About Shannon Polly, MAPP

Shannon M. Polly is a corporate communications trainer, facilitator and speaker and founder of Shannon Polly & Associates, a leadership development company in downtown D.C. Shannon works with executives, managers and employees of Fortune 500 companies in two areas: executive presence/presentation skills (based on over a decade of experience as a professional actor/singer in New York) and positive psychology. Shannon is one the first 100 people in the world who have received her Master in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree from the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Martin Seligman. She also holds a graduate degree from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in classical acting and a B.A. with honors from Yale University. She also holds a coaching certificate from the Georgetown Leadership Coaching Program.

Do you love your job? No?

If you’ve completed a strengths survey to discover the things you’re good at and enjoy doing, then you must be loving your job. Right? If you’re shaking your head, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that like any good tool, a little guidance on how to apply your strengths can make a world of difference. Drawing on the latest evidence-based positive psychology practices, Michelle McQuaid – one of the world’s leading strengths researchers – will teach you how to use the right strengths, in the right amount, for the right outcome so you can feel more confident, energized and happy at work. Find out more here [http://michellemcquaid.ontraport.com/t?orid=6015&opid=4].

Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology- Begins in April in Washington, DC (and cities around North America this winter)

I often get asked about more training from people who are fascinated by positive psychology but aren’t sure how to take that next step. I am reprinting this due to the overwhelming interest! The Certificate in Applied Positive Practices (CAPP) Program is a 200-hour personal and professional learning journey that will equip you with the tools and practices you need to support yourself and others in flourishing. If positive psychology teaches us that “Other people matter!” then why do so many people study PP in isolation and spend hundreds of hours creating materials that have already been created by others? Join the Flourishing Center to learn the science of human flourishing in a structured, empowering and exciting learning environment. Get access to skills and materials that will make it easy for you to apply positive psychology in your professional life,…

Free Screening of Tom Rath’s film – in DC Feb 10th!

See this new film for free. Fully Charged features science-backed tips and world-leading experts on decision-making (Thomas Gilovich), willpower (Roy Baumeister) and meaning in our work (Amy Wrzesniewski) and others. Science tells us that small and meaningful actions can increase our wellbeing, impacting our energy, purpose and relationships. How can you bring this to your organization? Join us for the free screening and meet like-minded people. Walk away with empirically-backed new tools to implement for 2016! Join us for the screening of the film and a lively discussion. The Details: 6 PM on February 10, 2016 at Make Offices at Tyson’s, 1751 Pinnacle Dr #600, McLean, VA 22102 Light hors d’oeuvres will be served! – See more at: http://positivebusinessdc.com/upcomingevents/fullycharged/#sthash.P3Muq26V.dpuf

Foundations of Well-Being

I wanted to tell you about a yearlong, online program that changed thousands of lives last year—The Foundations of Well-Being. In this guided, step-by-step program, Rick Hanson, Ph. D. shows you how to use the science of positive neuroplasticity to turn ordinary experiences into powerful inner strengths, including kindness toward yourself, insight into others, grit, gratitude, and self-worth. Rick is a Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and invited speaker at Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford universities. He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of Buddha’s Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture, a neuropsychologist, meditation teacher, and very down-to-earth, practical, and warm-hearted guy. Beginning in January 2016 (but you can still sign up now!), Rick will use the 12 Pillars of Well-Being to teach you practical, effective ways to see more of…

Strengths Challenge

Shhhh! Can you hear it? There’s a revolution taking place in our workplaces, and it’s being led by employees – want to join in? If you’re fed up with a job that drains your energy, a boss who undermines your confidence or simply lack the time or support to do what you do best, there’s a campaign underway and it’s aimed at restoring people’s happiness. It’s called the Strengths Challenge and it kicks off on Monday 8th February. We’ll help you to discover your strengths – those things you’re good at and enjoy doing, how to design your own 11-minute strengths habit to practice for one week giving you the support you need to put your strengths to work with access to leading strengths coaches. Participation is 100% free. Sign up here: http://michellemcquaid.ontraport.com/t?orid=6015&opid=1

Christopher Peterson Fellowship Fund Drive – to honor James Pawelski (a special blog for MAPPsters)

What would it be like to have more MAPP students attend from India?  How many people’s well-being could they affect in a country with the second largest population in the world (1.271 billion)?  Or how about Africa?  With 1.111 billion people in 2013, projections show 40% of the world’s population will be in Africa by the end of the 21st century.  Coming from India or Africa, it’s a major challenge to attend MAPP.  We can help make it possible with the Christopher Peterson Memorial Fellowship Fund. At the Summit, we announced a challenge: to raise $10,000 by the end of the year to honor James Pawelski’s commitment to the MAPP program in the year of its 10th anniversary.  As Marty said, “With PERMA, there are 5 pillars of positive psychology, but there is only pillar of MAPP, and that’s James.”…

The Marshmallow Test

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Walter Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally “hot” temptations. His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s, often referred to as “the marshmallow experiment“, examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forego immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward. Continuing research with these original participants has examined how preschool delay of gratification ability links to development over the life course, and may predict a variety of important outcomes (e.g., SAT scores, social and cognitive competence, educational attainment, and drug use), and can have significant protective effects against a variety of potential vulnerabilities.[4] This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in decision-making, and most importantly…

First Impressions – the 7/11 Rule

As the old saying goes: ‘You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression’. According to one university study*, people make eleven decisions about us in the first seven seconds of contact (“The 7/11 Rule”. They are the following: 1. Education Level 2. Economic Level 3. Perceived Credibility, Believability, Competence and Honesty 4. Trustworthiness 5. Level of Sophistication 6. Sex Role Identification 7. Level of Success 8. Political Background 9. Religious Background 10. Ethnic Background 11. Social/ Professional / Sexual Desirability  (*Source: Michael Solomon, PhD, Psychologist, Chairman, Marketing Department Graduate School of Business, NYU.) And then according to this study the rest of your time is spent finding evidence to prove your original impression of that person, whether that impression is true or not. This study emphasizes the importance of creating good first impressions.  you can learn how to do that…

Don’t Aim for Happiness

While attending the IPPA World Congress this summer I learned a lot.  I took a lot of notes.  Then I promptly forgot a great deal of what I heard.  Why?  Well, I was a little distracted.  We were launching our book, Character Strengths Matter:  How to Live a Full Life, which has been doing really well.  There was a lot of excitement among all the contributors and endorsers and we had a lot of books to get out to them. And I was on the practice committee which had to review 1/2 of the 800 abstracts, so I was busy greeting my committee and thanking them.  But one of my takeaways was Barbara Fredrickson’s new research that people who aim for happiness are actually less happy than those who aim for positivity in their lives.  If you focus on those…

Webinar recording: Thriving Virtual Teams

Did you miss our webinar on Thriving Virtual Teams?  No fear.  Click the link below. We had a fantastic webinar with Tina Jackson of Action Resources at the end of March, 2014.  And after much ado, here is the recording: https://files.secureserver.net/0sNoQCO1c89T1v Password: act1on (that’s a #1, not the letter l) She did a fantastic job of talking about the 5 C’s of communicating virtually and the neuroscience of the brain and how we learn – kinesthetic, visual and auditory.  You can see our previous post about the Brain Pathways and here for more on the webinar. Below is a little bit more about our amazing facilitator. Tina Jackson, M.A., M.C.C., is an organization development consultant, corporate trainer, and leadership coach.  She has helped over 10,000 people develop sustainable skills to enhance individual and team performance. Working with Fortune 500 companies, professional services…

Acting “As If”

Editor’s note: June 25 was the official launch date of the book, Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life, coinciding with the start of the 4th World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association in Orlando, Florida. The book is published in loving memory of Christopher Peterson, master scientist of character strengths, and the proceeds go to the Christopher Peterson Memorial Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Character Strengths Matter is the third book in the Positive Psychology News series, joining Resilience: How to Navigate Life’s Curves and Gratitude: How to Appreciate Life’s Gifts. A Kindle version of Character Strengths Matter is also available. This article comes from the introduction in the book. It explains why the book includes read-aloud passages for all character strengths. For those of you that read aloud to your children, grandchildren, or friends, it may come as a surprise how much good you are doing…

Seeing the Good Stuff

Research shows that we spend far more time thinking about how we can correct something that has gone wrong, or is about to go wrong, instead of basking in what has gone right. There may have been an evolutionary advantage to analyzing bad events more thoroughly, but this minimizes your life satisfaction and it maximizes anxiety and depression. The Seeing the Good Stuff Exercise improves well-being by a simple method of redirecting attention towards positive thoughts and away from negative thoughts and sweetens your memories about the past. Research shows that becoming more conscious of good events reliably increases your happiness and decreases depression.  Noticing and analyzing what goes well in our lives builds the skills of remembering good events and not taking them for granted. It builds gratitude as well. Analyzing why events go well encourages a consciousness of…

Be a Learner, Not a Judger: A Brief Introduction to Mindset

I often get asked about how to change your mind about a specific incident.  This is the crux of cognitive behavioral therapy.  Carol Dweck’s mindset is a fantastic tool.  Here is some more details on how you can use it. The Approach: How we interpret an event, i.e. our ‘mindset’ has huge implications for how well we bounce back from change and how we set goals.  By learning more about our mindsets, we can change them and become more resilient in the face of the challenges of our jobs and our daily lives.  This pioneering work was done by Dr. Carol Dweck at Stanford and has been tested over the last 20 years. A fixed mindset says, “Looking smart is most important” with the main goal at work is to show how good or how smart you are.  A growth…

Do You Have Executive Presence? by Michelle McQuaid

Do You Have Executive Presence? When you walk into a room at work are people naturally drawn to you? When you sit at a meeting table do others ask to hear your thoughts? When there’s a decision to be made do people seek our your ideas? If you’re wavering in your responses chances are you’re missing what researchers have found is an essential component to getting ahead at work … executive presence. Reported to account, on average, for 25 percent of what it takes to get promoted, understanding how to project confidence, stay poised under pressure and be authentic are clearly skills worth having. But if you’re not quite there yet, what can you do to cultivate a more positive presence at work? What Is Executive Presence? Michelle McQuaid on Presence from Donna Hemmert on Vimeo. “Studies have found that in the first seven seconds of meeting…

A Winter of Self Improvement

What’s your next mountain or molehill? My husband thinks I need to scale back on the learning.  I got so jazzed after finishing my coaching program at Georgetown, that I went and got certified in the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator).  Now I can understand the four letter codes my colleagues are always muttering.  And as a newly certified leadership coach, I wanted to have a 360 to offer my clients so I went to the Leadership Circle Profile 360 training as well.  I assumed that would be similar to MBTI…learn some theory, practice debriefing and then we’re done.  As it turns out it was some of the most impactful training of my life.  I had about 6 months of insights in three days.  The theory that underpins the assessment is very sound and the analytics are compelling for how the…

Engagement vs. Well-Being

Tom Rath on the Trends in the Field I was thrilled to finally get to hear Tom Rath in person at the GMU Well-Being conference a few weeks ago and I’m very excited for his new book.  I thought that employee engagement was the be all and end all measure for employees.  Rath’s research with Gallup indicates that well-being is more than being engaged on the job.  He shared 3 keys to improve daily wellbeing: Meaning – Making progress on goals Interactions – More positive than negative Energy – Based on his last book – Eat Sleep Move    In regards to meaning, the latest research shows that pursuing your own happiness may backfire.  Try to make meaning for others.  Connecting actions to meaning boosts performance and quality. In your own work, small wins can generate meaningful progress. As far as interactions go,…

Brain Pathways – An Essential Assessment for Virtual Teams

  Brain PathWays™ is the system you need to discover and leverage your unique brain strengths. Follow your brain pathways on a journey of self-discovery for breakthrough insights. Then, align with how your brain is wired for overall enhanced potential and fulfillment of your goals and dreams.  Knowing how your unique brain is wired to work for you is the most important thing to know about yourself. When you understand which senses your brain prefers and how it prefers to process information, you’re prepared to apply that knowledge to experience fulfillment and success. Doesn’t it make sense that when your work matches your strengths, you excel? Performing work that does not engage your brain strengths is more difficult, frustrating, stressful and less productive, not to mention, no fun at all.  Every aspect of your life can benefit from applying this…

Thriving on Virtual Teams – Free Webinar

  The world is flat. More and more teaming occurs virtually. But how do you build rapport when you don’t have a water cooler to meet near? How can you really know what your employee is doing? What does the science of positive psychology say about all this? Join us with an expert, Melissa Hammer, who shares some tips and techniques. She will also share some research on brain science and how you can use the way you learn (auditory, kinesthetic, visual) to engage your team…and yourself.   Join us on March 31st, 2015 from 12 – 1 pm EDT for Thriving on Virtual Teams.  Register here. Mastery in building strong virtual teams lies in the capacity to effectively connect and collaborate across barriers like time zones, cultures, business units and technology. To successfully sustain this connection and translate it to high…