By generating and sustaining an optimal workplace environment you can enable collective wisdom to come to life; since an optimal workplace supports collective and individual human potential. Positive Organizational Psychology encourages wellbeing in the workplace; wellbeing has been a customary subject of Occupational Psychology. When Positive Psychology shifted the focus of traditional psychology by exploring optimal psychological states instead of focusing on pathology. This has extended to the world of business, shifting its focus to the generative dynamics that permit optimal collective and individual performance. Leaders are responsible for developing talent in their organizations, and while this is acknowledged, few deliver the coaching and training at scale to develop their employees.
- Promoting morale in the workplace has been believed to boost productivity.- Recent research shows that the benefits of boosting morale has a more extensive benefit than simply the bottom line; it creates a more vibrant, creative and effective organization. The research shows that embracing each employee individually, and training these individuals to identify and enhance their strengths, dramatically affects their productivity and general company culture. Here is what you can do to implement Positive Organizational Psychology in your organization:
Be a role model
Transparency about your needs to learn and develop and sharing with your employees how you are able to do it will motivate them to do the same. Accept your vulnerabilities, it has been shown that leaders are perceived as more powerful when they are shown to be learning.
Fortify the value of learning
Ask your employees individually what they want to accomplish and in what areas they feel like they are lacking. After the completion of a task, celebrate the outcome and also the learning, especially if the task was not completed as well as everyone had hoped.
Embrace shared values
If your employees link their daily tasks and responsibilities to a bigger picture aka the companies values, they have a more extensive comprehension of why what they do is important and will strive to do a better job.
Leverage problems as opportunities for real world learning and progress
Acceptable failures must be clarified. This way employees can challenge themselves without feeling like their mistakes will jeopardize their career. Your organization must see problems or mistakes as opportunities for growth.
Implement some Positive Organizational Practices AKA Job Crafting
Job crafting is about making positive changes in your organization’s work experience through task crafting and changes in our surroundings, in order to better the development of skills and resources that in turn bolsters job performance. Here are the essential ones:
Cognitive Crafting: enabling employees to change the perception of their job, by thinking about how their work benefits their life as a whole, their organization and their community.
Environmental Crafting:
The employee can change where he/she works from time to time (home office, open space, etc.) in order to be more efficient.
Developmental Crafting:
The person identifies how they can acquire and use more skills and resources to better perform at their jobs.
Task Crafting:
The employee trims or alters his/her tasks in order for them to better fit his/her skills and interests.
Relational Crafting:
To make work more enjoyable the person changes the quantity or quality of their interpersonal relationships with colleagues, clients, etc.
All in all implementing Positive Organizational Psychology techniques in your organization boosts more than just morale. It can dramatically improve the efficiency of your employees and your company as a whole. Developing talent individually and collectively improves the overall rendition of a company and benefits all parties. It is a win-win situation and the results will be evident in the overall improvement of your company culture. By supporting the human potential in your organization you maximize the benefit they can bring into your company; the environment enables collective wisdom to come to life.