Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast

Tom Rath is an author and researcher who has spent the past two decades studying how work can improve human health and wellbeing. His ten books including, "Strengths Finder 2.0", "Wellbeing", and "Eat Move Sleep", have sold more than ten million copies, and made hundreds of appearances on global bestseller lists. During his 13 years at Gallup, Tom was the Program Leader for the development of Clifton Strengths Finder, which has helped over 20 million people to uncover their talents, and went on to lead the organization’s employee engagement, wellbeing, and leadership practices worldwide. He has served for the past five years as a Gallup Senior Scientist. And he's also an advisor, investor, and partner in several start-ups. In this podcast, we explore how small changes in the way you eat, move and sleep can improve your wellbeing and performance at work. Connect with Tom Rath:  http://www.tomrath.org You’ll Learn: [04:29] - Tom explains how the small choices around how we eat, move and sleep each day can ha

Jane Dutton is a Professor Emerita of Business Administration and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Jane's research focuses on how organizational conditions enable human thriving, and in particular, how the quality of connection between people at work affects individual and organizational flourishing. Her research explores compassion in organizations, resilience in organizations, as well as energy in organizations, and she's published over 100 articles and book chapters, edited 12 books, and written a book for managers called Energise Your Workplace: How To Build And Sustain High-Quality Connections At Work. In 2012, Jane was awarded the Scholarly Contributions in Management Award for the Academy of Management, which is a lifetime achievement award. In this week’s podcast, we explore the value of creating high-quality connections with people at work and the simple steps you can take to authentically connect with anyone – even your most challenging colleagues. Connect with Jane Dutton:  https://positi

Dr. Steven Rogelberg is an organizational psychologist who holds the title of Chancellor's Professor at UNC Charlotte for distinguished national, international and interdisciplinary contributions. He's an award-winning teacher and recipient of the very prestigious Humboldt Award for his research with over 100 publications, addressing issues such as team effectiveness, leadership, engagement, health and employee wellbeing, meetings at work and organizational research methods. His latest book, The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance, was recognized by the Washington Post as the number one leadership book to watch for in 2019 and has been featured in media outlets around the world In this week’s podcast, we explore the simple steps you can take to run more positive and productive meetings at work. Connect with Steven Rogelberg:  https://www.stevenrogelberg.com/ You’ll Learn: [02:27] - Steven explains how workplace meetings offer opportunities to improve our individua

Alissa Daire Nelson is a certified strength strategy coach who gives people the tools and guidance to put their strengths to work. She's the host of the Maximize Your Strengths podcast, and author of From Frustrated To Frickin' Awesome: 4 Steps to Achieve the Success You're Wired For. Alissa's work has been featured in media outlets all over the world. In this week’s episode, we explore the practical steps we can take to spot and develop people’s strengths – the things we’re good at and enjoy doing – using tools like Clifton Strengths in workplaces. Connect with Alissa Nelson:  https://www.daire2succeed.com/ You’ll Learn: [02:13] - Alissa explains why people’s strengths can help us quickly strengthen our relationship at work. [04:49] - Alissa explains how tools like Clifton Strengths can give us a language to spot and understand the strengths in each other. [08:04] - Alissa explains how we can use the talents that tools like Clifton Strengths surface for us as we go about our jobs to improve our performanc

Wendy Wood is a professor at the University of Southern California and visiting faculty at Insead Business school in France. Wendy has spent the last 30 years studying people's habits and understanding how to change them, and her research has been featured in media publications all over the world and is the focus of her forthcoming book Good Habits, Bad Habits. In this week’s episode, we explore what the latest research is finding out about how we can create and sustain good habits to support our wellbeing. Connect with Wendy Wood:  http://goodhabitsbadhabits.org/ You’ll Learn: [02:38] - Wendy explains why creating good habits can be challenging for many of us. [04:27] - Wendy shares what her research is finding about how we can develop good habits. [06:22] - Wendy shares why her research has found that it doesn’t take 21 days to build a habit. [08:40] - Wendy explains why thinking about the context for the habits we want to create is so important and offers some tips to make it easier to activate the habi

Cy Wakeman is a drama researcher, global thought leader, and New York Times bestselling author, recognized for cultivating a counter-intuitive, reality-based approach to leadership. Cy has helped companies such as Google, Facebook, NASA, and many others to navigate our rapidly changing world, using good mental processes to harness energy wasted in workplace drama, and reinvest that effort into achieving profound business results. Her work has been featured in several media outlets around the world. The author of several books, her latest is No Ego: How to Cut the Cost of Drama and Entitlement, and Drive Big Results. In this week’s episode, we explore at why most of us waste 2.5 hours a day on average in emotional workplaces dramas and the simple steps we can take to ditch the drama, improve our wellbeing and save ourselves time, energy, and money. Connect with Cy Wakeman:  https://www.realitybasedleadership.com/ You’ll Learn: [02:36] - Cy explains why workplaces lose billions of dollars every year due to t

Rachael Powell is the Chief Customer, People and Marketing Officer at Xero, a cloud-based accounting platform for small and medium businesses around the world. She's an experienced business executive with a demonstrated success across strategy, marketing, and human resources. Rachael has a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Melbourne and is passionate about enabling people to do the best work of their lives. In this week’s episode, we explore how Xero, a cloud-based accounting platform for small and medium businesses around the world, are using positive psychology to help their people thrive as they do the best work of their lives. Connect with Rachael Powell:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/powellrachael/ You’ll Learn: [02:29] - Rachael explains how she began applying what she learned in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology to her leadership of the people and culture function at Xero. [04:22] - Rachael shares why Xero chose Professor Martin Seligman’s PERMAH framework to guid

Robert Quinn is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, one of the co-founders of the field of positive organizational scholarship, and a co-founder of the Ross Centre for Positive Organisations. Bob's research and writing focuses on purpose, leadership, culture and change,and he is in the top 1% of professors cited in organizational behaviour textbooks. The recipient of multiple teaching awards, Bob was recently named one of the top speakers in the world on the topics of organisational culture and related issues. And last year, his talk on personal purpose went viral and has been viewed by over 16 million people. Bob has published 18 books, and his most recent book, The Economics of Higher Purpose, has just been released. In this week’s podcast we explore the economics of higher purpose in our workplaces and how we can find and consistently honor our purpose. Connect with Robert Quinn:  http://robertequinn.com/ You’ll Learn: [03:22] - Bob explains why the economics of

David Bryce Yaden is a Research Fellow and PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he works in the Positive Psychology Centre. David's research focus is on the psychology and neuroscience of spiritual, self-transcendent and other positively transformative experiences. Specifically, he's interested in understanding how these experiences can result in longterm changes to wellbeing. And how they alter fundamental faculties of consciousness, such as the sense of time, space, and self. He's the editor of the book, Being Called. And he's currently writing a book called, The Varieties of Spiritual Experiences: A Twenty-First Century Update. His work is being covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, and NPR. In this week’s podcast, we explore how positively transformative experiences can leave us feeling called to our futures and the impact they can have on our wellbeing and performance. Connect with David Yaden:  https://www.varietiescorpus.com/ Y

Loretta Breuning is the founder of the Inner Mammal Institute, which helps people manage the ups and downs of their mammal brain. As professor emerita of management at California State University East Bay, Loretta's research explores how people can discover the power of their mammalian operating system. The author of several books, including Habits of a Happy Brain, Loretta had shared her research, and talks all over the world. In this week’s podcast, we explore our brain’s happy chemicals and how we can create more happy chemicals as we work. Connect with Loretta Breuning:  https://innermammalinstitute.org/ You’ll Learn: [02:11] - Loretta explains how dopamine work and why it is important for us at work. [05:10] - Loretta offers some practical ways to spark more dopamine at work. [06:33] - Loretta outline how endorphins help our brains to perform. [09:00] - Loretta explores if endorphins might help ease social or emotional pain at work. [10:15] - Loretta explains the upside and the downside of oxytocin at

Michael Steger is the founder and director of the Centre for Meaning and Purpose, and a professor of psychology at Colorado State University. Endlessly curious about learning how to create a life worth living, Michael has spent the better part of two decades studying the vital role that meaning and purpose play in our work, health, relationships, growth, and happiness. His research has been featured in academic and general publications around the world, and he's also written several books on this topic, including Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace. In this week’s episode, we explore how meaning can be found in any job, and how workplaces can help people find the right balance to minimize both boredom and burnout. Connect with Michael Steger:  http://www.michaelfsteger.com/ You’ll Learn: [02:29] - Michael explains why a growing number of workplaces have become interested in helping their people find more meaning in their work. [05:40] - Michael shares what the research is finding when it comes to creating

Ethan Kross is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan's top-ranked social psychology programme. He's an award-winning scientist and teacher who studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships. And his research has been published in academic journals and featured in the New York Times, the Economist and the New Yorker, to name just a few. In this week’s episode, we explore how we can avoid being sucked into negativity vortex by using self-distancing and other simple hacks to improve our self-regulation at work. Connect with Ethan Kross:  Emotion & Self-Control Lab at The University Of Michigan You’ll Learn: [02:03] - Ethan outlines the consequences of becoming stuck in a negativity vortex at work. [03:38] - Ethan explains how the practice of self-distancing can help us to avoid the negativity vortex. [05:14] - Ethan provides examples of how the language we use can help us to self-distance during moments of ruminati

Jeremy Clifton is a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Martin Seligman, who is often regarded as the founder of positive psychology. After an initial career in urban economic development strategy, Jer has spent five years creating a foundational, empirically-derived typology of primal world beliefs, and his research examines many of these variables and their impact on well-being, personality traits and character strengths, professional success, depression, and voting behaviour. In this podcast, we explore how our primal beliefs about the world impact our levels of wellbeing, trust, and success at work. Connect with Jeremy Clifton:  https://myprimals.com/ You’ll Learn: [03:07] - Jer explains what his research is finding out about our primal world beliefs. [05:36] - Jer helps us to understand how primals differ from our other beliefs like growth mindsets. [06:58] - Jer outlines the 26 primal beliefs his research has uncovered. [09:56] - Jer helps us to understand wha

Sigal Barsade is a professor of management at the Wharton School of Business and focusses her research on emotional intelligence, organizational culture, unconscious bias, teamwork, leadership, and organizational change. Having consulted for organizations of all sizes across a myriad of industries, including Cisco, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Google, the NBA, and the United Nations, Sigal’s research has been featured in leading academic research journals and in media outlets around the world. In today’s episode, we explore why loneliness in workplaces is on the rise, how it impacts our wellbeing and performance, and how we can tackle it together. We also learn more about the contagion of loneliness and other emotions in the workplace and how we can manage this better. Connect with Sigal Barsade:  https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/barsade/ You’ll Learn: [02:25] - Sigal explains the impact of loneliness in workplaces on our wellbeing and performance. [08:57] - Sigal helps us understand why loneliness is on the

Dr. Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University. As a pioneer in the field of science help, her mission is to translate insights from psychology and neuroscience into practical strategies that support personal wellbeing and strengthen communities. Kelly is the author of several books, including the international bestseller, The Willpower Instinct, The Upside Of Stress, and her upcoming book, The Joy Of Movement. Her TED Talk, How To Make Stress Your Friend, is one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time with over 20 million views. In today’s podcast, we explore how we can tap into our different stress responses to shape our wellbeing and performance at work. Connect with Kelly McGonigal:  http://kellymcgonigal.com/ You’ll Learn: [03:12] - Kelly shares some of the latest research insights on the upside of stress when it comes to our wellbeing and performance at work.] [06:45] - Kelly explains biologically how our fight-or-flight stress response helps us to engage better wit

Dr Peggy Kern who is an associate professor at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education. Her research is collaborative in nature and draws on a variety of methodologies to examine questions around who thrives in life and why. She is the world’s leading researcher on measuring wellbeing using the PERMAH pillars, and has published 2 books and over 80 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. In today’s episode, we explore how systems informed positive psychology is can help workplaces to think more holistically about their wellbeing strategies and the tools that researchers and practitioners can use to help them take a systems approach. Connect with Peggy Kern:  http://www.peggykern.org/ You’ll Learn: [02:37] - Peggy explains why we need a systems-informed approach when it comes to improving wellbeing in our workplaces. [04:01] - Peggy defines how a systems-informed positive psychology approach makes visible what is invisible. [05:19] - Peggy shares some of

Jerry Colonna is the CEO and Co-Founder of reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm dedicated to the notion that better humans make better leaders. After many years as a partner and founder of private equity firms, Jerry has spent the last 20 years using the knowledge gained as an investor, an executive, and a board member for more than 100 organizations, to help entrepreneurs and others to lead with humanity, resilience, and equanimity to overcome the psychological baggage that has held them back professionally. In his new book 'reboot, leadership and the art of growing up', Jerry captures his unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy and entrepreneurial insight.  In this week’s episode, we explore why better humans make better leaders, and what we can do practically to improve our leadership and resilience skills as we work. Connect with Jerry Colonna:  https://www.reboot.io/ You’ll Learn: [02:37] - Jerry explains why better humans make better leaders. [04:01] - Jerry shares why s

Nataly Kogan is the creator of the Happier Method, and an entrepreneur, speaker, and author, whose mission is to help millions of people optimize their emotional health through science-backed practical skills, so they can thrive in work and life. She's the founder of Happier, whose online courses, Happier@Work Training Programmes, and her book Happier Now, have helped more than a million people live their best life. In this week’s episode we explore why happiness is a set of skills that workers can build in any organization, and the small, practical ways this can be incorporated into even the busiest of days. Connect with Nataly Kogan:  https://www.happier.com/ You’ll Learn: [03:11] - Nataly shares the many benefits researchers are finding of having happier employees in workplaces. [05:53] - Nataly offers some tips for helping skeptical leaders discover the value of having happier employees. [09:02] - Nataly explains why our goal shouldn’t be perfecting the skills of happiness if we want to be happier. [11

Mandy O'Neill is an associate professor of management at the George Mason University School of Business. Mandy's research focuses on how conceptualizing organizational culture as a function of emotions and gender enhances the link between culture and a number of individual teams, organizational processes, and outcomes, including decision making, attitudes, career success, health behavior, corporate strategy, and financial performance. Her research has been featured in journal and media publications all over the world. In this week’s episode, we explore why leaders and teams need to invest in creating healthy emotional cultures and the practical steps they can take based on the latest research in workplaces. Connect with Mandy O'Neill:  https://www.highqconnections.com/ You’ll Learn: [02:54] - Mandy explains what her research has found about the importance and bottom-line value of intentionally, managing the emotional culture of an organization. [04:48] - Mandy outlines what an emotional culture strategy mi

Chris Myers is an assistant professor in the management and organization discipline, the academic director of executive education at the John Hopkins University Carey Business School and holds a joint appointment in anesthesiology at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine. Chris' research and teaching focuses on individual learning, leadership development and innovation with particular attention to how people learn vicariously and share knowledge and his work has been recognized with several scholarly awards and has been featured in a range of leading academic journals and popular media articles and outlets. In this week’s podcast, we explore why focusing on learning opportunities can help workers to manage their levels of stress and how opportunities for coactive vicarious learning ensures there are no passive observers to the learning process.   Connect with Chris Myers:  http://christophergmyers.net/ You’ll Learn: [02:53] - Chris explains why focusing on learning opportunities, rather than gritt