The benefit mindset: The psychology of contribution and everyday leadership

This paper explores the significance of mindset in shaping a future of greater possibility. One’s mindset reflects personally distinguishable attitudes, beliefs and values, which influence one’s ability to learn and lead, and to achieve and contribute. Bringing together two areas of research – a “being well” perspective from positive psychology and a socially and ecologically orientated “doing good” perspective – the Benefit Mindset is presented as a mutually supportive model for promoting wellbeing on both an individual and a collective level. It builds upon Dweck’s Fixed and Growth Mindset theory, by including the collective context in which an individual resides. The Benefit Mindset describes everyday leaders who discover their strengths to make valuable contributions to causes that are greater than the self, leaders who believe in making a meaningful difference, positioning their actions within a purposeful context. We argue that creating cultures of contribution and everyday leadership could be one of the best points of leverage we have for simultaneously bringing out the best in people, organizations and the planet

The PERMA-Profiler: A brief multidimensional measure of flourishing

Abstract:  In the book Flourish (2011), Seligman defined wellbeing in terms of five pillars: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment, or PERMA. We developed the PERMA-Profiler as a brief measure of PERMA. We first compiled hundreds of theoretically relevant items. Three studies (N = 7,188) reduced, tested, and refined items, resulting in a final set of 15 questions (three items per PERMA domain). Eight additional filler items were added, which assess overall wellbeing, negative emotion, loneliness, and physical health, resulting in a final 23-item measure. A series of eight additional studies (N = 31,966) were conducted to test the psychometrics of the measure. The PERMA-Profiler demonstrates acceptable model fit, internal and cross-time consistency, and evidence for content, convergent, and divergent validity. Scores are reported visually as a profile across domains, reflecting the multidimensional nature of flourishing. The PERMA-Profiler adds to the toolbox of wellbeing measures, allowing individuals to monitor their wellbeing across multiple psychosocial domains

Positive education: Learning and teaching for wellbeing and academic mastery

Over the past decade, positive education has emerged as a rapidly growing arm of positive psychology that has attracted both interest and critique. Through a case study, we show that positive education can positively impact students, teachers, and others within the educational community, but success is not immediate nor imminent. We suggest that successful positive education programs blend evidence-based learning from the science of positive psychology, best practices in learning and teaching, whole school strategy, and evaluation, and consider pedagogy, philosophical assumptions, and the school’s culture. Positive education must be studied, applied, and managed responsibly, as there is also potential that attempts are ineffective or do harm. Finally, we consider implications for training, teaching, and professional practice. Positive education has made significant progress, but future research and application will benefit from a unified theoretical framework that adequately incorporates educational knowledge and pedagogical practice

Inside-Out-Outside-In: A dual approach process model to developing work happiness

Abstract: This conceptual paper presents the Inside-Out-Outside-In (IO-OI) model, a dual process positive systems science approach to developing work happiness. The model suggests that work happiness of employees is influenced by individual level personal resources developed through positive employee development and positive attitudes (inside-out factors), and social resources developed at the organizational level through positive strategies and positive organizational culture (outside-in factors). The model further specifies three processes that connect outside-in and inside-out factors (attitude re-evaluation, selective exposure and confirmation bias), and a series of feedback loops that support upward spirals of positive development at the individual and organizational levels. We suggest ways in which the IO-OI model can be used and tested. The IO-OI model integrates the fields of attitudes, positive organizational scholarship, and positive organizational behavior, and provides a foundation for understanding how to best foster positive attitudes, create virtuous organizations and foster employee work happiness

Developing a model of mathematical wellbeing through a thematic analysis of the literature

Globally, many students experience low mathematical wellbeing, defined here as the fulfilment of one’s core values, accompanied by positive feelings and functioning in the mathematics classroom. To increase positive feelings about and engagement in mathematics, there is a need to better understand students’ values and align practices to supporting these values. We report on a scoping review of 40 mathematics education publications. Student values in mathematics education could be categorised into seven wellbeing dimensions, namely accomplishment, cognitions, engagement, meaning, perseverance, positive emotions, and relationships. The resulting seven-dimensional mathematical wellbeing model points to target areas to build student mathematical wellbeing

Leader autonomy support in the workplace: A meta-analytic review

Leader autonomy support (LAS) refers to a cluster of supervisory behaviors that are theorized to facilitate self-determined motivation in employees, potentially enabling well-being and performance. We report the results of a meta-analysis of perceived LAS in work settings, drawing from a database of 754 correlations across 72 studies (83 unique samples, N = 32,870). Results showed LAS correlated strongly and positively with autonomous work motivation, and was unrelated to controlled work motivation. Correlations became increasingly positive with the more internalized forms of work motivation described by self-determination theory. LAS was positively associated with basic needs, well-being, and positive work behaviors, and was negatively associated with distress. Correlations were not moderated by the source of LAS, country of the sample, publication status, or the operationalization of autonomy support. In addition, a meta-analytic path analysis supported motivational processes that underlie LAS and its consequences in workplaces. Overall, our findings lend support for autonomy support as a leadership approach that is consistent with self-determination and optimal functioning in work settings

Lifestyle and wellbeing: Exploring behavioral and demographic covariates in a large US sample

Using data from a nationally representative sample of 46,179 US adults from the Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index, we investigate covariates of four subjective mental wellbeing dimensions spanning evaluative (life satisfaction), positive affective (happiness), negative affective (worry), and eudaimonic wellbeing. Negative covariates were generally more strongly correlated with the four dimensions than positive covariates, with depression, poor health, and loneliness being the greatest negative correlates and excellent health and older age being the greatest positive correlates. We reproduce previous evidence for a “midlife crisis” around age 50 across the four wellbeing dimensions. Notably, although salutogenic behaviors (diet, exercise, socializing) correlated with greater wellbeing, there were diminishing benefits beyond thresholds of about four hours a day spent socializing, four days per week of consuming fruits and vegetables, and four days per week of exercising. Findings suggest that wellbeing is easier lost than gained, underscore the influence that relatively malleable lifestyle factors have on wellbeing, and stress the importance of multidimensional measurement for public policy

Values-Flow in Contextual Psychotherapy: The ‘What’, ‘Why’, and ‘How’ of Sustainable Values-Based Behaviour

Flow - enjoyed and fully absorbed engagement in meaningful and contextually bounded activities - is widely underutilised in psychotherapy and mental health settings. Two gold standard therapies, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), while powerful and effective in many ways, would benefit from systematic models that move from initiating positive change to sustaining meaningful change. This chapter introduces ‘Values-Flow’ – an approach aimed at building commitment and sustainable engagement in psychotherapy and values-based behaviour in working adults struggling with sub-optimal functioning. We first introduce Values-Flow and describe how it may benefit psychotherapy skills practice in everyday life. Next, we discuss why Values-Flow is relevant and enhances the practice of ACT and DBT strategies, helping to sustain engagement and creative practice of values-based actions outside of sessions. We then describe the ‘Values-Flow’ framework, which incorporates VIVA (Virtue, Involve, Vital, Accepting) and ARIA (Attend, Reflect, Inform, Act) tools that develop commitment for values-based practice in daily life. We conclude with a case-example of how Values-Flow can build commitment and sustainable engagement in homework completion in psychotherapy

The impact of founder personalities on startup success

Startup companies solve many of today’s most challenging problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy or the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to survive. The probability of success of startups has been shown to relate to several firm-level factors such as industry, location and the economy of the day. Still, attention has increasingly considered internal factors relating to the firm’s founding team, including their previous experiences and failures, their centrality in a global network of other founders and investors, as well as the team’s size. The effects of founders’ personalities on the success of new ventures are, however, mainly unknown. Here, we show that founder personality traits are a significant feature of a firm’s ultimate success. We draw upon detailed data about the success of a large-scale global sample of startups (n = 21,187). We find that the Big Five personality traits of startup founders across 30 dimensions significantly differ from that of the population at large. Key personality facets that distinguish successful entrepreneurs include a preference for variety, novelty and starting new things (openness to adventure), like being the centre of attention (lower levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher activity levels). We do not find one ’Founder-type’ personality; instead, six different personality types appear. Our results also demonstrate the benefits of larger, personality-diverse teams in startups, which show an increased likelihood of success. The findings emphasise the role of the diversity of personality types as a novel dimension of team diversity that influences performance and success