Friday, April 17, 2015

Positivity Leads to Productivity


Though Agile Coaching has been one of my responsibilities as a development manager in the corporate world, I've very recently transitioned to independent consultant and full-time Agile Coach!

Those of you who aren't in the world of software development probably have no idea what an "Agile Coach" is, but basically, it's a coach who helps teams adopt "Agile practices."  And what are "Agile Practices" you ask?  Well, that's a pretty long topic, but one thing that Agile coaches care about is.... you guessed it...  Workplace Happiness!

In fact, in a LinkedIn Agile Coaching Group Discussion today, Michael Tarnowski posted a link to this article: Positive Teams are More Productive.

The article, written by Emma Seppälä, (that's a pretty cool name, isn't it?), published in the Harvard Business Review confirms that a workplace that promotes positive and virtuous practices is the surest way to improve productivity.

From the article,

Positive and virtuous practices include:
  • Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.
  • Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.
  • Avoiding blame and forgive mistakes.
  • Inspiring one another at work.
  • Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.
  • Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust & integrity.

There are four recommendations for organizations to add positive practices to their company:

  1. Leadership - Support from the top
  2. Culture - Implement changes designed to be positive and virtuous
  3. Small Steps - Spend time each day doing things like gratitude journals or other positive habits
  4. Retreats and Workshops - Strategic focus on positive practices and leadership
I love that last one because creating Agile Retreats is one of my future goals! I even bought the AgileRetreats.com domain the other day!

What small steps can you take to create a positive atmosphere at your workplace?

1 comment:

  1. Great article!
    This area is very close to my heart. Positive Psychology in the the work place is the way forward. And Agile is one of the ways to achieve that :)

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