Barbara Fredrickson is a social psychologist who has conducted extensive research into emotions and positive psychology.

In her book, Positivity, she talks about how being positive has the mind-broadening powers that allow us to be more creative.

Like daylillies, when the light is shining and we are happy we are more open to what is around us, our world literally expands and we see possibilities. But when darkness falls, just like the daylilly that closes up, we feel alone, unable to see our bright future and despondent.

Research studies have found that when you are positive it feels good because you are literally substituting negative thoughts for happy thoughts.

But that's not all, being positive changes the boundaries of our minds, expanding what we believe is possible. This in turn transforms our future, as our positive thoughts literally build up our resources (from sleeping better, having closer relationships) so that when the inevitable challenges do occur we are better equipped to handle them.

She suggests that to lift our moods to being more positive, we need to increase our positive thoughts to negative thoughts. And the ratio to strive for is 3 positive thoughts to 1 negative thought.

Positivity for Business

From a business perspective, it's important for business leaders to look at ways to encourage staff, and themselves, to be more positive. This is because being positive:

  1. Enables you to do what's right for others, rather than for yourself.
  2. Broadens the mind, by expanding the scope of your visual attention, so that it expands the conceptual connections you make. This makes us more creative, helping us to come up with more and better ideas. When you face problems, positivity makes solutions better.
  3. Builds good physical health. People with high positivity scores have lower levels of stress-related hormones.
  4. Builds connections with others, so that we have better interpersonal relationships.

Research has found that positive managers are more accurate and careful in making decisions, are more effective interpersonally, infect work groups with greater positivity which helps groups to work together better and faster. They also strike the best business deals during negotiations. In fact, business teams with a positivity ratio of 6 to 1 outperform all other types of business teams (read "Seven Factors behind creating a high-performance Business Team").

Give Thanks

But it's not just positive managers that can make a difference. Just by getting staff to think of positive things, before a meeting, this positivity enables them to bring more ideas and workable solutions to any problems discussed in meetings.

One such way to do this is at the start of a team meeting to express gratitude to work members who have undertaken or jobs well done. An example is "I appreciate Bob for helping out with my report on Monday which enabled me to meet the client's deadline" or "Let's be thankful team for the XYZ project we won last week". Just by starting business meetings on a positive note, you will find that your meetings will run much smoother and staff moods will lift.

- Digicast