Workshop Series on Applying Positive Psychology to Management (Session 4)

WORKSHOP SERIES OVERVIEW

Subordinates are like plants: if you get the conditions just right, they will usually flourish. So what are those conditions?  This workshop series will answer this question by drawing on the latest research in positive psychology on engagement, meaning, and resilience. 

In this workshop series, Prof. Tish Robinson, PhD, Hitotsubashi University have joined forces with several positive psychology researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Positive Psychology working with Professor Martin Seligman, to focus on three skill sets necessary for managers to maximize their own and their employees’ effectiveness and satisfaction: 1) Creating meaning through matching employee strengths to the tasks at hand; 2) Engagement; and, 3) Resilience.


Fourth Session: Resilience.
The final session of this series focuses on Resilience and managing challenge.  Resilience is the ability to survive difficulty and somehow come out stronger for it. 

Dean Becker, in his Harvard Business Review article in May 2002, noted “More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.”  Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Khoshaba, in a 12-year study of 450 managers at Illinois Bell Telephone undergoing downsizing and organizational upheaval, found that even while 50% of the employees studied lost their jobs and others experienced enormous upheaval, roughly one in three employees not only survived the stress and constant change, they actually appeared to thrive. 

Key to thriving were: 1) connection and engagement with other people, 2) taking control of some part of their job, and 3) the ability to reframe adversity into a meaningful opportunity for growth and utilize one’s natural strengths in a new way. 

This module draws on exercises developed at the Positive Psychology Center at University of Pennsylvania, and by Penn researchers, Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte at Adaptiv Learning.  Research has found that these resilience exercises halve the rate of depression of participants and can be taught to managers and employees.

For more information and details about this workshop series as well as registration procedure, download the flier here.


Note: Registration to this event should be made directly to Prof. Tish Robinson's email found in the flier/brochure.