“We work for 45 years, we work more than we are in any other relationship. You’ll see the people you work with more than you’ll see your children, partners, or anybody else. We work more than we sleep, eat, or any other human activity.

When we are 45 years old, we have worked for 20 years already, and yet we are only half-way through work with another 20 years ahead of us. How can we keep going? What gives us long-term motivation? What will keep us going? What will stop work being grey? Crushing? Boring?”

From “The Way of Intelegance” seminar introduction.

Hi, and welcome to the new course from Business Intelegant. Spread over 5 days (With an occassional break of a day or two when work gets busy for me), this course looks at some of the main types and tools used in one of the most interesting ways to answer that quote above: work psychology.

Work psychology, also called organizational psychology or I/O - Industrial / Organizational psychology is more than simply testing and evaluating candidates, or helping HR to design good job descriptions.

It’s even more than the strategic implementation of HR, the building and fostering of culture within organizations, and the research and practical tools and work design that aim to make work better.

It’s also been for a hundred years one of the most fertile grounds for reaping new ideas about what work can be - how work can help evolve new societies, how work can be creative, sustaining, and promote integrity and drive, rather than work as grey, boring, crushing and just plain yuk.

Scientists and thinkers like Kurt Lewin, Elton Mayo, Reg Revans, Rensis Likert, Chris Agyris, Peter Senge, Margaret Wheatley, and Otto Scharmer. We will talk about the theories that have driven the field in leadership, organization development, and new thinking and look at theories like Action Research, Action Learning, Organization Development, Force Field Analysis, 360° Feedback, Emotional Intelligence, Theory U, to names a few, and hopefully they’ll all be done is an Intelegant fashion -which aims for simple, intelligent, elegant approaches.

We will also look at work psychology as a academic and practical scientific discipline. It is only a slight exaggeration to say if ts human and works then it has been the subject of a paper: from induction to entrepreneurial leadership, to the interaction of work and family, to promotion, discipline, and reward, onto retirement and beyond all aspects of human behaviour at work is constantly under study.

Above all work psychology is about helping us to make work a better experience through a clearer understanding of the what work is. Ideally work should be a good experience - and a profitable one, for sure - and one that feeds and nourishes the other parts of our lives without dominating it.

I believe the more we learn about work the better work becomes. It doesn’t matter what you work with, the basic tenets that make all work workable, and the job a success, nearly always apply.

I hope you will join me on this journey and that work becomes more interesting - no matter what your aims are - as a result.