Cultivate high quality connections with others: Other people matter
Last Friday, I was presenting an overview of my ‘Cultivating Collaboration™’ development program to a packed room of over 300 delegates at the 6th International Positive Psychology Association World Congress. They were seeking practical ways to apply positive psychology into organisations. Along with my fellow presenters, Dina Pozzo and Associate Professor Peggy Kern, we shared: Practical approaches for applying positive psychology within organisations: Building courage, highly connected teams and measuring wellbeing in the workplace.
I spoke of my Cultivating Collaboration™ team development program built on evidence informed approaches to build high performing teams by fostering high-quality connections. Interacting well with others at work sounds simple right? But teams don't always get it right and organisations expend time and effort managing outcomes due to workplace incivility or toxic relationships. De-energizing relations between team members result in disengagement, distrust, disrespectful behaviour or a desire to stay home or leave the organisation. This impacts the bottom line and employee wellbeing. My program supports skill development to interact effectively and supportively to better connect and collaborate. I received great feedback that my program provides a practical solution to build high performing teams and gives participants practical tools to embed skills into daily interactions to enhance both the wellbeing and effectiveness of a team.
Five takeaway tips for applying PP in organisations for practitioners:
Listen to the business need and offer tailored solutions to fit the context
Build a business case based on evidence informed practices
Offer flexible delivery modes - use good learning design principles
Go heavy on the tools and lighter on theory
Make it easy to learn it and live it - let teams customise their action plan
Collaborative connections skills can be learned, but they require intentional practice. There is an abundance of research that fostering high quality interactions in the workplace leads to many business benefits as well as enhancing individual and team wellbeing. We can all develop skills to build high quality relationships with colleagues and create positive workplaces.
The HQCCoP – High Quality Connections Community of Practice
I also presented a poster about a global, online community of practice that I founded in 2017. The HQCCoP helps members build skills to make high quality relationships a reality in their work, community and life. You can download the poster here and join our HQCCoP group here.
More conference learnings and insights
I’m still collating my conference notes and plan to share bite size insights via a series of blogs, so get in touch here to be on the mailing list if you wish to receive these.