“His goal is to advance the well-being of the world – one sector at a time”.

An interesting (and revealing) article from Stacey Burling at The Philadelphia Inquirer on Professor Martin Seligman, often quoted as the founding father of Positive Psychology.

Image courtesy of the US Army

Ultimate Multi-tasking

Here’s a link to my post to Positive Psychology News Daily this month, on the subjects of happiness, busyness and holiday letters.

Please feel free to add your comments and thoughts here or on the PPND site.

Image: sha in LA

The times they are a-changin’

Yesterday many of my co-students and I attended the first “Positive Psychology: Well-Being and Business” Conference hosted by the University of East London – where we are almost half-way through our Masters in Applied Positive Psychology (the first programme of its kind outside of the US). The lecture theatre was full, mostly HR managers and leaders from public, private and NFP sectors, as well as a large sprinkling of independent coaches, psychologists and consultants, all keen to hear what Positive Psychology has to offer organisations.

The father of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman, gave the keynote address; here was the opportunity we had all been waiting for. No Positive Psychologist worth their salt would willingly pass up the chance to hear the man in person. He referred to the three pillars of positive emotion, engagement and meaning which you will be familiar with from his Authentic Happiness book, then oh so casually mentioned the possibility of “a 4th or even a 5th pillar” although he presented no new research in support of this theory. Turns out many prominent Positive Psychologists, among them Caroline Adams Miller and UEL’s own Dr Ilona Boniwell, have long been in favour of including positive relations and positive achievement in the definition of happiness, but are too polite to say ‘I told you so’.

You’ll remember from this posting a few days ago that I hoped Seligman would clarify his revelation at the Washington Global Well-Being Conference that Positive Psychology should henceforth be known as “Positive Social Science”. Well, unfortunately he didn’t elaborate. In our MAPP-only seminar, however, he said ‘everything I told you this morning is wrong’.

Hmmmmmm.

These might just be word games, of course, but I suspect there is more to it than that. I got the sense that there is a lot of discussion and thinking going on about the possible emergence of a new field of science, which of course would have serious implications for the future of Positive Psychology.

It has been suggested that Positive Psychology is the new paradigm. With the emergence of Positive Social Science, however, I think we’re already moving on.

Since our last blog on Strengths-based Management, several people have asked how to identify what their strengths are; there are a couple of easy-to-use questionnaires, the first is the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA – IS) .

Before you start, just a word of caution. As with all assessments of this kind, we would urge you to use the results as the starting point for a discussion about further personal development work, either for yourself or your team, rather than as an end in themselves. This is how we use them in coaching, to begin the process of Personal Development Planning.

The VIA-IS tool lists your strengths in rank order. You can access the it for free here . It is a very comprehensive assessment designed for adults, based on 24 character strengths . The full version contains 240 questions and takes about 30 minutes to complete.

You get a report of your Top 5 strengths immediately, which you can print out and/or save. If you want more information about character strengths, see Martin Seligman’s book, Authentic Happiness.

In order to improve work and life satisfaction and well-being, use your Top 5 strengths every day, both inside and outside work.

There is a shorter version (Brief Strengths Test – only 24 questions) as well which you can access here. If you work with children, there is also a young persons version (for age 10-17).