Page 56 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE MAKING OF ABUNDANCE

shaped their organization’s future identity around efficiency,
trust, and citizenship. They then had to turn this corporate
identity or brand into personal action among the 30,000-
plus bank employees.
Chapter 3 describes how leaders can shape an
organ ization-wide identity and then help individuals use
their personal strengths to foster that identity and succeed
at work. It also describes how leaders shape organizational
strengths (capabilities) to build an abundant corporate iden-
tity or brand, turning external stakeholder expectations into
internal corporate actions.
The field of positive psychology helps leaders answer this
primary question. The traditional approach of psychology
to depression, anxiety, and addiction disorders has been to
develop models and techniques for fixing what is wrong with
us. Few theorists or clinicians also probed what is right. Into
this space, Martin Seligman and his associates have inserted
the proposal that the domain of psychology extends beyond
fixing pathology to probing health and happiness. Positive
1
psychology asks what makes people happy in the long run.
Researchers in positive psychology have discovered that
when we identify and regularly use our signature character
strengths, life becomes more satisfying and meaningful.
2
They further assert that even when we must cope with depres-
sion, anxiety, addiction, or other mental illness (and their
corporate equivalents), building on our signature strengths
fosters creativity and courage for tackling our challenges.
The abundant organization adapts principles of posi-
tive psychology to help leaders build both organizational
strengths and the strengths of individual employees. In
3
addition, we propose that leaders in abundant organiza-
tions not only recognize and build on strengths but also use

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