Self Efficacy and Happiness in the Workplace

With work taking up a large amount of our daily living I am always interested in how to keep work moving at a more than ok level. So I was intrigued at coming upon a book entitled, Happiness At Work: Maximizing your Psychological Capital for Success by Jessica Pryce-Jones. She is CEO of IOpener, a human asset management consulting group. In the future I will mostly likely touch on many of the topics she brings up in the book but today I want to look at a concept in her chapter on Confidence concerning Self-Belief. Another term for this is self efficacy.

Self efficacy is the internal feelings and beliefs we hold about we how can do at different tasks and knowledge. How capable do we believe we are. Albert Bandura the noted Psychologist known for his work on self efficacy defines it this way,” self-efficacy is the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” This is our capacity to believe in ourselves which is important in our work life to make the most out of our time in the workplace. If we believe in our ability our work will flow much easier and we will have higher levels of satisfaction in what we are doing. It is also an impetus to keep us growing in our skills.

A big enemy of our self efficacy is “I can’titus”. It is the sickness that tells us we can’t perform as well as others. I can’t do this project. I can’t be creative in my work. The I cant’s bring stress to our work and drags out each work day. That is when the ball and chain feeling begins to overtake us.

By building up our self belief we can have more success on the job as we will reach our goals and perform better on our projects we do at work. We will be able to expand our possibilities more at work by creatively seeing new ways to help clients and customers. Creativity and skills levels grow when we have a positive belief about our capabilities. This allows us then a higher level of happiness in our work.
Some things that can build our self efficacy levels are to keep growing in our work skills. I can chant all day long that I believe that I am a great with my computer skills. Yet if all I know about the computer is how to push the power button my self belief statements are to no avail.

So be a lifelong learner, attend workshops, read up on journals and research in your work field. Attend conferences that relate to your work. Keep persistent in the difficulties of your work until you reach success. Don’t have a give up attitude but a keep on going and growing attitude. Learn from other co-workers. Don’t be an island, instead appreciate what others who work with you are doing, Also learn more about self efficacy to build up your levels of it. A professor at Emory university has a wonderful website full of information on the topic: www.des.emory.edu/mfp/self-efficacy.html
Check out the informational articles there on this important subject.

Our beliefs affect our job performance and the quality of our work experience. As stated in the past since we work about 80,000 hours in our lifo we want to make the most of that time instead of dreading that time. SO it is important to build up our self efficacy.

Reflection:
On a scale of 1-10 one being low and 10 high what is your level of self-belief about your work capabilities. Journal about a growth area you can improve on in your work life. Take the time to go to the emory website above and read up on self efficacy.