Striving to promote positive psychology across the entire community, Dr Sylvia KWOK LAI Yuk-ching, Associate Professor at CityU’s Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, and her team at the Positive Education Laboratory have been conducting numerous projects and courses for schools, social service agencies and corporates for years.
One of its recent projects is to conduct a series of positive psychology courses for over a thousand of Mass Transit Railway (MTR) employees at all levels, from the top management to train conductors, to the frontline and back-office staff. This collaboration with the public transport company, which aims at improving the staff members’ mental health and helping them build resilience for tackling daily challenges, commenced in early 2019 and is still ongoing.
Positive psychology is a field of social sciences studying the relationship among character strengths, positive emotions and happiness. It considers 24 character strengths under six virtues, namely wisdom, courage, transcendence, humanity, justice, and temperance. Also core to this model is the idea of flourishing, which comprises the measurable elements of positive emotion, engagement, relationship, meaning and achievement (PERMA). For the MTR courses, the trainers seek to facilitate the participants to utilise their character strengths and nurture all aspects of flourishing. The ultimate goal is to boost their happiness and well-being at work and in life.
Duration and themes of different courses vary to cater for the needs of the staff of various roles. To give an example, the half-hour session for the management team provides an overview of using positive psychology at the workplace, while the one for staff in general covers character strengths, both the positive and negative sides of emotion, ways to improve self-image, and mindfulness exercises.
Photo 1: Participants learn to appreciate and express gratitude to their colleagues through specially designed activities.
In addition to introducing basic positive psychology concepts, courses designed for specific types of staff also include elements that would be practical for them. The three three-hour sessions for the High Speed Rail frontline staff, for instance, do not only help them discover their own but also their colleagues’ character strengths. They learned how to make active constructive responses and show appreciation to colleagues. The six-hour course for the Tuen Ma Line train conductors requires participants to assess their core values, from which they may find the meaning of their work and life. The purposes of the two-hour refresher course for operation staff are to enhance their positive health and ability on handling adversity like train delays, by strengthening their internal resources such as problem-solving skills, stress management skills, perseverance, sense of gratitude, and multi-dimensional thinking.
Instead of delving into the details of the theories, the courses let participants experience how positive psychology practices could benefit them. The trainers have designed a variety of activities to achieve this purpose, such as exploring character strengths using Dr Martin SELIGMAN (father of positive psychology)’s survey, learning words for emotions with a set of emoji icons, debating on the power of negative emotion, rethinking their meaning of life using the passion and wish cards, and many more.
Participants are invited to complete an online questionnaire for the team to evaluate the effectiveness of the training courses. Result of the pre-and post-test survey shows that the participants have significant improvement in positive engagement (work vigour, dedication, and absorption), purpose of life, and sense of achievement.
Cover photo: The Positive Psychology Laboratory has been working with the Mass Transit Railway from early 2019 to deliver courses to staff members of all levels and different departments.
