What is Psychological Capital or PsyCap?
Psycap or Positive Psychological Capital is defined as the positive and developmental state of an individual in the areas of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency.
ALL the mindset stuff we need for high performance agile people in a VUCA world.
IQ was the primary measure of your “intelligence”. In the past, if you had a high IQ you were smart and in demand.
Then along came EQ, your Emotional Intelligence.
So people were hired for IQ skills and FIRED for lack of EQ skills!
Many high-level company leaders were technically skilled (IQ) – but they had limited self-awareness or people management skills (EQ).
Then along came AQ – or Adversity Intelligence or Resilience.
You needed sufficient IQ to get into the game field or team.
Good EQ keeps you in the game and working well with the team.
But if you are knocked down and stay down – what’s your value of staying down or falling down often? you must get back up quickly.
So RESILIENCE became the next most important factor on top if IQ and EQ.
We then discovered that happy people usually deliver more – because they are HAPPY.
They are not happy because they earn and deliver more.
So a positive psychological demeanor and mental resilience is vital.
Psychological Capital (PsyCap)
– Developing the Human Competitive Edge…Positive psychology, the study of optimal human functioning.
PsyCap research has found that it is related to multiple performance outcomes in the workplace:
• lower employee absenteeism
• less employee cynicism
• lower intentions to quit
• higher job satisfaction
• higher commitment
• better organizational citizenship behaviors
Research has also found PsyCap can be enhanced by a supportive work climate/Culture.
Which means CONSCIOUS LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT who consciously create and manage the workplace culture.
WHY is Psychological Capital VITAL? …It has positive correlation with performance and satisfaction
We are exposed to more uncertainty, more competition, more challenges, more stress, more illness, more expectations, more demands, less trust, less simplicity, less time! …
DO MORE WITH LESS is the organisational demand in an attempt to motivate and squeeze every last drop of effort from each employee.
So What is Psychological Capital?
Positive psychology; is the study of optimal human functioning.
It’s our new positive appreciative focus and endeavors to build holistic wellness and thriving, mainly by focusing on 2 core , psychological goals:
• Help ordinary people to live a more productive and meaningful and happy lives
• Enable the full realization of the potential that exists in each human.
2 new branches of positive psychology are being implemented into the organizational world.
• Positive organizational scholarship- (POS) a research field that emphasizes the positive characteristics of the organization that facilitates its ability to function during periods of challenge and crisis.
• Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) – focuses on measurable positive- psychological abilities of the employee. The research is to discover and develop those abilities in order to improve job performance.
Increased Psycap decreases workplace Absenteeism and Presenteeism
Positive psychology (PsyCap), organizational positive psychology focuses on situational characteristics that can be developed and improved through intervention in work place and proactive management techniques.
PsyCap focuses on measurable & improvable characteristics. Research has discovered that different constructs of POB are synergistic and their effective combination produces a higher structure with greater potential.
The implications and influences of this high potential structure are bigger than the simple sum of its parts.
Hope – Is defined as a positive motivational state where two basic elements – a successful feeling of agency (or goal-oriented determination) and pathways (or planning to achieve those goals) interact.
Self-efficacy – Is defined as people’s confidence in their ability to achieve a specific goal in a specific situation.
Optimism – was defined by Seligman by Attribution theory.
An Optimistic person is defined as one that makes “Internal” or “dispositional”, fixed and global attributions for positive events and “External” or “situational”, not fixed and specific attributions to negative events.
Optimism in Psycap is thought as a realistic construct that regards what an employee can or cannot do, as such, optimism reinforces self-efficacy and hope.
Resiliency – Is defined in Positive Psychology as a positive way of coping with danger or distress. In organizational aspect, it is defined as an ability to recuperate from stress, conflict, failure, change or increase in responsibility.
Psycap mediates between supportive climate and employee performance.
Psycap and positive supportive climate are necessary for human resources in order to achieve stable organizational growth.
Supportive climate is defined as the total support that an employee receives from their:
• coworkers,
• other departments
• and their supervisors
… which helps them with their job demands.
High Psycap Employees supports effective organizational change
Employees have the challenge and responsibility to adjust and behave according to the new strategy decided and implemented by the management, which is typically mostly with fewer resources.
During change, different aspects of employees’ Psycap is put to the test – they have to learn new ways of behaviour and be confident to do so, recover from the crisis, be motivated to cope efficiently and to believe in a better future.
Psycap and positive emotions are examples of how personal factors facilitate organizational change.
Positive change is defined as every change that the organization undergoes for its own benefit and has more positive psychological and behavioural consequences than negative ones.
The role of positive emotions is that they help workers cope with the organizational change by broadening their point of view, encourage open decision-making and giving them essential vitality for their coping.
This interaction means…. The difference in performance can be explained by their psychological constructs which manifest themselves in their cognitions, motivations and propensities and predispositions to ACT.
And new behaviours and actions are required if a better culture and more effective organisational performance is to be achieved.
Contact Tony Dovale on 083-447-6300 or www.lifemasters.co.za for expert team building ideas and events.
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