How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 21: PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS
1.
Summarized in: Dweck, C.S. (2006). 
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
New York: Random
House.
2.
In researching 
Strengths-Based Leadership
, the report from which these figures are drawn, Gallup
researchers studied more than one million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews
with leaders, and interviewed more than 10,000 followers. These specific numbers come from a study of
65,672 employees, 530 “work units” (i.e., teams), and 469 business units ranging from retail stores to
factories.
3.
Corporate Leadership Council (2002). 
Building the High-Performance Workforce: A Quantitative
Analysis of the Effectiveness of Performance Management Strategies.
Washington, DC.
4.
The original study showing these results was: Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T.A., Park, N., & Peterson, C.
(2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. 
American Psychologist, 60,
410–421. Alex Linley’s work has been particularly useful in showing the stickiness of long-term effects,
e.g., in: Govindji, R., & Linley, A.P. (2007). Strengths use, self-concordance and well-being: Implications
for strengths coaching and coaching psychologists. 
International Coaching Psychology Review, 2
(2), 143–
153; and Wood, A.M., Linley, P.A., Maltby, J., Kashdan, T.B., & Hurling, R. (2011). Using personal and
psychological strengths leads to increases in well-being over time: A longitudinal study and the
development of the strengths use questionnaire. 
Personality and Individual Differences, 50
(1), 15–19.
5.
The original strengths survey that formed part of Seligman and Peterson’s research can be found at
http://www.viacharacter.org
. Gallup also maintains a suite of strength-based tools that you can access for a
fee at 
https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com
. The Centre for Applied Positive Psychology offers a survey
that distinguishes between learned vs. innate strengths, and realized vs. unrealized strengths, at
https://assessment.r2profiler.com
.
6.
Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J.E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of
their work. 
Academy of Management Review, 26
(2), 179–201. You can take the “job crafting” survey they
designed by going to 
http://jobcrafting.org
.
7.
Grant, A.M. (2013). 
Give and take: Why helping others drives our success
. New York: Penguin.
POSTSCRIPT
1.
Merzenich, M. (2013). 
Soft-wired: How the new science of brain plasticity can change your life.
San
Francisco: Parnassus.
2.
There’s even research to suggest he’s right about the power of the pebble. In a study that tested the
effectiveness of various interventions in prompting people to save more, Dan Ariely and colleagues found
that a “tangible track-keeping device” (in this case, a large shiny coin kept close to hand) did better than
anything else. Akbas, M., Ariely, D., Robalino, D.A., Weber, M. (2015) 
How to Help the Poor to Save a
Bit: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya.
Duke University Working Paper, January.