Gong, Masa
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Publication Resilience, Engagement, and Connection: Positive Psychology Tools for Hot Bread Kitchen(2020-05-07) Coleman, Keith; Gong, Masa; van der Willigen, TessaHot Bread Kitchen (HBK), a not-for-profit in Brooklyn, New York City, provides culinary training to women living below the poverty line as a pathway to jobs in the food services industry. HBK provides wraparound support services, ranging from help with childcare and English language skills through to training in professional readiness skills. HBK’s members are carefully screened, yet some still struggle with the stressful, fast-paced, and multicultural kitchen environment. Based on a review of the literature, we propose a positive psychology plan to strengthen individual and team thriving in the kitchen by developing resilience, engagement, and social connection, using specific activities relating to cognitive-behavioral skills, character strengths, team-building, and meaning and purpose. We provide a library of activities that HBK staff—as experts on their population—can adapt and fit into their evolving curriculum, and a short training for staff, to unite them around goals and approaches.Publication Missing Link: Marrying Applied Positive Psychology and Diversity Training(2020-01-01) Gong, MasaDiversity training has grown over the last twenty years and has recently surged in the wake of the global protests for racial justice and equality sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The U.S. Census Bureau has projected that non-Hispanic Whites will no longer be the majority racial group by the year 2044. The emerging majority will be composed of Asians, Blacks, Latinx, and other races. To prepare for this multicultural shift and help increase connectivity between groups, especially in the current COVID-19 era of working from home and Black Lives Matter, companies are investing heavily in diversity training. Diversity training aspires to help workers learn about and appreciate differences as a pathway to more egalitarian behaviors and practices, and diversity also aids in the economic success of the business. Yet current diversity training effects can encompass the opposite. For example, social dominance challenges, power and status needs, in-group and out-group divisions, fragility, negativity, and mixed results in terms of bias reduction, behavior change, and equality in the workplace. This paper will explore how applied positive psychology may help to ameliorate these negative effects and therefore increase the odds of meaningful long-term change.