As a subfield of psychology Positive Psychology is often derided as a soft science or pseudoscience - but it is based on the scientific method of evaluating theories based on evidence. It is not untested self-help or secular religion, it is not a recycled version of the power of positive thinking. Christopher Peterson formed the commonly accepted definition that: “Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008). Positive psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings and behavior but with a focus on strengths and building the good life instead of focusing on weaknesses or repairing malfunctions (Peterson, 2008). The focus on positive events and influences like positive experience, positive states and traits and positive institutions helps to learn how people can live their best lives.

A quick comparison to Scrum values shows that positive psychology research and agile practice have much in common and we can learn many things from this discipline. Agile development teams can learn how tasks to be done can be most meaningful and which tools we can use to measure positivity. We can think about building resilience in challenging projects and what research teaches us about getting back on track. This blog post gives an introduction to central terms of positive psychology and how they are connected to agile practice. If you want to dive deeper I recommend the introduction Nico Rose gave to t3n Podcast in January 2021.

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WWW, POS and PERMA

Well, you’re in the World Wide Web right now, you came here from a Point Of Sale and most probably you got directed by a permalink. But that’s not what Positive Psychology tells us with these acronyms.

PERMA is a model proposed by Martin Seligman to explain and define wellbeing in greater depth. P - Positive Emotions and experiencing it is part of wellbeing. E - Engagement is being completely absorbed in something we enjoy and an important piece of wellbeing. R - Relationships are important for humans as social creatures and vital to our wellbeing. M - Meaning and dedicate ourselves to a cause truly develops a sense of wellbeing. A - Achievement and developing a drive to accomplish things is an important puzzle piece of authentic wellbeing. PERMA model gives us a framework for understanding as well as improving wellbeing. All aspects are measurable and bring more detail and deepness than just focusing on positive emotions.

POS is Positive Organizational Scholarship and an application of concepts of Positive Psychology to companies and the world of labour. Positive Organizational Scholarship deals with the study of positive characteristics, processes, and outcomes of organizations and their members. It focuses on dynamics that can be described as excellent, virtuous, resilient, or fulfilling with the goal to understand the conditions under which people function best and how to achieve them. Results of these kind of research helps us to get closer to well performing agile teams.

WWW or Want Went Well brings the focus of leadership to positive aspects of work itself. Attention must be regularly focused on the things that are going well. When talking about products and development we name things that have gone well, things of which you are proud. Afterwards we can always talk about problems but even in the bad situation there are usually successful things we can build on. That gives a completely different productive atmosphere. WWW is linked to the upward spiral, a research of how positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. This dynamic was studied and contributed to demonstrate that everyday positive emotions can initiate a cascade of psychological processes that carry enduring impact on people’s subsequent emotional well-being (Fredrickson and Joiner, 2002 / Burns et al., 2008)

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Focus in Leadership

Leadership is about developing an attitude. What do I spend time on when I lead? and who am I myself when I lead? are important questions you have to ask yourself. Organizations are often build on the ideas of Engineers and that shaped a certain concept of performance and measuring performance in organizations. This is reflected in the actions of Managers: Management attention is mostly on detecting deviations and bringing certain deviations back into the normal range. Anything that is not working draws a lot of our attention, our brain gives a lot of attention to anything negative. This is where we spend too much time and block out the good stuff. Since time resources are limited following the path of deviations from normal brings too much resource to prevent “fires” and too little is left for focus on abnormal good areas. Areas where team members excel and where processes are better need more focus, time and resources. People who are already doing abnormally well deserve the attention to see that we can build on that.

When bringing vision to product development, when focussing on the direction of the teams work focus on the things that went well. Let people show what they have accomplished and let them talk about their success. And when your team is struggeling with something always bring positive vision and tell a story of positive things the team accomplished and they can build on.

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What Positive Psychology tells us about New Work

Self-directed teams, hierarchy-free organizations and Empowerment are some of the buzz-words of new work. Focusing on positive aspects: The more people are involved in organizations and feel as authors of their own story, the more they feel they can decide for themselves, the more meaningful work feels for them.

However positive psychology would look critically at orientation and guidance. Good hierarchy gives that guidance that comes up short with forms of self-organization. Google’s Project Oxygen i.e. tried to prove that managers don’t matter. It experimented with a radical flattened organization without any managers, the experiment was a disaster and terminated after some weeks because the whole organization lacked orientation, direction and guidance on their most basic needs. And from Positive Psychologie we can learn that orientation has a lot to do with a sense of meaning.

More self-determination, more participation and less failing hierarchy - that has a separating effect - is a model Positive Psychology proposes. It is worth asking yourself which psychological need should be fulfilled with an Agile organization and whether this need can be fulfilled just as well in a classic hierarchy? Many Agile principles can also be implemented in hierarchically structured organizations. It just depends very much on the behavior of the management. Not every company can be turned around within 1-2 years because most companies run strictly according to hierarchy. And more important hierarchies can be good and hierarchies can relieve a lot of pressure. Small steps towards better hierarchies are more likely to lead to the goal.

Conclusion

Positive Psychology tells us a lot about sense and orientation in the field of labour. That people are willing to trade sacrificing parts of their income for a more meaningful experience on the job. It tells us that fruit baskets, table football tables, office parties and pizza fridays are not likely to lead to economic success. Every company can provide these feel-good measures and when a company is convinced it needs them something more basic is not right. If the work is so boring or your boss is driving you crazy fruit baskets won’t make for sustainable change.

Agile is about individuals and interactions and we can learn a lot from Positive Psychology. We can understand how human behavior works and that a positive vision and more general a focus on positive aspects of work, products or anything else leads to a much better situation in the long term.

Does agile working at the same time include “well-being” in the sense of Positive Psychology? The answer is no, not necessarily. Positive Psychology is about people with their feelings, good relationships, and strengths that need to be discovered and nurtured. So only when employees and their values are compatible with those of the agile way of working you have potential for positive emotions and commitment. Of course, the agile way of working also talks about increased and more intensive collaboration but again this does not necessarily lead to better relationships and more sense in the way we work.

Thank you, and have a beautiful day!