Dedications

was the first time in my life I really felt like I had the knowledge, tools and support to truly show up and
embrace the raw, messy, magic that is life.
Secondly, it is the aspiration to be as evidence-based as possible. I say “aspiration” because coming
from a non-research background, I naively assumed that if there was research that underpinned an
idea, then it must be true. Then, as I was taught to pull apart different research approaches and their
limitations, it became clear that when you’re studying human behaviour, there are so many variables
that might impact our results that there is always more to learn. While I think being evidenced-based is
an important aspiration to have, I also think we need to be honest with ourselves and others about the
limitations of the evidence we have.
Given your corporate background, what do you think businesses and business leaders can learn from
positive psychology?
The more I’ve learnt about how our brains and bodies perform at their best, the more I’m amazed how
little of this is ever taught to business leaders when their primary goal is to bring out the best in the
people they manage. I was taught about communication, negotiation, management, innovation,
relationship management and sales, and not one idea was ever shared about how our brains function
or the psychology of human behaviour. I think this is slowly starting to change, but given the time and
money spent on training leaders and the research we now have available, there is no excuse for leaders
to not be given the kind of knowledge and skills that positive psychology now offers workplaces to help
their people more consistently flourish and to address the engagement, innovation, collaboration and
productivity many organisations face.
For yourself, personally, who is it that you look up to in the field, and why?
My personal hero has to be David Cooperrider. David was my capstone supervisor when I did MAPP
and is now my PhD supervisor. David changed my world the first day he taught us for positive
organisations when he pointed out, “Every action we take is preceded by a question,” and that,
“Questions that look for the true, the good and the possible are what enable us to consistently flourish”.
I’d been so focused on getting stuff done, I hadn’t even thought about the questions driving my
behaviour. When I started digging behind them, so many of my questions were driven by my fears, that
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