• Appreciative Inquiry 2010
• VIA Cards
• About Us
• Testimonials
• Executive Coaching
• Senior Women
• Advisory and Bespoke Programmes

About Us   Combined, Jan Elsner and Barbara Heilemann have more than 30 years of experience working in professional and financial service firms before establishing Positive Leadership, almost a decade ago. Positive Leadership have pioneered the application and teaching of Strengths, Positive Organisational Scholarship, Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry in Australia.  At the 2010 Australian Positive Psychology Conference they were introduced as the Midwives of Positive Psychology in Australia.  It is their goal to ensure that Positive Psychology, Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Organisational Scholarship are not seen to be the domain of any individual consultant or consulting firm, and that rigorous academic material is made accessible and relevant and does not become a transient fad. To this end, Jan and Barbara have brought International thought leaders to Australia, to work with and to teach colleagues, clients and local academics. Initially they presented Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, whom Jan studied with in the early days of the emergence of Positive Psychology, to begin to spread the word. Tal Ben Shahar, who was the most popular teacher at Harvard, came to Australia twice to teach Positive Leadership’s clients and colleagues, and to work with Jan and Barbara. He acknowledges their contribution to his work and thinking in his lectures and his new book ‘Perfect’. “My colleagues from Australia, Jan Elsner and Barbara Heilemann ...arguably the leading practitioners in the area of Strengths...have really helped me understand what strengths mean...” (University of Pennsylvania, Foundations of Positive Psychology) Jan and Barbara are selected and invited speakers at numerous International and Australian academic and professional conferences. In 2010 they will present at the prestigious Academy of Management international meeting in Montreal, the Australian Positive Psychology Conference and the Women’s International Networking Conference in Europe, organise and host the First Women’s International Networking (WIN) conference in Australia, lead an Australian Delegation to the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society in Deauville, France, and teach as adjunct faculty on the Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Business, Certificate for Appreciative Inquiry Certificate in Positive Business and Society Change in Australia. In the past, they been invited and selected speakers at the First International Conference on Positive Change (Florida USA) the International Positive Psychology Summit (Washington DC, USA), WIN (Womens’s International Network) Conference (Barcelona and Prague), the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Women Chiefs of Enterprise (Australia), hosted the initial meeting to launch the International Positive Psychology Association, and been on the advisory committees of the Australian Positive Psychology Conferences. Jan has also spoken at the European Positive Psychology Conference (Braga, Portugal), the World Conference on Gifted Education (Australia), and been on the Australian Psychological Society inaugural National and State Committees for Coaching Psychology. Barbara is a popular teacher of her own Positive Psychology based Performance Management elective subject at Monash University, School of Management, and holds a Board Position for a not for profit agency. Barbara and Jan maintain strong academic and professional links internationally and regularly attend and present at academic and Women’s Leadership events and conferences. APPROACH Positive Leadership have built a unique strategic model that synthesises the broad material in the fields of Positive Psychology, Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Organisational Scholarship, Authentic Leadership and the latest in the field of neuroscience, into an approach that is applicable to executive coaching, leadership development, as well as group and organisational initiatives. Strengths Approach At senior levels many people are fatigued by diagnostics that focus on yet another set of factors about themselves that they need to ‘improve’ and solution focused coaching and development agendas that imply there has to be a problem to be fixed. Positive Leadership’s strengths based focus is to help a client to be their best: mentally and emotionally, in the whole of their life. Positive Leadership have pioneered the use of the VIA Signature Strengths survey in Australia, and have developed the Via Signature Strengths cards, used by all their clients and now by people all across the globe. We focus on understanding what is causal to clients’ success and thriving to date, what drives the person to greater satisfaction and success, what positively distinguishes them from others, how to leverage it, and how to maintain and sustain a sense of thriving, career direction and success in the future. Building a Critical Mass of Senior Women Positive Leadership have built upon Barbara’s original masters research, being one of the first to identify unconscious  bias as the main barrier to women attaining and being retrained at senior levels, and providing a pedagogy to explain why current and past initiatives to promote and keep women in executive roles and on boards were not working. They have built a reputation for success in applying the Positive Leadership model in an empirically rigorous and strategic way to the challenge of building a critical mass of Senior Women in organisations and are now applying it to the challenge of achieving representation of women on boards in Australia. The Positive Leadership solution is not steeped in ‘creating awareness’, laying blame or changing the individual, the protagonists or the organisation and has no foundation in gender initiatives. The solution is based on the latest findings in neuroscience, identifying what occurs in the brain, how this may differ for men and women and a set of tools to help individuals navigate their careers.

		Jan Elsner Jan is originally a Psychologist, with a background in Big 4 corporate and organisational strategy consulting and in senior Group Human Resources leadership, specifically in talent management. She is a pioneer in the study and practice of Positive Psychology and Positive Organizational Scholarship in Australia. Jan has spent the last 10 years working as an executive coach specialising in the application of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry to executive coaching and organisations.
		Barbara Heilemann Barbara is originally a Chartered Accountant, and has spent 10 years researching the causes of dissatisfaction and disengagement for high potential and senior women, with a special focus on professional and financial services, in the search for a solution. Barbara presents a rigorous argument as to why standard interventions to solve the problems won’t work. Barbara is a passionate and popular teacher of Management at Monash University and holds a Board Position for a not for profit agency related to sexual assault support.

In the past, Jan and Barbara been invited and selected speakers at the First International Conference on Positive Change (USA, 2007), the International Positive Psychology Summit (USA, 2006), WIN (Women’s International Network) Conference (Barcelona 2008, Prague 2009), the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2003), Women Chiefs of Enterprise (Australia 2003), hosted the initial international meeting to launch the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) with Prof. Martin Seligman (2006), and been on the advisory committees of the two Australian Positive Psychology Conferences (2008, 2010). Jan has also spoken at the European Positive Psychology Conference (Braga, Portugal 2006), the World Conference on Gifted Education (Australia, 2003), and been on the Australian Psychological Society inaugural National and State Committees for Coaching Psychology (2003/4).