those that operate with more Structure, are under high stress despite reasonable levels of productivity and quality.
Quite often, organisations want to move teams to a place of Agility, where there is increased productivity and quality, but that comes with its challenges of increased pressure and doesn’t necessarily mean that teams are thriving.
In order for teams and individuals to thrive, they need to be in a place of Positive Agility, where there is:
Psychological Satisfaction
Supercharged Productivity
Supercharged Quality
Having a more positive team and applying elements of Positive Psychology to a team leads to much better performance within the organisation and within the team itself, resulting in a positive impact on bottom-line results as well.
Positive Leadership
Could having more positive leadership be the answer?
Juan Humberto Young, Dave Cooperrider and others have developed the foundations of Positive Leadership, which applies Positive Psychology principles to organisations, enabling them to shape outstanding teams and address strategic challenges more effectively.
This means that managers lead using a style based on the premise that the psychological well-being of people, and the financial well-being of business organisations are interrelated.
Traditional leadership approaches focus on enhancing technical skills and performance but often neglect the emotional well-being of team members. Positive leadership, on the other hand, emphasises building strong relationships, understanding individual motivations, and creating a supportive atmosphere.
This means that the approach to Positive Psychology needs to come top down.
Positive Agility in Action
Michele Buonaiuto specialises in applying Positive Leadership methods for the development of extraordinary organisations.
In 2013, he started working with a Mexican Insurance company where there was a team of 60 people that needed support with transformation. The sales department was generating 600 million Pesos at the time.
By applying agile tools and principles, improving processes and helping them with strategy, they were able to see a 50% improvement in sales in the first year. But this wasn’t a case of Agile alone, it was Positive Agility.
With a focus on Strengths and Rituals, Michele was able to apply the following principles to see transformation and success.
Strategy: the ability to define and improve through problem-solving
Discipline: the ability to implement and follow up
Efficiency: the ability to streamline processes
By using these principles, by 2015, the sales department was on track to make 1,300 million Pesos.
What’s more, the teams were strongly connected. They were working together to motivate each other and were working in an environment that was actively helping them thrive and flourish.
The application of positive leadership was helping these teams form better relationships and really understand each other and ultimately leading to the overall success of organisational results.
What are the keys to enabling people and businesses to flourish?
There are several factors that contribute to individuals flourishing, which include genetics, environment, and individual habits. While genetics and environment play a significant role, research has shown that approximately 40% of flourishing individuals’ success is attributed to personal habits and daily practices.
By consciously adopting positive habits, individuals can boost their positivity, resilience, and problem-solving skills, ultimately leading to improved overall well-being.
Here are some things to consider when implementing Positive Principles in an organisation.
Why do people want to work in the first place and how can you provide conditions that fulfil that need?
How can you make the conditions of the workplace as attractive as possible?
How can you ensure that a Job has meaning and adds value?
How can you reward individuals who find satisfaction in their work?
The answers to these questions can help create a positive culture and environment, one where the leadership truly understands the context behind how teams and individuals are performing and why.
Adopting Positive Leadership Can Supercharge Organisations
Embracing positive principles is not only beneficial for individuals but also leads to substantial positive outcomes for teams and organisations as a whole.
Here are some considerations that leaders and organisations can apply, using a 3-pillar framework to enable people and businesses to flourish.
Rituals and Strengths
Identification and nurturing of positive character strengths strongly support well-being.
Character strengths are innate qualities that come most naturally to the person.
A positive character profile is constructed through the identification of a person's strengths, allowing a deeper understanding of behaviour and preferences.
Establishing the right environment and rituals to enable flourishing:
By encouraging positivity and not forcing it
Maintaining integrity and equality of rules and processes
Engagement
Engagement is people's level of intrinsic satisfaction and commitment to company goals and values.
It is the inner motivation related to the social relationships within the organisation and the opportunities for self-expression.
It is possible to measure it via the key elements that affect human motivation as identified in SDT.
SDT identifies innate human universal necessities that when appropriately cultivated enable well-being and growth.
Satisfaction
Identifying how satisfied are the people under current circumstances.
Measured through perception elements specifically related to outward factors like rewards and recognition processes, happiness and stress.
It is important that organisations and leaders take note of the transformative power of positive psychology, positive leadership, and the integration of these principles with Agile and Lean methodologies. By recognising the significance of psychological well-being and implementing practices that support positivity and psychological satisfaction, organisations can unlock the full potential of their workforce and witness remarkable improvements in performance, satisfaction and overall success.