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Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being
by Martin Seligman by Free Press
Hardcover 
List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $13.89 Buy Now
| | Great new information about the application of Positive Psychology to health, education, psychotherapy and work. Read about the amazing Comprehensive Soldier Fitness project reported in the recent HBR. | |
The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage
by Robert S. Kaplan by Harvard Business Press
Hardcover
List Price: $39.95
Our Price: $17.79 Buy Now
I'm a great fan of the Kaplan-Norton Strategy Mapping Process so I was very excited to see this new book in the series. | | |
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Pamela Cole
PsychTech Inc. |  | |
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Greetings!
I've been working intensively with a client since the beginning of the year but I'm not too busy to have time for working on new research and development areas. The continuing application development in the field of Positive Psychology is yielding exciting results that are likely to have significant impact in organizational learning and development.
The April Harvard Business Review theme of Failure immediately caught my attention when the issue arrived in my mailbox. The issue became even more intriguing when I saw an article by Martin Seligman on Building Resilience where he reports the work that they are doing with the US Army on Comprehensive Soldier Fitness. After reading the article, I definitely wanted to learn more so I immediately ordered Seligman's latest book, Flourish.
I confess I've been a fan of Seligman since I first read his research on learned helplessness in the early 1980s. I've incorporated his research into my own work ever since then and this new body of work will add even more. I strongly believe that building resilience is something we all will need in all areas of our life, now and in the future. |
 Comprehensive Soldier Fitness |
The April 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review reported the work that Seligman and his colleagues are doing to create and implement the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.
Quoting Seligman on PTSD and the Army, "Our goal is to employ resilience training to reduce the number who struggle and increase the number who grow. We believe that business people can draw lessons from this approach, particularly in times of failure and stagnation. Working with both individual soldiers (employees) and drill sergeants (managers), we are helping to creat an army....that can turn their most difficult experiences into catalysts for improved performance."
Central to the work in Applied Positive Psychology is PERMA, A New Theory of Well-Being. The acronym stands for the five elements of Well-Being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. According to Seligman, PERMA represents the further development of his Authentic Happiness model which he felt did not accurately capture well-being and often led to misrepresentation as a model for cheerful, happy people.
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Character Strengths and DISC
I've spent the past 10 years researching the links between the work in "strengths" and DISC. The strengths approach first caught my attention in 2001 while using Gallup materials at University of Toyota. It seemed there were some clear areas of overlap in the assessment of Gallup talents/strengths and DISC behavioral styles. Since then, I've spent some time with the Seligman and Peterson Character Strengths model. Their model, Values in Action (VIA), doesn't seem to overlap DISC, although it might be possible to say that some of the character strengths are more likely/easier to develop for some DISC behavioral styles than others. The 24 Character Strengths are grouped into six categories; Strengths of Wisdom, Strengths of Courage and Bravery, Strengths of Humanity, Strengths of Justice, Strengths of Temperance, and Strengths of Transcendence. DISC has historical roots in the model of temperament (Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Melancholic). Temperament seems to represent a fundamental orientation or energy profile. Character Strengths, as measured in the VIA, seem to represent factors that have been developed through learning, interests and life experiences. Learn more at AuthenticHappiness.org where you can take the VIA for free. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts after taking the VIA and comparing it with your DISC profile. Contact me at: Pamela |
| The Impact of Culture on Strategy Execution |
The recent book by Kaplan and Norton, Execution Premium, details the challenges of implementing strategies and documents the "premium" received by organizations that persist in execution. Working with a client who has committed to an ambitious four year global growth strategy, I'm reminded of the subtle but powerful role organizational culture plays in implementation. Using DiSC PPSS with this client over the past six years has provided a unique way of looking at the cultural challenges impacting successful strategy implementation.
The most commonly occurring behavioral styles in the client culture fall in the "Northwest" of the DISC Map which is characterized by both Control and Autonomy-Seeking. The process of cascading the strategy maps from global to regional and local strategy maps and execution plans has required behaviors that represent a significant "stretch" for management at all levels. In addition to learning new planning and analysis skills, it's becoming apparent that new "soft skills" for team problem-solving and decision-making are going to be necessary for successful execution of the strategy.
DiSC PPSS supplemental reports provide information (such as problem-solving and decision-making strategies) that can be used to coach managers into a new approach, better suited to the needs of the situation. |
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| It's already nearly summer in New England and I feel like the year has just started--so much to learn, so much to design and so much to do! I'm grateful to be doing work I love with people who share a similar commitment to finding better ways to live and work.
Sincerely,
 Pamela
Pamela Cole
PsychTech, Inc. |
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