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Learning and Happiness

It is Adult Learners’ Week again.

Adult Learners' Week 2011

It only seems like yesterday when we did our first Adult Learners’ Week blog.  Do you remember what the Three R’s really stand for?  If not, check back to last year’s blog.

What is Adult Learners’ Week?

Adult Learners’ Week is a campaign that ‘celebrates learning and learners in all their diversity, inspiring thousands of people each May to try something new. The initiative promotes the benefits of all kinds of learning, whether it is for fun or leading to a qualification.’

Happiness is on everyone’s agenda

The Saturday and Sunday papers are full of ‘happiness’ articles.  New Scientist (my favourite weekly) did a feature on it in April and Martin Seligman (the founder of Positive Psychology) has a new book out (Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being – and How To Achieve Them).

Of course, with spring in the air, it is a good time to feel happy, but what has this to do with Adult Learners’ Week?

Flow and Happiness

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about flow.  Flow is a state where you become so immersed in something that time seems to stop, so that, when you finish, you have hardly an inkling of how much time has passed?  You may only then realise how cold, how hungry or even how desperate you are for the loo.

The originator of the concept and author of a fantastic book on the subject (Flow: The Psychology of Happiness) is Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.  Note the subtitle of the book: in it, he describes flow states as states of great pleasure and enjoyment.  So forget wealth, parties and drugs: get immersed in something with a clear goal and evident measures of progress, which stretches you to perform at your limits.

Flow and Learning

Let’s re-read the last part of that last sentence:

‘…get immersed in something with a clear goal and evident measures of progress, which stretches you to perform at your limits.’

This describes Csikszentmihaly’s three criteria for a flow state: a goal, feedback, and challenge.  It also is the definition of learning: knowing what you want to be able to do, understand, or create; being able to monitor your progress; and moving beyond your present capabilities.

The Fourth R (and maybe a fifth)

I hope that, by now, you’ll be curious enough to have discovered what the original three R’s were.  So I am ready to add my own extra R:

‘Reasoning and analysis’

Perhaps a fifth my be:

‘Remembering and recall’

Back when I did maths at school, we took a little foray into classical logic, which is based on maths, of course.  We learnt about robust and faulty reasoning, and in particular, I recall the concept of syllogism.  Take two statements:

Learning creates flow

Flow creates happiness

A syllogism is a form of argument that makes a deduction from two statements of known truth…

Learning and Happiness

Stephen Hawking was told by his publisher that every equation he put into ‘A Brief History of Time’ would halve its sales.  He didn’t do so badly!  So I’ll take a chance and put one of my own into this blog, knowing you don’t pay to read it anyway:

Learning = Happiness

So here’s the Deal

If it is not already a habit, make this week a week to learn.  Here are ten top tips for how.

  1. Check out the Adult Learners’ Week website for ideas and opportunities
  2. Set yourself a challenge to take your hobby or passion to the next level and start working on it
  3. Watch a documentary on TV
  4. Find a new blog to read
  5. Take an hour to research a topic you’ve always been interested in
  6. Go out to lunch with a colleague and ask them to tell you all about their specialism, hobby, degree subject or favourite book
  7. Sign up for an evening class
  8. Pick up a quality magazine or newspaper and read it cover to cover
  9. Go to a library or a bookstore, choose a subject at random, pick the most appealing book on the shelves and read it
  10. Go for a long walk, notice the things around you (weather, buildings, trees, animals, people, vehicles, …) and when you get home, research any one of them that captures your interest

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

It’s tempting to say: ‘all of them’ but let’s face it; we all have our favourites and there are some you won’t like as much.  So, as a learner, or a trainer, or a teacher, here are some pocketbooks you might like:

Learning

Training

Teaching
(Thank you to our sister blog,
The Teachers’ Pocketbooks Blog)

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Flow and Performance Management

Management Pocketbooks was at the CIPD’s HRD exhibition in full force last week.  It’s always a good opportunity to see what’s new in the worlds of training, coaching and management development.

Thank you, by the way, to the hundred and forty or so people who sat or stood for the forty five minutes of my talk about Handling Resistance, and to everyone who visited the stand.  More on the talk in a future blog.

Is it a trend?

One thing stood out for me at the exhibition.  Maybe it represents a trend – it did catch my interest.

Positive Psychology

"Psi plus" symbol: Positive PsychologyAt least two businesses exhibiting had deep expertise in Positive Psychology, which I’ve covered in one form in an earlier post, and applying it to the workplace.

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I remain convinced that this is a field whose time is coming – I’d put it about where Emotional Intelligence was in the early 1990s.  Who will be the Dan Goleman of this field?

I picked up a copy of the new Positive Psychology at Work by Sarah Lewis and my wife (who nabbed it on the train) tells me it’s really good!

Another Aspect of Positive Psychology is Flow

Have you ever found yourself so immersed in something that time disappears from under you and so, when you finish – or are stopped – you have hardly an inkling of how much time has passed?  You may only then realise how cold, how hungry or even how desperate you are for the loo.  That was flow.

Flow experiences happen when we are in a directed task with clear goals, plenty of sense of how we are doing and, crucially, just the right amount of challenge.

The typical flow state diagram looks like this.

Flow state diagram

High Performance at Work

Flow states are the key to high levels of motivation and performance.  We need to get ourselves, or the people we manage, into a flow state by making demands of them with just the right amount of challenge.  This way, what we are doing always tests us to our limit of competence but not so far beyond, that we feel stressed by it and not so far below that we get comfortable, complacent and bored.

How can we increase the challenge further?

There are two ways to increase the challenge we place on a team member and still maintain the possibility of a high performance flow state:

  1. we can either provide suitable training, coaching, practice or other intervention, or
  2. we can offer our support, leaving them feeling safe from potential failure and able to ask for help, thus extending the range over which they can operate before feeling stressed.

So here’s the deal

Good management is about matching the challenge to the person – and positive psychology shows us why this is.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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A little note…

I have been using the “Psi plus” symbol for about three years now as a shorthand in my notes for positive psychology.  I’ve never seen it anywhere else, but it seems such an obvious shorthand.  Anyone seen it elsewhere?

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Happiness – as simple as ABC?

AbnormalityA couple of years ago, I spotted something a bit special in an Oxfam bookshop; it was a kind of archaeological relic of a by-gone age.  The book was a basic psychology text called ‘Abnormality’.  Because I have no more than a passing interest in the subject and ever-diminishing shelf space, I elected to leave it behind.

However, this book marks the end of an era.

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A New Field in Psychology

Abnormality was published in 1997.  The following year, its principal author, Martin Seligman, was President of the American Psychological Association.  In 1998, Seligman officially launched Positive Psychology as a distinct branch of psychology, and lifted it from the level of pop psychology to a topic of serious scientific research.

Abnormality marked Seligman’s last book on the ‘old’ psychology of the damage we accumulate or do to one-another.  All his subsequent books have been about aspects of optimal human functioning.

Why this timing?  Was it just because Seligman had the opportunity that year?  I don’t think so.  In his 2003 book, Authentic Happiness, he says:

‘it took Barbara Frederickson … to convince my head that positive emotion has a profound purpose far beyond the delightful way it makes us feel.’

In 1998, Barbara Frederickson published a ground-breaking paper: ‘What good are Positive Emotions?’  In it, she suggests that positive emotions broaden and build our personal resources and help us to cope with the trials of life.  She won psychology’s most lucrative award, The Templeton Prize, in its first year, 2000.

But what if I’m stuck with negative emotions?

Martin SeligmanSeligman himself is a leading thinker in Positive Psychology; most closely associated with two aspects: strengths, and ‘Learned Optimism’.

His 1990 book (now in its third edition); ‘Learned Optimism’ pre-dates Positive Psychology as a field of study with a name, but it is an essential read for anyone interested in the field.

It shows how we can move from helplessness to optimism by changing the way we think, and it presents a very powerful model, developed by Albert Ellis.

Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

Albert Ellis founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) – yes British readers: I have used the US spelling.  This is a fore-runner of the better known CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and Ellis is known as the Grandfather of CBT.  He died in 2007.

In Learned Optimism, Seligman uses his ABCDE model as a tool for changing the way we think about adversity and and challenge.  You will also find this model in The Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC) Pocketbook.

A B C D E

A: Activating event
… or Adversity, as Seligman describes it, is the objective event that causes us concern

B: Beliefs
The beliefs we have (rational or not) about the event that trigger our attitudes, fears and subsequent behaviours

C: Consequences
Ultimately, what consequences do those beliefs have for us in terms of what we do and how that changes our options and opportunities.

D: Dispute
Change comes when we confront our beliefs with real-world evidence and start to dispute our interpretation and beliefs.

E: Energization
This is the word Seligman uses, which seems more powerful than ‘Exchange’ used in the CBC Pocketbook. Here the new evidence and understanding we have exchanged for the old energises us to make changes, think differently, do things differently, and change our world.

Our Cognitive Behavioural Coaching Pocketbook has a whole chapter on the ABCDE model and how to use it.

Is Happiness as Simple as ABC?

Of course not, but what Seligman shows us is how a simple process can radically change our perspective from pessimism to optimism.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

The Cognitive Behavioural Coaching Pocketbook

The Energy and Well-being Pocketbook

The Positive Mental Attitude Pocketbook

The Stress Pocketbook

The Emotional Intelligence Pocketbook

The Empowerment Pocketbook

You might also like our earlier blog: Socrates’ Questions, Pavlov’s Dogs and Skinner’s Box.

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Truly Radical!

Change is everywhere and whether from incoming governments or new management teams, one of the most ubiquitous refrains is:

‘We must be radical’

But what does radical really mean?

Let’s get to the root of this (ahem)

RadishesGetting to the root of a meaning in English, often takes us back to Latin.  This is no exception, and what we unearth is the Latin word ‘radix’.  Radix gives us ‘radical’ and also ‘radish’ the common, peppery and delicious root vegetable.  Radix means ‘root’.

Picture credit: La Grande Farmers’ Market

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A radical solution is one that takes us to the root of the problem, or back to basics, you might say.  So truly radical solutions should not involve an over-throw of what has gone before; they should build on the best of what already exists.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry, or AI as it is sometimes called, is formal methodology for discovering the best of what already exists, and using it as a basis for designing effective change.  It has powerful links with Positive Psychology and Positive Organisational Psychology, and and rejects the language of ‘problems’ in favour of ‘possibilities’ to be explored.

The AI process has four Steps.

Discovery

A systematic effort to discover the memories, stories and knowledge that captures the best of what an organisation has done and is doing.

DreamArticulate how an organisation could be at its very best, using pictures, narratives, quotes and statements.
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DesignWork together to figure out how to create your dream, by designing processes, collaborations and a culture that will bring it to life.

Destiny

Make things happen.  Invite others to follow, inspiring them with the dream and empowering them with the design.

While we wait

… for the Appreciative Inquiry Pocketbook, The Appreciative Inquiry Commons is the principal resource for information, ideas and tools for this extremely powerful change management technology.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might Enjoy

The Managing Change Pocketbook

The Strategy Pocketbook

The Diversity Pocketbook

The Improving Efficiency Pocketbook

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