At the recent Small Giants breakfast we helped host locally, Tom Walter, founder of Tasty Catering, spoke about the idea of helping people to think and act like owners and entrepreneurs.

In that journey, Tom shared how he’s realized that the most important “process” in any business just happens to be the most complex: it comes down to human behavior.

Focusing on people instead of products and processes is where he puts his focus.

The result? Employees who are invested in their work, invested in adding to the company culture, and leaders who want to do what’s best for the business and the community.

With that in mind, he also shared the idea and importance of “HERO”, which is a concept of psychological capital.

Tom learned about positive psychological capital from Fred Luthans, Ph.D., who has conducted much research and authored many books on this topic.

The words and constructs that make up the acronym are hope, self-efficacy, resilience and optimism. As applied to mental health in business, Tom explained what that means:

• Hope: In this context, it means we have the ability to see the way to our goals. In other words, it’s the positive state where we believe we can achieve a certain outcome.

• Efficacy: we know it as confidence in yourself. It’s our capacity to know we can carry out a task or project to get to a certain outcome.

• Resilience: our ability to bounce back and to handle uncertainty.

• Optimism: our view and the energy we have about what can be achieved.

This “HERO” leadership concept has been linked to job and life satisfaction.

The great news: the more we can work this positive psychological capital “muscle,” the more people can be effective in their jobs, and the more satisfied in life we can be. (Fred has proven scientifically, that this method works.)

Not only that, but the more we’re able to develop this capacity, the healthier and more engaged our entire team will be.

It’s a concept Tom has been focusing on as he looks to help others find success and thrive…and that’s even if they aren’t working at Tasty Catering. “All of these things we can work on, practice, and develop to become better leaders, and to become better at our work,” shared Tom.

I’ll be waiting for more from Tom on that subject in months to come, and in the meantime, I’ll be working on “practicing” my leadership.