We live in an extremely competitive world. Industry regulation is designed to create and sustain intense competition, so that customers can reap the benefits of better services at lower prices, from hard-working firms. Therefore, in order to succeed, any firm must do things better than the competition: implementing new initiatives more effectively, and implementing them faster.

Of course, this has implications for the workforce: The winning firm is going faster; the people are doing more; they’re under more pressure. In order to simply be competitive, we need to be finding ways to get our teams to do more than the equivalent teams in competing firms.

We need to get more from our people. We need them to willingly get more from themselves.

This is why the idea of “work-life balance” (or, more accurately, lack of it) has become such a big issue in the media. And your lunch-room.

Fortunately, the field of positive psychology can help your teams to address these challenges, in ways that make “workforce well-being” and “life satisfaction” programs very relevant and welcome elements within your organisational change programs. You can show your people that you care about them in times of great change.

Positive psychology is an oft-misunderstood field of research. Some regard it as a “fuzzy happy-ology” for Pollyannas. In fact, the field applies the scientific method to the question: “How do we make life more worth living, for more of the people, more of the time?” (At least, that’s the question I use to summarise it.)

Positive psychology has a lot to offer large organisations engaged in constant, and often tiring, change. Various studies and engaging exercises can help leaders and their teams to:

• build resilience in order to better handle stresses and pressures
• build supportive relationships at work — and at home
• enjoy their lives more at work and home
• make good decisions about using their leisure time well
• develop “well-being literacy” (think financial literacy and what happens when people don’t have it)
• apply the idea of well-being to sharpen organisational ethics

An organisational well-being program, or any positive leadership initiative as part of a major change effort, can equip a workforce and its leaders to manage their own lives and their impact on others, more constructively.

I bring exercises and insights from positive psychology to every project on which I work — every strategy should be a positive strategy, implemented positively. In addition, I am regularly engaged in leadership and cultural development projects that aim specifically to embed the science of positive psychology in organisations, for the benefit of all. In my view, positive psychology can often be implemented “invisibly” — as a set of guiding principles embedded in leadership development and organisational change programs.

I’m always happy to have a chat about the ways that positive psychology can inform organisational change, leadership and communication initiatives, and share my rich experience in this field: real case studies; real outcomes.