3.13 Organizational Highlights: Sam Presti, Maureen Rush & Carolyn McIntyre

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills

767 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Positive Psychology: Resilience Skills

767 ratings

Course 4 of 5 in the Specialization Foundations of Positive Psychology

Learn how to incorporate resilience interventions into your personal and professional life with Dr. Karen Reivich. In this course, you are exposed to the foundational research in resilience, including protective factors such as mental agility and optimism. Several types of resilience interventions are explored including cognitive strategies; strategies to manage anxiety and increase positive emotions such as gratitude; and a critical relationship enhancement skill. Throughout the course, you will hear examples of individuals using resilience skills in their personal and professional lives. Suggested prerequisites: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science, Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions and Positive Psychology: Character, Grit & Research Methods.

From the lesson

Managing Anxiety and Increasing Positive Emotions Like Gratitude

In this module, you will learn the definition of catastrophic thinking and identify the effects it has on physiology, attention and contingency planning. You will experiment with several non-cognitive strategies to decrease anxiety, including Deliberate Breathing. You will be introduced to the Broaden and Build theory of positive emotions, and will be able to describe the effects of positive emotions on resilience. Finally, you will relate research and examples of gratitude to your own life and develop a plan for a gratitude practice.

3.6 Dr. Park: Deliberate Breathing to Manage Anxiety5:37

3.7 Dr. Baime: A Mindfulness Approach to Anxiety7:10

3.8 Positive Emotions Broaden8:59

3.9 Positive Emotions Build Resources7:19

3.10 Gratitude Research14:40

3.11 Gratitude Skill: HTGS6:28

3.12 Designing a Gratitude Practice: Team Collage9:44

3.13 Organizational Highlights: Sam Presti, Maureen Rush & Carolyn McIntyre11:20

3.14 Summary of Module 3 and Preview of Module 42:09

Meet the Instructors

Karen Reivich, Ph.D.
Director of Resilience Training Services
Positive Psychology Center

[MUSIC]

We found that gratitude is the unifier that connects

the other information with everybody else.

I would say the thing with us that has uniformly.

Is the better opt for everybody's training.

The other things may, depending on the person, resonate a certain way.

But the gratitude concepts, those are like all telling.

And then I use that quite a bit with the high

school students that I work with in the community.

And it's funny because when you ask them questions about that, they're

really great as young people identifying what they are fortunate to have.

And I was really impressed by that.

Almost all of them are able to hit right to the important things, you know?

There's a point in the year where you kind of knew, we were good enough.

This might be a championship-level team.

We have reached that point in this season.

13, 14, and we're playing great.

Historic margin of victory.

You're winning games by an average of nine points a game.

Going to the playoffs, we're playing great.

And Russell Westbrook gets injured.

And it was in a very unfortunate circumstance.

It was a very freak thing that happened, the way it happened.

And I remember being at kind of a high point.

And then I remember speaking with the head

athletic trainer or physical therapist.

And I remember him calling me and it was late at night we were waiting for

his MRI results, which were going to determine what we're dealing with here.

And he called and he said, it's

got a meniscal tear and definitely done for the year.

And so I remember, this is the part of the story I remember.

In this job, right, is a very lonely job.

And when you get the information that no one else in the world knows.

But you know once this information's out, it's changing, it's massive, right.

It changes the landscape of the entire industry.

But more importantly, if you've got a player who you've seen grow

from 19 years old to, he's never been injured, he's never missed a practice.

He's going through this crazy turn of events.

So if you're worried about him, you're worried about the rest of the team.

And I remember, this is the funny part.

Does anyone know what Whataburger is?

>> [LAUGH] >> So I'll remember, I was driving

aimlessly, just thinking about how this is unfair,

moved on from beginning in '08 to this.

And we're having this incredible season and the guys, it's a great group of guys.

And I remember sitting in the Whataburger parking lot very late at night.

And, I'm not a big fast food consumer, but that night I was.

>> [LAUGH] >> And, like, okay,

where is the good thing that's coming from this?

Like, I remember thinking to myself, where, hunt the good stuff,

was kind of what I was like what I was thinking.

Like, okay, where's the benefit?

Where's the silver lining?

How are we going to, and then that's where I

really felt the concept of gratitude came back, like really into play.

So if you went back and you looked at my press conference following, or

I guess it must have been the announcement.

because then you've got to get there in front of everybody and

announce that this happened.

And it's brand new to them, but you've known about it for 12 hours and

I just remember really lacing into my comments this concept of gratitude.

We're very fortunate that we have a player like Russell Westbrook,

we're fortunate that he's going to be okay.

This is not a career ending injury.

We're fortunate that we have the health of our other players.

We are fortunate that we have a tremendous training staff.

We are fortunate, and I was kind of like over doing it probably on

messaging the gratitude because it was very important in my opinion,

for our fan base because it was such a new thing.

It's still a new, the Thunder is still new, professional sports is still new.

I think helping them understand that, here's the good things,

here's how to frame this.

It's not the last season in the history of the Thunder.

You're going to see Russell Westbrook play again,

that's the most important thing, his health.

His longterm health and well being.

Yes things are, could be much more difficult without him.

Because he is a very important player to the team.

However, we're also an organization that started 3 and 29.

And this is part of our batch, this is what we were.

We are overcomers.

And we're going in to finish this series until next game.

And I had a conversation with Russell, about the fact that, listen,

I don't want to make you fell like I'm discounting you.

But I want to put the focus right now on the other guys,

and that we need to step up.

We can't look back that you're not there, we have to look forward.

And he totally understands that, the guy is super bright.

And, so the message was we're moving forward, he's going to be okay,

we have to take care and have a great practice today so

we can get ready to play the Rockets in the next game.

We ended up winning that series and then we got to the second round against

Memphis and we ended up, we won the first game.

But then we lost the next four in a row.

They were just too much for us to handle without Russell.

But to me that was a birthing of that, putting it into action.

>> So when we brought the Resilience Training program in for

my whole division, We had 178 people trained.

And a lot of the folks are on the front lines, but behind the scenes.

And so the police certainly are on the front lines.

But some of the other folks are also speaking with people on the phone.

Our communications center, for example.

So they are also exposed to stressors.

And one of the things that we celebrate every day is we get a lot of thank yous.

And it's something that I think all of us in life should remember,

whether it's a waitress, whether it's service at a drive up window

to take that moment to thank somebody or send the note to their boss.

I get a lot of notes coming in from not only the Penn community but

we have hospitals.

So we have people who might have had a long-term illness with their loved one.

And they've been coming back and forth to Penn and have been helped.

So we celebrate those moments at roll calls.

We send out notes, we thank people for what they did.

And we want to make sure that, yes, negativity will occur,

there will be bad things that happen.

But at the end of the day we want to celebrate the positives,

the thank yous, the gratefulness of our community.

>> Hi, my name is Carolyn McIntyre.

I'm the HR director for business services at the University of Pennsylvania.

Our organization is 19 different departments providing customer service,

and mission critical services to the university community.

Everything from housing and dining, through to parking and transit,

Pence Children's Center, hotel oversight, purchasing, a myriad of businesses.

It's a very diverse workforce as well.

Leadership in the business services division believe that resilience was

really important for our staff and for our managers, because of the work that we do.

And also in support of our staff as they go through their work life and

their home life.

We're a diverse organization.

We're a customer facing organization.

And with that comes challenges and stress sometimes.

We recognize that and the intention was to provide some support for staff.

Our vice president in particular thought that this was really valuable and

our staff responded and said that they agree.

I think the concept of gratitude for me, links to, to engagement with our staff and

ultimately to the success of our organization.

The link with gratitude has really been something that I think has

since we've done the training been really been utmost in the mind of managers and

quite frankly staff as well.

Recognizing good work but being grateful for the environment that we work in,

for the fact that we're doing something that is bigger than just a job.

We're making a difference to students and to staff across campus.

We've worked hard to ensure that we keep ourselves mindful of gratitude.

In my own role, I appreciate the support that I get from my specialist colleagues

in central human resources, for example.

And I've tried to be mindful of being grateful to staff that I work with who

perhaps are the unseen sometimes, and recognizing that

everyone has a contribution to make to the success of our organization.

Those things can make a difference.

You might have had a bad time at home, you've come to work.

Being recognized and experiencing gratitude and being

active in terms of that, from a manager's perspective, can just make the difference.

So one of the things that we've found really powerful is using our

monthly newsletter and monthly staff newsletter to call out great work.

And to call out perhaps, to call out great work that

connects with some of the university's mission as it relates to the community.

So, recognizing staff who've done volunteer work

in the West Philadelphia Community, as that enhances our mission.

It's not required in the line of duty, but it certainly enhances that.

And being grateful for the fact that doing that with colleagues, and connecting in

a different way, as part of our welcome to business services orientation session.

We've really put an enhanced focus on connecting new staff members

to each other, and to the business of a sort of staff community.

Being grateful for the fact, that we work with great team members, and how that can

make a difference with engagement, and folks being successful, and happy at work.

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