You may think of psychologists as only dealing in negative human experiences – they are the professionals who apply their expertise to support mental illness, anxiety, stress, and trauma.
When you are suffering, they put you on a calming couch and try to work out where it all went wrong. However, in the last few decades, modern psychology has made a fundamental shift away from this traditional focus. Instead, psychologists have started to investigate the positive wellbeing of the population, looking at human strengths and values, and applying scientific approaches to achieve peak performance in a range of different contexts.
The new field of positive psychology has gained not only scientific recognition but also shown a real impact on the performance of individuals and organisations.
Gaining an advantage over competitors
Much in the same way that athletes are working with sports psychologists to achieve peak performance, businesses are now turning to psychology to gain an advantage over their competitors and maximise the potential of their employees. Leaders are learning how to use psychology to grow their businesses and for their employees to perform at their best.
Additionally, we see leaders wanting to understand the science behind positive psychology, enabling them to speak with authority about happiness, which is so important in the UAE as it seeks to become the happiest nation in the world.
Now, not all businesses will be down on their fortunes. Some may be doing OK. However, who wouldn’t want to learn how to go from good to great? Positive psychology is the scientific study of how people thrive, succeed, and perform at their best, and it continues to deliver evidence-based interventions that enable employees and businesses to flourish.
Improving your business
As the global economy emerges from the downturn, businesses are looking to grow but may not have the financial resources to do this. Employing skills and activities from the field of positive psychology allows businesses to maximize their existing resources and see their employees thrive. Often these activities are simple, yet highly effective.
Positive psychology approaches have been shown to grow businesses in the areas of increased employee engagement, greater employee productivity, reduced turnover of employees, better suitability of employees recruited, and higher job satisfaction.
If you were able to achieve just one of the above, what would be the positive impact on the growth of your business?
Benefits to your employees
A large portion of our adult lives is spent working. If your employees don’t enjoy working with you, it can have a negative impact on their wellbeing and personal relationships and also have a detrimental effect on your business.
Disengaged, unhappy, and unmotivated employees not only provide lacklustre work, but they can spread this attitude to their co-workers. We’ve observed how this can lead to a downward spiral in productivity and commitment from employees, with the end result being a negative impact on your business.
Whether from a ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approach, positive psychology can help employees learn about their strengths and how they can apply them effectively, increase their happiness and wellbeing levels, develop ways to reduce stress and anxiety, improve health, set and accomplish goals and objectives, and cope in a frequently changing environment and heavy workloads.
How positive psychology is beneficial
When employees are able to apply their strengths more often, it signifies they are working on things that they are good at and which come naturally to them. This, in turn, leads to employees enjoying tasks more and being more engaged in them, which has the knock-on effects of increasing productivity and job satisfaction.
Research suggests that it is more common for happier people to become successful rather than the other way round. How would happier and more successful employees then impact the growth of your business?
During a stressful business period, where employees and businesses have to cope with increasing workloads, it is vital that businesses give employees the tools to improve their resilience. For example, workloads may increase, and despite this, the number of resources, typically employees, to carry out this work remains the same.
By boosting resilience, it helps employees to bounce back from adversity, cope better with stress and anxiety, and also maintains their health and wellbeing.
Now is the time for positive psychology in the workplace
Taking a leaf from the world of sport, embracing the positive impact that positive psychology has in the workplace may be the best method to grow your business, get the best performance out of your employees, and gain that competitive edge over your rivals.
The writers are speakers at the IPCD hosted by Heriot Watt University Department of Psychology.
