<p>If you think the key to happiness is success, you've got it all backward--and you're not alone. This prevailing theory is what longtime Harvard professor and award-winning speaker Shawn Achor has been trying to disprove for more than a decade. According to Achor and his research, happiness breeds success, not the other way around.</p><p>Achor put his research together in the best-selling book <i>The Happiness Advantage</i>, and he has since founded Good Think, Inc., to help spread the happy news about positive psychology to Fortune 500 companies, schools, and nonprofits worldwide. In 2011, Achor won a Telly Award for outstanding training program by demonstrating how companies can improve job satisfaction, productivity, and creativity by focusing on positivity in the workplace. In 2013, Achor released his follow-up book titled <i>Before Happiness</i>.</p><p>'Achor bases his training on a burgeoning body of research on the positive psychology movement, which emphasizes instilling resiliency and positive attitudes...' <i>Wall Street Journal</i></p><p>Isolating seven practical, actionable principles he shows organizations how to capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve performance and maximize potential. The power of his research blends with an approachable style that keeps audiences smiling while they learn how to take advantage of their own positive attitude to effect positive changes to their organizations' bottom line. Shawn's research on happiness and human potential has received attention from the <i>Harvard Business Review</i>, <i>New York Times</i>,<i> Forbes</i>, CNN, and NPR.</p>
Harvard professor of positive psychology and author of The Happiness Advantage
<ul><li><strong>The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance</strong></li><li>The typical formula, "If you work harder, you will be more successful, and then you will be happy," is scientifically backward. By researching top performers at Harvard, the world's largest banks, and Fortune 500 companies, Shawn Achor discovered patterns which create a happiness advantage for positive outliers--the highest performers at the company. Based on his best-selling book, <i>The Happiness Advantage</i>, Achor outlines practical applications for reaping the Happiness Advantage in the midst of change and challenge.</li><li><strong>Positive Leadership: Restoring a Culture of Confidence</strong></li><li>When the economic collapse began, the world's largest banks called in Shawn Achor to restore confidence and forward progress. Shawn researched those managers and teams who maintained high levels of success and leadership during the challenge. Based on the science of positive psychology and case studies of working with companies in the midst of an economic collapse, Achor provides practical applications for raising the belief that individual behavior matters and helping leaders to keep teams motivated and engaged.</li><li><strong>The Ripple Effect: How to Make Positive Change Easier</strong></li><li>Achor's research in the field of positive psychology has revealed how changes in our own brain caused by mindset and behavior can have a ripple effect to a team and an entire organization. This positive ripple effect can create a more productive, positive work culture making positive change easier. Audiences will discover the latest scientific research on brain activity to explain how positivity and negativity spread, case studies on how to become a lightning rod for change, and findings on how a positive ripple effect profoundly affects an organization's ability to transition and change.</li></ul>