This list of 5 Great Books on Organizational Leadership was compiled by a member of Positive Psychology Practitioners group on LinkedIn. More than 700 practitioners share best practices, problem-solve, and network with this free group . Join today.
Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance
by Kim Cameron. This book is short, to the point, and the best summation of how the findings of positive psychology apply to organizations. To me, this book didn’t carry the emotional wallop of Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, but it certainly can help clarify the constructs and how they fit in the world of business and organizations.
Strengths-Based Leadership
by Tom Rath. This books builds on the strengths research underlying Gallup’s other books with lots of new research specifically applicable to leadership. Like the other books, it includes an access code to take the online Strengthsfinder 2.0 instrument, but in a version that comes with a report that focuses on leadership. The book describes how the 34 strengths themes group into four domains of leadership: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. These are illustrated with stories of four significant leaders, each working out of a set of strengths in one of the four domains. Finally, the authors report on Gallup’s research into the four basic needs of followers: Trust (honesty, integrity, respect); Compassion (caring, friendship, happiness, love); Stability (security, strength, support, peace), and Hope (direction, faith, guidance). Highly useful and original.
Making the Impossible Possible: Leading Extraordinary Performance: The Rocky Flats Story
by Kim Cameron and Marc Lavine. This is the story of how the same workers who were operating the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant — with lots of union grievances — managed to close and cleanup that facility in 1/10th the estimated time, at 1/6th the estimate cost, and to standards 13 times greater than federal requirements. Plus you get a real introduction to key areas of Dr. Cameron’s work. Excellent, and inspiring!
Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work
by Jane Dutton. Dr. Dutton gives both the research on the importance of relationships at work — she calls them “high quality connections — and specific approaches to making and sustaining such connections, and helping those you lead to do the same. We are not talking deep intimacy here, just the quick, human-to-human link that lets emotional and cognitive information flow freely.
This is one of my favorite videos by Professor Todd Kashdan about “Uncharted Territory” in Positive Psychology research today. Professor Kashdan goes on to talk about our dynamic world and the unstudied spillover effects of positive experiences into other domains. He even poses the question: Could having a meaningful and fulfilling sexual experience help someone be more productive at work the next day? Pretty interesting stuff. Enjoy.
November 11, 2009 – Philadelphia, PA – happier.com, a personal trainer for your happiness, now offers gift certificates. With the holidays fast-approaching, this gift could change even Scrooge’s mood! Gift certificates provide the recipient with unlimited use of the psychological tests and happiness-boosting tools available at happier.com. Gift certificates are available for $14.99 for three months; $24.99 for six months; and $99.99 for unlimited lifetime use, at www.happier.com/giftCertificate.htm.
Gift certificate recipients have access to more than a dozen research-backed tools customized to increase happiness, resilience, optimism, engagement, and meaning through the science of positive psychology. After responding to a simple online questionnaire, the customer begins a happiness-boosting plan with specific activities, each day, designed to scientifically boost happiness and reduce stress and anxiety.
Gift certificate recipients can also access the happier.com blog at http://blog.happier.com with innovative ideas and tips from the experts on how happiness applies to all aspects of life. A recent post included suggestions on how to increase happiness in the workplace: Make a place smell like lemons; the scent of lemon improves mental performance. Diffuse this odor into a space for creative thought, or serve lemonade, lemon drops, or lemon frosted sponge cake. happier.com also offers more than 100 exclusive videos from the world’s leading happiness researchers and practitioners.
Give the gift that can actually lift one’s spirits after just a few minutes of use. And decades of research show that happier people are less likely to get colds, are less likely to feel down as the days get shorter, and are likely to make those around them happy.
About happier.com
Doug Hensch and Andrew J. Rosenthal co-founded happier.com to inspire people to be happier and more resilient based on the field of positive psychology. They worked closely with Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D, an exclusive consultant for happier.com, who is the “father of positive psychology” and a noted professor from the University of Pennsylvania.
happier.com is the first set of easy-to-use and engaging online happiness-boosting tools backed by the science of positive psychology. To date, the online tools, videos, blog and iPhone application have been used by more than 40,000 beta-testers.
For media inquiries or for additional information please contact Christa Guidi, Cashman & Associates at 215.627.1060 or cguidi@cashmanandassociates.com.
Positive places enhance our lives – they are spaces where we thrive now and flourish in the future. Positive places improve our experiences by: 1. Communicating. Human beings are social animals, and in positive places we can mingle with other people, when we choose. In positive spaces we not only communicate verbally with others, but also send personally desirable nonverbal messages about ourselves as people. Members of a culture can “read” the nonverbal communication of culture-mates, and we feel that nonverbal information is more honest than spoken statements. Place-based nonverbal communication is why we get so worked up about furniture selections – a lot of furniture is equally comfortable, but the style of the particular furniture we select from among those equally comfortable options speaks eloquently about who we are as a person. Why do you think we love video tours of celebrities’ homes? We want to know who they really are.
2. Comforting. A place comforts us in many ways – colors and scents can sooth, sounds can calm, and opportunities to control the space can reduce stress, for example – but people often don’t consider how a space can help them restock their psychological batteries. When we work mentally, we tire our brain and reduce the mental energy at our disposal – just as we can wear down the charge in batteries. Our mental batteries are rechargeable, happily. When we look out a window at nature or into a fish tank or at a fire (or watch nature, fish or fire videos), we are transported from our physical location into a different place mentally, a place where interesting things happen that we can understand effortlessly. While we’re in that place, energy flows back into our cognitive centers. A place that helps us restock our mental batteries is comforting.
3. Challenging. One of our fundamental human needs is to grow and develop in ways that interest us. Different people have different self-enhancement plans, so the ways that places can challenge us to change need to vary – a studio to practice the cello is different from a woodworking shop or a hideaway to write a great novel, but all three can help a person achieve their own personal goals.
4. Complying. A positive space supplies us with the tools we need to do whatever activities we’ve planned there – it’s hard to cook a roast in a bathtub. If we’re doing thoughtful work, we need to be able to focus without distractions, which many people designing home and workplace offices forget.
5. Continuing. A positive place has the ability to evolve as our place-based needs change – too many built ins can turn out to be way too much.
Use the 5 C’s for positive places (communicate, comfort, challenge, comply, and continue) when you’re in different spaces – home, school, office, . . . – to determine if you’re a place that will enhance your life – or not. Watch for additional blog posts here to learn how you can turn negative places into positive ones.
