4 Reasons Broaden-and-Build is Needed In the Workplace

The “Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions” (Fredrickson, 2013) is one of positive psychology’s central ideas. Fredrickson has spent many years researching the role of positive emotions in human survival – a hitherto largely unexplored field of psychology.

While much emphasis was placed on understanding negative emotions, positive emotions did not receive much attention until Fredrickson’s curiosity led her to focus on these.Even to the layperson it is immediately clear why negative emotions such as anger, fear or disgust might have helped the human race to protect itself and to avoid injury, death or sickness.

However, while we all enjoy experiencing them, the purpose of positive emotions is less obvious.

Fredrickson’s initial research showed that we are capable of experiencing a wide array of positive emotions, which include joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. Each of these emotions is caused by certain experiences and triggers a specific behavioral impulse, or “action urge”.

For instance, the emotion “joy”, which is a result of “unexpected good fortune” (Fredrickson, 2013, p.4), creates the action urge to want to play and get involved. This allows an individual to experience new situations and thereby learn new skills.

Similarly, a new but safe environment triggers “interest” – a positive emotion that creates the urge to explore and to learn, again building new skills.

“Inspiration,” which develops when we “witness human excellence in some manner” (Fredrickson, 2013, p.6), propels us to want to excel and provides us with the motivation to develop ourselves.

Also, her studies showed that positive emotions promote momentary “Big-Picture” thinking i.e. broaden an individual’s perspective or mindset (versus just focusing on one aspect of a situation). Big-picture thinking allows learning experiences to take place.

Fredrickson explains that while positive emotions don’t have an immediate effect on survival (such as fear, which triggers a “fight-or-flight” response), they, over time, allow us to build our repertoire of skills, traits, and social connections. This turns into potential resources that we can use to our advantage.

To quote from the Pep-Lab website at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where Fredrickson is based today:

“expanded cognitive flexibility evident during positive emotional states results in resource building that becomes useful over time. Even though a positive emotional state is only momentary, the benefits last in the form of traits, social bonds, and abilities that endure into the future.” (para. 6)

How can Broaden-and-Build Theory benefit employees at the workplace?

While Broaden-and-Build was developed to explain the role of positive emotions in general, the findings can conceivably be applied to organizational behavior in a very practical way.

Increasing Employee Engagement

Organizations spend a lot of time and effort on employee engagement surveys. These surveys aim to understand how employees assess their workplace with regards to various areas, allowing organizations to focus their efforts to improve employee experience, enhance productivity and increase loyalty to the organization.

Similarly, the Great Place to Work survey identifies key variables that employees rate as particularly important: trust in management, pride in their work, and enjoying the company of their colleagues.

Organizations looking to increase their engagement ratings would, therefore, be well-advised to review the list of 10 positive emotions identified by Fredrickson and find ways to create simple mechanisms for employees to experience these more frequently at work. As mentioned above, frequent (authentic) positive feedback instills pride in employees.

Expressing gratitude and appreciation for a job done well benefits both the person saying thank you as well as the receiver. Hiring “inspirational” leaders who set an example that others aspire to triggers employees’ intrinsic motivation and the desire to learn.

Fostering A Continuous Learning Culture

Most organizations have a strong interest in ensuring their employees continue to learn and develop their skill sets, becoming more productive, and enabling them to deal with greater complexity.

Some companies such as Amazon have integrated this thinking into their leadership principles. From Amazon.com,

“Learn and Be Curious: Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.”

Broaden-and-Build provides a useful framework for organizations looking to create meaningful learning experiences for their employees. By creating a safe environment and company culture in which employees are encouraged to experiment without fear of negative repercussions for failure, and frequently giving employees the opportunity to work on new and challenging projects, organizations can cultivate the positive emotion of “interest” with its action-urge of exploring and resulting skill-building.

Building Positive Leadership Skills

Positive Leadership as a management philosophy becoming more and more widely spread (e.g. Cameron, 2013). In terms of broaden-and-build, there are several elements that have great relevance for today’s leaders.

Assuming a leader’s purpose is to inspire and motivate teams of employees to excel at achieving an organization’s goals, broaden-and-build can provide a framework for leaders to provide guidance on how to build the emotional environment to achieve this goal successfully.

A leader plays a vital role in making the company culture stick – it is they who need to find mechanisms to increase employee engagement and continuous learning in their teams.

Some additional thoughts in addition to those already described above: “Gratitude” – appreciative leaders who foster a culture of gratitude can create a positive climate in their teams.

Leading by example and encouraging team members to give each other positive feedback for tasks well done and support provided can improve a team’s overall communication patterns. It has also been found that expressing gratitude can also improve wellbeing in the “sender” – a welcome side effect! (Seligman, 2011)

Finding opportunities to have fun even during a stressful day will impact the employee experience in a positive way, and via the emotions of amusement and joy can motivate individuals to get more involved and be creative.

Enhancing the Customer Connection

Last but not least, an organization applying broaden-and-build tenets to their culture will most likely find that their customers will also benefit.

In an interview with Gallup (2003), Fredrickson stresses the importance of building human connections with customers, providing a service that customers are grateful for, and will remain loyal to. In essence, the aim should be to provide a customer experience that feels positive to the customer, and that the customer will, therefore, strive to repeat.

Organizations have much to gain from taking note of broaden-and-build findings and applying these in their management practices and organizational culture. Creative thinkers will identify many more ways in which the 10 positive emotions researched by Fredrickson can be fostered and nurtured in organizations around the world.

Which emotion would you encourage in your organization, and how? We’d love to hear from you!

References

This article was written by Sarah Battey.

Sarah left a corporate career in Human Resources last year to pursue her dream of helping others develop themselves and their unique talents.

Today Sarah works as an independent coach, trainer and consultant at www.all-about-talent.net.  

Along the way she discovered her passion for Positive Psychology and is thrilled to be able to integrate tools & knowledge from PP research into her everyday work to the benefit of her clients.

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