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Making Positive Psychology Work

If you believe as we do that by uncovering tested, practical ways to help people move from functioning to flourishing at work, we can better navigate the incredible challenges and opportunities our world faces, then this podcast is for you. Our goal each week is to give you access to the world’ leading positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship and neuroscience researchers and practitioners to explore their latest research findings on how you can improve wellbeing, develop strengths, nurture positive relationships, make work meaningful and cultivate the grit to accomplish what matters most. If you want evidence-based approaches to bringing out the best in yourself and others at work, then consider this podcast your step-by-step guide.
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Now displaying: April, 2017
Apr 28, 2017

Sue Ashford is a professor in management and organization at the University of Michigan.  Her research interests include leader effectiveness and development, issue selling, self-management and feedback processes in organizations.  

Are you keen to step up to a leadership role but worried you aren’t quite ready?  Sue suggests that everyone has leadership potential, and you learn leadership mostly from experience.  But if you’re racing through your experiences mindlessly, you could be missing out on a lot of learning.  By mindfully engaging in your experiences, and being open to growing, developing your skills and getting feedback you can be more effective at learning leadership skills.

Connect with Sue Ashford:

Sue’s Website

You’ll Learn:

  • [01:42] – Sue will be presenting at the upcoming Positive Business Conference on ‘Control Your Own Destiny: Leadership Development through Mindful Engagement.’
  • [03:41] – Sue discusses the leadership is part skill, part mindset, and in part risk.
  • [05:32] – Sue defines ‘mindful engagement’ as a set of practices that allow you to learn more from the experiences you’re in.
  • [07:53] – Sue explains that it’s not possible to be mindful every moment of every day, but she says that you can be mindful in certain experiences.
  • [12:45] – Sue says that experimentation with different approaches allows you to find what works and doesn’t work.
  • [14:08] – Both anxiety and too much positivity can prevent learning. Emotion regulation can keep your emotions in a middle ground.
  • [15:48] –Referring to yourself in the third person has been found to help regulate emotions.
  • [17:14] – Sue talks about feedback-seeking and explains two strategies for gaining this information.
  • [20:20] – Sue explains why managers struggle with reflection.
  • [23:15] – The Lightning Round with Sue Ashford.

Your Resources:

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.  

Also, please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.

You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free!

Special thanks to Sue for joining me this week. Until next time, take care!

Apr 21, 2017

Edwin Locke is the Dean’s Professor of Motivation and Leadership Emeritus at the University of Maryland.  He has published over 300 chapters and articles in professional journals on topics such as motivation, job satisfaction, incentives and the philosophy of science.  He is internationally known for his research on goal-setting.

Goals are critical in helping us create change in our lives, and yet most people struggle to stick with the goals they set. In this conversation, you’ll hear Ed explain the importance of setting goals and what his 35 years of research has discovered about setting effective goals and why SMART goals may not be as smart as you thought they were.

Connect with Edwin Locke:

Website: http://edwinlocke.com

You’ll Learn:

  • [01:37] – Ed explains that life is a goal-directed process and if we remain passive in setting goals it’s unlikely we will thrive.
  • [04:44] – Ed shares why people struggle with goals.  
  • [06:14] – Ed explains why we should be setting difficult goals for ourselves.
  • [07:08] – Ed describes the difference between a performance goal and a learning goal.  
  • [09:18] – Ed explains why SMART goals are incomplete.  
  • [10:55] – Ed shares the power of goal hierarchies and how to avoid goal conflicts.
  • [12:16] – Ed reminds us that it’s important to set goals for your own life and not setting goals to “show off” or goals based on someone else’s life.
  • [13:45] – Ed explains why “emotional intelligence” is over-rated for leadership.
  • [15:00] – The Lightning Round with Ed Locke

Your Resources:

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.  

Also, please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.

You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free!

Special thanks to Ed for joining me this week. Until next time, take care!

Apr 14, 2017

Peggy Kern is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education in the Center for Positive Psychology. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles, and her research addresses the question, “Who flourishes, and why?”

Are we oversimplifying positive psychology?  While the field has made much progress over the last 15 years in helping people find ways to improve their wellbeing, however, at best interventions are only beneficial for some people, some of the time, and are far from a magic bullet for everyone in all situations.  Peggy suggests combining positive psychology’s focus on the individual with systems science to take into account the complex reality of our everyday contexts, could assist target interventions for individuals and the collective good.

Connect with Peggy Kern:

Website: http://peggykern.org

You’ll Learn:

  • [01:36] – Peggy has been working with a team of collaborators at Melbourne University that merges positive psychology with systems science to create positive systems science. She explains this merging of two interdisciplinary fields.
  • [04:49] – Peggy shares how systems science helps us figure out which positive psychology interventions will be helpful for specific outcomes at different times.
  • [11:10] – Peggy talks about how a systems map helps discover the relationships between things.
  • [13:12] – Systems are complex, dynamic and changing.
  • [15:13] – Peggy talks about how system science needs to be developed to help people flourish.
  • [17:23] – Peggy addresses how we can get organizations to see themselves as wellbeing systems.
  • [18:24] – To determine if a system is flourishing, measurement is necessary. Peggy talks about how the measurements work.
  • [21:08] – This is the early days of this type of thinking.  Peggy shares some resources for you to learn more, such as her blog.
  • [22:08] – The lightning round with Peggy Kern.

Your Resources:

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.  

Also, please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.

You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free!

Special thanks to Peggy for joining me this week. Until next time, take care!

Apr 7, 2017

Professor Carol Dweck is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology, and developmental psychology.  She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US Academy of Sciences and won nine lifetime achievement awards for her research.  Her work is used by organizations around the world to transform their cultures.

In this conversation, you will hear Carol talk about fixed and growth mindsets and how her research has found they can impact our performance at work.  She draws on her experience of helping organizations implement this type of mindset to share the small changes workplaces can make to cultivate growth mindset environments and where this can go wrong. 

Connect with Carol Dweck:

Website: http://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/

You’ll Learn:

  • [02:10] – Carol explains the differences between fixed and growth mindsets, according to her research.
  • [04:56] – Carol shares how her studies have found that when there is a fixed mindset culture with an organization, there’s a lot of unethical and unhealthy behaviors because of the pursuit of outcomes.
  • [08:41] – Carol shares that innovation is coming out of growth mindset companies at a higher rate.
  • [10:22] – Carol’s recent article in the Harvard Business Review points out some of the misconceptions around growth mindsets in workplaces.  She explains what those misconceptions are.
  • [13:00] – Carol talks about how Microsoft are cultivating growth mindsets across their teams.
  • [19:32] – Carol explains why she believes self-compassion works well with a growth mindset.
  • [23:20] – Carol shares where the growth mindset and these strategies can go wrong and the importance of evaluation.
  • [24:16] – The Lightning Round with Carol Dweck.

Your Resources:

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post.  

Also, please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.

You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It’s free!

Special thanks to Carol for joining me this week. Until next time, take care!

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