CHAPTER 3

Building Positivity in Your Organization with Psychological Capital

Dustin Bluhm

We all have the power to turn positivity on or off in ourselves.¹

“Our people are our greatest asset.” This management cliché is prominently featured on websites and in the annual reports of companies ranging from Nestlé to Goldman Sachs. Still, leader behaviors are often inconsistent with the sentiment of this platitude, but perhaps only because the phrase casts the net too broadly. In Good to Great, Jim Collins argues that “the right people” are your greatest asset, and the wrong people are more of a liability for your organization. Even then, what is it about the right people that makes them an unparalleled asset, capable of providing a sustainable competitive advantage?

Financial capital shows up in the assets column of the balance sheet and represents “what our company has.” Employees, on the other hand, show up as liabilities on the balance sheet and as expenses in the income statement. The value that employees add is considered an intangible asset that has been traditionally assessed as intellectual capital and social capital. Intellectual capital, or “what our people know,” places value on their expertise and experience to accomplish tasks related to the business. Social capital, or “who our people know,” can be just as advantageous, if not more so depending on the circumstances of your organization.

In the movement to embrace the principles of positive psychology, many organizations are prioritizing an additional intangible asset provided by their people, known as psychological capital. In reference to the more traditional types of capital, psychological capital is best summarized as “how our people are.” Sometimes referred to simply as “positivity,” psychological capital represents the hope, confidence, optimism, and resilience of the members of an organization. Its value as an intangible asset has been proven through a growing body of scientific research linking it to individual and corporate performance. Perhaps most importantly, psychological capital can be developed within employees, unlike general traits that employees may or may not possess before they join an organization.

Creating and sustaining a positive organization requires a shift in the mindset of employees at every level. Thus, the purposes of this chapter are as follows:

    •  To gain a greater understanding of psychological capital, the scientific version of workplace positivity, and how its components operate in the lives of individuals and in positive organizations

    •  To recognize the benefits of increased psychological capital

    •  To learn principles and strategies of developing psychological capital in oneself and others in an organizational setting

Components of Psychological Capital

Psychological Capital is a promising, evidence-based answer to gaining competitive advantage through people.²

Psychological capital, commonly referred to as PsyCap, goes well beyond the self-help literature on positivity that was largely spawned from The Power of Positive Thinking published in 1952. The primary difference between the popular literature and PsyCap is that PsyCap is evidence-based, with peer-reviewed scientific theory and research to support its components and claims rather than the anecdotal and nonscientific support typically offered in the positive thinking self-help books. Although this chapter cannot review all of the scientific studies with PsyCap, it will explore the details of a number of studies as well as examples that demonstrate how positivity makes a difference at work.

Each of the components that make up PsyCap had to meet rigorous scientific demands to be included in the definition of positivity. First, they had to be linked to performance that goes beyond adequate functioning and enters the realm of flourishing. Next, they needed to be anchored in scientific research, which provides a foundation for how the components fit into current scientific understanding, valid forms of measurement, and evidence that the benefits generalize to more than just one context. The third criterion is that the components of PsyCap must be open to change and development. This requirement separates PsyCap from dispositions and personality traits that are genetically and environmentally determined, and over which the individual has little or no control. Traditional selection procedures can be valuable for hiring and retaining people based on dispositional positivity, but because PsyCap is developmental, boosting it in your organization is not limited to whom you hire. Every person in your organization has the potential to work on and dramatically improve his or her psychological capital.

Although others are in consideration, only four variables made the final cut to be considered as part of psychological capital: hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. The HERO acronym is useful to remember the components of PsyCap while also pointing to the role that PsyCap plays in bringing out the champion or hero of positivity within each of us (see Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 The HERO components of psycap

Hope: The Microloan Pathway

Hope is a well-researched phenomenon in psychology defined as a positive motivational state with two elements: (1) willpower or goal-directed energy and (2) planned pathways to accomplish the goal.³ Research on hope has proliferated since the validation of a survey measure in 1996 that assesses both components, allowing researchers to discover that hope can be developed through proven strategies including goal setting, acquiring resources that help form pathways to achieve the goal, and even rewarding oneself for progress toward the goal.⁴ A review of 45 studies totaling 11,139 employees demonstrated that hope’s relationship to both well-being and performance outcomes is statistically and practically significant. High-hope employees were 28 percent more likely to perform well than low-hope employees, and 44 percent more likely to experience positive well-being and greater health.⁵ These effects seem to generalize across a variety of jobs and industries, with one series of studies showing that hope is positively associated with performance of retail sales representatives, mortgage brokers, and financial services executives.⁶ Let’s examine a case study of the power of Hope.

Through Grameen Bank, Yunus enabled hope among the Bangladeshi people. He provided reasonable financing as the key pathway for the people who could then accomplish the goal of raising themselves out of poverty. Over 95 percent of the millions of microloans issued since the bank’s inception have been to women, granting them a financial independence and opportunity that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. Yunus and the Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for their hope-bringing, microloan solution to poverty eradication.

Efficacy: Breaking through the Glass Ceiling

Consistently ranked among the top of Forbes’s Power Women, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has had a stellar career. In companies and industries dominated by men, Rometty began at General Motors for 2 years followed by a position at IBM in 1981. Still early in her career, her potential became apparent and she was offered a prominent position within the company, but she told the recruiter that she needed time to think about the offer, as she didn’t feel fully qualified. That evening as she was discussing the potential promotion with her husband, he asked her, “Do you think a man would have ever answered that question that way?”

Self-doubt and the accompanying self-perceived fraudulence can accompany any successful career, but research shows that it is more common among women than men.⁷ Prominent female business leaders from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to Ernst & Young managing partner Liz Bingham have struggled with imposter syndrome, admitting that they often feel like frauds who have tricked everyone into thinking they are smart and qualified. When British managers were surveyed about their confidence in their profession, less than a third of the male respondents expressed self-doubt about their job performance and careers compared with approximately half of the female respondents.⁸ That finding might explain the struggle that Hewlett-Packard faced when analyzing their employee records to try to get more diversity in top management positions. They discovered that men applied for promotions when they met at least 60 percent of the requirements, but that women only applied when they met all of the listed qualifications. Additionally, studies of business school students demonstrate that men negotiate salaries four times as often as women, and that they ask for 30 percent more money than their female counterparts.⁹ Is it possible that the glass ceiling and the gender earnings gap are merely products of a lack in confidence?

Efficacy is defined as belief in one’s ability to successfully complete a specific task. Although efficacy can be used interchangeably with the term confidence for the purposes of PsyCap, it is important to note that it is not generalized confidence, but task-specific confidence that is being referenced with efficacy. In other words, assessing workplace efficacy determines how confident you are at the tasks related to your job.

A great deal of research has proven that efficacy is malleable and positively predicts performance outcomes. Efficacy is derived from dedicated practice and mastery of specific tasks. Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura¹⁰ demonstrated that efficacy can be developed in a number of ways including the following:

    •  Opportunities to experience success or mastery of a task

    •  Learning and modeling task-related behaviors from others

    •  Constructive feedback designed to help the learner achieve mastery

The successes associated with learning and mastery must be accompanied by cognitive recognition that individual effort is the determining factor in improved performance. For individuals suffering from imposter syndrome, those cognitive processes are lacking and attributions for success are shifted to luck, timing, or deceit, ultimately robbing them of the opportunity to build greater confidence through learning and mastery.

Although women are especially prone to self-doubt in the business world, the feelings are by no means unique to them. Roughly 70 percent of high achievers experience feelings associated with imposter syndrome at some point in their careers. Individuals are often their own harshest critics, and while a number of strategies exist for dealing with self-doubt, sometimes all that is required is stepping outside self-critical opinions and considering strengths and successes. Venturing into the mind of a male counterpart to answer her husband’s question was a defining moment for Ginni Rometty that allowed her to start taking credit for her successes in order to build efficacy.

With the required cognitive processes in place, efficacy becomes both a product of past accomplishments and a predictor of future performance, generating an upward spiral of confidence and success. A statistical analysis of over 100 studies revealed that efficacy accounts for approximately 15 percent of the variance in performance on any given task.¹¹ Simply put, people who believe they will perform well on a task do better than people who believe they will perform poorly. Efficacy also creates a buffer against setbacks including negative feedback, self-doubt, criticism, and failure, which have a much smaller impact on individuals with strong efficacy.¹² Of course, efficacy also comes with a warning label, as crossing the line between efficacy and over-confidence or narcissism will yield negative outcomes.

Resilience: Making the Right Call to Fire Steve Jobs

Few companies are as well-known today as Apple. Co-founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Apple grew from a garage startup into a billion-dollar company within 10 years. Jobs lured John Sculley from Pepsi to lead Apple in 1983, and after 2 years of power struggles and head butting, Sculley asked for Jobs’s resignation. Months later, Sculley asserted that they had made the right move and that Jobs wouldn’t be missed. In recent interviews, Sculley is quick to admit that firing Jobs was a mistake. Yet there is a convincing argument that he might be wrong about that.¹³

Incorporating resilience into PsyCap provides an answer to the question, “despite our optimism and hope, what if things don’t work out according to plan?” After all, positive organizational scholarship doesn’t simply prescribe rose-tinted glasses. It is more a set of mental tools designed to help individuals and organizations flourish, which requires accepting and overcoming difficulties and problems. Resilience is the ability to recover from adversity and setbacks in a way that surpasses initial expectations, or in simplified terms, “bouncing back and beyond.”¹⁴ The Steve Jobs that Apple re-hired in 1997 was ready to not just bounce back, but to take Apple far beyond expectations from its early days. What factors contributed to Jobs’ resurgence as the world-renowned visionary that re-launched Apple to new heights?

Individuals can and ought to pursue resilience to prepare themselves for potential pitfalls. Resilience is established by acquiring cognitive and relationship assets, strengthening values, and mitigating personal risk factors.¹⁵ Personal assets that boost resilience include initiative, insight, relationships, creativity, and a sense of humor.¹⁶ These personal traits encourage reframing of setbacks and provide resources to tackle associated challenges. During his 12 years away from Apple, Jobs went through a valuable maturation process. In his famous speech delivered at Stanford University in 2005, Jobs admitted, “[the forced resignation from Apple] was devastating. I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

Other strategies for building resilience include emphasizing moral frameworks and values, whether derived from religion, humanism, or personal philosophies, which add meaning to suffering, trials, and failure.^17,18 Finally, mitigating personal risk factors such as poor health, stress and strain, and drug abuse helps position individuals for a successful comeback when dealing with failures.

Importantly, resilience is positively associated with workplace performance outcomes in addition to improved health and relationships. High resilience leads to posttraumatic growth as opposed to posttraumatic stress, enabling individuals to learn from mistakes, form deeper relationships, and appreciate greater meaning in life. Resilience is also associated with greater job satisfaction, work happiness, and organizational commitment¹⁹, each of which leads to improved performance. To highly resilient individuals, adversities become launching pads for greater future success.

Optimism: Entrepreneurship against All Odds

“Dr. Yes” began his first business at age 14 attempting to grow and sell Christmas trees. At 16, he dropped out of school to start a business in the publishing industry, which also didn’t last. Seemingly unfazed by failure, Dr. Yes would go on to create and sell wedding dresses, enter the world of liquor with a Vodka company, challenge Pepsi and Coke with a soft-drink company, face several of the world’s biggest brand conglomerates with a make-up company, create a line of apparel and accessories aimed at young adults, go head to head with Victoria’s Secret in the lingerie industry, challenge Apple with an MP3 player and online music sales, and even start an online social network before anyone knew what a social network was. Each of these businesses was, in its own right, a spectacular failure. But when your personal mission statement is “to have fun in [my] journey through life and learn from [my] mistakes,” leaping toward “screw it, let’s do it!” as your business mantra is almost a logical step.²⁰ Dr. Yes received that moniker from his employees who were in awe at his perpetual willingness to go against all odds and try new ideas. He also received a more noble title to precede his name, that of Sir Richard Branson.

Ever the entrepreneur, Branson has started hundreds of companies under the Virgin brand. Branson rarely discusses the past and instead prefers to focus on the bright future ahead not just for his company, but for society, the world, and even beyond with his company Virgin Galactic. Through his blogging and personal reflections hosted on the Virgin website, Branson discusses his own success and offers advice to anyone willing to listen. Lately, Branson’s message has centered on optimism, with posts titled “Why optimism pays off” and “Why science backs optimism.” He confesses, “Throughout the Virgin journey, many of our most successful ventures have been based entirely on contrarian intuition or carpe diem moments, spurred on by optimism. I cannot count the times we said yes when the odds were stacked against us, and were told by banks, partners, lawyers, consultants and experts to say no.” Branson’s optimism has both made him and cost him large sums of money. Are rose-tinted glasses that lead someone to defy his or her own team of experts really a tool for success in business?

Optimism is the quintessential component of positivity and the final member of the variable set that forms PsyCap. It manifests itself as the attribution of positive events to personal and permanent causes and negative events to external and temporary causes.²¹ Yet optimism goes beyond attributions as it also encompasses a generalized propensity to hold positive expectations about life in general, placing it opposite pessimism on a continuum of how individuals perceive the world. Research has demonstrated that the tangible benefits of optimism are not derived from the positive outlook and general cheeriness alone, rather, the benefits come from more productive mental strategies and coping mechanisms that optimists naturally adopt.²²

In the face of adversity, optimists are more likely to persevere. They frame difficult situations more positively and focus on solving the problem rather than dwelling on it. Despite the potential to overlook the realities of adversity, most optimists remain grounded in reality while preparing for best-case scenarios, allowing them to take advantage of opportunities and learn more from failures. Branson is no exception, reflecting on the times he moved forward when everyone else told him to turn back. “Those times weren’t easy and it was rarely smooth sailing,” he admitted, also advancing, “it is how a beginning entrepreneur deals with failure that sets that person apart. Failure is one of the secrets to success, since some of the best ideas arise from the ashes of a shuttered business.”²³

Although people have innate levels of optimism, they can also learn to be more optimistic. Learned optimism can be developed in organizational leaders and employees in a number of ways. First, individuals looking to increase their optimism should embrace leniency for the past. By reframing past situational constraints and concentrating on the positive actions that were directed at the problem, employees can move past perfectionism and learn from adversity and mistakes. The next step in developing optimism is learning to appreciate the positives of the present. Training oneself to find the good in every person and situation is key to optimism in the present. The third and final step to learned optimism is seeking opportunity for the future. Rather than narrowing in on the problems of why an opportunity wouldn’t succeed in the future, consider the strengths of the opportunity and the best pathways to ensure success.²⁴

A review of optimism research revealed that optimism is significantly and positively related to psychological and physical well-being indicators including life satisfaction, happiness, purpose, resilience, job satisfaction, and general physical health. It was also negatively related to depression, anxiety, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), health problems, and alcohol abuse.²⁵ Optimistic employees provide better customer service and perform at a higher level than less-optimistic employees. Further research has shown that the companies started by entrepreneurial optimists outperform companies started by pessimists.²⁶ Notably, the strongest performing companies belonged to entrepreneurs rated high in both optimism and realism, which falls in line with other research demonstrating that the companies of overly optimistic entrepreneurs tend to underperform.²⁷

Overall, the research supports the benefits of learned optimism mixed with a healthy dose of realism. Branson concludes, “I wholeheartedly believe that positive thoughts create positive action, and that only positive proactivity moves the world forward.... If you lead with optimism, confidence and success are sure to follow.”²⁸

Synergistic Psycap

PsyCap is a core construct that predicts performance and satisfaction better than any of the individual strengths that make it up.²⁹

Hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism are positive in nature, founded in scientific research, open to development, and result in increased job performance. As you may have noticed in the examples above, there is considerable overlap between the four dimensions of PsyCap, although research has demonstrated that they are also distinct from one another. Researchers within the positive organizational behavior movement sought more than just adopting relevant constructs; they were determined to understand the commonalities and potential synergy among them. Research demonstrates that hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism function synergistically; creating an umbrella construct that explains more variance in work outcomes than the individual components from which it is formed.³⁰ PsyCap is best understood as the overlap or variance shared between the four base components, and is defined as, “An individual’s positive psychological state of development that is characterized by (1) having confidence (efficacy) to take on and put in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks; (2) making a positive attribution (optimism) about succeeding now and in the future; (3) persevering toward goals and, when necessary, redirecting paths to goals (hope) in order to succeed; and (4) when beset by problems and adversity, sustaining and bouncing back and even beyond (resiliency) to attain success.”³¹ Figure 3.2 summarizes these four components with sample items from the PsyCap Questionnaire.

In a review of over 12,000 employees from over 50 studies on PsyCap, employee PsyCap was significantly and positively related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, citizenship behaviors, psychological well-being, and multiple measures of performance (self-reported, supervisory evaluations, and objective measures). Additionally, PsyCap was negatively related to undesirable work outcomes including stress, anxiety, cynicism, deviance, and turnover intentions.³² Notably, the effects of PsyCap predict these outcomes after statistically controlling for personality traits, fit with the job and the organization, and demographics like age and gender, which highlights the unique space that PsyCap occupies in scientific understanding of “how our people are.”³³ The benefits of PsyCap have been validated in a wide variety of industries (aerospace, government, healthcare, financial services, military, manufacturing, retail, etc.) and across cultures (American, Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, New Zealanders, etc.).

Figure 3.2 Higher-order PsyCap measurement sample items

The Big Picture

PsyCap is a critical component of any positive organization, yet the benefits derived from its development will be most apparent in organizations with a comprehensive plan to help positivity thrive. The vision and strategy of the organization combined with its culture can provide a positive organizational context of support and encouragement for positivity. Support from the top is critical to inspire the positive culture and vision for the company around which employees can rally. The organizational side converges with employees’ efforts to increase their PsyCap, removing doubts, fears, and cynicism that otherwise exist at the individual level when considering a shift toward positivity. In a supportive environment as described, positive self-development thrives, inspiring a collective sense of positivity accompanied with social reinforcement. This generates an upward spiral of personal and collective PsyCap development, leading to a company full of confident, optimistic, hopeful, and resilient employees. PsyCap is also a critical component in leadership development, inspiring employees to grow in responsibility and in a leadership style designed to promote positivity.

Table 3.1 The ten Buffer values

Social media marketing company Buffer is an excellent example of a positive organization that embraces PsyCap development. When it was less than a quarter of its current size, the employees gathered together and discussed the values by which they wanted to operate the company. Their value list can be seen in Table 3.1. Like most positive organizations, chief among their values is “always choose positivity and happiness,” with the first sub-dimension stating, “you strive to approach things in a positive and optimistic way.” The emphasis on optimism is obvious, but as part of that value, Buffer also recognizes the need to seek out the silver lining in difficult situations as they provide important opportunities for additional learning and growth.

With the presence of both optimism and resilience in their first value, Buffer addresses hope and efficacy in the “Focus on self-improvement” value. Every Buffer employee has self-improvement goals that are shared openly within the company, yet goals without a defined pathway are insufficient to enable progress and positivity. For that reason, team members at Buffer receive a new partner each week with whom they complete a daily review on the progress of their self-improvement goals and discuss strategies or pathways to achieve their objectives.³⁴ This positive practice also results in increased relationship assets and a degree of cross-training that adds to employee resilience. Naturally, the value of self-improvement also feeds into efficacy, as practice and mastery of both well-being and work-related tasks are prioritized at Buffer.

Even positive organizations like Buffer recognize that it would be unhealthy to let negative emotions and situations go ignored. In 2014, one of the co-founders of the company discussed on a company blog how something bad happening can feel like an elephant in the room that no one wants to address as it might violate their core principle of positivity. By opening up the conversation within the company, they discovered a simple solution that offers the flexibility to set aside the rose-tinted glasses when necessary. They removed the word “always” from their core value, altering it from “always choose positivity and happiness” to “choose positivity and happiness”. They also altered the wording on the sub-dimensions of that first value, with examples like, “you always approach things in a positive and optimistic way” and “you never complain,” becoming “you strive to approach things in a positive and optimistic way” and “you avoid complaining.” Avoiding over-optimism and over-confidence in this way allows PsyCap to remain rooted in realism, thereby yielding its best work and life outcomes.

The leaders and employees of Buffer embrace the company value of positivity as a way of life both in and out of the organization. They rely on the values when hiring, in employee interactions, in social media posts, for customer service, and more.³⁵ The stellar products and services offered by the company might have put them on the map in the social media marketing realm, but it is the culture they have created, founded in PsyCap development, that gives them their pick of who they would like to hire and keeps employees engaged with job satisfaction and very high levels of productivity.

Training and Development of PsyCap

The question remains, is prioritizing the development of PsyCap practical and cost-effective for organizations? Research confirms that PsyCap can be significantly elevated through trainings as short as 2-hour micro-interventions. For leaders seeking an enduring shift toward positivity in their organizations, a more comprehensive plan to develop employee PsyCap is warranted. The following action plan section provides key exercises and details on how to construct a revolving PsyCap development plan for your organization.

Organizational leaders can assess the impact of PsyCap development by surveying employees with the PsyCap Questionnaire (available at www.MindGarden.com). A pre-training and post-training survey will quantify the gains in positivity and set a benchmark for future improvement. Conservative estimates suggest that employee PsyCap is already responsible for a large portion of revenue and that incremental improvement will yield great financial benefits for small, medium, and large firms.³⁶ If the prospect of survey assessments of PsyCap and statistical analysis to determine the effects on your company’s performance is daunting, simply reach out to any PsyCap researcher to find a partner interested in similar questions and willing to assist.

Action Time

The average individual falls slightly above the midpoint of the PsyCap scale, confirming research that suggests we all have a slight tendency toward optimism, hope, and confidence. The benefits that come from that slight bias toward positivity can be markedly increased through purposeful development of PsyCap in yourself, other organizational leaders and managers, and employees. The following action plan elements are intended for all employees in your organization and are based on scientifically proven strategies to build each of the four components of PsyCap.

Hope Staircases

  1.  Make a list of the highest priority goals that you would like to accomplish at work in the next 6 to 12 months. Be sure to make them specific, measurable, and positive in nature (“I will ______” rather than “I won’t ______”). Include goals that stretch you beyond your normal capacity but are still potentially within reach.

  2.  Place each goal atop its own metaphorical staircase. List the milestones or steps required to achieve the goal. By breaking down difficult and long-term goals into more manageable steps, you actively create pathways through which you can direct your energy to accomplish the larger objective. Refer back to your goal staircases regularly and celebrate the completion of each step to maintain hope through the completion of your objectives.

  3.  Consider following the example of Buffer and asking a friend, team member, or supervisor to partner with you and review goal progress on a regular basis.

The hope staircase exercise can be completed at various levels within the organization including individual employees, teams, departments, and the entire company. If building hope at the company or department level, focus on a 1- to 5-year timeline depending on the current needs in the organization.

Efficacy through Task Mastery

  1.  Identify one or two tasks that are most relevant to success at your job. 2. Reflect on the greatest successes you have had with those tasks. What went right? What was different about your own attitude and performance? How did you feel after these great successes?

  3.  Identify one or two people at work that have mastered these tasks. Ask if you can observe how they do it. Chances are, they will be flattered and interested in helping you and others on their way to greater mastery.

  4.  Practice the new information you’ve gleaned from steps 2 and 3. What tactics and strategies can you incorporate into your own style and mastery of the task(s)? Don’t abandon a successful strategy if it doesn’t work for you right away. Find a way to make it your own and continue to develop it through practicing and performing.

  5.  Once you’ve practiced it enough, ask a supervisor or the person(s) from step 3 if they will observe you and provide feedback on the task. Believe in yourself, and use any constructive feedback to work toward greater task mastery.

To adopt the efficacy development strategies to the department level, identify the most critical tasks for the department’s success and the employees with the strongest mastery over those tasks. Have the employees model their methods in a live or recorded training for departmental employees to observe. Conduct regular trainings in which the employees practice the details learned from those who have mastered the critical tasks, with feedback from supervisors.

Expand Resilience Assets to Bounce Back and Beyond

  1.  Expand your resilience assets and personal human capital through cross-training in other departments of your company. Learn their processes and understand each role in the big picture of the company’s mission.

  2.  Leverage networking opportunities to build real connections within your own company and your industry. Each month, strategically target one person whom you can help, and another person who could potentially assist you, your team, or your department in a time of work crisis.

  3.  With your team and/or supervisor, identify the challenges and scenarios that are most likely to occur and negatively impact team performance. Discuss and implement strategies to minimize the risk of those challenges.

  4.  Learn coping strategies for dealing with failure. This typically begins with separating the failure from your identity and appreciating failure as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and try again.

To implement resilience training at the company level, have department leads organize a cross-training effort that incorporates all employees. A half or full day per month for each employee will greatly expand connections, knowledge, and creativity to bounce back from setbacks. Consider an ongoing socialization effort where employees get to know company managers and leaders across departments. Instruct team leaders or department leaders to identify challenges that are likely to occur and risk mitigation opportunities, along with training on coping strategies.

Optimism for the Past, Present, and Future

  1.  Leniency for the Past: Create a short list of times in your life that things didn’t work out how you had hoped. How were your actions constrained by the situation in those scenarios? What positive actions did you take? If you were currently in the middle of the scenario, what have you learned since then that could be applied to progress toward a more desirable outcome? Focus on what you did right, and what you will do better if a similar scenario arises in the future.

  2.  Appreciate the Present: Make a list of people you interact with at work on a regular basis. What qualities do you admire in them? What can you learn from them?

  3.  Appreciate the Present: At the start of each workday, write three things that you are grateful for with regard to your current role and organization. Keep a running list over the next month and reflect on the items regularly.

  4.  Opportunity Seeking for the Future: Generate a SWOT analysis for one or two future directions that you can take your company, department, or team. Be realistic about the weaknesses and threats, but frame them in a positive light by prioritizing how to mitigate the risks while maximizing the strengths and opportunities.

In trainings or internal communication, make light of mistakes made by the company in the past, noting important positive actions that were taken even when things didn’t turn out as planned. Instruct employees on the benefits of a gratitude journal for developing PsyCap and consider adopting an existing app (http://getgratitude.co/) or creating one for your organization.

To ensure that your company continues on the path to becoming a positive organization, determine an ongoing schedule that emphasizes development of the different components of PsyCap that will fit your company’s needs. For example, hope staircases might be generated each January with an extensive revisit at quarterly performance reviews, whereas building resilience assets through cross-training employees could be ongoing on a monthly basis.

Finally, to evaluate your individual and company progress on developing PsyCap, get access to the full Psychological Capital Questionnaire online at www.MindGarden.com.

For Further Reading

Psychological Capital and Beyond by Fred Luthans, Carolyn Youssef-Morgan, and Bruce Avolio.

The updated 2015 version of this text is a scholarly look at psychological capital from the principal researchers in the positive organizational behavior movement.

Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin Seligmann.

Seligmann is recognized as the father of the positive psychology movement and details decades of research on optimism in this text.

The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get Here from There by C.R. Snyder.

Learn how to foster and assess hope for yourself and your employees in this scientifically grounded text from hope’s principal researcher.

Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control by Albert Bandura.

World-renowned psychologist Albert Bandura explores the evidence on self-efficacy and confidence in this comprehensive work.

Endnotes

  1.  Fredrickson, B.L. 2009. Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3-to-1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.

  2.  Luthans, F., C.M. Youssef-Morgan, and B.J. Avolio. 2015. Psychological Capital and Beyond. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

  3.  Snyder, C.R. 2000. Handbook of Hope. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

  4.  Luthans, Psychological Capital and Beyond.

  5.  Reichard, R.J., J.B. Avey, S.J. Lopez, and M. Dowlett. 2013. “Having the Will and Finding the Way: A Review and Meta-analysis of Hope at Work.” Journal of Positive Psychology 8, pp. 292–304.

  6.  Peterson, S.J., and K. Byron. 2008. “Exploring the Role of Hope in Job Performance: Results from Four Studies.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 29, pp. 785–803.

  7.  Kolligian, J., and R.J. Sternberg. 1991. “Perceived Fraudulence in Young Adults: Is There an ‘Impostor Syndrome’?” Journal of Personality Assessment 56, pp. 308–326.

  8.  Institute of Leadership and Management. 2011. Ambition and Gender at Work. London, UK: Institute of Leadership and Management.

  9.  Babcock, L., and S. Laschever. 2003. Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

10.  Bandura, A. 1997. Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York, NY: Freeman.

11.  Stajkovic, A.D., and F. Luthans. 1998. “Self-efficacy and Work-Related Performance: A Meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 124, pp. 240–261.

12.  Bandura, A., and E. Locke. 2003. “Negative Self-efficacy and Goal Effects Revisited.” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, pp. 87–99.

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