CHAPTER 11
Pillar—Accentuate the Positive
Daniel Siegel (1999) tells a poignant story of a man who had trouble relating to his wife and daughter. Although he was a reliable and caring husband and father, he wondered if there was not something more. When Siegel asked how he was feeling, he was not quite sure. As hard and as often as he thought about it, he did not seem to be able to access his emotional side. Then he and his daughter went SCUBA diving on a vacation. There, deep in the ocean, they could communicate only using gestures. The man felt something stirring in his consciousness. He had not been able to trigger an emotional response by thinking or talking about it, but through physical gestures, he had a moment of delight in the underwater world around him. He also felt a connection with his daughter. This was the beginning of the uncovering of his emotional life.
What does it mean to be mentally healthy?
As we have pointed out, much of modern medicine and psychotherapy has assumed that mental health meant the absence of symptoms. Although ridding ourselves of disease must surely be a part of health practices, it is our contention that coaching has arisen as people realized that there must be more to being healthy than just not being ill. A new subdiscipline, positive psychology, is dedicated to studying just this topic. Both coaching and positive psychology are founded on the belief that people want more from life than an end to suffering. They want to lead meaningful, fulfilling lives. Presumably this quest can be traced back to the beginning of humanity itself.
We have said that Adler emerged from his experience as a military doctor in World War I with a mission to promote positive human characteristics that could make war no longer possible. He had concluded that when people feel connected to their family and community, and eventually to all life in the universe, they develop a capacity for contributing to others that he called “social interest.” Social interest was, for him, the measure of human health and well-being. The reception his ideas received illustrates the nature of science of his time. Although Adler taught many psychotherapists, started schools and institutes, wrote some of the first self-help books, and lectured extensively to lay audiences in Europe and the United States, his ideas were ridiculed by scientific psychology as being too value-laden. His early contributions to the positive side of psychology were largely forgotten by mainstream academics. Like coaching itself, the quest for positive health has become widely appreciated as part of social science only during the last few decades.
• What makes people truly, authentically happy?
• Does seeking pleasure lead to a fulfilling life?
• What part do traditional virtues like honesty, generosity, and gratitude play in our lives?
• Why is it desirable to cultivate “good character” in our children and ourselves?
• How do positive emotions affect our psychological well-being? Our physical well-being?
• Are there values or virtues that are more or less common in all cultures?
• What is the best way to live?
• How can we develop resilience?
• How can we influence others to be happier and more productive?
Traditional psychology and psychotherapy cannot answer questions such as these. For much of its history, psychology has conformed to a mechanistic paradigm that sought to understand the human condition objectively, in a value-free manner. Much of psychotherapy is concerned with diagnosing and treating mental illness rather than understanding and promoting mental health. In contrast, positive psychology focuses on increasing well-being, valuing virtues, and seeking to understand what makes people truly happy. Drawing on groundbreaking research, positive psychology has shifted the social science focus from attempting to describe behavior objectively, outside any system of values, to unabashedly defining and valuing a better life. Positive psychology invites psychosocial change agents to shift from pathology, victimology, and mental illness to a focus on happiness and fulfillment, human performance, positive emotions, and strengths. Little wonder that Vikki Brock’s (2008) research on the theoretical genealogy of coaching lists positive psychology as a major contributor.
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE
Personal Beginnings of Positive Psychology
As described in previous historical overviews, health and disease were inseparable concerns of classical philosophy and medicine. As Western science and medicine took on the physical body side of the mind/body divide, concerns about happiness remained in the “soul,” or nonmaterial domain of religion and spirituality. Psychotherapy and psychology ventured into this domain during the mid-19th century only by virtue of treating illness or by “objectively” exploring behavior from a materialistic stance.
Nearly a century later, Martin E. P. Seligman took up a mission of his own, as he describes in his book Authentic Happiness (2002). As a graduate student, Seligman conducted an experiment that helped to loosen the hold of behaviorism on experimental psychology. He discovered that dogs that were shocked with electricity and had no chance to escape often gave up trying to escape even when they could. Stimulus/response theory could not completely explain this finding, which Seligman named “learned helplessness.” As a professor in the psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania, he went on to study the cognitive beliefs underlying optimism and pessimism and published Learned Optimism in 1968, a runaway best seller. Since then, he has published more than 20 books and 170 articles on motivation and personality.
During 20 years of clinical research, Seligman became more and more interested in how to apply the principles he was discovering. He outlined techniques that help people rise above depression and pessimism to build optimism and create happiness. He presented his readers with a self-test for optimism and then went on to give a map of how to change pessimism into optimism.
In 1998 he became president of the American Psychological Association (APA). As he thought about what he might accomplish in this position, he recalled an experience with his five-year-old daughter. As they raked weeds in the garden, Seligman criticized the girl for throwing the leaves and dancing under them rather than focusing on the task at hand. His daughter stalked off, only to return in a few minutes to remind her father that the previous year, on her fifth birthday, she had decided to change her habit of whining. “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said to her father that day. “And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch” (Seligman, 2002, p. 28). Despite his previous knowledge, fame, years of scientific research, and eminent position, Seligman realized that it was his daughter who had issued the challenge of his lifetime.
As a result, Seligman decided to take psychology in a new direction. He chose to focus on positive psychology as a theme for his term in office as APA president. He insisted that mental health should be more than the absence of mental illness.
So that interest in positive psychology would not disappear after his term of office ended, Seligman brought together a team of experts from related areas to build a solid research base for the new field. These people included Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote Flow (1991); Edward Diener, a psychologist who had been studying happiness set points for years (1984); Barbara Frederickson, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan (2001); and Chris Peterson, who helped to systematize and gather research related to positive character traits (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).
The team set about to gather all the psychological studies on happiness, how it is gained, and what it means. However, they were able to find precious little in the way of past research on the general topic in psychological literature. The team then realized they had to go outside Western psychology to investigate beliefs and teaching about mental health and happiness beyond definitions of mental disease and illness. They examined philosophical traditions, spiritual texts, and research from around the world to gather ideas about characteristics of truly healthy human beings.
When Seligman wrote Authentic Happiness (2002) to describe his experiences and that of the positive psychology team in establishing this new field, it became another best seller. The field has now been widely accepted by the academic community. Science based on logical positivism had eschewed the promotion of values by scientists because values were assumed to bias scientific research and interfere with objectivity. But the new findings of positive psychology connected values with the search for wellness, and this contributed to the breakdown of prohibition against values-oriented science. In January 2005, Time magazine ran a feature/cover story entitled “The New Science of Happiness,” which explained the research to lay people and confirmed its usefulness and acceptance.
Positive psychology is a science with extensive relevance for the coaching profession. It can be considered a major pillar in raising coaching above the disease orientation that held sway in the helping professions during most of the 20th century. Although dozens of specific techniques are presented in the positive psychology literature (see, e.g., Peterson, 2006), research shows that the positive mind-set is what is most effective. It is important for coaches to acquaint themselves with the concepts that the field has developed. In this chapter, we review main approaches of positive psychology and related inquiries:
• Learned optimism
• Science of happiness: Pleasure, engagement, and meaning
• Resilience
• Emotional intelligence
• Accentuate the positive as a pillar for coaching
LEARNED OPTIMISM
Learned Optimism is the title of Seligman’s 1968 book. It is also a set of ideas that are just as relevant today as they were then. The ideas of learned optimism are some of the most insightful and useful models for any type of coaching.
Seligman started his research, ironically enough, by identifying and studying the concept of “learned pessimism,” specifically in animal experiments. This was a more cognitive approach to the phenomenon he had earlier identified as “learned helplessness.” He noticed that animals would stop attempting an activity, such as pressing a lever, after a widely varying number of failures. Some would stop after one press; others would go on for another 10. He became curious about whether this type of difference would hold true for people, and he identified that indeed it did: Individuals would give up on particular activities after widely varying numbers of failed attempts. He came to believe that some people persevered longer than others because of differences in “explanatory style.”
An explanatory style is our individual way of explaining what happens to us. An optimistic explanatory style means we do not see defeat as permanent, as applying in all circumstances, or as affecting our basic worth. A pessimistic explanatory style is characterized by the opposite—misfortune is forever, applies across the board, and is our own fault. (You will recognize these as examples of “maladaptive thoughts” from cognitive therapy.)
In summary, a pessimistic style explains setbacks or failures as:
• Permanent
• Pervasive
• Personal
An optimistic style, in contrast, explains positive events in this way. An optimistic style explains negative events as:
• Temporary
• Local
• External
A pessimistic style, in contrast, explains positive events in this way.
Example: Jim—“I’ve Never Been Able to Hold onto Clients and I Never Will”
Jim is a broker with a pessimistic explanatory style. He lost an account and told his coach, “That’s it. I’ll never make my target. I bet every account will turn out this way. I’ve never been able to hold onto clients, and I never will.” [Note the permanent, pervasive, and personal elements of this explanation.]
At the next session, he was pleased to tell his coach that he had won a new account, but then he “discounted” this win by saying, “But it’s only one account. Can’t count on a next time. It’s just blind luck anyway.” The coach recognized these remarks as examples of Jim’s pessimistic explanatory style. Over time, the two were able to use a combination of techniques, some of which are outlined in the text that follows, to help Jim recognize his pessimistic self-talk and substitute more positive explanations.
In order to identify clients’ style at the beginning of coaching, coaches can use the Seligman Attributional Style Questionnaire (SASQ), which yields a continuum from optimism to extreme pessimism based on 48 statements. More details can be found in Learned Optimism (1990) or at the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center (see Internet links), which provides several questionnaires based on this work.
Practices based on learned optimism have a lot in common with basic approaches and competencies of cognitive therapies and of coaching. In coaching, we ask clients to look underneath the surface content of what they say to reveal their assumptions and filters, separating facts from interpretations of events. Doing this helps develop self-awareness that enables thinking patterns to change.
Seligman (1990) suggests that developing a more optimistic way of explaining events (defeats are temporary, only apply to this situation, and are not our fault) will stop us from dragging down our success in work, relationships, health, and every other part of life.
Does Optimism Really Make a Difference?
Our earlier references to the role of the observer in quantum mechanics and to the importance of expectations make the answer to this question not at all surprising. In over 500 studies around the world, the SASQ has been shown to predict mood, motivation, and performance. Research has shown that optimistic people are more likely to be determined, decisive, and persistent. They believe that they will achieve success frequently and that their failures will be short-lived. Their optimism inspires them to achieve success. They live longer, on average by 8 years, and have less illness. Yes, the difference is significant.
Individuals who are pessimistic may suffer from feelings of hopeless-ness and depression and be more prone to poor physical health and even death. Seligman (2002) cited a study completed by the Mayo Clinic in which “optimists had 19 percent greater longevity, in terms of their life span, compared to that of pessimists” (p. 10).
In an interview with Seligman, one of us (David) asked how people start shifting from pessimism to optimism. Seligman replied:
I think the way most people start is to find out the costs of being a pessimist. As a pessimist, it’s always wet weather in the soul. They don’t do as well at work, and they get colds that will last all winter. They find themselves failing in crucial situations and their relationships go sour very easily. So when people have those kinds of hurts, if they can find that there is something useful in positive psychology, that’s where they start.
In their book How Full Is Your Bucket? authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton (2004) cited recent studies showing that negative emotions can be harmful to health. They also suggested that negativity might shorten life. However, they pointed out that positivity must be grounded in reality. Happy marriages are founded on positive interactions, according to a ratio that cannot stray by much. Five positive interactions for every one negative interaction is the magic ratio for marriage, and three positive interactions for every one negative interaction is the ratio for a happy work environment.
This brings us to an important point. Optimism should not be confused with simplistically “being positive” no matter what is going on. Seligman (2002) and others (Peterson, 2006) present evidence that the effects of optimism do not come from an unjustified positivity but from thinking negatively less often. Learned optimism is about building greater resilience and improving our performance by changing the way we interpret events, not by pasting on a happy face in every situation.
Linking Learned Optimism to Coaching
The effective coach is someone who can realistically appraise a situation and yet maintain aspects of the optimistic approach. Seligman (1990) suggests a balance between the two, even a need for a pessimistic perspective when the stakes are high. For instance, he suggests that airline passengers do not want an overly optimistic pilot.
To summarize, learned optimism suggests retaining faith that we will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, but being ready to deal realistically with those difficulties. Jim Collins (2001) refers to this as the “Stockdale paradox” after an American prisoner in the Vietnam War who survived with just such a sense of balanced optimism.
In coaching, we want to help clients focus on what they can control. Our interpretation of events is one thing we can control. Having a good understanding of learned optimism can help a coach ask questions that reveal how clients’ interpretations reduce their effectiveness. According to Seligman (1990), optimism can be learned. Coaching can help.
SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS: PLEASURE, ENGAGEMENT, AND MEANING
What do we mean by “happiness”? That was one of the first questions addressed by the new field of positive psychology. Is happiness a temporary state of mind? Or can we describe some people as generally happy (or grumpy, as Seligman’s daughter accused him of being)? What is the relationship of happiness to things or activities we take pleasure in? How is it related to the things we desire? How does it relate to work or to the people around us? How does it relate to values and purpose? What do our strengths have to do with happiness? Where does “flow” come in?
Positive psychology has explored these questions and identified three distinct kinds of happiness: the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. This theoretical framework is one of the central ideas in the field.
The Pleasant Life—and Its Limits
The pleasant life is all about everyday pleasures. This type of happiness is also called hedonic happiness. This is the happiness that comes from buying a new outfit, eating a good meal, or celebrating with friends.
A good deal of scientific research has focused on this type of happiness, with some surprising findings. Edward Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, proposed that people have a “happiness set-point” (Diener, 1984). He cited data showing that lottery winners are no happier one year after their good luck than they were before. Scientists call this “the hedonic treadmill.” We adapt to any improvement in our circumstances and then start from that point to seek more pleasure, so our happiness is short-lived.
The majority of us have a steady level of joy in life, whatever our life circumstances may be. As Diener’s research on lottery winners shows, the more “stuff” we demand from life, the unhappier we become if do not get it. Richard Layard (2003) summarized research across different countries, income levels, and age groups to support this claim.
People are bad at predicting what will make them happy. Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work in this area. He found that people focus on the peak of an experience and on the end, ignoring what happens in the middle. Thus, if something starts and ends well, we tend to react well to it. Laura Rowley (2005) has provided a brief but informative overview of Kahneman’s findings.
The things that do make us happy are not the things we expect. Peterson (2006) surveyed a number of studies that correlated different elements with happiness and life satisfaction. He found that the correlation of such admired qualities as physical attractiveness, income, intelligence, education, and social class with happiness and life satisfaction was negligible. Psychological attributes such as percent of time experiencing positive feelings, gratitude, optimism, self-esteem, and frequency of sexual intercourse, however, showed relatively large effects, along with being employed—with the caution that none of these measures is strong enough on its own to determine happiness. Perhaps even more telling is the international research (Diener & Diener, 1996) that showed most people are above the midpoint of the happiness scale most of the time.
Thus, when coaches work to help clients reframe their pessimistic explanations, we can have confidence that we are not likely starting at a low point of happiness—just one that can be higher more often.
The Good Life—Engagement and Flow
The good life is often referred to as eudaemonia, a concept initially addressed by thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle in considering the “pursuit of happiness.” It is believed that in eudaemonia, time stops and self-consciousness is blocked. An individual experiencing this state is in what Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” (1991). To achieve this state, people need to know what they are good at (their “signature strengths”—to be discussed), then organize their life around those strengths, and honor and use them more.
The “good life” is a life of engagement, of being immersed in activities we enjoy, including family life, hobbies, and work activities. The good life means we are engaged in activities that stretch and challenge us. This theory is reiterated by Richard Layard (2005), who explains that psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and applied economics have shown the causes and consequences of happiness. He believes that setting goals is necessary to our feeling happy, and he supports this belief by observing how children test themselves by seeing how fast they can run or high they can climb.
FLOW Flow is the gratifying state that we enter when we feel completely engaged in what we are doing. The characteristics of flow have been described as follows:
• The task is challenging and requires skill.
• We concentrate.
• There are clear goals.
• We get immediate feedback.
• We are deeply and (seemingly) effortlessly involved.
• We have a sense of control.
• Our sense of self vanishes.
• Time stops.
The best-known researcher in this field is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1991), an American-trained psychologist from Hungary. His life’s work has been to study what makes people truly happy. Drawing on years of systematic research, he developed the concept of “flow” as a metaphorical description of the mental state associated with feelings of optimal satisfaction and fulfillment. His analysis of the internal and external conditions giving rise to flow show that it is almost always linked to circumstances of high challenge, when personal skills are used to the utmost.
Long before Csikszentmihalyi’s research, however, the concept of “being at one” was part of the practice of Eastern spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism and Taoism. In sports, we hear athletes speak of “being in the zone” when they are in a state of peak performance. They report this state as being highly gratifying. Csikszentmihalyi was the first researcher to study these phenomena in a scientific way.
To conduct research on the conditions of flow, Csikszentmihalyi pioneered the experience sampling method (ESM) as a means of measuring the amount of flow people were experiencing. People are given a pager that goes off at random times all day. When the signal sounds, they write down what they are doing, where they are, and whom they are with, then rate the contents of their consciousness numerically: how happy they are, how much they are concentrating, how high their self-esteem is, and so on.
In a study of 824 American teens, Csikszentmihalyi (1996) divided free time into active versus passive components. Games and hobbies are active and produce flow 39% of the time. They produce the negative emotion of apathy 17% of the time. Watching television and listening to music, in contrast, are passive and produce flow only 14% of the time while they produce apathy 37% of the time. He found that the typical mood state for American teens watching television is mild depression.
Flow can come in any activity, from reading to writing, singing, painting, or even doing a spreadsheet or building a house. In order to live the good life, we need to know what our strengths are and spend time in the experience of flow using these strengths.
SIGNATURE STRENGTHS The study of human strengths is a key component of positive psychology. Seligman (2002) says that, in order to increase happiness, we must not only remove unhappiness but also understand what actually increases our sense of well-being. Having fewer negative emotions is important, but it does not guarantee having more positive ones. Research is showing that a sense of well-being and fulfillment comes from an understanding and daily exercise of our personal strengths.
The Values in Action (VIA) Strengths Inventory (University of Pennsylvania AuthenticHappiness- see Internet links) was the first major scientific project undertaken from the perspective of positive psychology. According to this groundbreaking work (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), there are 6 ubiquitous virtues (found in traditional teachings around the world) into which a series of 24 strengths can be categorized:
1. Wisdom and knowledge
2. Courage
3. Humanity
4. Justice
5. Temperance
6. Transcendence
Clients may complete the inventory online and then receive a printout that shows their top five strengths. This system provides critical tools for any coach to understand the primary resources their clients bring and to provide a framework to focus clients on utilizing those strengths to their best advantage. The Journal of Positive Psychology (see Internet links) contains several relevant articles to illustrate research in this arena (e.g., see Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2006). Studies now show that people tend to have the greatest engagement in life when they are able to constructively use their signature strengths.
LINKING “THE GOOD LIFE” TO COACHING Flow is a state that many clients desire in their work and personal life. Coaches who understand the characteristics of flow can ask their clients whether they are experiencing flow in the activity in which they are engaged. In order to increase the opportunity for a state of flow, Seligman (2002) suggested a recipe that coaches can integrate into their work with clients:
• Identify your signature strengths.
• Choose work or activities that let you use your strengths every day.
• Recraft your current work to use your signature strengths more and more often.
• If you are the employer, choose employees whose signature strengths mesh with the work they will do.
• If you are a manager, allow employees to recraft the work within the bounds of business goals.
This approach makes work more fun, transforms the job or the career into a calling, increases flow, builds loyalty, and is decidedly more profitable for the business. Infusing work with gratification makes for a long stride on the road to the good life.
Marcus Buckingham has written a series of books (Buckingham, 2007; Buckingham & Clifton, 2001; Buckingham & Coffman, 1999) that take a more business-oriented perspective in reinforcing the notion of utilizing strengths. He highlights the importance of searching for specific strengths that refocus people on core goals and purposes so that they can stop wasting energy on relations and job activities that they simply have no interest in pursuing. Buckingham has been with the Gallup organization for 17 years, and its Web site (www.gallup.com) is a rich resource, although access to its test or evaluative instruments is on a subscription basis.
Example: Marilyn—“I Have No Idea What’s Going on with Them”
Marilyn is the chief executive officer of a small professional services company. She found that her professional and administrative team members were often in conflict. “He treated me like I’m a complete moron,” or “Why can’t she just do what I asked her to do rather than questioning everything?” or “I have no idea what’s going on with them.” Because the professionals were on the road working virtually, it was very difficult to schedule enough face-to-face team-building exercises to develop better relationships and more understanding of one another. Marilyn realized that an assessment instrument might provide a shortcut to better understanding but feared that the personality measures she was familiar with often identified weaknesses that the employees would hesitate to share. Her coach suggested the VIA Strengths Inventory. Marilyn found that its emphasis on positive resources meant that employees both completed the assessment and were willing to reveal the results to the rest of the team. After a meeting where people talked about the strengths that the team as a whole exhibited, working relationships showed a marked improvement.
Two specific exercises are used in positive psychology to help people expand the awareness and use of their strengths:
1. Use your strengths in new ways. Identify your signature strengths and create ways to use them in new parts of your life.
2. Strengths date. This is fun for couples. Identify the strengths of both partners and work out an activity that would use both people’s strengths. Coaches may also suggest a similar exercise for work groups.
Coaching is by nature focused on solutions, and therefore it is strengths-based. Coaches should understand and work with the concept of strengths, using some of the tools just mentioned or widely available elsewhere. The concept of growing our strengths ties in directly with the findings from neuroscience about the brain. Focusing our attention on our weaknesses magnifies them. Attending instead to our strengths increases our capacity to use them.
In summary, the science of flow provides useful knowledge and tools for coaches. Coaches should know the conditions that bring about and inhibit flow and help their clients achieve more flow in life. After all, coaching is about improving performance, and our performance is best when we are in the zone.
The Meaningful Life—Beyond Ourselves
The meaningful life is about using our natural strengths in the service of something larger than we are. This is the route to obtaining abundant and authentic gratification. In fact, according to Seligman (2002) and the positive psychology researchers, the larger the project or mission that we attach ourselves to, the more meaning we can harness.
This discovery of modern positive psychology reminds us of lessons from ancient traditions and spiritual and religious practices as well as from psychotherapists such as Alfred Adler (1956), Abraham Maslow (1968), and Viktor Frankl (1984).
LINKING “THE MEANINGFUL LIFE” TO COACHING Richard Boyatzis (Boyatzis, Smith & Blaise, 2006) asserted that compassion—the act of focusing our attention on the needs of others—reverses the damaging effects of stress. Compassion not only reduces stress, it helps to heal its effects. The ability to focus on others is thus an important part of developing a meaningful life. The next exercises have been developed by positive psychology researchers to expand our capacity to connect with others.
• Three blessings. At the end of each day, identify three things you are grateful for and why.
• Gratitude visit. Think of someone you are truly grateful to. Write a letter to the person identifying how and why, then visit to read the letter aloud.
• Gratitude journal. Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues (2006) found that conscientiously counting one’s blessings by writing them in a journal once each week for six weeks significantly increased subjects’ overall satisfaction with life. A control group that did not keep journals showed no such gain.
Seligman (2002) believes that pursuing all three types of happiness, resulting in lives of pleasure, engagement, and meaning, is what it takes to lead an authentically happy life. He and his colleagues discovered that, just as we can train to play the violin, we can train ourselves to be happy. Clients can use the exercises just listed in coaching to do just that.
RESILIENCE
How do people deal with happenings that are clearly not positive? Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress, such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. It means bouncing back from difficult experiences.
In a Psychology Today article, Paul Stoltz remembered a plane trip at age 12 with his father. The plane had been delayed and the two sat watching a stream of people marching through the airport, none of them seeming to have any life or energy.
“Dad,” Stoltz asked, “why are these people so dead?”
“I guess it’s because life is hard,” his father answered.
“So am I going to end up like that, too?” . . .
“Some people seem to be able to escape.” (Wellner & Adox, 2000, p. 3)
Stoltz says this exchange planted the seeds for his research on strategies for dealing with adversity. He found that resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. Everyone is born with some resilience. Certain people learn to apply it day after day. They prefer to be problem solvers rather than victims. Relevant to coaching, resilience involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed.
Stoltz published the results of his research in Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities (1997). He used the acronym CORE to represent how deal with adversity:
C: Control—recognize your own power in a situation.
O: Ownership—what part of the problem do you take responsibility for solving?
R: Reach—do not catastrophize or let the problem leak into other parts of your life.
E: Endurance—do not let adversity get you down for long.
Resilience involves a complex set of traits, but a primary factor is having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family. These relationships create love and trust, provide role models, and offer encouragement and reassurance to help build a person’s resilience. Neuroscience research shows that relationships based on attuned interactions actually affect brain structure, increasing the connections in the brain that yield emotional control, the ability to concentrate, and a good deal of what is called emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995, 2006; Siegel & Hartzell, 2003).
Many of the available models regarding resilience pertain to children and youth. However, interest in adult resilience models and measures has been increasing since the study by Salvatore Maddi and Deborah Kobasa (1984) on the hardiness of executives facing the stress of AT&T restructuring in the 1980s. This trend has also increased with the discovery that the adult brain is more adaptable than previously thought.
Linking Resilience to Coaching
Coaches may find helpful several instruments to assess adult resilience, including one short test (consisting of just eight questions) developed by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte (2002).
Coaches may easily recognize signs of resilience, since many of the factors that characterize resilience also contribute to an effective coaching engagement:
• The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out
• A positive view of oneself and confidence in one’s strengths and abilities
• Skills in communication and problem solving
• The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
At times, clients who are typically quite resilient seem not to be able to access their normal resources. If we think of resilience as a sort of seawall that protects us from waves of stress, very strong tsunamis may overwhelm even the most resilient of us. In these cases, the coach may help with these in-the-moment suggestions:
• When anxiety strikes, your breathing may become shallow and quick. You can control the anxiety by controlling your breathing. Inhale slowly through your nose, breathing deeply from your belly, not your chest.
• Stress will make your body tight and stiff. You can counter the effects of stress on body and brain if you relax your muscles.
• Try positive imagery. Create an image that is relaxing, such as visualizing yourself on a secluded beach.
Longer-term resilience is a trait that can be learned and developed. If a coaching client identifies a goal of building resilience, the 10 strategies listed on the APA Help Center (www.apahelpcenter.org) may be useful. In addition to these, some people write about their deepest thoughts and feelings related to trauma or other stressful events in their lives, thus activating the storytelling power of narrative therapy. Meditation and spiritual practices can help build connections and restore hope.
Coaches may provide tips for building resilience if their clients show an interest in this topic. Clients may need to build resilience in order to access coaching and other resources that will allow them to cope with changes in their lives. Ethical considerations require coaches to refer clients to mental health therapists when severe or ongoing stress affects their basic life functions.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Research on emotional intelligence has developed in parallel with positive psychology, and there are many connections between the fields. Emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive, assess, and positively influence one’s own and other people’s emotions and intentions.
Some early psychological researchers recognized the importance of emotional intelligence versus intellectual or cognitive intelligence. We introduced David Wechsler, the author of two of the most-utilized intelligence tests, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, in chapter 7. Psychometrics text writers Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2005) suggested that, although he is commonly thought to have focused solely on cognition as the definitive aspect of intelligence, Wechsler thought factors such as emotion and motivation were necessary for a person to act intelligently.
Robert Thorndike (1910-1990) wrote about social intelligence in the 1930s. However, the concept did not become popular until Howard Gardner (1983, 1993) introduce “multiple intelligences.” Gardner theorized that intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences are as important as the type of intelligence measured by IQ tests.
In 1990 Johan D. Mayer, David Caruso, and Peter Salovey introduced the term “emotional intelligence” (EI) to the psychology world (see Mayer et al. 2000), describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.” Mayer and colleagues (2001) led many research programs to develop valid measures of EI and explore its significance. They conceived of a four-branch model of EI, which includes the capacity to:
1. Accurately perceive emotions
2. Use emotions to facilitate thinking
3. Understand emotional meanings
4. Manage emotions
In 1995 Daniel Goleman popularized the term in his best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence (1995). Goleman divided emotional intelligence into five competencies:
1. Identify and name one’s emotional states and to understand the link between emotions, thought, and action.
2. Manage one’s emotional states—control emotions or shift undesirable emotional states to more adequate ones.
3. Enter into emotional states associated with a drive to achieve and be successful.
4. Read, be sensitive to, and influence other people’s emotions.
5. Enter and sustain satisfactory interpersonal relationships.
Goleman felt that these competencies happened in stages beginning with number 1 and only then moving to number 2, and so on. More recently he has modified this model to include only 4 domains and 19 categories (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002):
1. Self-awareness. Emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, self-confidence
2. Self-management. Emotional self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement orientation, initiative, optimism, conscientiousness
3. Social Awareness. Empathy, organizational awareness, service orientation
4. Relationship Management. Inspirational leadership, influence, developing others, change catalyst, conflict management, building bonds, teamwork and collaboration
Goleman (1995) believes that EI competencies are not innate talents but learned abilities. Thus, clients may overcome gaps they identify in any of these categories. This finding is important for coaches to remember.
Linking Emotional Intelligence to Coaching
Clients benefit when coaches integrate EI into their coaching practice. Assessing and teaching EI helps improve relationships, and research shows that social factors are more important to clients’ long-term success than are technical ones. Empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, and the ability to read the emotions of others are foundational skills for clients who wish to make positive changes in their personal or work lives. Goleman’s books should be on every coach’s shelf as a resource to be shared with clients.
Several instruments are available for measuring emotional intelligence:
• BarOn Emotional Quotient-Inventory (BarOn EQ-i®). This self-report instrument assesses personal qualities that enable some people to exhibit better emotional well-being than others (High Performing Systems Inc., see Internet links).
• Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). In this test of ability, the test taker performs a series of tasks that are designed to assess his or her ability to perceive, identify, understand, and work with emotion (Multi-Health Systems Inc., see Internet links).
• Emotional & Social Competency Inventory (ECI)/Emotional Competency Inventory. In these two 360-degree instruments, people evaluate individuals within an organization or the organization as a whole. These audits can provide an organizational profile for any size department within the company. The Emotional Competency Inventory works with the 19 competencies just described (Hay Group®, 2008).
Does emotional intelligence matter in the workplace? The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace keeps track of the latest EI research in diverse fields such as management, leadership, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. Research gathered by Cherniss (1999) shows that EI supports good working relationships and positive behaviors.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE AS A PILLAR FOR COACHING
Coaching and positive psychology are linked in many ways. Many positive psychologists consider themselves to be coaches in some form, and many coaches are studying positive psychology. In addition to the University of Pennsylvania’s programs (see Internet links), Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital are sponsoring a Coaching and Positive Psychology Initiative (www.harvardcoaching.org - see Internet links). Robert Biswas-Diener and Ben Dean (2007) have published a book that builds on several years of Dean’s use of positive psychology training for coaches (www.mentorcoach.com - see Internet links).
Positive psychology suggests a model of the good coach as a happy and optimistic person. To listen for another person’s potential takes optimism. Positive psychology rejects the value-free requirement of logical positivism and unabashedly aims to help people make positive changes in their life. Coaching embraces the same mission. Positive psychologists help their clients lead a life that is happier, more engaged, and more deeply meaningful, just as coaches do.
Coaches assume that their clients are whole and healthy human beings who can discover many of their own answers. We encourage clients to rediscover the passion in their work and lives. Being able to apply the concept of levels of happiness and helping clients raise those levels if they wish to do so is a large part of unleashing a client’s potential. Positive psychology has shown many ways to do this.
The goal for us as coaches is also to lead a life that is happier, more engaged, and more deeply meaningful. By internalizing these principles in our own lives, we become an inspiring model for those with whom we work, helping to “infect” them with a cheerful outlook that enhances all of us.
As positive psychology and the many applications of emotional intelligence were emerging, developmental psychologists and child psychiatrists were studying attachment and its effects on adult pathology as well as positive relationships throughout life. Observations arising from these studies have stimulated questions among neuroscientists, such as “What are the neurological correlates of positive emotions and emotional intelligence? Are we stuck with brains that produce either happiness or unhappiness because of our past attachment experiences?”
The response that we are not “stuck” in this way is supported by the discovery that adults who were insecurely attached in childhood can actually “earn” or develop secure attachment and many of the qualities identified by positive psychology as necessary to authentic happiness. The pillar of positive psychology rose above the assumption that human values, such as what is considered positive rather than negative, were mere objects of study. This new subdiscipline sees values as guides to what makes life worth living, which has helped to break the hold of the disease model on psychotherapy. It also stimulated neuroscience to provide evidence regarding how it is possible to change one’s values to yield more positive results.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.