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The authors describe a hypothetical course that educators can use as a resource and model to (1) inform students about the transformations currently occurring as societies grounded in practices of the 20th century Industrial Age experiment with the emergent systems and structures of the 21st century Innovation Age, (2) identify experiential learning strategies that actively engage students in practicing the collaboration skills they will need to be successful, and (3) expose students to the field of positive psychology to understand their psychological strengths and to learn how to use them strategically to enjoy more success across multiple social networks. These multiple social networks present a complexity to learners that require students to develop a navigational compass. Psychological strengths refer to personality traits and competencies that enable people to do things well. In this three module course, students learn how moments of positive emotion can contribute to the high levels of engagement that occur when operating from strengths. Awareness and use of strengths energize the drive for achievement, sustain resilience, and improve performance. Students systematically identify their strengths and learn to spot strengths in others. In portfolios, they document engaged experiences to understand what truly energizes them and improves productivity. They reflect on how strengths and moments of positive emotion affect their self-esteem and self-efficacy. In class activities, students explore how to deploy strengths effectively in different settings. In the last module, they set goals and work with teams to discover why collaboration and communication are essential to maximizing the value of strengths-based learning in social networks.

In this chapter, we assume the following: (1) the root cause of most organizational problems is culture and leadership, (2) executives seldom want to deal with these root causes, (3) because life is uncertain, organizational change is an emergent process, (4) most change processes unfold by reconstructing social reality, (5) the change process is inherently relational, (6) effective change efforts are enhanced by increasing the virtue of the actors, (7) change is embedded in the learning that flows from high-quality relationships, and (8) change agents may have to transcend conventional, economic exchange norms in order to demonstrate integrity and to build trust and openness. Drawing on the field of positive organizational scholarship, we focus on the change agent. We review the literature on self-change and offer several paths for becoming a positive leader.

As they say, “Change is the only constant.” Thriving and surviving during a period of extraordinary collision of technological advances, globalization, and climate change can be daunting. At any given point in one’s life, a transition can be interpreted in terms of the magnitude of change (how big or small) and the individual’s ontological experience of change (whether it disrupts an equilibrium or adapts an emergent way of life). These four quadrants represent different ways to live in a highly dynamic and complex world. We share the resulting four-quadrant framework from a quantitative and a mixed methods study to examine responses to various ways we respond to transitions. Contingent upon these two dimensions, one can use a four-quadrant framework to mobilize resources to design a response and hypothesize a desired outcome. Individuals may find themselves at various junctions of these quadrants over a lifespan. These four quadrants provide “requisite variety” to navigate individual ontology as they move into and out of fluid spaces we often call instability during a time of transition. In this chapter, we identified social, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral factors that contribute to thriving transition experiences, embracing dynamic stability. Two new constructs were developed, the first measures the receptivity to change, Transformation Quotient (TQ) and second measures the range of responses to transitions from surviving to thriving, Thriving Transitional Experiences (TTE). We hope our work will pave the way for Thriving to become a “normal” outcome of experiencing change by transforming the lexicon and expectation of engaging with transitions.

Despite the now sizable body of research documenting the importance of emotions and emotion regulation in the workplace, there is relatively little research investigating methods for improving emotional well-being in organizations. Moreover, well-being interventions that have been historically predominant in psychology are deficient in a variety of ways. In light of these deficits, researchers in other areas of psychology have begun to investigate the role of self-guided activities in enhancing the positive aspects of emotional well-being and emotion regulation. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of self-guided activities and interventions. To this end, we provide a review and discussion of various theoretical ideas and specific interventions that have been, or could be, adapted into self-guided activities to boost emotions and emotional regulation skills in the workplace. The chapter is meant to provide practical guidance to employers, organizations, and individual employees interested in using self-guided activities to improve well-being and emotion regulation at work.

There is a compelling need for developing constructs in management science for higher relevance rather than adapting constructs developed in other domains and applying them in organizations. An inquiry in the relevance of the construct of strength developed in personality psychology and applied to organizations is compelling, as deploying strengths leads to humanizing organizations. With growing disengagement of employees at work, this study makes a significant contribution by conceptualizing strengths in the context of organizations and carrying out two studies on independent samples for developing a psychometrically validated 14-item scale for measuring it.

The study has two phases. The first phase is conceptual in nature where the authors deploy the social systems theory and use recent empirical research evidence in conceptualizing the construct of employee strengths at work (ESAW). In the second phase, the author carry out two studies on independent samples for ascertaining the factor structure by carrying out EFA and then confirming it by doing a confirmatory factor analysis.

The construct of ESAW, relevant for management science, has five factors: potential deployment, person-jot fit, managerial sensitivity, prompt assimilation and joy. The psychometrically validated scale for measuring ESAW developed in this study has 14 items. Because the construct incorporates key contextual factors, it is more relevant to organizational science and contributes to humanizing organizations.

This study evolves the construct of ESAW from a predominantly trait-based approach to a conceptualization that accounts for the contextual factors, essential for enabling strengths of employees to manifest. The study contributes to advancing literature that holds promise for humanizing organizations – a pressing need because of the growing instances of employee disengagement. The author develop a 14-item psychometrically validated scale for measuring ESAW that the practitioners can use in first assessing current levels of employee strengths’ deployment and thereafter intervening for increasing the deployment of their strengths for enabling higher well-being and superior performance.