Positive business is a sub-discipline of positive psychology. With the help of scientific studies and models, the aim is to find out what makes for satisfied and high-performing teams. The aim of this first article is to find out more about the field of positive business.
What is Positive Business?
This approach, which can also have a major impact on organizational development and change management processes, focuses on the ethical dimensions of leadership.
The aim is therefore to find out what people need at work in order to be and remain productive, happy and healthy. Studies show that positive business also leads to positive results in companies. Topics such as resilience, positive communication, mindfulness, flow and many more play a role here. Find out more about positive psychology and how it can improve your (working) life in our soft.fact whitepaper.
In order to implement positive business in the company or in teams, an open culture and the right leadership are required. This means that employees must feel comfortable and valued. At the same time, they should also be offered opportunities for growth. This is the only way to positively influence employee satisfaction. Provided, of course, that managers also live this culture.
The advantages of Positive Business
Focusing on employees has a major impact at all levels. Here is a brief overview of the biggest benefits.
At team level:
- Intrinsic motivation
- More commitment & performance
- Greater identification with the company
- Strengthened resilience
- More flow experiences
- Building good, trusting relationships
- The experience of meaningfulness
- Reduced risk of burnout
At management level:
- More stable and better team climate
- Successful cooperation
- Faster problem solving
- Higher (team) performance
At company level:
- Greater agility, innovation and productivity
- Greater economic success
- Stronger market position
- Decreasing fluctuation
- Lower sickness rate
- Lower burnout rates
- Greater confidence in change processes
3 approaches to positive business
There are various approaches that can be taken in the area of positive business. We briefly present the three most important ones below.
Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS)
This model (developed by Kim Cameron) deals with the conditions that lead to organizational excellence. POS is the overarching term for various positive approaches in organizational research. The focus is on strengths, resilience and vitality. Mistakes and weaknesses, on the other hand, take a back seat.
In this context, positive refers to the emphasis on beneficial processes and results. Organizational describes the interpersonal and structural dynamics within an organization. And scholarship refers to the scientific study of the positive.
Research shows that focusing on the positive (POS) leads to numerous positive results in companies (see the benefits in the previous section).
Psychological capital (PsyCap)
Psychological capital (by Fred Luthans), or PsyCap for short, describes the positive psychological development status of employees. It is made up of the components hope, efficiency, resilience and optimism and forms the acronym HERO.
The importance of psychological capital for companies is constantly increasing, as it promotes performance, commitment, job satisfaction and innovation. At the same time, it helps to reduce absenteeism and counterproductive work behavior.
PERMA Lead
PERMA is a central concept of positive psychology on the subject of happiness and flourishing. Markus Ebner has transferred these five aspects to the world of work and introduced the PERMA lead as a leadership model. According to this model, there are five keys to high performance:
P (positive emotions): Generation of positive emotions
E (engagement): Engagement (strengths and flow)
R (relationship): Promotion of beneficial working relationships
M (meaning): Giving meaning to work
A (accomplishment): Setting goals
Positive business - small word, big impact
As you can see, positive business can have a huge impact on the positive development of team and company dynamics. This blog post is just an overview. In the coming weeks and months, we will dive deeper into this exciting field. Stay tuned.
