The psychologist Martin Seligman proposed that psychological well-being consists of “PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.”
When we think about an organisation and its well-being we see how critical are engagement, relationships, sense of meaning and accomplishment. Practicing poetry contributes to greater psychological well-being by influencing our emotions, engagement and even experience "flow" all positively impacting social relationships, sense of meaning and purpose. Poetry and all the arts are a way of forming, shaping and holding in front of our eyes something invisible: our feelings. By doing so, arts support us in forming, creating and changing how we feel and hence how we behave. They help us develop a narrative of our lives and relate to our own experience in a new way.
Why wouldn’t we then practice the arts in the workplace or use poetry as a new metaphor to resolve the illness affecting business?
I invite you to challenge the myths and practices of your workplace and offer you the opportunity to re-connect with the sacred heart of being human. If you could create, work, resolve like an artist, what would you do and how dynamic and resilient your organisation would become?
I am not providing you (intentionally) with a full list of data supporting this invitation, not only because you can just google it by yourself but especially to challenge you, all of us, to move from a merely process and data proven orientation to a more humane approach to business. One that is centred around our needs to self- express, contribute, belong and that provides expanded awareness and access to the re-generative power of creativity.
When we think, act and feel like an artist (heartist), we enter into a deeper dialogue with the world and allow a re-NEWed way of being which as a result transforms how we do work.
If you were the heARTist of your workplace what would you change? And as a result how your human experience of work would change?
I have a personal interest in bringing the arts and humanities into business education. I see it as the access to a deeper dialogue and co-creation of practices, processes and tools that support our progress and evolution - while shifting the current business model designed on the premises of an assembly line. (Read more about "A Human Education here)
Fromm said: “The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age.”
Times are now mature to embrace our more artistic, creative, intuitive, humane side. It is central to the future of business and to the future of our wounded humanity. I bring poetry into organisations to invite us to dwell out of isolation and step into well-being, offering the opportunity to re-affirm our whole humanity and re-awaken our inner wisdom.
I became a scientist to cure people and wrote poetry to heal myself.
Well-being in a functional work environment is observed when people support one another and share a sense of belonging in a meaningful community. Think about ways in which the practice of an art form contributes to it and put in place. Here a few tips you can start implementing:
Employ a residential artist to support well-being and inspire changes in work practices.
Use art-based work methods in organisational development.
Support employees in participating in art and cultural activities also in their leisure time.
At RNEWB we create work cultures like piece of art! We offer a robust diversity of experiences, talks, workshops and programs that use storytelling, poetry and heARTistry in an innovative and yet practical methodology. For more information please feel free to get in contact.