A Person-Centered Workplace

A White Paper by grit & flow

In the last five years, grit & flow haS evolved from the initial focus of lowering the unemployment rate for autistic people to our greater understanding of the cause of low employment rates for all neurodivergent people -- and job satisfaction for people in general. We found it stems from how our leadership education has focused on lessons from the industrial age – one size should fit all. The increase in focus on the diversity of individuals, including physical, racial, sexual, gender, and cognitive – demonstrates the need to change how we lead people. Through an intentional focus on guiding companies on their journey to creating inclusive workplaces, we have found that using the principles of managing a neurodivergent workforce benefits everyone in the workplace. Therefore, using a neurodivergent lens to look at the workplace, we have created a person-centered workplace certificate.

Why person-centered? As organizational psychologists - researchers and practitioners -- we turn to the ample research on changing behavior to be more person-centric. It comes down to meeting the person where they are instead of trying to change them to fit how you or your organization believe they should be.

A person-centered focus emerged during the third pause of the psychology –humanistic psychology. Shortly, we will give you some perspective on the evolution of psychology to this approach. But first, let's discuss the reasoning behind taking our successes in creating neuroinclusive workplaces that support cognitive differences in processing, language, and overall communication as a guide to creating a person-centered workplace certification. Through our work guiding organizations towards a neuroinclusive-friendly employment experience, we saw an increase in better job-person fit. These meeting practices provided everyone an environment to contribute at their best and greater satisfaction in employee feedback processes. The more we witnessed this phenomenon, the more convinced we were that our work creates a better workplace for everyone.

The History of Psychology and the Road to Human-Centered Approaches

William James (1842-1910), the father of American psychology, believed that behavior helps people live in their environment (Kaag, 2009). His revolutionary outlook stimulated focus from the human experience to personality types. Psychology continued to evolve as different movements were introduced and argued to be the ultimate reliable way to study people.

Reconciling with an individual's history (Kluners, 2014) and enabling the transformation to a self-reflective individual (Richardson & Zeddies, 2004) led to the establishment of psychoanalysis and the development of psychodynamic theories. Made famous in the late 1800s and early 1900s by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), it has developed a cult-like following, attracting criticism from the psychology field and academia for the lack of empirical evidence to support the practice (Johansson, 2007; Schut & Castonguay, 2001). Viewed as an external force imposing the change on an individual (Cassel, 2001), the results of psychoanalysis and the probe into the unconscious have been consistently successful and documented (Hebbrecht, 2013; Kluners, 2014; Perera, 2013).

Behaviorism was the second major force in the psychology behind the psychoanalysis movement. It was derived from the desire to understand unconscious thoughts and how these impacted our actions. Introduced with John B. Watson's (1878-1958) paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (Harzem, 2004), it is now accepted as an independent field of psychology. The central tenet of the behaviorist movement was the need to have observable behavior, not the dialogue with the analysand, as both psychoanalysis and humanistic practices implement.?

Humanistic, transpersonal, and existential psychology (HTE) explore what it means to be human and examine an individual's experiences. Humanistic psychology was initially defined as an opposition to the current practices of psychology, psychoanalysis, and behaviorism, coining itself as the third force in psychology (Kriz & Langle, 2012). HTE psychologies are considered open and inclusive, a progressive moving away from what many psychologists believed was a "preoccupation with illness and pathology" (McDonald & Wearing, 2013, p. 39). The humanistic umbrella encompasses transpersonal, existential, phenomenology, and other mind-body approaches that examine the whole person.??

The necessary components of the Humanistic Psychology (HP) movement expressed by the founding theoreticians was a mission to restore the whole person to psychology while looking past the medical model (Ryback, 1990). Rather than neglecting traditional science and its progress, the goal was to influence the correction from a positivistic bias (Clay, 2002). Humanistic psychology was influenced by German philosophers Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and their experience with Nazi Germany and World War II. Husserl introduced phenomenology, followed by his student, Heidegger's introduction of externalism, both setting the foundations for the humanistic movement in psychology (Reinders, 2012).??

The old Saybrook Conference of 1964 contributed to America's place in psychology by introducing the third force, a significant contrast to behaviorism and psychoanalysis, which were considered dehumanizing by HP (Aanstoos et al., 2000). As documented by Aanstoos et al., their contributions were timely with changes in the American culture and the population's widespread acceptance, leading to HP becoming a more permanent fixture in society. The need for a more extensive user base for human-centric therapies and approaches created an avenue beyond academia to establish HP as an accepted psychology.??

Kriz and Langle (2012) argue the impact of psychological interventions when they share the importance of the individual's acceptance of the healing process. The recognition of the client-centered aspect, introduced by Carl Rogers (1902-1987), as necessary in multiple disciplines such as medicine, law, and business administration demonstrates the acceptance that a client-centered approach is required for progress (Taylor & Martin, 2015). Consumer perception has also evolved towards a positive, self-improvement, and empowerment movement (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The change in society's awareness of self and the field of psychology, in general, placed the humanistic psychology movement at the forefront.?

These tenants were the change in focus to a growth-seeking experience in both clinical and academic domains and the extensive acceptance of books advocating the science of persons by humanistic influencers Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), and Rollo May (1909-1994) along with a push for a science about humans away from natural sciences by Amedeo Giorgi (1931) (Taylor, 2000). Carl Roger's view of looking at the individual and giving them the tools to facilitate their growth was also a significant tenet in the humanistic psychology (HP) movement (Kahn & Rachman, 2000). Kahn and Rachman (2000) share how these foundational tenets created client-centered therapy and continued into a person-centered approach or self-psychology. The tenet of focusing on the subjective instead of objective interpretation by an individual sets a foundation for a new way for people to understand their behavior based on each circumstance.

An example of the trend of matching treatment to symptoms comes from Insel's (2009) article for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) findings that "new interventions based on a personalized approach to the diverse needs and circumstances of people with mental illness" (p. 128). Pragmatically, all three movements in psychology have been attempts at changing how individuals interact with the world around them. Analyzing and understanding the unconscious or conscious experiences or observing and modifying outward behavior all do the same thing but access different channels of the individual. Since all humans are different, different options must be available if we wish to make ourselves fuller members of our society or to have "a good life" (Dillion, 2019).

?Bringing Humanistic psychology to the workplace

We are the sum of our experiences. We all have intersectional identities. In the workplace context, intersectionality introduces a dynamic perspective that recognizes the multifaceted nature of individuals' identities. "Intersectionality emphasizes how an individual's overlapping identities impact their experiences of discrimination and oppression" (Lopez, 2022, p. 255). Rather than neatly fitting into singular identity categories, people's experiences are a blend of various factors, including race, gender, sexual orientation, and more. Originating from Kimberlé Crenshaw (Davis et al., 2022), this viewpoint underscores the intricate interplay between these elements in shaping people's lives.

Within our workplace, intersectionality is essential in engaging our workers while creating an environment of belonging and inclusion. Our certificate program, founded on meeting all these intersectional identities daily, encourages and provides actionable steps to change how we communicate, relay information, and manage interactions while considering essential situational and environmental factors unique to each workplace.

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Workplaces need to be human-centric, and we can begin your journey to workplace inclusion through our person-centered workplace certificate.

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References

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Clay, R. (2002). A renaissance for humanistic psychology: The field explores new niches while building on its past. Monitor on Psychology, 33(8), p. 42. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep02/renaissance?

Davis, A., Solomon, M., & Belcher, H. (2022). Examination of race and autism intersectionality among African American/Black young adults. Autism in Adulthood, 4(4), 306-314. doi: 10.1089/aut.2021.0091),

Dillon, J. J. (2019, July 1). Humanistic Psychology and the Good: A Forgotten Link. The Humanistic Psychologist. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/hum0000149?

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Hebbrecht, M. (2013). The dream as a picture of the psychoanalytic process. Romanian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6(2), 123–142. ?

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McDonald, M., & Wearing, S. (2013). A reconceptualization of the self in humanistic psychology: Heidegger, Foucault and the sociocultural turn. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 44(1), 37–59.?

Lopez, K. (2022). Intersectionality on the horizon: Exploring autism in adulthood from a unique vantage point. Autism in Adulthood, 4(4). doi: 10.1089/aut.2022.29023.editorial

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