In this Expert Insight Interview, Tim Sharp discusses positive psychology and happiness. Tim Sharp is at the forefront of the positive psychology movement and is the founder of The Happiness Institute.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- The definition of positive psychology
- Why positive psychology is important in today’s world
- How to focus on strengths instead of weaknesses
Positive Psychology
When most people think of psychology, they think of clinical psychology. It primarily focuses on the assessment and treatment of depression, anxiety, and stress. About 20 years ago, a group of psychologists decided that, instead of asking what was wrong with people, they could start asking what was right with people and how to make the most of that.
This is how the positive psychology movement was born. In the simplest of terms, this movement involves a shift from an exclusive focus on problems and deficits and how to overcome them to a more balanced approach that started to include strengths, attributes, and successes, and how we can leverage them for thriving and success.
Performance Reviews
As humans, we’re almost hard-wired to look at deficits and problems. Even when corporations and businesses do performance reviews, this is what they focus on. Therefore, it is no surprise that we associate clinical psychology with problems, issues, and deficits rather than something to use to build upon successes.
Dr. Tim points out that this is not entirely inappropriate, particularly in the business world. If someone’s underperforming and needs to learn something, it is important to identify those areas. However, it should not be exclusively about this, as each one of us also has psychological strengths.
Focusing on Strengths
The best organizations and managers are much more aware of their people’s strengths, and they are much better at helping their staff use those strengths. If you can do that, you can perform a lot better.
Focusing on strengths leads to a much more positive experience because, at the end of the day, there are some things that some people will never be good at, so why put that stress on them.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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