In the military, mission readiness is paramount. It determines success or failure on the battlefield–and impacts life-and-death outcomes. Military leaders are recognizing that psychological readiness is vital to individual and unit-level mission readiness. After studying job performance across 1 million people in the U.S. Armed Services over five years, Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology and a BetterUp Science Board member, found that optimism and well-being are the biggest drivers of job performance. Mindset matters when performance is on the line.
Amid rapid and unpredictable change, often precipitated by small groups of stakeholders or one-off events, business teams need to be agile, adaptable, focused, and creative to drive results–just like soldiers in the increasingly networked and dynamic world of war. Their leaders, too, must keep adapting and performing without succumbing to exhaustion or burnout–be it mental, physical, or emotional.
