The HR Leader in discussion with Michelle McQuaid about positive psychology

Michelle McQuaid is a positive psychologist and founder of The Wellbeing Lab. She joined The HR Leader to talk about what positive psychology is, how it can help, and how important it is for leaders in the workplace to promote wellbeing.

Shandel McAuliffe, editor at HR Leader: “What does positive psychology mean to you?”

Michelle McQuaid: “I was fortunate to do my Master’s in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania with one of the field’s founders, Dr Martin Seligman. Dr Seligman talks about his life as a psychologist before helping to found this field of positive psychology.”

Quoting Dr Seligman, Ms McQuaid stated: “‘I spent my work and my life helping people fix what was wrong,’ he said. ‘I could get them from minus 10, minus six, minus four to zero, but when I got them to zero, it didn’t necessarily mean they were well.’ And so, he started to become increasingly curious about, well, what makes you plus two or plus four or plus six or plus eight, and how do you sustain that?

“So, this was where this term ‘positive psychology’ came from. I think the term’s a bit misleading because ... the positive suggests it’s all going to be good all of the time no matter what. And there’s plenty of science in this space that shows that can be as dangerous for us as feeling like it’s all going to be bad all the time as well.”

Ms McQuaid continued: “And so, I tend to think of positive psychology simply as the science of wellbeing or the science of humans flourishing. And really, that’s what it’s trying to help us do. Figure out when it’s hard: how do we get help and support, be gentle with ourselves? [And] when it’s good, how do we sustain that?

“I think, like lots of people, I spent most of my life worrying that when it was good, the bottom was about to fall out and it was like, don’t get too comfortable here. And so, for me personally, what positive psychology’s done has given me the science and the tools to be able to more confidently navigate the ebbs and flows of life that we all experience and to enjoy the good bits and savour them.”

Editor: “What work do you do with leaders around wellbeing?”

Ms McQuaid: “Your leaders are one of the most contagious things in your workplace when it comes to worker wellbeing. When we find that leaders are often expressing compassion, appreciation, what we call ‘care responsibility’, emotional wisdom in there as well. When they’re doing that often for your workers, every wellbeing factor goes up – it’s just a night and day difference.

“We’ve done research over the last few years with Australian leaders to help them identify what we call the ‘four Rs’: what already is happening for them around the role modelling that they tend to do, what do they prioritise? The routines, the formal ways of working [in] their team. Any team rituals, more the informal things like Friday drinks or Friday barbecue ... And then the rules that your organisation might have, policies and procedures that are in place,” she explained.

“This is becoming a much bigger deal as we go into 2023 and beyond because of the new Safe Work requirements around those psychosocial hazards. And so, it will now be a compliance requirement for organisations to be identifying risks that are causing burnout for people.”

Ms McQuaid added: “So, unachievable job demands, poor workplace relationships, lack of job clarity, lack of job autonomy, and the like … leaders will need to be showing that they understand what those hazards are and that they’ve made a best effort to reduce them so that their employees aren’t exposed to unnecessary stresses that lead to burnout.”

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation recorded on 11 November 2022 with Michelle McQuaid is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.