Thriving in the New World of Work

Workforce well-being is an urgent issue: Stress and burnout are limiting employee engagement and driving out talented workers. But Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin Seligman, coauthors of the book Tomorrowmind, have identified five skills that can help individuals flourish in dynamic work environments — even those that are especially pressure-filled.

During Work/23, an MIT Sloan Management Review symposium held in May 2023, Kellerman and Seligman explained that they use the acronym PRISM to refer to those five skills. It starts with prospection — the ability to imagine our options, plan for the future, and restore our agency — which Kellerman described as “the meta skill of our era.” The others are resilience, innovation, social connection, and mattering. All of them can be learned, the coauthors said, and leaders can help their employees do so.

Kellerman and Seligman’s work builds on seminal research Seligman conducted with the U.S. Army to understand which soldiers are most at risk of experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. He found that people with extreme pessimism — catastrophizers who believe that when bad events occur, everything will fall apart — are most vulnerable. His research also found that soldiers who demonstrate high positive emotion, low negative emotion, and high optimism on Day One are better positioned to withstand their environments and even go on to be awarded medals for heroism.

“I’ve worked on resilience my entire 60 years in psychology,” Seligman said. “The people who were invulnerable, who are resilient, are the optimists.”

Resilience draws on self-awareness and self-compassion, they explained. “Emotional regulation is, in some ways, the foundational skill of maturing as an adult,” noted Kellerman. “It’s our ability to recognize our emotions, to pause in response to them, to reappraise them, and then to choose a response.” That response, she added, ideally comes from a thoughtful, centered place rather than an emotionally reactive one.

Kellerman and Seligman weren’t able to get to all of the questions from attendees during the Work/23 event, so Kellerman answers some of them below. (Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Why is it that, in some cases, self-efficacy and confidence are seen as negative traits, irrespective of knowledge or skills?

Self-efficacy is our belief in our own ability to act in the ways we need to in order to achieve our goals. We build self-efficacy by witnessing our own successes as we build mastery in specific domains. Many decades of studies have shown the positive relationship between self-efficacy and well-being and accomplishment.

In contrast, self-esteem — often defined as confidence in our own abilities — is a less robust construct and can be falsely inflated. It may or may not be related to actual accomplishments. As our colleague Roy Baumeister has demonstrated, self-esteem does not predict performance or well-being.

People with high degrees of self-efficacy may not come across as confident to others, and people who do come across as confident may or may not have high degrees of self-efficacy. Confidence becomes a negative trait when it is false or narcissistic, but neither characteristic applies to self-efficacy.

Are there studies correlating pessimism, PTSD, and suicide?

Yes. Pessimism is a common feature of depression, and a significant risk factor for suicide. See, for example, “An Examination of Optimism/Pessimism and Suicide Risk in Primary Care Patients: Does Belief in a Changeable Future Make a Difference?”

Catastrophization, an extreme form of pessimism, is predictive of PTSD risk. Catastrophization has also been shown to have a causal relationship with PTSD severity; see “The Sequential Relation Between Changes in Catastrophizing and Changes in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Severity.”

What skill do you recommend that people choose first for growth?

This will vary for every person. For those who are low on resilience, start there. Specifically, focus on the five following skills that drive resilience: emotional regulation, self-efficacy, cognitive agility, self-compassion, and optimism. Which of the five do you feel least comfortable with? Learn about it and look for ways to apply it in your day-to-day life.

Our book, Tomorrowmind, includes exercises to build each of these in Chapter 4. For those who are already feeling resilient, pick another of the PRISM powers (prospection, resilience, innovation, social support, and mattering) to start with. [Editor’s note: Kellerman and Seligman also explore the elements of PRISM in their recent MIT SMR article “Reimagining HR for Better Well-Being and Performance.”]

How can companies train their employees on these skills?

All of these skills can be taught and developed. The best forms of training are personalized and longitudinal and include a mix of learning and practice. Human experts, like mentors or coaches, are an ideal resource, where available.

You can start with large-group experiences, like presentations or workshops, but don’t stop there. Teach these skills to managers, and teach the managers how to teach those skills to the people who report to them. Look for ways to integrate practices that build these skills into your culture. All of them require practice over time in order to be sustained.