ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a teaching regime in use at the Project Management Center for Excellence (UMD PM Center) at the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. It is of particular value to others considering designing or improving courses relevant to people managing teams in projects. Some project teams respond to the challenges of complex projects and changing environments with resilience and innovation, whilst other project teams may start strong but then diminish in productivity and fail. The UMD PM Center courses build on empirical research from the fields of positive psychology, Positive Organizational Behaviour (POB), Positive Leadership, and Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). Positive psychology as a term of art was coined in 1999 by Martin E. P. Seligman when he was president of the American Psychological Association (APA). After the Second World War, research funding in psychology, at least in the US, was directed primarily to the relief of psychological suffering.
