Perhaps you are a coach working with corporate or individual clients, perhaps you are a manager working with a team of employees, or perhaps you are a parent of a teenager or recent college graduate. In every role, you will likely find the Strengths Cart Sort a practical tool to help others understand, own, and apply their strengths.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mike Morrison, VP and Dean of University of Toyota, speak at last month’s Global Well-Being Forum (formerly the International Positive Psychology Summit) at Gallup’s headquarters in Washington, DC. The room was jammed packed with both business and academic people interested in Mike’s talk “Personal Leadership: A Psychological […]

How do you create a positive organization? What’s the formula? In previous articles I have focused on the leader’s role in creating a positive work environment. In this article I will focus on a few other factors - Physical Location, High Quality Relationships, and Meaningful Work – using specific examples from a company I recently visited in northern Italy.

If you have ever worked in a corporation you are familiar with the notion of competencies – a prescribed set of desired behaviors a leader* is expected to exhibit in order to achieve results.  As Clifton & Buckingham write in Now, Discover Your Strengths, organizations “then spend a great deal of time and money teaching each […]

By Margaret Greenberg
Earlier this month I attended a women’s leadership conference sponsored by The George Washington University (GWU) in DC. I didn’t go to the conference with the intention of writing a Positive Psychology News Daily article – I went simply to recharge my batteries, learn something new, and of course support my daughter […]

It’s September and that means back to school time for American kids and business planning time for American businesses. In most organizations the business planning cycle is in full swing preparing for the upcoming year and beyond: and that means lots of meetings! Unfortunately, planning meetings are often met with huge groans as executives recall last year’s mind-numbing, PowerPoint presentations. Energize your business planning? That can sound like an oxymoron. […]

Last month, I wrote about what I believe a leader must Do, Know, and Be. This month I’d like to use this same, three-part model to examine the role of a coach. The intersection of these three components, the shaded area, is where excellence in one’s profession can be found. It’s where action, feeling, and thinking are aligned and integrated into a consistent whole. […]

Today is Valentine’s Day so to me there is but one topic to write about…
 
LOVE

Capacity to Love and Be Loved is one of the twenty-four character strengths measured by the Values in Action (VIA) Signature Strengths questionnaire (available at the Penn Authentic […]

Last year at this time, Dana Arakawa and I were writing up our Capstone study.  We found that managers who were in the top quartile for providing frequent recognition and encouragement had teams that were more engaged and productive (see May 10, 2007 Gallup Article for more detailed findings).  What we studied were “informal” forms of recognition, […]

When I reflect on all that I learned last year in the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP), it sometimes makes my head spin.  I’m reminded of the notion of clarity that Buckingham describes in his book The One Thing You Need to Know (2005).   I’m taking Buckingham’s advice and am placing […]