Is happiness the next big business issue asks The Happiness Institute

Executive coaching and facilitation have become an important consideration in the corporate sector for the development of leadership and staff.

At The Happiness Institute it is believed that having happy staff is highly correlated with productivity.

The Happiness Institute is offering coaching and psychology professionals the opportunity to purchase their intellectual property via licensing. This is comparable to investing in a coaching franchise, but licensing offers more independence in how to apply the intellectual property, and means that licensees can implement it for the gain of their own business.

Professor Tim Sharp founded The Happiness Institute in 2003 and specialises in the field of positive psychology and one of his main areas of interest is applying the principles of positive psychology in the workplace. Technically termed positive organisational scholarship, it incorporates a range of topics including leadership, resilience, optimism and strengths. Prof. Sharp is currently looking at the ‘primacy of positivity’, which is based on the idea of the ‘tyranny of when’. He describes this as the process many people engage in, that involves thinking they ‘will be happy when they lose weight, they earn more money, and so on. The primacy of positivity is centred on creating positivity first.

Numerous companies reward their staff in the opposite way, by awarding bonuses and praise after targets have been achieved. Prof. Sharp believes that even though this can be beneficial, it can also backfire, in the event that people focus more on the future and what they need to do later on, as opposed to the present and thus don’t work effectively in the here and now. By boosting positivity and happiness first, Prof. Sharp believes that staff will subsequently be more energised and engaged.

Prof. Sharp’s coaching service applications for the workplace are based on valid and reliable empirical research and he stipulates that they should not be seen as ways to simply ‘gee’ people up superficially.

There are a few ways in which Prof. Sharp believes the primacy of positivity can be achieved. The first is to ensure that people are having fun at work. Fun which is appropriate will help to create a more enjoyable experience for staff, and in turn hopefully improve motivation and engagement. Also, employees need to feel that their role is valued, so as to have meaning and purpose at work. And finally, by encouraging individuals to identify their strengths, as well as the strengths of their fellow team members, more effective team work and collaboration can be fostered.

The Happiness Institute offers positive psychology coaching and coaching services.