Business 21C - Published by UTS Business

Creative thinking doesn’t just happen. Innovation is rarely an accident. Discoveries seldom happen in isolation. Dr Tyrone Pitsis explains how positive thinking can change the innovation environment in an organisation.

Creative thinking, innovation and breakthrough discoveries seldom happen in isolation.

They occur when social and environmental factors, behaviours and attitudes combine to allow them to happen.

Take penicillin, arguably one of the key discoveries of modern times. The discovery of penicillin revolutionised medical treatment in the twentieth century, yet the mould that Alexander Fleming found to have anti-bacterial properties, only grew in his lab because the eminent scientist did not wash up his culture dishes before going on a month’s holiday.

Nonetheless, the medical breakthrough was no accident. Fleming was already a leading scientist of renown and experience. He was surrounded by colleagues and acquaintances who shared his intellectual inquisitiveness and he worked in a research environment that allowed for creative thinking that lead to innovation and discovery.

Any organisation that aims to encourage innovation needs to consider the values it promotes and how they contribute to a creative environment. Any such organisation will benefit from understanding the positive psychology of leadership.

What is positive psychology?

Positive psychology evolved from the theory that mainstream psychology had become too focused on mental illness, abnormality and deviant behaviour. By focusing on what can go wrong with the human mind, psychology had increased its understanding and the treatment of psychological problems.

While addressing what goes ‘wrong’ in the human mind is critical, identifying, generating and progressing what goes ‘right’ needs to be central to theory and research in psychology. This is the idea that underpins positive psychology. The academics who popularised the notion of positive psychology were Professor Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and a leading academic on happiness and resiliency, and Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a leading thinker on the psychology of flow and creativity over the past three decades.

Today, positive psychology has evolved into the study of phenomena that allow societies, organisations and individuals to experience life to its fullest potential. It is the study of the positive in order to understand the positive.

The areas of positive psychology of particular interest to business leaders who wish to enable their organisations and the people within in them to achieve their full potential are:

• positive organisational behaviour (POB)
• positive organisational studies (POS)

Within the discipline of POS are a number of specialties which have relevance to today’s business environment: authentic leadership, mindfulness, organisational resilience, hope in organisations, positive identify formation, checked (or realistic) optimism, signature strengths, positive power, flow and creativity, happiness, thriving communities and psychological capital. Positive organisational studies considers any organisational dynamic that enables positive functioning in individuals, with positive impact upon organisations and societies.

The positive psychology of leadership

The positive psychology of leadership is the study of leadership attributes, characteristics and behaviours that generate and enable management and organisational capabilities that allow organisations and the people within them to realise sustainable and positive outcomes.

Traditionally, the study of leadership started by defining what a leader is. The ambitious list of qualities that emerges is daunting for any aspiring leader: intelligence, trust, integrity, honesty, perseverance, caring, superior communication skills, the ability to motivate and inspire, a sense of ethics and a sense of humour. For any individual it is an unrealistic and unachievable list.

But positive psychology defines leadership less by what a leader ‘is’ and more by what he or she – or if it is an entity rather than an individual – it, ‘does’ in practice. A leader represents hope for the group or the community. And this hope is bound in the values and the ethics and the issues that the community holds.

Take two leaders of two diverse communities: US President Barack Obama, and al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden. Each one has admirers and followers. Within his own constituency, each one represents hope and reflects the values and the cultural biases of their respective constituents. To those outside the group, the same leader, with the same attributes can represent fear or inspire hatred.

To an extent then, leadership is also social, in that leaders cannot be separated from the social context within which they exist. I say they, because leadership is not necessarily an individual phenomenon.

The ‘so what’?

A positive psychologist would argue that a successful leader – one who creates an environment that promotes positive and sustainable outcomes for the organisation and the individuals within in it – will operate within the social values and aspirations of the member of the organisation. These may include integrity, transparency, fairness, and adopting a reward system that reflects the personal goals of the organisation’s members, for example.

Good leaders inspire hope. Great leaders inspire action and are able to build an environment in which people strive to achieve their best. The traditional paradigm of leadership in Australian business has been driven by the principles of economic efficiency and economic value.

A great leader who wishes to create a nurturing, innovative environment – where employees are inspired to achieve rather than are driven by the fear of failure – will adopt the values of positive psychology of leadership: collaboratively building an environment of growth, engagement and inclusiveness.

Without positive leadership, there can be no long term results for organisations, societies or indeed, for humanity. Leadership is part of a system, and does not operate in isolation from that system. Leadership can change a system, but also be changed by the system.

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Video:

TYRONE PITSIS | HOW CAN POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY HELP COMPANIES INNOVATE?

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