Positive Psychology

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Maslow (1954) was among the first humanist psychologists to shine a light on the exclusive focus of psychological research and scholarship on causations and preventions of pathological mental illness versus interventions that support wellbeing and thriving. In his acclaimed book, Motivation and Personality, Maslow wrote, “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illness, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology has voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, the darker, meaner half” (p. 354).

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Maslow’s optimistic perspectives on human existence as reflected in his pioneering research on the psychosocial conditions, which support emotionally healthy, high-achieving individuals to have peak experiences and achieve self-actualization offers a significant underpinning for what we now know as positive psychology (PP) (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Hoffman, 2011; Maslow, 1954).  In his 1998 inaugural presidential address to the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.), Seligman introduced positive psychology, the scientific study of what makes life most worth living, as a new vision for the field of psychology 

(Peterson & Park, 2014; Seligman, 1999; Wallis, 2005). 

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At the onset, critics facetiously dubbed positive psychology the “science of happiness” and “happyology” as a critique to its simplistic positive-negative dichotomous construct. Early PP researchers failed to acknowledge that although there is an added complexity when mixing positive and negative elements, it is difficult to explain most psychological phenomena without integrating the two emotional experiences. The response to this critique was a second wave of growth in the industry known as PP 2.0. As Wong (2011, p. 1) describes, PP 2.0 is “characterized by a balanced, interactive, meaning-centered, and cross-cultural perspective.” More specifically, the four pillars of the good life (meaning, virtue, resilience, and well-being) are accompanied by three additional reinforcing conceptual frameworks: a more clearly articulated taxonomy, a balanced hypothetical construct of meaning- and happiness-orientation, and a dual-systems approach to actively integrating the reality and benefits of negative emotions and experiences.

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   Over the past 20 years, this field has evolved into a highly regarded contributor to the scholarship of psychology, neuroscience, existential human development, and organizational studies. PP continues to reinforce its validity with evidence-based empirical research and psychometric instruments on a vast catalog of theories and methods that identify experiences, traits and conditions that cultivate well-being and enable individuals and organizations to thrive. These include character strengths and virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004); flourishing (Seligman M. , 2011); flow (Csikszentmihaliyi, 1990); fixed and growth mindset (Dweck, 2016); grit (Duckworth, 2016); self-compassion (Neff, 2011); love and lovingkindness (Frederickson B. , Love 2.0, 2013; Salzberg, 2017; Klemich & Klemich, 2019), motivation and self-determination (Pink, 2009); judgment and decision making (Kahneman, 2011); resilience (Hanson & Hanson, 2018); eudaimonic well-being and meaningfulness in life and work (Frederickson, et al., 2013). Just as positive psychology focuses on optimal conditions that foster human well-being rather than disease and pathological states, Positive Organizational Scholarship attends to the optimal conditions and dynamics that cultivate high performing organizations that bring out the best in people. 

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Positive Organizational Scholarship

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The emerging body of research in positive organizational scholarship (POS) draws from anthropology, psychology, sociology, organizational theory, and systems theory to address “the generative dynamics in organizations that lead to the development of human strength, foster resiliency in employees, enable healing and restoration, and cultivate extraordinary individual and organizational performance” (Cameron & Spreitzer, The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship, 2012, p. 1; Dutton, Glynn, & Spreitzer, 2005).  This organizational approach requires a paradigmatic shift from Industrial Age mechanistic input-process-output patterns to which most organizations still ascribe to a dynamic living systems model that enable long-term sustainable excellence by unlocking potential and revealing hidden possibilities that foster individual and collective strength and capability building (Ancona & Isaacs, 2017; Dutton, Glynn, & Spreitzer, 2005; Cameron & Spreitzer, 2012). Additional domains of POS research include: Positive Culture, Positive Ethics and Virtues, Positive Meaning and Purpose, Positive Practices, Positive Relationships, and Positive Leadership in an organizational setting. 

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Positive Leadership

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Positive leadership, an approach that integrates behavioral concepts from other established leadership theories such as transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and servant leadership, emphasizes “ways in which leaders enable positively deviant performance, foster an affirmative orientation in organizations, and engender a focus on virtuousness and the best of the human condition” (Cameron, 2012, loc. 98; Schimschal & Lomas, 2018). The four strategies that positive leaders leverage to catalyze extraordinary performance are: positive climate, positive relationships, positive communication and positive meaning. In a working environment with a positive climate, well-being predominates over distress and dissatisfaction and positive emotions over negative (loc. 315). This frequency of positive emotions unlocks a “broaden and build” effect that generates “upward spirals toward optimal functioning and enhanced performance” and also enhances prosocial behaviors (loc. 314-315). Consequently, the literature reflects that in imbalanced positive climates, “one piece of negative feedback amid several compliments, one significant loss amid several important gains, one incidence of abuse amid several incidents of nurturing, one traumatic event amid several pleasant events, or one bad relationship amid several good relationships can have a disproportionately negative impact on individuals and on organizations” (loc. 353). In this circumstance, a skillful positive leader will use their virtuous traits to role model and foster generative behaviors (i.e. communication, compassion, forgiveness, collaboration and gratitude) to reset the climate (loc. 497). 

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Positive relationships extend beyond team members getting along with each other; it refers to team members experiencing a level of synergy and flow that contributes to extraordinary performance. The scientific explanation for why this occurs is supported by research findings that show a correlation between positive social relationships and the hormonal, cardiovascular, and immune systems of the body (Heaphy & Dutton, 2008). Positive communication refers to the ratio of positive to negative, inquiry to advocacy, and self-focused to others-focused comments, as well as degree of connectivity, engagement and information sharing on the team (Cameron, 2012). The fourth positive leadership strategy is to inspire a profound sense of positive meaning in their team members. Positive meaning is characterized by a strong sense of purpose, engagement and intrinsic motivation to achieve exponential performance outcomes (loc. 942). Empirical evidence suggests that implementing these strategies more often than not generate higher than normal individual, team and organizational achievement (Cameron & Spreitzer, 2012). Probing participants for evidences of these strategies during the post-study interviews may prove to yield valuable insights that contribute to the study’s key outcomes. 

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