Positive Psychology at Work:

Introduction

Is sustainable growth possible? Can one actually do more with less? In this chapter we shall examine how the capacity and capability of people and organizations can be increased in sustainable ways. We shall discover how a focus on developing individual capability can act to increase organizational capacity. First, though, we need to note that the legacy of Frederick Taylor, an engineer who became one of the first management gurus, still looms large. From his initial thinking and writing about organizations we have inherited a tendency to consider them as no more than machines with human components. A common piece of advice when considering things mechanical is ‘if it ain't broke don't fix it’, and this is still the mindset of many managers and leaders, who hesitate to meddle with their organization in the absence of any evidence of a problem. This means that improvements are only ever seeded from an awareness of deficit rather than from a desire for abundance. Yet as Cameron's work (discussed in Chapter 2) illuminated, abundance is a source of competitive advantage. If we start to think of the organization more as a living system and less as a machine, we begin to open our minds to the idea of growing more from what we have, rather than needing to import more ‘bits of kit’ to grow.

Positive psychology focuses on cultivating human growth by going beyond fixing problems to creating positive states of flourishing. Traditionally, development and training within organizations ...