Positive psychology has turned traditional leadership metrics upside down. This new science of success examines strengths rather than weakness, celebrates failure as the path to mastery and encourages a culture of learning rather than competition. We dive into three tried and tested, evidence based kick ass positive psychology practices that will positively impact upon your leadership.
Finding Your Flow: Using Positive Psychology for long term impact
Flow, the model of performance introduced to Positive Psychology by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is big news both in the workplace and outside of it. But what is it? Think of a time when you’ve been completely immersed in a task, when distractions were minimized and you lost sense of time and space. Got it? Well that’s flow. If you can answer ‘Yes’ to the following questions whilst undertaking a task, you’ve probably found yourself in flow;
- You’re doing it because you’re motivated
- You’re completely focused on the task
- You lose sense of time, hours feel like minutes
- You’re not worrying
- You have a sense of control
- You forget yourself
- You feel inspired
- You don’t really notice your surroundings
- You’re enjoying it and feel good as you get on with the task, you’re on a roll!
- You feel as though you’re achieving something
Csikszentmihalyi narrows it down to two characteristics that must be present for flow to occur:
- We should know what to do moment by moment whilst participating in the activity or task and utilise feedback instantly
- The abilities of the person undertaking the task match the opportunities for action
Put more simply, he describes it as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from your previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost”
Or, as Lyubmirsky describes it, “being involved in life” rather than being on autopilot.
Surprisingly, adults often report experiencing more flow in the workplace than in their personal life outside of work. This might have something to do with the parameters and guidelines around work, which you’ll see below, are a necessary part of creating more flow in life. But rest easy, flow is an essential element of happiness whether you’re at work or not and can be applied to friendships, relationships, projects, hobbies and sports.
Why does it matter?
Research suggests that people who feel flow experience greater levels of wellbeing. This doesn’t mean that each time you participate in a task you’ll feel euphoric and instant happiness (if only). Instead, studies suggest that after the task has been completed, people feel a sense of accomplishment, a greater subjective sense of wellbeing along with purpose and meaning. All ingredients of happiness and flourishing according to Martin Seligman, the ‘father’ of Positive Psychology. Csikszentmihalyi says it’s one of the secrets to finding happiness in life. In our book that makes creating flow worth a go.
To introduce more flow experiences into your day to day activities, Csikszentmihalyi recommends the following in his book, ‘Finding Flow”.
- Seek out situations where you’re fully involved in the challenge. It’s not too easy for you and there is some ‘stretch’ involved in the task for you, you’re pushing yourself outside of a comfortable level of performance.
- The activity has a set of goals and requires certain actions. The rules help you get into flow because you’re not wondering how to do something. It’s clear.
- Learn to focus your attention. Train yourself to focus on moment to moment awareness so you’re able to concentrate fully. Try practicing mindfulness to hone this skill.
- Apply flow to routine tasks. Lyubmirsky suggests ‘microflow’ experiences created by applying goals and rules to everyday tasks. See how you can apply these to something you do every day, for example, creating a personal best time for completing your administrative tasks or seeing if you can bring your full attention to a conversation.
- Aim for superflow. This is when you’re in maximum flow with the volume turned up. You’ll get there with practice, from small microflow projects, to practicing your moment-to-moment awareness on a regular basis. That’s you rewiring your brain and honing your skills until you’re able to move into superflow with ease.
With a little bit of practice and effort, flow is something that, when cultivated will pay dividends in your wellbeing and happiness. Want to find out more about flow? Here’s the man himself at TedX Monterey, California https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en
We love to talk about all things positive psychology at Positive Change Guru. Check out our forthcoming events or get in touch to find out more about our suite of courses and discuss bespoke positive psychology training for your organisation.
5 Positive Psychology Coaching Skills Every Leader Needs to Develop
The business world has long since recognised the value of using coaches for their top performers. But coaching skills don’t have to remain the exclusive domain of a professional coach. What if you were to grow those exact same skills in house? As an internal coach you are uniquely placed to develop powerful relationships along with lasting individual and organizational change. Leaders are increasingly developing their own coaching style of leadership, viewing coaching skills as a core leadership competency. So what are coaching skills and how exactly can you develop them?
Identify Strengths
Traditionally the model of development pivots on shoring up our weaknesses. Good leaders recognize that this is an outmoded (and incorrect) deficit model. Instead, by taking a strengths based approach, looking at what’s working, rather than what isn’t leaders are able to increase efficacy. Enter positive psychology. Research (Linley 2009) demonstrated that by identifying and leveraging strengths we see a bump in performance of around 38%. Once you’ve identified the strengths of your team you can begin to develop them, aligning them with your business goals and challenges. Not sure what a strength is? Go to the world’s most used, free strengths assessment, the VIA at www.authentichappiness.org and take your team with you.
Curiosity
When you’re coaching others it’s important to be curious about them, the environment they operate in and the world around them. Curiosity will help you to stay open to new ideas and innovations, keeping you a step ahead of the game. Being curious will prevent you from believing that you have all of the answers, leaving you open to fresh ideas and suggestions from your team. Growth mindset coaching questions to develop your curiosity and your team are;
“What do YOU think some options are?” “What would YOU do?” “What are the pros and cons of each option?” “How would you advise a colleague?” “What is the learning information here?” “What can you do differently next time?” Ask questions that will help your team, to identify their motivations, to see other alternatives and achieve their goals.
Feedback and Accountability in Positive Psychology Coaching
It’s that checking in with staff on their progress that makes such a powerful difference to achieving success. Research by Christine Porath and Gretchen Spreitzer found that the four factors necessary to sustain a high performing team were; feedback, autonomy, civility and information sharing. It’s a growth mindset blueprint for success. Feedback enables your team to know if they’re headed in the right direction. Make it clear, timely, specific, non-judgemental and positive. Once accountability has been established, staff have a whopping 95% chance of achieving their objective. Think about the systems and processes that you have in place to enable staff to build this sort of accountability into their role. Consider how you support, encourage and motivate staff to be accountable for the goals that they have committed to.
Listening
Yup, it sounds obvious but often it descends into either combative listening; waiting for the other person to shut up so that you can interject with your own point of view and tell them how they ‘should’ be doing it or passive listening; peppered with a string of “Umms” “Uhuhs” or nods as you slowly zone out. A coaching skill that is often overlooked.
With genuine listening you’re aiming for active and reflective. Make sure you focus as you listen and regularly reflect back to check your understanding of what has been said. There really is nothing quite like the attention of a good listener and this skill will help you to build rapport to boot. Leave your own agenda behind (remember your curiosity?) keep interruptions to a minimum and watch the dialogue flow.
Positive Psychology Coaching and Communication
Karen Tweedie of Access Leadership says “Better conversations mean better relationships, which lead to better output.” Below are a few tips to help the coaching leader support direct reports or other key stakeholders:
- See yourself as a thought partner, listen for potential (of people and ideas)
- Keep your questions open-ended (be willing to be surprised)
- Encourage self-discovery (encourage colleagues to find their own answers to their own challenges)
- Put your attention on the person in front of you, not the issue
- Expect that the person is capable of discerning the best approach
- Empower the other person to succeed – remove obstacles, provide resources
- Maintain accountability, celebrate effort and results
Once you’ve mastered these coaching skills you’ll have a vital addition to your leadership competencies, increasing your impact, developing your people, improving your relationships and your results.
Why coach using positive psychology? Rarely are jobs designed to match the talents, preferences, and aspirations of the individual. Dr. Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, discusses the art and science of job crafting.
We love to talk about all things positive psychology at Positive Change Guru. Check out our forthcoming events or get in touch to find out more about our suite of courses and discuss bespoke positive psychology training for your organisation.
Positive Psychologist Amy Wrzesniew on Job crafting & creating meaning in your own work