Positive Psychology Archives - Page 8 of 14

Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Productivity, Workplace Culture / My Holland

A lot of men say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that the pessimist, sees women as naughty and bad. An optimist HOPES women are naughty and bad! Seriously though, you know the big difference between these two points of view: Optimism being one that can have a great impact not only on your career or profession but also on your health and life, in general. What Research Studies Say In fact, research studies have shown that optimism helps to keep depression away, improve your social ties, boost job performance and raise the chances of success in any undertaking. And when you come face to face with setbacks, optimism can make you more resilient. Pessimism, on the other hand undermines work, friendships and health. It increases your stress when you dwell on the negative too much. It actually is the recipe for depression and failure. Given these, wouldn’t you rather work with the optimist who can lighten up the day and who you can count on for support? Of course you would!, unless you’re “The Voice of Doom” who loves to hang around people who do nothing but complain, point blame at co-workers and see the whole world as nearing its end. High Performance Emanates from Optimistic Employees If you look closely at your people in the workplace, you may notice (as studies in actual work setting reflect) that your high performing teams tend to have a 6-to-1 ratio of positive to negative viewpoints. The low performing groups have an under 1-to-1 ratio. This gap generally makes a tremendous difference in your business, organizational set-up and the people who comprise them. Your best performers typically produce the top scores on profits, customer service ratings and other value measurements. Have no doubt about it. Positive emotions play a key role in a company’s daily operations. It broadens. Negative emotions hold you back. What You Can Do So, on your one-on-ones with the negative guys help them out. Persuade them to distract themselves. Help them find healthy distractions like music, exercises, meditation, etc. Short of getting them to take up bullfighting lessons, get them to learn new things.These will help put their focus somewhere else. Get them to reappraise problems and see them in a different perspective. Is it half-full or half-empty? Is it really that complex or do they just see it as such? Teach them to regard a thought as simply that: a thought. No need for them to make any judgments. The only real thing is experience. With the foregoing, you should be able to lend a hand in raising the optimism levels in your company and shoo away all forms of negativism. This is key to productivity that leads to business success.

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The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Emotional Intelligence, Engagement, Leadership, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Wellbeing / My Holland

Well-being is about people feeling highly valued and supported in the job they do in their place of work. It’s also about their health, productivity and performance which can usually lead to good bottom line numbers for companies. Business organizations that are well-structured and well-managed generally play an essential role in the promotion of employees’ health and over-all well-being. The benefits they bring result in the reduction of absenteeism and malingering illnesses and facilitates ease and speed of recovery and return to work after either a serious injury or illness. At its simplest definition, well-being is about personal happiness, feeling good and doing one’s job in a safe and healthy environment. Why Is Well-Being Important To A Company? Experts in the corporate world say the cost of replacement of employees who resign can go as high as one hundred fifty percent (150%) of the departing employee’s salary, given the collateral costs of recruitment, hiring and training. On the other hand, business organizations which have a workforce that is highly engaged can reduce employee turnover by eighty seven percent (87%). You don’t have to be a rocket engineer to figure out its impact not only on a company’s net profits, but on the productivity, culture and over-all output of the business, as well. And so, if you haven’t as yet taken employees’ well-being seriously in your company, now’s a good time. Work out a wellness program with a system that’ll increase productivity and bring in good figures for your company profits. Even more importantly, develop a wellness package for your staff that will result in over-all happiness and health. Here are 5 easy-to-implement guides your company can adopt to create a well-designed wellness program to, not only raise your employees’ engagement level but as well, build a pervasive, positive culture in the workplace. Link your program to the company’s strategic direction. Get this running parallel with your company’s vision and values. This way everybody wins. Make sure you have a yardstick to measure your ROI. Launching a wellness program will naturally entail some investments. Put it all together with specific objectives and how success is to be measured. Check your rate of absenteeism, cost of employees’ wages and your company’s engagement scores. They’ll serve as an index against which you can compare performance after the program has been put in place. Get your top management to buy into the idea of a sound and well-grounded well-being program. It never hurts to have the support of everybody, especially the head honchos you might have to run too should problems crop up. Work out some quick wins. Provide initiatives that will help your staff to quickly jump in and level up. Don’t forget to have fun! The subject of wellness and health doesn’t have to be boring. Make sure your message is intriguing, trendy and to the point. It should inspire a change in behavior of your guys. Inject some lightheartedness into it or even some fun from time to time. With something like this in place in your company, don’t be surprised to see your people with smiles on their faces Monday to Friday!

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Empathy at Work Drive Your Business Forward

Compassion, Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology / My Holland

What Is Empathy? Empathy is the capacity to recognise and understand the emotions of other people. It’s about putting yourself in another person’s shoes, understanding his/her perspective and reality. You’ve heard about this often enough during call center and customer service trainings where the trainers tell you to “put yourself in the customer’s shoes to better understand what’s going on in the customer’s heart and mind.” You might think that empathy is spontaneous. It’s not. There’s a little science to it. What happens is …when you hear a compelling story or see a scene or a situation that hits your soft spot, our body releases Cortisol which helps us to concentrate on the subject matter. Simultaneously, the body also releases Oxytoxin. This is sometimes called the “Trust Hormone” or the “Bonding Hormone.”. It’s what makes us care about the subject matter and increases our empathy. Recent research which had men undergo an aerosol shot of Oxytoxin found that this group had exhibited emotional empathy in higher levels. All of us have these, but depending on genetics, our mood at the moment and how we relate to the other person, levels of our individual empathy varies. Why Empathy Is Important In Businesses The ability to connect with and relate to people, (in particular, prospects and regular customers of a business) is true empathy. It’s a force that can move the business forward because empathy makes you think beyond yourself and your own concerns. The minute you begin seeing and understanding that side of the business, you’ll realise there’s a lot to discover and appreciate. This inevitably leads tocreativity and innovation and happy customers. To start applying empathy at the workplace more effectively, especially among employees who interact with customers, you as a manager might want to have them consider the following guides: Get rid of your own perspective. Instead look at things from the other person’s viewpoint. As soon as you do this, you’ll get to realize these guys aren’t being wicked or unkind or difficult and unreasonable. They’re just responding to the situation with the information they’ve got. This happens all the time with customer complaints. Listen and listen well. Listen with your ears (what is the other person saying? what kind of tone is he using?) Listen with your instincts (Is he communicating all the important issues? Is there something he’s not telling you?). Listen with your heart (how do you think he/she feels?). Acknowledge the other person’s perspective. Once you recognize why the other person believes what she believes, then acknowledge it. This doesn’t equate to you agreeing but it’s an acceptance of other peoples opinions and they may have solid reasons to have those opinions. Be flexible. When interacting with your company’s customers, be prepared to change directions as the other person’s thoughts and feelings might also change. Getting yourself and your team to develop an empathy approach at the workplace may just be the most relevant decision you can make to improving your business. When you start understanding others, they’d want to understand you too and that’s how effective collaborative work goes.

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Positive Psychology

Create Positive Emotions At The Workplace. It Raises Productivity

The Importance Of Well-Being At The Workplace

Empathy at Work Drive Your Business Forward

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