Positive psychology: The science at the heart of coaching

WHAT YOU WILL understand by the end of this chapter is how the new field of positive psychology provides a robust theoretical and empirical base for the artful practice of life and executive coaching. But first, what exactly is positive psychology, and how is it different from business as usual? Through the years, traditional psychology has focused on ways to help make ill people better by finding clinically valid and empirically supported methods to help fix things that are wrong with them. The mission of positive psychology is to develop sound theories of optimal functioning and to find empirically supported ways to improve the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people. In this chapter the author will present a number of emerging trends in positive psychology theory and research and explore their applications to coaching. I’ll walk you through studies of positive emotion, flow (ac-cessing the zone), hope therapy, and classification of strengths. Each set of studies offers a rich resource of knowledge that can be mined for po-tential coaching interventions. The chapter is not an overarching per-spective on the coaching process, as this is described in other chapter