Category: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Have you ever been given advice by someone who sounded confident, but turned out to be wrong? I certainly have. For example, I once asked my team whether it was possible to automatically add up the cells in Microsoft Word. “Definitely not,” they said. For the next twelve months, we wasted valuable time manually adding up long strings of data. Finally, I paused to reflect. After all, computers are designed to manipulate data. Surely, a simple addition in Word would be possible? Of course, a short Google search established that this was, indeed, the case.

Fortunately for me, seemingly trivial incidents like this have taught me to question even the most confidently delivered advice. I now make it a habit to ask, “How do you know that?” whenever I am seeking advice. What I’ve learned from this is there are three main situations where questioning a confidently delivered opinion can pay off.

• When mitigating risks
• If you’re encountering resistance to change or new ideas
• When seeking expert opinions or advice on an issue you have little knowledge of

In these situations, it pays to check the underlying assumptions behind a confident speaker’s opinions. I like to use NLP meta modelling techniques when doing this. Essentially, these techniques help you spot the ‘presuppositions’ (or assumptions) a statement is based on. You can then zero in on those presuppositions and check their implications for the decision you are making. Useful questions include:

• What is that advice based on?
• Can you talk me through the assumptions this advice is drawing on?
• When you say ….is obvious, what makes it obvious to you?
• Based on your experience, what are the key things I need to remember when putting this advice into action?
• What is your training and experience in this area?
• What assumptions are you making about my situation when you offer this opinion?

If you’d like to find out more how to use positive psychology in your training and development activities, download Eleanor Shakiba’s Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a specialist in positive psychology. Her passion is teaching talented people to use social and emotional intelligence to excel in business. These skills centre around building positive mindsets, proactive communication habits and purposeful leadership behaviours. Eleanor’s qualifications include degrees and diplomas in Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She is also the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. This is a free resource for trainers and facilitators.

If you want to unlock your creative talent, it is time to strengthen your curiosity muscle. Curiosity and creativity work together like stretching and aerobic activity. They complement each other and lead to better ‘mental fitness’. This is why positive psychology trainers and researchers are so interested in the concept of the ‘curiosity mindset’. This is a way of engaging with the world that leads to improved resilience and is also linked to high performance in academic, social and work contexts.

So, what is curiosity and why should leaders and HR practitioners be interested in fostering it? According to Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman it is one of five strengths which promote wisdom. They define curiosity as “taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering”. In the workplace, the benefits of promoting curiosity are clear. You probably know this from practical experience. But what does the research tell us about curiosity and thriving at work?

It turns out that curious people suffer less stress, respond to problems more creatively and bounce back quickly after experiencing setbacks. In other words, curious people have higher levels of mental stamina and resilience. They also have high levels of engagement and connection – and this supports the development of positive workplace culture.

Overall, there is a strong link between curiosity and learning ability, because curious people naturally acquire useful information, habits and skills. Benefits of encouraging your people to be curious include:

• Higher motivation and engagement
• Better problem-solving
• Increased innovation
• Development of positive workplace culture
• More ‘positive deviance’ across the organisation

How do you tap into these benefits in your business? You can use positive psychology training tools to teach employees to flex into the curiosity zone. Building curiosity involves developing two personal characteristics. Exploration is the tendency to seek out new or challenging situations. Absorption is the ability to become fully immersed in an experience.

How can leaders and trainers encourage people to strengthen these characteristics? By micro skilling them in three key cognitive skills.

Attention direction

Put simply, this means learning to focus. Positive psychology trainers often advocate the use of mindfulness techniques. These are, essentially, techniques which help people focus and direct their attention to what is happening in the here and now. It turns out that people who are skilled in the art of exploration are also skilled in the art of attention direction. So, teach mindfulness and reframing skills.

Activation of flow states

Flow is a state of total immersion in an activity. Think back to the way you became immersed in games when you were a child: you were experiencing flow. Adults enter this state when they do things they love and when they draw on their strengths to solve a problem. Teaching your people flow theory is a great way to help foster this state – which links directly to curiosity-boosting ‘absorption’.

Tolerance of ambiguity

Many people feel uncomfortable with ambiguity. For example, leaders who seek closure dislike the ambiguity of not having immediate solutions to problems. Curious people, on the other hand, thrive on ambiguity. It triggers their interest and shifts them into a state of exploration and creativity. Teach your people this. Encourage them to attend resilience training, positive thinking workshops or creativity sessions. All of these will foster increased tolerance of ambiguity.

Overall, then, there is a lot you can do to foster curiosity thinking in your business. Focus on building focus, flow and tolerance of ambiguity. Then watch your people thrive!

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor is a positive psychology trainer and coach. She works with ‘positive deviants’ to build positive mindsets, proactive communication and purposeful leadership. Since 1994, Eleanor has been teaching talented people how to think, communicate and behave in ways that build success. She holds qualifications in Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. She’s known for her dynamic training style and passion for experiential learning techniques. Download a copy of Eleanor’s free ebook Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners.

If you’re struggling to ‘build’ or restructure your organisational culture, you’re probably grappling with a little-known paradox. You can’t shape culture from within that culture, because the culture is shaping you. As a positive psychology trainer with a background in anthropology, I see the task of redefining cultural norms is exactly the same as trying to see a blind spot.

Only people with a real blind spot (and I am one of them) know that you never can see a blind spot. So, the commonly used metaphor of exposing a blind spot in order to gain insight just doesn’t work. If you have a blind spot, although you know it is there, your perception is still always influenced by the ‘whole’ in your visual field. Thus, despite knowing you have areas of blindness, you will still inevitably collide with objects that fall into the blind spot. To prevent this happening, you therefore need to adapt the way you look at the world.

Exactly the same principle applies to ‘seeing’ problematic aspects of organisational culture. A trainer or facilitator situated within a business cannot fully understand the culture of that business, simply because they are part of it. This doesn’t mean internal efforts to build culture are doomed. However, it does mean it’s wise to broaden your perspective and get input from outside the system in order to accelerate your culture change efforts.

As a positive psychology trainer with a bent for the anthropological, here are three ways I suggest you do this.

• Pay attention to the gap between what people say and what they actually do. Culture change experts call this the gap between espoused theory and theory in use.
• Seek input from people outside your system. This can include customers, industry experts and culture change consultants.
• Focus your efforts on strengthening what’s working, rather than trying to eliminate what isn’t working. Being strengths focused shifts your attention to activities which will improve engagement far more than punishing people for so-called negative behavioural norms.

During the chaos of pandemic change that characterised 2020, did you notice how organisations with positive cultures thrived? This isn’t a coincidence. This is why all leaders and organisational development experts should take culture seriously. Make reflecting on and shaping culture an ongoing process, though. In this way, you will develop the reflective practices that we advocate in every session we develop in our Learn with Eleanor Shakiba online programs.

If you’re interested in using positive psychology training tools to develop thriving organisational cultures, download my free e-book, Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor consults in the area of culture-building and behaviour change training. Her customers are people who want to embed positive psychology in teams and organisations. Since 1994, she has been teaching talented professionals how to think, communicate and lead in ways that build success. Eleanor holds qualifications in Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. Eleanor is the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.

Imagine a business where everyone is committed, engaged and inspired to do their best. A workplace where people are resilient, positive and creative. You can build that business by working on your organisational culture. The science of positive psychology provides concrete steps leaders can take to shape workplace culture and build flourishing teams.

Anthropologists define culture as ‘a way of life’. Culture impacts how people think, speak and behave. But what about ‘organisational culture’? It is probably a term you throw around regularly. Do you actually know what it means? The idea that the culture of an organisation influences the actions of workers was introduced in 1951, by Dr Elliott Jaques. He studied the development and impact of corporate group behaviours. His conclusion was that the overall culture of an organisation guides the actions of everyone working there.

A social psychologist named Edgar Schein made the term ‘organisational culture’ popular. He defined culture as the “beliefs, values and interactions followed by a group”. He also pointed out subcultures emerge in large organisations. For example, a business division or regional group may operate differently to other parts of the organisation. This point is particularly relevant if you work in a multi-national organisation.

In 2011, Flamholtz and Randle claimed that organisational culture is equal to the ‘corporate personality’. They defined organisational cultures as being an outcome of the beliefs, values and norms people adhere to. However, it is important to recognise that most people are not consciously aware of their beliefs, values and norms. As positive psychology trainers know all too well, gaps often exist between what people say and what they do. For example, a leader might claim to value employee input. At meanings, though, everyone might be afraid to speak up because the leader does not tolerate new ideas.

Over the years, positive psychology trainers have developed a variety of techniques and practices for driving a cultural change within an organisation. Before an organisation can change its culture, you need to have clearly defined values and behaviours for others to follow. People cannot fit into a culture if they don’t know that it exists. Translate the values that you want to achieve into actionable behaviours. For example, if you want to promote inclusiveness, provide real-world solutions for achieving this goal.

Leaders need to take a detailed look at current policies and practices to determine what works and what needs to change. Keep the elements of your organisational culture that work well and promote your goals.

Focus more on the strengths of your organisational culture. In positive psychology, identifying and enabling a positive trait is believed to foster greater resilience. By focusing on what works, you naturally begin shifting the culture of your organisation.

After devising a plan and setting a new agenda, it is up to the leaders to set an example. Supervisors and managers need to adopt the changes if you want the rest of the workforce to follow them. Measuring your efforts is also essential. You cannot evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies without monitoring the impact. Use concrete metrics to measure employee engagement, morale and productivity to determine whether your culture is shifting toward the positive.

You know as soon as you walk into an organisation with a vibrant culture. There is a buzz of positive conversation and energy levels are high. You notice people solving problems together and finding constructive solutions to challenging situations. If your business doesn’t have this type of culture yet, it’s time to start learning more about positive leadership and culture change. By actively setting the values and beliefs for an organisation, you can get others to follow the same vision. Contact Eleanor Shakiba for more advice on how to build a positive organisational culture, using positive psychology training techniques.

About the author: Eleanor Shakiba

Eleanor consults in the areas of culture-building and behaviour change training. Her customers are people who want to embed positive psychology in teams and organisations. Since 1994, she has been teaching talented professionals how to think, communicate and lead in ways that build success. Eleanor holds qualifications in Social Anthropology, Positive Psychology, Counselling, Coaching, Adult Education and Neuro Linguistic Programming. Eleanor is the author of the Positive Psychology Toolkit for HR and L&D Practitioners. Download your free copy here.