Ken Blanchard
Optimal experiences at work are within our grasp! This is what the science of positive psychology shows us today and which individuals can learn from in transforming their lives. But, you may ask, how do we translate these insights into practical business tactics?
Along comes Ken Blanchard, best-selling co-author of “The One Minute Manager” and half a ton other books on leadership in business, to remind us in a recent Fast Company post that “flow” is a useful concept to help managers with maintaining the engagement of all team members.
Flow is the concept coined by leading positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “optimal experience” where people feel “strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious, and at the peak of their abilities”.
Says Blanchard:
“One of the keys to achieving this state is finding the perfect balance between challenge and skill on one axis and anxiety versus boredom on the other.”
In the blog post he wrote along with Scott Blanchard, also from The Ken Blanchard Companies, three rules are proposed to get managers started:
Managers can get started on the right path by following three rules:
- Become more aware of your goal-setting habits.
- Focus on both the long and short term.
- Create variety for yourself and others.