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Panel on Staying Resilient: Why Happiness is Important in Business

happier.com — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:16:04 +0000

On behalf of Drexel University’s Business of Ambition: Co-Curricular Activities, Programs & Services, Kamina Richardson, Program Manager and co-sponsor happier.com invite you to attend:

“Staying Resilient: Why Happiness is Important in Business”

Wednesday, October 14th
Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design
Nesbitt Hall, Ruth Auditorium
33nd and Market Streets
Philadelphia, PA 19104
5 – 6 p.m. Panel Discussion
6-7 p.m. Reception

When the growth is stagnant and people are losing jobs, why should we care about happiness? What impact does employee happiness have on productivity and engagement, and how do we teach people to be more resilient in the face of adversity? What works for increasing employee happiness?

Leaders in the fields of management, consulting and psychology provide perspectives on staying resilient during tough times: why happiness is important for business. Learn what Merrill Lynch and the U.S. Army are already doing to increase happiness and resilience and hear about the latest findings in the science of happiness.

Panel Speakers:
Professor Diana Sandberg is an instructor for the Finance Department at LeBow College of Business. She is an expert in Risk Management.

Scott Asalone is partner and co-founder of ASGMC. He co-founded the firm to inspire and guide people in business to be their very best, through the use of his motivational speaking skills and management development expertise. Scott has a Masters Degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an affiliate of the American Psychological Association and a member of the International Positive Psychology Association. He is certified in Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, Firo-B, and Dimensional Management techniques.

Karen Reivich, Ph.D. is co-author of The Resilience Factor and of the best-selling The Optimistic Child. Dr. Reivich is a Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychology, and is also the co-director of the Penn Resiliency Project and an instructor in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program in which she teaches a course on Positive Psychology and Individuals.

Adam M. Grant, Ph.D. is an award-winning researcher and Associate Professor of Management at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Grant’s research focuses on work motivation, job design, pro-social helping and giving behaviors, initiative and proactive behaviors, and employee well-being.

To register: http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/Event/2528 or contact Kamina Richardson 215-571-3568 for additional information.

Media contacts: Christa Guidi, Cashman & Associates, 215.627.1060, cguidi@cashmanandassociates.com or Courtney Sochacki, Cashman & Associates, 215.627.1060, courtney@cashmanandassociates.com

happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.

Thirty Profiles of Resilience in Business – The Psychology of Bouncing Back

happier.com — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:12:30 +0000

Entrepreneurs are a hearty bunch. They’re known for persevering when others give up. But there’s a difference between realistic optimism and stubbornly hitting your head against the wall hoping something will change.

Inc: The Magazine for Growing Companies combed through 30 years of stories to find the ones that best illustrate an entrepreneur overcoming an obstacle where others would have given up. And, from zappos.com to the 1993 Dallas Cowboys Superbowl victory, many of the results are now taken for granted. All 30 stories are profiled online. And to read some unknown stories of resilience, from users of happier.com, visit the Community section, where you can even contribute your own story.

Thank God It’s Monday – Putting the Best-Seller to Work Through Positive Psychology

Andrew Rosenthal — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:52:02 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great to create a workplace employees, customers and management all loved? This is the question that frames the new book by Roxanne Emmerich, Thank God It’s Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love. Emmerich’s book has reached the best-seller list recently, ranking in the top-10 on lists from Amazon.com, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. In her book, Emmerich chronicles real companies where motivational “kick-butt kick-offs” led to transformational changes in attitude, productivity and earnings.

While the language and the stories in the book are uniquely hers, Emmerich’s strategies draw on key tools from within positive psychology. She directly refers to Martin Seligman’s “profound research” documented in Learned Optimism as having a significant role in changing the tenor of a workplace. In fact, there are a number of positive psychology tools, some available on happier.com, to help put the “TGIM” strategy to work.

Enthusiasm: Light That Fire in Your Belly

Enthusiasm is a “moment-by-moment choices” explains Emmerich. And for plenty of workers, it can be a hard choice to make. How do you get out of a rut and become contagiously enthusiastic? Here’s an easy way to start:

Discover, and use, your strengths. Getting started is easy — every single person has a set of top strengths. There’s no heavy-lifting here. Just take the free VIA Strengths Survey and get instant results on your top strengths. Then, put them to work. Focus, each day, on using one of your top strengths in a new way during work. Doing this is fun — these are things you’re already good at — and it can be pretty easy. And if, at first blush, the strength doesn’t seem like it’s relevant to work, then find a way to make it so. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence doesn’t have to be a walk in the park — take a moment to recognize a colleague’s achievements. And Self Regulation can mean checking your email every 2 hours instead of every 2 minutes. Find a way to use one of your strengths in a new way during work. Within no time, you will be more enthusiastic. It’s fun, lasting and authentic.

Want more guidance? The Discover Your Strengths plan on happier.com provides tests, tools and assistance to make it easier.

Giving: Ignited Spirits Through Profound Service

Emmerich points out that “customer satisfaction” isn’t good enough, especially if they are weighing “satisfaction” against a lower price elsewhere, when deciding where to do business. “Customer success is what matters: making a lasting difference, transforming your interactions from a simple business transaction to a profound exchange between two human beings that creates a transformation of more success for the customer.”

As you begin giving, put a number to your progress. Track and measure your results. In addition to asking “Have I made a difference?” try taking the free Positivity Test, developed by Barbara Fredrickson, at the University of North Carolina. Better yet, take the test before you start giving. Try and establish a baseline. Then, once you start giving, take the test every day, for a week. Then take it every few days. Surely, your results will bounce up and down a bit. But if you’re really giving, and if you’re achieving customer success, your positivity ratio will increase. And you’ll be increasing the positivity of others.

Five Reasons Happy CEOs Are Good for Business, and Why Congress Needs to Focus on Happiness

happier.com — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:00:32 +0000

Congress and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner want to give shareholders a vote on executive pay. The thinking goes like this:

Executives are critical to a company’s success, and giving shareholders a say on corporate pay helps ensure that shareholders get the right kind of leader, and hold influence over her.

But Congress doesn’t have the whole story. When analyzing a CEO, shareholders should care about both economic wealth, and emotional health. Here are five reasons a happy CEO is good for business.

1. Happier CEO’s know how and when to give authentic praise. The best CEOs and managers are able to use techniques like Active and Constructive Responding to celebrate success. And the research shows that maintaining the right ratio of praise to criticism correlates with bottom-line business results.

2. CEO’s in touch with their emotions are better able to focus on growth. According to Dr. Martin Seligman: “Within … a corporation, or a nation, when you’re in trouble, that trouble is generally about negative emotions. When you’re in trouble, you want to be the master of sadness or anger. The negative emotions, that’s about performance management traditionally in business, whereas if your concern … is growth, then I think that’s when the positive emotions and engagement and meaning really matter.” The Mindfullness Journal from happier.com helps you better understand, and ultimately manager, your positive and negative emotions.

3. Creativity counts. In today’s pressing business world, CEOs who exhibit creativity are being lauded for their ability to help companies recover. In professional under intense psychological strain, the reserch shows that positive emotion increases creativity and problem-solving. happier.com’s Positivity Portfolio provides even the most dour CEO with a quick emotional pick-me-up.

4. Resilience is golden. With adversity mounting all around us, the ability to demonstrate resilience is what sets apart those who succeed from those who fail. Resilience is the ability to persevere in teh face of an adversity and to thrive when confronted with challenges. Learning to be more optimistic is the key component of resilience. Seligman says:”What pessimism does is promote helplessness and what optimism does is it gets people trying harder even in the face of adversity. When it’s overcome-able, optimism matters.” Take the Optimism Test on happier.com to measure yourself.

5. Job satisfaction is directly tied to working within your strengths. In a recent poll of professionals on LinkedIn, happier.com found that the leading indicator of job satisfaction is feeling like you are using your strengths in everyday work. Happy CEOs are more likely to build their teams, and their organizations, around the strengths of employees, meaning everyone gets to benefit.

Interested in learning more? You may want to check out:

Fredrickson, B.L. & Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 678-686.

Active and Constructive Responding, explained by happier.com

Scherer. K – Importance of happiness in the work-place