Psychological capital is a collection of positive personal characteristics, like optimism, hope, resilience and self-confidence. These character traits are important when dealing with stress, setbacks and challenges. Things that are inevitable parts of any job. One employee has more psychological capital than the next, but the good news is that everyone can train these four character traits.
The theory behind Psychological Capital (also known as PsyCap) comes from positive psychology and was developed by management professor Fred Luthans, also an expert in the field of positive leadership Positive leadership is a term that comes from positive psychology. This means that the manager believes that the team or individual employee is able to complete a task well, and this is reflected in the way they behave. Positive leadership is inspiring and provides coaching.
In large-scale research he and his colleagues carried out they showed that people can develop a set of four measurable qualities that have a positive effect on stress and performance. Otherwise known as psychological capital. Employees who have plenty of psychological capital feel good about themselves, take pleasure in their work and perform better.
The four qualities of psychological capital
Everyone has the four qualities of psychological capital to some extent or another:
- Optimism
The belief that you yourself can have a favourable influence on a positive outcome. Optimists deal with challenges and problems more actively; they have the feeling that they can influence the situation and that they can change it. - Hope
You are hopeful when you have a goal and are confident that you will actually be able to reach it. Someone who is hopeful has the willpower to achieve something, and ideas about how they can do so. - Resilience
You are resilient if you can recover from stressful events, such as setbacks or losses and grow from them. Resilient people can deal with risks in a healthy way. - Self belief
The belief in your own ability to complete a specific task well in a given situation. Someone with self-confidence is more likely to tackle challenges than to avoid them. And will suffer less from any setbacks.
These four qualities, also referred to as personal resources, together with work-related resources, play an important role in employees' mental resilience.
Why Psychological Capital is important for employees' fitness for work
Someone with plenty of psychological capital:
- can deal with stress and setbacks. Following a setback, this employee will pick up the thread again all by themselves;
- is able to relativise, which renders problems less difficult and important.
- performs better at work. If there are problems, an employee with plenty of psychological capital will tackle them better or will ask for help from someone else in good time. If it is necessary, they can also let go of problems.
- is more satisfied with their work because they have the feeling that they can influence it.
This means that an employee with plenty of psychological capital can generally keep working for longer and runs less risk of burnout.
How do you as a manager increase your employees' psychological capital
If you want to help your employees to increase their psychological capital, it helps if you can first help them understand that it is good for them. That if they develop themselves, they will be better able to deal with problems, stress and challenges, take their own decisions and take on responsibilities.
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This article drew on information in the book Optimisme, hoop, veerkracht, zelfvertrouwen by Matthijs Steenveld.
Exercises to reinforce psychological capital
You can develop all of the four qualities of psychological capital through practice and training. You can start doing this for yourself and apply it to your daily activities.
Challenge
Another way to take action to improve motivation and instil self-confidence is to ask solution-oriented questions. This means that you ensure that your employees start to take action for themselves. For example, you might say:
- What goals do you want to achieve for yourself in your work?
- What would the result then look like?
- How do you think you could achieve your goals?
- Who or what could help you to sort this out better?
- What would be the effect of achieving your goals?
- What steps do you need to take to reach your goal?
- What obstacles are you going to encounter along the way?
- How are you going to overcome these obstacles?
- What would make you believe that you are going to achieve your goal?
Step-by-step guide
- Increase optimism
- You can increase your employees' optimism by getting them to take action. Set achievable goals and let people do things themselves and on their own responsibility. This will make them feel more powerful and independent. They also then get to experience what making a positive contribution to events feels like. Of course, this is only possible if you give them the space to do so and make sure that they have enough control.
- Increase hope
- Hope can make you stronger by helping to achieve a shared goal. What do your employees want to achieve through this project or this job? What is their mental image of a positive outcome, and what would be the result of that? This way, you teach your staff to imagine a desirable situation. Then you can ask them how they can achieve this goal. The aim is not to set out the most realistic idea, but to bring together a number of options. Finally, you can help to make the choice by getting your employees to think about the obstacles they might encounter, and how they would resolve them. The art here is to let them think for themselves instead of doing it for them.
- Increase resilience
- You can develop resilience among your employees, by recognising and relativising errors and upsets – it is not the end of the world – and by asking how the error can be corrected. By sharing experiences with each other, telling each other what you learned from them, and how that can be applied to prevent things happening again, you are reinforcing that errors are something you can overcome.
- Increase self-confidence
- Employees gain more self-confidence when there is a good balance between what they are capable of and what you are asking of them. Assign people activities that match their knowledge and skills, and don't check up too often. That tends to give the impression that you don't think that person is capable enough. Paying compliments also goes a long way: emphasise what is going well and a person's strong points, rather than focussing on everything they still need to develop.
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