Being Positive. Approaching Career Design from the Perspective of Positive Psychology
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Journal of Education Culture and Society No. 1_2015 DOI: 10.15503/jecs20151.89.100 Being Positive. Approaching Career Design from the Perspective of Positive Psychology MA âGORZATA KLIMKA Institute of Applied Psychology, University of Social Sciences, ul. Sienkiewicza 9, 90-113 Lodz, Poland [email protected] GRA įYNA BUDZI ĘSKA Institute of Applied Psychology, University of Social Sciences, ul. Sienkiewicza 9, 90-113 Lodz, Poland [email protected] Abstract Constructing a career path based upon positive personal potential and positive indivi- dual resources is a signiÞ cant factor for professional development of employees and their success on today’s labour market. A satisfying career, an inherent element of personal well- -being and good life, is linked with an ability to explore and reinforce signature strengths. In order to effectively design programmes which could support young people who are preparing to enter a job market, it is essential to acquire knowledge about values and cha- racter strengths and their perceptions among young people living in Poland and abroad. The article presents comparative analysis of signature strengths perceptions among young people in different cultures and discusses the signiÞ cance of the most striking differences. Keywords: Career design, positive psychology, strength, virtues Introduction The article aims to show positive psychology and its role in constructing a career path in the case of young people preparing to enter a job market. Martin Seligman (2011), a leading representative of positive psychology, indicates that subjective well-being depends on positive emotions, engagement, meaning, posi- tive relations with others and achievements. The above mentioned aspects are treated by Seligman as measures of subjective well-being, which is impossible to achieve without its speciÞ c activators namely virtues and signature strengths (Seligman, 2005). The assumption that happiness arises from recognizing our positive attributes and using them while working, loving, playing and raising children (Seligman 2005, 15) gave a beginning to a discourse on the salience of virtues and signature strengths for constructing a career path by young people who are preparing for a job. The discourse seems especially important in the con- text of intensive changes that can be observed in career counselling in the times Experience of quick transformations on the job market, precariousness of work, appearance of new professions and numerous jobs becoming obsolete on an everyday basis. According to Mark Savickas individuals are obliged today not only to choose a speci Þ c career and sustain it but they also have to project and construct their lives and careers in such a way as to increase their employability and competitiveness on a job market (Minta 2012). The article presents the results of research whose goal was to conclude about the importance of the virtue and signature strength conditioned well-being for job satisfaction and success. Additionally, the authors posed a question about the impact of optimism on job satisfaction and attemp- ted to measure the difference in perceptions of signature strengths and virtues a well as the difference in perceptions of the importance of optimism on career con- struction in two groups of young people: students born and raised in Poland and foreign students who are studying in Poland for the period of six months within Erasmus exchange programme. The World of Work and its Impact on Career Design The world of work has been changing constantly together with the changes in economy and technology. In order to be sustainable and successful on the market companies have to develop strategies to react quickly and gain competi- tive advantage over their rivals. The nature and quality of decision-making pro- cesses in competitive companies depend on the people they employ, the people who, in fact, constitute a core of competitive advantage. Thus, fast changes in economy are transferred onto the employees responsible for an ability of a com- pany to react to the often unexpected requirements of the global business envi- ronment “to be ‘lean and mean’ and restructure continually” (Sweet, Meiksins 2013, 91-96). Continuous changes in the economy and market realities transform the nature of the labour market, make it more unstable and insecure, and challenge people with “employment relations in transitions” (Kallenberg 2009, pp.1-22) characte- rized by a constant ß ow and precariousness. That is why it is dif Þ cult for people to predict or plan the future life and future career. The concept of liquid societies created by Zygmunt Bauman (2007, pp. 2 – 4) seems to be adequate to the world of today since permanent change and instability are the only elements of today’s life and work that appear to be unquestionable. Social structures based on long- -term planning and acting are no longer a major part of our experience and that is why individual lives consist of a series of short-time projects rather than of one coherent and planned sequence. What is more, these tendencies are transferred from country to country thanks to globalization processes. Precarious work seems to be pervasive today and as such it demands new approaches to life and career design that could supplement well-known and established models. The concepts of Milton Erikson’s identity development, Donald Super’s career planning or vocational personalities advocated by John Holland refer to more stable and pre- dictable modes of career and personal development and seem not to be adequate in the reality characterized by a constant and unstable change and extreme needs Journal of Education Culture and Society No. 1_2015 for adaptability. In liquid societies an individual has to react to a changing reality of life and work and construct his life and a career while looking for the best per- sonal-organizational Þ t in a constantly changing context. Virtues and Character Strengths as a Basis of Good Life and Work Centrality of work in life cannot be questioned or underestimated, especially if we take into consideration how much work conditions psychological, social and economic aspects of life. That is why the Þ t between a person and his or her job has been long sought by career counsellors. This article would like to propose an approach to career design and development of person-job Þ t based on positive psychology and character strengths. Positive psychology brought back attention to character as an important basis of psychological good life of an individual but also societal well-being (Peterson, 2006). Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000, pp. 5-14) presented a study of positive traits as core in positive psychology. The notion of eudaimonia borrowed from Aristotle let Martin Seligman (2002) advocate that good life and happiness are based on signature strengths identi Þ ed and used extensively in acting by a person, in his life and obviously at the workplace. Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson (2003, pp. 33-47) linked positive traits to positive experiences, social relations and positive organizations. Virtues The classi Þ cation of character strengths is known as the Values In Action pro- ject since the VIA Institute supported Þ nancially the introduction of the project. The classi Þ cation is based upon 24 character strengths grouped under 6 virtues. Good character is perceived as a family of characteristics that exist in different proportions, some people having less or more of a given character strength. A virtue was understood based on the de Þ nition following the Þ eld of virtue ethics (Yearly, 1990), which, in fact is close to the meaning of a trait presented in perso- nality psychology as “a disposition to act, desire and feel that involves the exercise of judgment and leads to a recognizable human excellence or instance of human ß ourishing”. Moreover, virtuous activity involves choosing virtue for itself and in the light of some justi Þ able life plan. Similar to personality traits, virtues constitute character which is, however, tre- ated as more speci Þ c than personality: it is like personality but evaluated morally. (Baumrind 1998, pp.1-28). Based on the review of philosophical and religious tra- ditions, the researchers identi Þ ed a set of six virtues. They are important in majo- rity of the above-mentioned traditions (Dahlsgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005) and as such were treated as a basis for character strengths: • Wisdom and knowledge are understood as cognitive strengths and are necessary to acquire knowledge and use it. • Courage, which is emotional in its nature and is understood as a will to attain goals in the context of internal or external opposition. Experience • Humanity, which is interpersonal in its nature, and is connected with befriending others. • Justice, which is civic in its nature, and constitutes the basis of community well-being. • Temperance, which protects people from excessive actions. • Transcendence, which connects an individual to the world beyond himself and provide him with meaning. Character Strengths In the process of character strength classi Þ cation under the above-mentioned speci Þ c virtues researchers identi Þ ed a set of criteria to verify if a strength is to be taken into consideration. The strength should be widely recognized across cultures (ubiquity), contribute to individual happiness and ful Þ lment (ful Þ lling), should have moral value in itself and should evoke admiration when noticed by others, should have an easily identi Þ able antonym and has been measured and examined as an individual difference. What is more, it is distinctive and not redundant in the collection of the whole set of strengths and it has paragons vividly embodying the strength. It can be early represented in some children and young people but also missing in other persons as well as it is deliberately cultivated by some institutions as a desired social target.