Surprisingly little action is taken directly to promote optimism in the workplace despite a wealth of scientific studies[1] suggesting that optimistic employees:
- perform better;
- don’t give up as easily as pessimists;
- have better health;
- get stressed less easily; and
- live longer!
Active promotion of optimism in the workplace is especially important in the present gloomy and uncertain economic climate where cutbacks and redundancies are either looming on the horizon or are already underway. This is a reality, but it is important for employees to retain and develop an optimistic outlook both for their own emotional (and financial!) benefit and also for their work performance and that of the organisation.
For example, Luthens, Lebsack and Lebsack examined the relationship between nurses’ self reported optimism and their supervisors’ ratings of their performance in 2008. The results indicated a highly significant positive correlation between the nurses’ measured state optimism and their supervisors’ ratings of their performance on the following criteria: increased customer satisfaction, being committed to the mission, values and goals of the hospital and overall measures of work performance.
Martin Seligman, working with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, studied optimism in insurance agents. He learned that life insurance agents are a stunningly optimistic group. Metropolitan Life used the insurance industry career profile to help screen new agent hires. In 1985, 15,000 applicants took both an attributional style questionnaire and Met Life's career profile. One thousand agents were hired based on the career profile alone, as Met Life had done in the past. However, Met Life had a chronic shortage of agents and also hired 100 agents who scored just below the cut-off point on the career profile but in the top half of the ASQ.
After two years, the optimists in the regular group of hires were outselling the pessimists by 31%. Amazingly, however, the special hires outsold the pessimists in the regular force by 57%.
Not only is optimism good for work performance but, your levels of optimism can your staff and colleagues. Optimism can be contagious! It’s important you act as a good role model for others in the organisation. So why not take this mini- optimism test and see how optimistic you are?
How optimistic are you? Take the test!
You are part of a team working an important part of the work or school project. The deadline has just passed and you haven’t completed your part as you have had a lot of your demands on your time outside work. You feel bad for letting the rest of the team down. Which response best describes what you would think? Circle or tick response A or B:
A. I’m unreliable and always let the team down
B. I didn’t organise my time well for this assignment
A. I don’t want to work in this team again
B. I am happy to start the next assignment
A. I’m very likely to miss the next deadline too
B. This incident was a one off and won’t affect my ability to meet the next deadline
A. I’m feeling anxious about meeting future deadlines
B. I work best with challenging deadlines
A. Missing the deadline means that I’m a complete loser!
B. I’m upset I missed the deadline but I will learn from this and do better next time
A. The team will probably think I’m a loser too!
B. The team is annoyed with me but its only temporaryHow did you score?
As the test is very transparent you will have worked it out that the A response is that of a pessimist and the B response is that of an optimist. If you gave some B responses it may mean that you are limiting yourself in your capacity to cope with work and life demands in the most effective way.
Martin Seligman (1998) has spent several decades researching the characteristics of optimists compared to pessimists:
Optimists
- See bad events as temporary (not making the deadline was a one-off).
- See bad events as caused by external factors (other events took up my time).
- See good events as caused by themselves (I will learn to meet the deadline next time).
Pessimists
- See bad events as prevailing (I’ll always let the team down).
- See bad events as caused by internal factors (I’m a loser).
- See good events caused by external factors (I struck lucky).
Tips to promote optimism in the workplace
- Test for optimism levels in prospective employees as part of their selection process. Valid and reliable scales of trait-like optimism have been developed (see www.authentichappiness.com) and could help identify those candidates who possess the type of optimism predictive of job success. This seems particularly relevant in sales agents with their high cost of recruitment, training costs and turnover rate but could be equally important in highly stressful jobs such as teaching, health delivery, and social services.
- Place staff with high levels of optimism in areas or departments that match their psychological strengths. The ability to manage stress and to persist at difficult tasks seems to be consistent with high performance in many challenging jobs.
- Develop optimism in your staff. Past research has indicated that optimism has a state like quality and therefore is open to change and development. Seligman in his best- selling book Learned Optimism.(1998) offers a specific framework for developing optimism.
Martin Seligman has developed a simple system for disputing pessimistic thoughts and developing optimistic ones. It’s called the ABCDE model. This simple model could form the basis of an organisation-wide learning and development programme helped by mentors and coaches and 360-degree feedback testing
Seligman says: “The key to disputing your own pessimistic thoughts is to first recognise them and then to treat them as if they were uttered by an external person, a rival whose mission in life was to make you miserable”
Here are some simple examples you can apply to yourself and your workplace:
A for Adversity
Your thoughts determine how you interpret adversities. Negative thoughts have a negative impact on mood leading to feelings of anxiety and depression. Learned optimism lightens the effects of adversities. One person’s perceptions of events can be quite different form another’s.
A manager informs Nick and Nicky that he wants to talk with them in the morning. For Nick this is a negative event. But for Nicky it’s a positive one.
B for Beliefs
Adverse events trigger beliefs. Beliefs are just beliefs. They are not facts. Some people hold irrational beliefs which they may have learned from unpleasant past experiences like overly critical parents or teachers. Because they are automatic (automatic negative thoughts) we may not even be aware of them and how they colour our view of the world:
Nick thinks: “Oh no. I knew this job wouldn’t last. I’m a complete loser.”
Nicky thinks: “This is a great opportunity to get to know my boss better. I may be offered a promotion.”
C for Consequences
Beliefs have consequences. If the beliefs are not accurate then you are making yourself depressed and anxious for no good reason. If they are accurate then confront them head on and form a plan of action.
Nick feels sure he’s going to get the bullet! He dwells on past perceived failures. He feels anxious and depressed, can’t sleep and takes a sickie the next day.
Nicky doesn’t think much about it. She sees the boss and he offers her an exciting new project with more money. He wanted to discuss the project with Nick as well put he’s called in sick! Tough luck!
D for Disputation
It’s essential to dispute pessimistic beliefs. Imagine that you are a barrister or scientist checking their validity. There are four ways to dispute these beliefs:
- Evidence
- Alternatives
- Implications
- Usefulness
If you have a negative belief, ask yourself “Where is the evidence?” In other words, how likely is it I’m going to get fired? 5%? 10%? This approach is often called ‘catastrophising’ events.
Ask yourself if there is a better way to think about the problem and use an approach that is less destructive (this is known as reframing). Most events have multiple causes but pessimists have got into the habit of going for the most negative explanations.
For example Nick could have listed a number of possibilities of why the manager wanted to see him e.g. offering a promotion, checking holiday plans, looking at his training and development etc. Being fired might seem the least probable of the alternatives.
Implications (de-catastrophising)
Even if the belief turns out to be true doesn’t mean that one needs to catastrophise more. Because he get’s fired doesn’t automatically mean that Nick is a loser. He may have hated the job anyway, got redundancy and then better able to pursue what he did want to do.
Usefulness – even if the belief is true what good does it do to hold that belief now? I may be a loser in being fired from this job but that doesn’t mean I’m a complete loser. I’m successful in a lot of other spheres and anyhow plenty of people are losing their jobs at the moment.
E for Energisation
Letting go of pessimistic beliefs frees up energy tied up in negative states. So get rid of them and then you are all fired up ready to go!
Further reading
Luthens, K.W., Lebsack, S.A., Lebsack, R., (2008): 'Positivity in healtcare: relation of optimism to performance'. Journal of Health Organization & Management, Vol 22, issue 2, pp 178-188.
Seligman, M.E.P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster.
Seligman, M.E.P. (1998). Learned Optimism. New York: Pocket Books.
Further information on Seligman’s work can be found at www.authentichappiness.com
See also as useful background: Higgins, Monica C., Shasa Dobrow, and Kate Roloff: ‘Optimism and the boundaryless career: The role of developmental relationships.’ Journal of Organizational Behavior
[1] Shifren & Hooker, 1995; Seligman 1998