Positive psychology may sound like the kind of fluff that you’ve heard before from any number of feel-good speakers, but for Michelle Gielan and the businesses she’s coached—Marriott, Google and Dell, to name a few—it has left legacies of trackable and tangible success.
“When we as individuals are positive and optimistic, it fuels every single business and educational outcome that we know how to track,” says Gielan, who will be presenting the MPI keynote “The Optimism Quotient: Changing Our Mindset, Fueling Success” at IMEX America, Sept. 10-12 in Las Vegas.
According to her research, positive and optimistic thinking increases productive energy by 31 percent and profitability by as much as 50 percent. Over time, it also decreases the negative effects of stress—such as headaches, backaches and fatigue—by 23 percent.
However, positive psychology is more than simply thinking your way to happiness and success. According to Gielan, changing the game begins with small moments where we decide to perceive situations positively.
“Optimism is the expectation of good things to happen and the belief that our behavior matters,” she says. “We can train our brain to be more optimistic at any point in our lives through positive habits that get our mind focused on the things we are grateful for and the ways in which we can control our happiness.”
This practice requires discipline and the acknowledgement that while positive thinking is primarily an internal exercise, the words we use inevitably influence other people, in what Gielan calls the ripple effect.
With the ripple effect, increasing individual wellbeing ultimately increases the wellbeing of the company. As many of us know, once stress and negativity start creeping into the work day, it’s hard to turn the attitude around. Gielan’s positive psychology helped Nationwide Brokerage Services stop the practices that were perpetuating a cycle of negativity.
“We worked with them on rewriting the playbook for their business team,” she says. “For them it was a call center. They do the same basic business practices over and over. They decided to infuse positive psychology research into everything they did. They redid morning meetings, they redid the scripts that they used on phone calls, and we tracked them over time. Over an 18-month period they increased revenues by 50 percent, which for them was hundreds of millions of dollars. And they also saw an increase in their new insurance application rate of 237 percent.”
Garnering success also comes from acknowledging the importance of focusing on solutions, not just problems.
“The opposite of happiness is not unhappiness, it’s apathy,” Gielan says. “Unhappiness can spur positive change. Focusing on the problem is not a problem in and of itself—it’s when we stop there. Resilience, and therefore success, is predicted by our focus on solutions.”
Gielan’s path towards positive psychology began by focusing on a solution. The problem presented itself during what most people would think was her most successful time. In just three years, she had worked her way into a prestigious career as a news anchor for CBS, with multiple programs under her belt. Then the recession hit, and like many others, Gielan was deeply affected by the negativity that flooded the media.
“I was anchoring two national news programs, including the CBS Morning News. It was at the height of the recession when there was an uptake in negative stories because we were airing stories of people losing their homes and their jobs and retirement savings,” she says. “So, what I decided to do was investigate and bring experts in to talk about how you can foster happiness in the midst of uncertainty, change and challenges. We put together this weekly program called Happy Week. All the experts we brought in were from the field of positive psychology.”
Since her days at CBS, Gielan has attended the University of Pennsylvania to study under renowned positive psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman. For the last few years she has worked with The Institute for Applied Positive Research to study the effects of positive psychology, and in 2015 she published a bestselling book, Broadcasting Happiness: The Science of Igniting and Sustaining Positive Change. Now, her goal is to coach others in rewriting the playbook and changing the game by using applied research and three strategies for creating positive habits.
“At IMEX America, for instance, what I’ll be doing is sharing three actionable strategies attendees can start using right away in their business. No matter what role at their organization, these are researched positive habits that we found make a significant difference and improve people’s success rates,” Gielan says. “Given my broadcasting background, I’ve created an engaging session with an interactive experiment, novel research, stories and tools, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be presenting in Las Vegas and meeting everyone there!”
Rowland Stiteler contributed to this article. This was the final article in The Meeting Professional by our friend and colleague, who passed away in June after spending more than 20 years as a writer and editor for MPI publications.
MPI will be providing many educational opportunities at IMEX America, Sept. 10-12 in Las Vegas, beginning with Smart Monday, powered by MPI on Sept. 9. Keynote presentations will include Phil Hansen on transforming limitations into opportunities; Four Day Weekend on using improv in the workplace; Michelle Gielan on fueling success through optimism; and Jessie States, director of the MPI Academy, offering an “un-keynote” experience with funky icebreakers. Learn more about IMEX America at mpi.org/imex-america, and learn more about Michelle Gielan at michellegielan.com.
