Developing Leaders for Positive Organizing

A 21st Century Repertoire for Leading in Extraordinary Times

Bernd Vogel, Rob Koonce, Paula Robinson, Bernd Vogel, Rob Koonce, Paula Robinson

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787142411
• eBook ISBN: 9781787147607
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

As revealed in the most recent global survey of human capital trends conducted by Deloitte University, leadership is rated as the top priority across all organizational levels, geographies, and functional areas in every industry. The evolving shift in leadership from individual leaders at the top to collective leadership throughout organizations requires creating and sustaining the necessary conditions through which leaders and those being led can flourish and positive organizing can thrive. Developing Leaders for Positive Organizing examines this challenge by taking the reader on an investigative journey into everyday leadership as framed in the increasingly interconnected context of human relationships within and across organizations around the globe. This book offers broad appeal for the novice working practitioner; corporate, not-for-profit, or non-profit executive; experienced scholar or academic student.

SECTION IV
Mental Fitness

CHAPTER
12

Leading with Mental Fitness

Paula Robinson

While leaders in organizations develop many and varied programs and interventions to improve their business results, the management of human capital and the relationship between employee wellbeing and business outcomes is increasingly being identified and addressed in the workplace as a crucial area of research and practice. Despite this, wellbeing has not been recognized to the extent that it should in determining its relationship to business outcomes. Only slowly are boards, senior and frontline leaders becoming aware that employee wellbeing and business performance are complementary components of a financially and psychologically healthy workplace. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers (2014), for every dollar spent on effective workplace mental health actions, an organization derives $2.30 in potential benefits resulting from, by way of example, reduced presenteeism, absenteeism, and compensation claims with an increase in ROI when multiple targeted actions are implemented. These and other studies come at a time when there is raised awareness about meeting the challenge of improving mental health in the workplace, combined with the continued challenge of achieving marketplace and stakeholder expectations.

Leaders, followers, researchers, and practitioners are now articulating the need for new and novel approaches for the engagement and promotion of positive mental health and wellbeing strategies and practices in organizational settings (Keyes, 2007; Luthans, 2012). One such approach is mental fitness. This chapter explores the concept and application of mental fitness in organizations. The essential proposition is that the concept of mental fitness can assist leaders to formulate and implement a systematic course of action to meet the challenge of measurably improving mental health and wellbeing outcomes.

The concept of mental fitness was first suggested over 50 years ago in the United States by psychologist Dorothea McCarthy (1964) as an answer to the following plea by the distinguished behavioral scientist and public health expert Dr. Andie Knutson:

Positive mental health has been left on the doorstep of the public and professional community as a neglected and starving stepchild … it would be useful to have some new term to replace positive mental health … that retains the good will and enthusiastic participation of members of the mental health profession and their medical, health and welfare colleagues, and yet effectively elicits the involvement of members of the social sciences. (Knutson, 1963, pp. 303–304)

McCarthy suggested the term mental fitness to express Knutson’s positive mental health concept. She asked the Committee on Mental Health Research Programs “to try it on for size and see how well it fits” (p. 201). McCarthy thought the term would, in her words, “serve well through the many gradations represented by the various categories of clients served by community mental health clinics, to the well adjusted, spontaneous, natural, creative individuals who are coping with reality, making effective contributions to society and realising their intellectual, emotional and social potential” (p. 202). McCarthy also stated that mental fitness formed an excellent counterpart for the late President Kennedy’s population-based program for physical fitness, that is, a total fitness initiative combining mental and physical fitness together.

McCarthy’s rationale for using the term mental fitness can also assist leaders in moving themselves and their followers’ focus from the stigma associated to “mental health.” Further, a total fitness framework can assist in organizing strategy and practices to support individual, team, and cultural shifts toward positive mental/physical health and wellbeing engagement, development, promotion, and mental/physical illness prevention. The ability to expand this narrative to an organizational context is self-evident.

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM, 2000) also supports a holistic approach to fitness as they adopt a definition of “health-related fitness” developed by Pate (1988) that defines fitness as the demonstration of capacities that help prevent disease and promote health. The World Health Organization are already utilizing the term fitness in their evidence paper on mental health promotion (see Naidoo & Wills, 2000) which states that “health can mean the absence of disease or disability but, just as often, may refer to a state of fitness and ability or to a reservoir of personal resources that can be called on when needed” (p. 16).

Some 40 years after Knutson’s plea with the formal introduction of the positive psychology (PP) paradigm, Martin Seligman, President of the American Psychological Association, agreed that the focus on pathology had largely dominated the field of psychology over several decades, and had unwittingly created an image of mental health as an absence of mental illness (Seligman, 1998a, 1998b, 1999; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

The rapidly expanding subfield of psychology quickly offered traditional psychology and the social sciences a very specific focus on positive mental health and its predictive power in multiple contexts, for example, work, life, school. Essentially PP is the study of what makes life worth living within the pillars of positive emotion, positive character, and positive institutions (Seligman, 2002a, 2002b). Seligman (2008) argues that a scientific discipline of total positive health that goes beyond the absence of disease and infirmity barely exists. PP is the study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals, schools, organizations, and communities to thrive (Sheldon & King, 2001). PP is thus an attempt to adopt a more open and appreciative perspective regarding human potentials, motives, and capacities. One of the principle aims of PP has been to address the historical imbalance in psychology (i.e., the emphasis on illness or deficiency) by encouraging the field to supplement its hard-won knowledge about suffering and mental illness with more knowledge about wellbeing.

It is important to note that PP has rigor; PP is not a self-help movement or a repackaging of the power of positive thinking. It is not happy-ology (PP does not encourage extreme levels of happiness) and it is not a passing trend. PP is a science that brings the many virtues of science – replication, controlled causal studies, peer review, representative sampling to understand how and when people are at their best (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2008). Researchers in the fields of PP and wellbeing now have a growing body of evidence for the value and effectiveness of specific interventions. Far from being “pop psych,” these fields are supported by research. Unfortunately, although organizations are starting to build corporate wellbeing programs and initiatives, they often lack research-based definitions, models, and activities to ensure solid foundations to counter the voices of cynics and keep the initiatives out of the category of “self-help.”

PP continues to make important theoretical and empirical contributions to the science and practice of improving levels of wellbeing across multiple contexts.

Understanding Wellbeing

An important first step to understanding wellbeing at work through the mental fitness lens is to achieve wellbeing literacy, defined as “the vocabulary, knowledge and skills of wellbeing that can be used to intentionally maintain or improve the wellbeing of self and others” (Oades, 2015; Robinson, 2016). There is no doubt that wellbeing literacy must be a top priority in organizations as unfortunately the term wellbeing is often utilized without the proper knowledge of what the term actually means. Over the last few decades, the increasing interest in the concept of wellbeing has produced varying levels of science and practice. Unfortunately, it has largely been the practice to date that the application of the science has been outcome or transaction focused, whereas most researchers agree that wellbeing is and should be viewed and applied as a multidimensional construct, that is, it refers to several distinct but related dimensions treated as a single theoretical concept (Law, Wong, & Mobley, 1998). A comparative example is the concept of physical fitness (single theoretical concept) consisting of strength, flexibility, and endurance (distinct, but multiple related dimensions). There are a number of definitions for wellbeing, here are just a few:

The positive and sustainable characteristics which enable individuals and organizations to thrive and flourish. (Institute of Wellbeing, 2013)

The balance point between an individual’s resource pool and the challenges faced. (Dodge, Daly, Huyton, & Sanders, 2012)

A state in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to his or her own community. (World Health Organization, 2014)

To add further complexity to the concept of wellbeing, scholars have often categorized wellbeing into two types: subjective wellbeing (sometimes known as hedonic wellbeing) and psychological (or eudaimonic) wellbeing (see Robinson, 2016). Subjective wellbeing (SWB) assesses life satisfaction in terms of how “happy” and “satisfied” one feels with their life at a given moment. It measures wellbeing based on the level of pleasure attained compared to the level of pain avoided. SWB relates to a sense of positive affect (emotion) that comes with feeling good about one’s self, experiencing pleasure, and having fun. Historically, most “happiness” research has used measures of SWB because the concept is easy to define and work with (Diener, 1984).

Psychological wellbeing (PWB) is more complex by being concerned with the quality of relationships, engagement, and meaning we have in our lives (Ryff, 1989). For example, PWB relates to:

• One’s values;
• One’s sense of meaning and purpose in life, at work and the contribution they make to the world;
• How one develops relationships and get along with others;
• The sense of control and self-determination one has over their life;
• One’s ability to shape their environment;
• One’s ability to be authentic and like themselves;
• One’s opportunities to learn, grow, and be challenged.

Based on many years of research, scholars and practitioners now suggest focusing on developing wellbeing, not just as a preventative strategy to reduce illness, but for its own sake because evidence suggests that, economically and socially, employees, families, and communities are stronger when they have higher levels of wellbeing. For example, research has revealed, improved levels of wellbeing are associated with the following:

Seligman (2011)	Faster recovery from surgery
Heaphy and Dutton (2008a, 2008b), Dutton and Ragins (2007)	Lower incidence of cancer Improved immunity to colds and flu viruses Reduced incidence of heart attacks Increased ability to cope with stress Higher levels of worker satisfaction and productivity Increased life expectancy
Fredrickson (2001)	Stronger verbal communication skills Improved memory More openness in social relationships
Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, and Linkins (2009)	Fewer illnesses Fewer marriage breakups More creative and flexible thinking Increased creativity Higher levels of mental acuity Better performance at work Improved ability to make decisions Greater resilience following trauma
Fredrickson (2008)	Greater tolerance toward others
Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, and Schellinger (2011)	Better academic results
Gray and Hackling (2009)	Higher levels of academic engagement and participation Higher retention rates
Noble and McGrath (2012)	Stronger social and emotional skills
Bird and Markle (2012)	Prosocial behavior
Brunwasser, Gillham, and Kim (2009)	Higher levels of optimi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Section I Emergent Mindset
• Section II Courage
• Section III Forgiveness
• Section IV Mental Fitness
• Section V Positive Energy
• Section VI Human Values
• Index