Description
Positive Leadership Cards invite you to work with coaching questions inspired by works of art from around the world. For personal development, the cards can be used individually, focusing on one coaching question or exercise each day for a month. They can also be used together in a group of people who wish to focus their conversations on the positive aspects of life. The questions are based on the five dimensions of well-being proposed by Martin Seligman in his PERMA model. The individual letters correspond to the English terms for positive emotions, engagement (being in a state of flow), relationships, meaning, and accomplishment — including recognising and celebrating achievements.
The selection of artworks reflects a desire to go beyond the traditional canon of European art and to encourage people using the cards to draw inspiration from artefacts from other cultures, as well as from works of art created by women artists.
Participants who have used the cards emphasise that this interdisciplinary approach to art and positive psychology means that:
during the game, participants find that their mood improves as they focus their stories on positive life experiences and positive emotions,
by sharing experiences, participants can gain inspiration to try new ways of coping with stress and to approach different activities with greater creativity and understanding,
the cards encourage self-reflection on what is good for us, how we want to spend our time, and how we can focus more consciously on creating more moments of happiness and satisfaction in our immediate surroundings,
curiosity about the world grows, together with the desire to learn more about selected artefacts and the cultural contexts in which they were created,
the cards also make it possible to look not only at works of art, but also at different situations in life from a new perspective — the perspective of another person.
The cards grew out of a fascination with art from around the world, coaching methods drawn from positive psychology, original storytelling practice, and intercultural communication. At the heart of their creation was the desire to encourage people using them to judge less and make a greater effort to understand the behaviour and views of others, to practise changing perspective, and to begin seeing art as an important source of inspiration for improving mood and achieving well-being.
