Course home page
TU-E3040 Human Potential is a course on how to create and lead organizations in which workers thrive and perform at their best. How to ensure that the potential inherent in every human being is able to fully blossom at work? What makes work motivating and what is the secret behind exceptionally high work engagement? What is needed for employees to really commit to their work and want to give their best effort in the pursuit of the common goal? These are the founding questions of this course.
In modern worklife, where quality of work is often a more important factor than mere quantity, the motivation and feelings of the employee have become crucially important factors in enabling successful work. The key source of value and competitive advantage in more and more industries are human beings. And unlike machines, human beings have rich and complex psychological lives that significantly influence how much effort they put into their work, how much they commit to the organizational goals, how well they collaborate, how creative and innovative they are individually and as a team, and whether the organization is able to recruit and retain key talent in the first place. Thus, building a successful organization is increasingly about designing an atmosphere where employees are able to feel motivated, exercise their best abilities, and thrive.
Building engaging work context where people are able to thrive and realize their full potential is both a leadership and a personal challenge. The leadership challenge is to design challenging and resourceful work contexts that enable workers to thrive. The personal challenge is how to find, create or craft a work situation in which you thrive at your best.
In order to answer these question, the course draws both from psychological research on human motivation, well-being, and meaningfulness as well as organizational research on how to best enhance both individual-level and group-level thriving, wellness, and effort. Although the focus of the course is in enabling a more positive worklife, it also aims to remain critical in identifying the key obstacles in the way of such positive developments: What are the forces, structures and fixations that lead to a situation where instead of engagement, many employees are currently actively disengaged from their work?
TU-E3040 creates opportunities for you to learn about theories and tools for enhancing human potential and engagement from: (1) case studies; (2) personal reflection; (3) readings and key theoretical insights; (4) in-class discussions, and (5) various individual and team exercises.
Topics covered in the course include:
- Why is work engagement so important and how to improve it?
- What forces are shaping the future of work, and what implications do these
changes have as regards how to lead employee motivation and engagement?
- Meaningful work: What makes work meaningful and why is it so important?
- Basic psychological needs and how to fulfill them at work
- Job crafting: What can you do yourself to make your work more engaging
and meaningful?
- The psychological factors behind successful team work
Dates and time: Periods I - II, Wednesdays (17.10. - 05.12.) @ 9:15 - 11:45
Place: Open Innovation House (Maarintie 6, Otaniemi), Lecture hall A116
Instructors: Frank Martela (lecturer) and Tiina Rahja (assistant)
Contact: firstname.surname@aalto.fi
Course
requirements and grading:
This course requires 135 working
hours. It consists of the following parts:
- 7 lectures á 3 hours (21
hours)
- 5 pre-readings and reading responses (25 hours)
- Team assignment (25 hours)
- Movie assignment and final essay (40 hours)
- Independent study time and time to think (24 hours)
See more detailed discussion in the page ’Course requirements and grading’