The cost of ill-health to the British economy is a staggering £103 billion a year according to a recent report from Professor Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work. This article from today’s spiked suggests that the government’s attempts to get the unemployed back to work by e.g. re-branding “Incapacity Benefit” as “Employment and Support Allowance”, is merely tinkering at the edges. I’m inclined to agree. Other carrot-and-stick measures such as tougher health tests for those claiming IB and requiring doctors to intervene sooner are unlikely to be successful and will instead just create more expensive targets and measures to be monitored and circumvented, in the same way that hospital waiting lists have been.

The article quotes one professor of psychiatry, Simon Wessely, as saying that many normal human experiences are being medicalised; for example feeling sadness after a bereavement is now seen as a health “problem” for which there should be a medical cure. People are encouraged to think of negative emotions as something can and should be avoided – take the frequency with which counselling is offered after traumatic events for example, even though there is growing scientific evidence that most people heal better and more quickly without it.

Off hand I don’t know how the UK compares to other European countries regarding the true cost of ill-health (if anyone reading this does, let me know!). I agree with Mick Hume that the answer lies not in treating the entire problem as one of ill-health (and certainly not in the ways the government proposes), rather we need to be looking more seriously at the underlying causes. If it is the case that many of those people on IB should really be at work, the question is why they prefer to claim state benefits rather than make a meaningful contribution to society. That is a much deeper issue.

Once again I’m left thinking that those of us with an interest in Positive Psychology and the science behind happiness need to ensure we talk about the benefits of PP in business without it sounding like we inhabit cloud-cuckoo land.

Image: Lindseyy

Have you ever thought that emotion has no place in the world of business? Well here’s some research that might cause you to stop and think. Do you want to see quickly and easily how positive or negative emotion impacts your current thinking style?

Take a look at these four groups of shapes – for each one do you think pattern A is more like B or C?

According to Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” theory, in this visual processing task people in positive moods are more likely to choose B (global) every time. Fredrickson and Branigan’s research* shows that positive moods facilitate more creative, flexible, big-picture thinking, in which positive people remain open to new information. As a result, the number of behavioural options open to them increases.

People in negative moods, on the other hand, are more focused on the detail of a situation, have a more rigid thinking style in which their thought-action repertoire is narrowed. These people are more likely to say pattern A is like C (local).

The good news is that while a positive emotional state is only momentary, there is evidence to suggest that the effect is cumulative, thus you can increase your flexibility and resourcefulness over time.

It’s crucial for workplace success to remain as flexible and open to new ideas as possible, so the broaden and build theory has serious implications for business. Specifically you may want to consider how you can foster positive emotions before and during brainstorming sessions, when you want to create as many innovative ideas as possible. In problem-solving situations too, consider what action you can take to sustain a positive frame of mind while you’re generating new solutions.

Next time you’re in one of these business situations, notice the impact your mood has on your thinking style. In coaching we’ve noticed that clients who maintain a positive outlook are far more likely to generate ideas than those who allow a negative mood to dominate. Try it for yourself, and let us know how you get on.

* Fredrickson, B.L., & Branigan, C. (2005) “Positive emotions broaden the scope of attention and thought-action repertoires”

Practical, research-based (and free) suggestions for improving your happiness and well-being.

On Saturday I went to the 2nd Bristol Happiness Lecture, presented by Dr Chris Johnstone and my UEL Positive Psychology course leader, Dr Ilona Boniwell .

Both presented lots of practical tips on how to apply Positive Psychology in the real world, supported by research on everything from Broaden and Build Theory of positive emotions to Self-Determination Theory.

Here’s a small selection:

1) In any personal relationship the ratio of positives to negatives needs to be at least 5:1 (and not more than 11:1) for the relationship to really flourish. So, for example, make sure you say five positive things to your partner for every one criticism; if you do criticise, focus on the behaviour not the person.

2) A limited choice is better than no choice at all, or many choices. Choice enables autonomy, which is essential for motivation. This works very well in motivating small children to do things they don’t otherwise want to do. So, for example, ask them if they want to do their maths homework first or their science homework – they’ll be more motivated given a choice.

3) The things you focus on, good or bad, tend to increase in significance. Think of it in terms of rowing a boat across a lake; rather than focus on trying to avoid the rocks which get in the way, focus instead on what you can do to raise the water level.

4) Be aware of learned helplessness (Seligman); i.e. thinking ‘Nothing I do matters’ or ‘I was helpless yesterday and regardless of new circumstances, I will be helpless again today’. This feeling can be very prevalent in organisations whose cultures do not allow staff to make a difference. It requires more management effort to re-engage people once you’ve lost them, than to manage them effectively from the start.

5) Negative feelings are not always bad, and not something to be avoided at all costs. They can enable you to respond to a situation in ways that lead to a turnaround. Boredom, for example, can prompt a child to seek out new and interesting experiences, and helps promote self-motivation. The key thing is to be aware of the negative emotion, and to ask yourself what it’s there for.

Maybe it’s the traditional British reserve but whenever I mention that I’m interested in the subject of happiness, people tend to raise their eyebrows and look a little bemused. Very often they say ‘that’s simple, if I had more money I’d be happy’, or at this time of year in particular, ‘if I lost a little weight/stopped smoking I’d be happy’. Happiness is worth a closer look because, actually, it’s not that simple; research has shown that health and wealth might bring happiness to a point or temporarily, but that it doesn’t last.

Happiness is becoming big business now. If you type ‘happiness’ into Amazon, you get over 5000 books on the subject. There are TV programmes about it and websites devoted to it. But why does it matter to organizations what makes people happy?

In his article ‘Happiness is a serious business’ quoted in People Management, Nic Marks, head of the Centre for Wellbeing at the New Economics Foundation, refers to the CIPD employee attitude survey 2006, part of which looked at the relationship between positive and negative emotions and several key performance indicators (KPIs): job satisfaction, meaningfulness of work, absorption in work, commitment to complete work, loyalty and performance.

What the survey found was that, with the exception of job satisfaction, positive emotions seem to have more than twice the impact on these KPIs as negative emotions do. In the case of job satisfaction, says Marks, people’s satisfaction ratings and assessments of others are more clouded by their negative feelings than their own experience and behaviour. He concludes that organizations could therefore have more impact and improve individual, team and organizational performance by promoting a climate that fosters positive emotions at work.

In short, there is a very serious point to ensuring that people are happy at work. In the past, we have thought that feeling happy was a result of good functioning i.e. ‘life is going well, therefore I feel good’. However there is a growing body of research (e.g. by the psychologist Dr Barbara Fredrickson, a world expert in the field of positive emotions) which suggests that feeling happy is also a cause of good functioning. So happiness is important to organizations because feeling happy actually helps promote creativity, resilience and resourcefulness; all qualities that we need to improve our performance and succeed at work.

I bought the book ‘Healing without Freud or Prozac’ earlier this year when I was looking into alternative treatments for depression, i.e. those which don’t involve drugs or therapy. I was fascinated by the chapters on Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which the author, Dr David Servan-Schreiber, calls ‘the mind’s own healing mechanism’. It’s a relatively simple technique which simulates the rapid eye movements that take place during dreams.

So when Charlie sent me a link to a BBC Radio Four programme (How to Knit a Poem) this week, which was about the therapeutic effect of knitting, I wondered whether knitting might also be a way of imitating REM.

In this 15 minutes programme, the poet, Gwyneth Lewis, interviews Jeni Hewlett (referred to incorrectly as Jeni Green in the interview), a research assistant in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University , who is undertaking a research study to demonstrate scientifically whether or not knitting can help people get out of a cycle of negative thinking that accompanies depression.

Betsan Corkhill, who runs Stitchlinks, believes that cross-stitching and crochet have a similar effect. It seems it’s all to do with the repetitive nature of the activity; the beneficial effect it has on physical and mental health might be due to eye-scanning, or the release of the chemical serotonin in the brain.

So now I’m thinking of taking up knitting in 2007; I doubt it will transform me into a serene earth-mother, but I could do with a few more scarves…

PS I’m amazed at how many knitters are also bloggers …see for example:

http://www.bhkc.co.uk/data/knitting_therapy.htm

http://fibrespates.blogs.com/blog

http://acechick.typepad.com/uknitters