What makes us happy at work?
 On
paper, Maria’s new job had it all: A financially successful
organization, interesting tasks, an impressive salary, cool
offices, a French chef, a gym, free fruit, massages, and a view
out of her office window that took your breath away.
Maria is an easy-going,
attractive woman in her forties with a broad business background,
but even in her first month at the new job she noticed that
things were very wrong. As wealthy as the organization was, it
still completely lacked human and social values. The workplace
was plagued by distrust, infighting, slander, backstabbing,
sexual harassment, a lack of respect, repression, and veiled
threats.
She spent the second month in
her new job pondering how she could change things. By the third
month Maria realized that she probably wouldn’t be able to
change much and that she might easily get crushed trying. She
quit without having found a new job.
Maria is now a publishing
editor and is also responsible for HR and the work environment at
her new workplace. Her salary is much lower, but her quality of
life is much, much higher, and she told me: “I’m now a
believer when it comes to happiness at work, and want to help
spread the happy message.”
While all the traditional trappings of a good job don’t
hurt, they’re just not enough. As Maria’s story shows, it
doesn’t matter how nice your office is, how large your salary
is or how good the food is if the mood at the company is bad.
Some of the things we strive for at work—the title, the
salary, the perks—aren’t really the things that make us
happy. I’m not saying that a high salary will make you
unhappy—at least that never happened to me!—but it won’t
make you particularly happy either.
So what can make us happy? Well, the first likely culprit is
work itself.
Work itself
Chris is a travel journalist
who gets to travel to all the best resorts and travel
destinations in the world and try out the best restaurants and
hotels. You have to admit that sounds like really nice work, and
when I met him, my first thought was, naturally, “How can I
kill this guy and get his job!” But the truth was, Chris wasn’t
that excited about it, because he never really got to enjoy his
travels. He had to eat dinner in 4 or 5 different restaurants in
one night. He had to visit 3 or 4 different hotels a day and
could never relax in any of them. He also had to travel a lot and
the endless plane rides soone became a boring chore to him.
On the other hand, I talked to
Peter, a sanitation worker once (a few years ago he would have
been called a trash man) who absolutely loves his job. Peter has
to get up at 4 in the morning, but that also means that he is
finished by noon and has the rest of the day off. He enjoys
working outdoors, he has a great time with his co-workers on the
garbage truck, and he likes doing a great job and helping people
out.
Work itself can make us happy. If you’re a salesperson who
loves talking to customers, a mechanic who loves fixing things, a
programmer who loves to code, or a nurse who loves treating
patients, there’s a good chance you’ll be happy just doing
the work involved in your job.
However, one thing should be made very clear: Happiness at
work is not limited to those people lucky enough to have found
their calling. It's not only got those whose job is their first
career choice. Even when the job itself is fairly generic, it’s
possible to love it.
Even if the work itself is perfect, that is absolutely no
guarantee you’ll be happy at work. If your manager is a
terrible person, if the mood at the company is bad, if you’re
bullied or treated unfairly, you will be unhappy at work, no
matter how great the job.
It ain't what you got, it's what you do
When you ask people what makes them happy at work apart from
work itself, you get these long lists of what people want to
have, usually including a good boss, appreciation, a good salary,
nice co-workers, free donuts, having fun, great meetings, having
ideas, and much, much more.
This is reflected in most theories and studies on job
satisfaction and motivation, which invariably focus on what we
must have to enjoy our jobs.
However, happiness at work is less about what you have
and more about what you do. You may have a great
boss, a great team, fun tasks and a lot of fun. But it's what
you've done that makes it so. And it's what you do
today that will keep it so.
Also, even if you know what you must have to be happy at work,
you still face the obvious question: “So, what do I do
to get it?”
Finally, focusing on what you must have is passive, whereas
focusing on what you must do is active. You take charge and
create the future you want.
That is why any useful theory of what makes us happy at work
must focus on what we do – not on what we have. By some strange
coincidence, the theory presented in this chapter does just that!
Six actions that make us happy at work
There are six simple, everyday actions that create a good mood
and make us happy at work. To be happy at work we must:
Be positive
Learn
Be open
Participate
Find meaning
Love
People who do this at work are happy. A workplace where people
can do each of these is a happy one.
These six actions can be introduced into almost any job and
any workplace in the world. They’re not limited to certain
businesses or certain types of work or workers.
Notice that it’s not the organization that is positive,
learning, open, participative, meaningful or loving—it’s you.
It’s us. While the company must offer an environment within
which these actions are easy, it’s still up to us to actually
take the opportunity to practice them daily.
Do
you prioritize the things that make you happy at work, or are
your efforts concentrated elsewhere? The problem is that many
people don’t have a clear picture of what makes them happy at
work, and while they may have the best intentions, they end up
doing the wrong things.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the six actions that
make us happy at work.
 Happy
action #1: Be positive
“I have this co-worker who is
almost always cheerful,” says Paul, a 28-year-old
schoolteacher. “It doesn’t matter how busy we are, how many
problems we’re having, or how bad the weather is outside—he
is unfailingly cheerful, relaxed, positive and optimistic, and
sees the best in everything and everybody.
“He’s a life-saver. There
is always a positive, calm atmosphere around him, people visibly
relax and become more open and constructive when they work with
him, and his optimism infects others, which means that we all
tend more to see solutions than problems.”
“While he himself gets no
more work done than anyone else, I still think he is responsible
for a large part of our school’s success, because his happiness
at work spreads to so many other people.”
Being positive is an incredibly important skill to learn, a
skill that is key to both happiness and success at work. Positive
people and positive workplaces choose to focus on possibilities,
solutions, advantages and fun. It’s not that they ignore
problems, disadvantages and threats—far from it—it’s just
that they have found that being positive makes you both happier
and more efficient. Psychological research clearly shows that
they’re onto something:
As a young psychology student
at Pennsylvania University in the sixties, Martin Seligman was
troubled. He’d designed a ground-breaking experiment which
involved giving dogs mild electric shocks that would be
unpleasant but not harm them in any way. Should he go ahead and
perform it? Would the potential benefits of the experiment
outweigh the discomfort of the dogs? After talking it over with
his advisor he went through with it and his findings shocked (no
pun intended) the world of psychology.
Three dogs went through each
experiment. The first dog was placed in a special cage and given
electrical shocks through the floor, which stopped whenever the
dog pressed a panel with its nose. It received shocks but had the
power to stop them and quickly learned to do just that. The
second dog got shocks whenever the first dog got them. This means
that it received exactly the same amount and duration of
electrical shocks as the first dog, but it had no chance to
affect them. The third dog got no shocks.
Then each dog was placed in a
so-called shuttlebox. Here the dog was given an electrical shock
through the floor that it could easily escape by jumping over a
low barrier into another part of the box. Dog number one (who’d
recieved shocks it could turn off itself) quickly jumped over the
barrier. So did dog number three that had gotten no shocks. But
dog number two just lay there, feeling powerless to change its
conditions. It had learned that electrical shocks were not
something it could control. It had learned helplessness.
If you want to be happy at work, it’s important to be
positive. But how do you do that? You can’t walk around all day
mumbling “gotta be positive, gotta be positive” under your
breath. That might make your co-workers a bit anxious…
The truth is that many workplaces have a strong focus upon the
negative. Everything that goes well is ignored, while meetings
focus upon problems, emails are about mistakes, phone calls mean
unhappy clients, and conversations are about conflict. This
constantly reinforces a sense that things are bad, there’s
nothing we can do to change it, and people end up like the second
dog in Seligman’s experiment—they give up.
Seligman’s research into the field he calls positive
psychology clearly shows that positive, optimistic people do much
better than negative people. For example, positive people:
Have a higher quality of life.
Live longer.
Are healthier.
Do better at work.
Experience less depression.
Have more friends and better social lives.
And it gets better:
These are good solid reasons to be positive. And while
Seligman’s research shows that it’s easy to learn negativity,
pessimism and helplessness, it also shows that you can teach
yourself to be positive.
In a workplace experiment, Seligman convinced an insurance
company to hire a group of people who were not initially
qualified to work at the company, but who all scored highly in
terms of positivity and optimism. This group of employees went on
to outperform all their highly skilled but less positive
colleagues.
Think about it: What kind of person do you want to be at work?
The positive, upbeat, happy, smiling person who works actively to
make things better? Or the negative, pessimistic grouch who’s
already given up and accepted that things are bad and will never
change?
The following are some simple things that you can do to make
you and the people around you more positive.
Praise
Kjaer Group, a Danish company
that sells cars in developing nations, introduced The Order of
the Elephant a few years back. It’s a huge plush toy that any
employee can award to any other, along with an explanation of why
that employee deserves The Order. The praisee gets the elephant
for a couple of days, and at two-feet tall it’s hard to
overlook if it’s standing on that person’s desk.
Other employees stopping by
immediately notice the elephant and go, “Hey, you got the
elephant. What’d you do?”, which of course means that the
good stories and best practices get told and re-told many times.
This is an excellent, simple and cheap way of enhancing learning
and happiness at work.
Praise is the single most effective method to make people
happy at work:
Remember that good praise is:
Relevant—Don’t praise just for the sake of
praise—make sure there's a reason to praise.
Timely—Praise as soon as there’s a reason.
Personal—Tailor the praise to suit that particular
praisee.
For extra bonus points:
Praise someone you don’t talk to often. It’s a great
way to establish contact.
Praise your manager. Managers often hear very little
praise from their employees. However, only genuine praise
counts—don’t kiss butt!
If you really want a challenge, praise someone you don’t
like much or someone you’re currently having a conflict with.
It can be a great way to get unstuck. Can’t think of anything
positive about that person? Try again—there’s always
something.
Also, try to remember that not only can you praise people for
what they do, but you can also praise them for who they are. The
happiest workplaces use this technique to create a culture of
praise, where good deeds and good people are routinely and
quickly noticed and appreciated.
Which philosophy do you think is more likely to make people
happy at work?
Catch
people making mistakes and punish them quickly
or
Catch
people doing things right and praise them quickly
While I definitely opt for the latter, this does not mean that
you can’t criticize people and correct them when they make
mistakes. In fact, if you routinely praise people when they get
things right, they’re more open and positive towards criticism.
Some great ways to praise people include:
In person—Don’t make a big production out of it, just go
up to a colleague, deliver your praise and then get back to work.
Do not hang around waiting to be praised back. Also, do not add
“…but you really need to improve your…” after the
praise—that ruins the whole point.
Use a token—Like the elephant that the Kjaer Group uses, a
widely recognized token helps to develop a culture of praise
within your company. If you can find something with relevance to
your company, even better.
On the walls—The London-based innovation agency ?What If!
has praise for their employees written all over their combined
meeting and reception area. Any employee can nominate any other
for their good deeds, and the best ones are immortalized in big,
colorful letters pasted across the walls and ceiling of the
busiest area of the office, where the most people will see them.
Poncho—This is an exercise we developed for our Happy At
Work Workshops, and it never fails. It takes about 15 minutes and
works in groups of up to about 40 people. All you need are
flipover sheets and a marker pen for each person.
Give each person a flipover sheet. Ask them to tear a hole in
the middle of it and then put it on like a poncho. Give each
person a marker pen. Once everyone is wearing their paper poncho,
give the following instructions: “Go around and write on the
back of other people. Write the stuff you like and appreciate
about that person, the stuff they excel at and do well. Write on
as many people as possible.” Give people enough time to write
on each other—groups of 10–20 people will need about 5
minutes, larger groups may need 10. My favorite part of the
poncho exercise is when you get chains of 5–10 people, each
writing on the back of the next.
Once people have finished writing on each other, give them
these instructions: “I bet you’re all wondering what people
have been writing on you. Please keep your ponchos on and sit
down. Now, for the next minute you’re not allowed to speak.
You’re only allowed to read what it says on your poncho and to
enjoy it. Please take them off and read them now.” Give them a
minute or so to read their ponchos, then end the exercise and
thank them for participating.
We’ve done this exercise with leaders, employees, government
workers, school teachers, social workers, secretaries, lab
workers, prison guards, kitchen staff, and many, many other
groups—it works every single time.
Participants especially enjoy that:
It’s easy to give praise.
It’s easy to receive praise—you don’t have to
respond to it, only to enjoy it.
They learn what people appreciate about you.
They can save their ponchos and take them out and read
them whenever they need a boost.
Try it!
Keep a happiness-at-work log
At the end of every workday, just before you go home, take a
few minutes to note down five things that made you happy at work
that day. Type the log on your computer before you shut it down,
or just write it on a piece of paper. Big or small doesn’t
matter—note it down if it made your day a little better. Making
a deadline. Talking to a nice co-worker. Meat loaf day at the
cafeteria. Anything!
If you can’t come up with five items for the list, just
write down as many as you can. If you can’t think of a single
good thing, then either it’s been a really bad day, or you’re
just not accustomed to remembering the good things that happen
during the day.
Let’s say you’ve had ten good experiences at work and one
bad. If you go home thinking only of the bad one, you will
remember it as a bad day. It will even feel like a bad day. Since
most people have a tendency to remember negative experiences
better than positive ones, it’s a good idea to take extra care
to remember good experiences. A happiness-at-work log is a
simple, effective way to do it.
You can find a sample happiness log at the book’s website:
www.positivesharing.com/happyhouris9to5.
Positive meetings
Psychological experiments can
be very devious, and this one was certainly no exception. The
focus was meetings and the format was simple: Groups of people
were asked to reach agreement on a contentious topic.
Here’s the devious bit:
Unbeknownst to the other participants, one member of the group
was an actor hired by the researchers. The actor was told to
speak first in the discussions. In half the experiments he would
say something positive, while in the other half he would start by
saying something critical. After that he simply participated in
the discussion like the other group members.
The experiment showed that when
the first thing said in the meeting was positive, the discussion
turned out more constructive, and people listened more and were
more likely to reach a consensus. When the first statement was
critical, the mood became more hostile, people were more
argumentative and consensus became less likely.
The researchers concluded that
the way a meeting starts has a large impact upon the tone of the
discusion and on whether or not the group will eventually reach a
consensus.
Ah, meetings—the most energizing, creative and fun activity
in the workplace. What’s that? They’re not?! Well, they can
be. In fact, they should be. Here’s a tip that can help your
group take a step in the right direction.
Many groups, projects or departments open their meetings with
a round where each participant can say what he or she is working
on, and quite often this ends up as a litany of complaints and
problems. However, as the experiment cited above shows, this is
likely to negatively affect the whole meeting.
Instead, open meetings with a round where each person answers
one of these questions:
What have I done since the last meeting that I’m proud
of?
Name a person who has helped me since the last meeting.
What am I looking forward to the most in the coming
week/month?
What’s the funniest thing someone has told me in the
last week?
Pick a new question for each meeting and make some up
yourself—as long as they focus on something positive. Don’t
spend a great deal of time on the exercise, just give each
participant half a minute to share something positive. It can
change the entire mood of a meeting when you start with something
positive instead of a round of individual and collective moaning.
Have fun
A senior Southwest Airlines
executive spent a day working at the ticket counter and with the
ground crew in order to better understand their roles.
While she was helping direct a
plane to the gate using those long orange directional devices,
one of the seasoned ground crew members told her to rotate her
wrists in a circular manner.
When she did this, the plane
did a 360-degree turn! She began to scream, thinking she had sent
a confusing signal to the pilot.
In reality, the ground crew had
contacted the pilot and told them they had a “greeny”
directing the plane and that they wanted to have some fun with
her. The pilot enthusiastically agreed to play along.
Fun matters, and any job can be fun. Even in the most serious
situation, fun can make work bearable.
Make room for fun at work. Give up on the idea that fun is
somehow unprofessional and frivolous. Even if you’re not in the
mood for fun that day, let others have theirs—never ruin it for
them. Just as importantly, don’t force people to participate.
Some are up for it that day, some aren’t.
Don’t worry too much about what is appropriate or proper.
Fun is about being spontaneous and open. Try some things out and
see what works.
 Happy
action #2: Learn
Michael, a programmer in his
mid-thirties, came up to me after a presentation I gave and told
me this story.
I work as a programmer in a
major bank. I used to go in every week, work my 40 hours (more
like 50, but hey) and get paid a nice salary. It was a nice job
in a good company, my boss was a good guy, my co-workers were
neat people and the work was OK.
But as time passed, I felt like
something was missing. Work was comfortable and secure, but I
felt that there were sides of me that I never really got to use.
I wanted to do work I could really feel proud of. I wanted to
make more of a difference. And mostly, I was never really excited
about work.
So I asked myself what it would
take to improve things. I came up with three things:
Being more creative and
working on more varied projects, as opposed to only maintaining
the bank’s internal programs.
More fun at work. The mood
in the department was very serious and professional, to the
point of being boring.
Learning some new
professional skills.
I asked my boss about this and
he was very supportive. We drew up a plan for some courses and
certifications and found some new tasks that I could work on. We
recruited some like-minded allies in the group and worked on
lightening the mood in the group together.
To my surprise, this didn’t
just change my work life a little, it made a big difference. With
my new skills, new projects and a more positive mood at work, I
went from feeling OK about my job to feeling really great about
it.
I do much better work as well.
Partly because I’ve increased my skills and increased my work
experience but mainly because I feel so much more enthusiastic
about work now. The difference between being OK with my job and
being happy about it has been huge for me.
No matter how much you enjoy your job today, if you do exactly
the same things in exactly the same way for a long time, sooner
or later you will stop enjoying it. Human beings are learning
machines, learning from everything that goes on around us. And
loving that feeling of getting better and wiser.
We’re either growing or we’re shrinking; there’s no
in-between. Shrinking feels bad; growing feels really, really
good because it lets you:
Know that you’re better at your job now
than you’ve ever been.
Be curious and learn about a topic.
Know that you can obtain the skills you
need to succeed.
Expand your horizons.
Michael took the initiative and learned some new professional
skills that made him enjoy his work more. But he also learned
what makes him and his co-workers happy at work and was able to
use this knowledge to create a fun and engaging mood in his
department together with his manager.
When we don't learn at work, things become a lot less fun.
When I worked for the federal
government here in Canada I tried suggesting that all the
training allowances be used freely. Spend your $700 (!) a year on
woodworking if you want, as long as it keeps you learning.
The reply was, “The Queen does not
pay for knitting classes.”
I left soon after!
—Comment on positivesharing.com
The Queen does not pay for knitting classes—that’s
classic! Well, perhaps if she did she wouldn’t have lost a
valuable employee.
Peter Senge is the man behind the concept of Learning
Organizations, which he defines as,
Organizations where people
continually expand their capacity to create the results they
truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are
nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where
people are continually learning to see the whole together.
There are many ways to learn in the workplace. You can be
learning professionally and getting better at your job, or you
can be learning about yourself, the people around you, and the
workplace.
Basically, learning can be injected into any activity at work,
making it run more smoothly and more fun to do. You can have a
meeting and learn. You can work on a project and learn. You can
work alone and learn. You can talk to co-workers and learn. Here
are some great ways to keep learning at work.
Take a course in something—anything!
Pixar, the company known and loved for movies like Toy Story
and Finding Nemo, has created something they call Pixar
University, that lets employees take classes in moviemaking,
sure, but also in pottery, improvisational theatre, sculpture,
drawing and much more.
How does learning pottery make you a better Pixar employee?
Randy S. Nelson, the dean of Pixar University, explains:
We’ve made the leap from an
idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of
developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in
ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of
learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for
talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be
interested. We want an organization filled with interested
people.
I have enjoyed courses in painting, creative writing, improv
theatre and singing, and while none of this is directly relevant
to the work I do, it all helps me to grow and develop. You never
know when something that seems totally irrelevant is going to
spark a creative breakthrough, precisely because it is not
directly connected to your field of work.
Pixar realizes that happy people make better movies and that
learning is a key part of making them happy. It doesn’t matter
what they’re learning, as long as they’re learning, growing
and developing—and having fun doing it.
Learn one new thing about a co-worker every
day
What do you know about your co-workers? Do you know who has
children and how many? Who has what hobby? Where they went on
their last vacation? What makes them happy or unhappy at work?
Take a genuine interest and absorb at least one new fact every
day. The more you know about the people around you, the easier it
gets to create a positive work environment, with better
communication, better understanding, and fewer conflicts.
Learn at meetings
Associate professors of
psychology Alexandra Luong and Steven G. Rogelberg had a theory
that “having too many meetings and spending too much time in
meetings per day may have negative effects upon the individual”.
They made a group of volunteers keep a diary for five working
days, answering survey questions after every meeting they
attended and also at the end of each day. That was the
experiment.
The results were clear, and
depressing for those of us who go to a lot of meetings: The more
meetings and the longer meetings people attended, the more
negative effects they experienced. They became more tired, more
irritable and more burdened by their work.
In another survey, more than 80% of Australian workers said
they believed that half of the meetings they attended at work
were unnecessary and unproductive.
Meetings take up much of our workweek, and yet few people take
an active approach to having better meetings. We tend to assume
that every department, project group or team is skilled at
running efficient meetings. As the above surveys show, this is
simply not true.
Here’s something you can do about it. At the end of every
meeting, take a little time to talk about these questions:
What went well at this meeting?
What could we have done better?
Did we achieve the objective for the meeting?
What will we do differently at the next meeting?
If you don’t take time to learn from what you’re doing,
how do you expect to get better?
Asking the above questions will take five minutes, and may
save you ten minutes at the next meeting. This way, being
constructive may make meetings fun, rather than a deadly drag on
everyone’s energy and mood.
Teach
When I was just starting in my
new job, I had a lot of trouble using the IT systems. One day I
asked one of my co-workers how to do a specific thing. She
promptly put all of her own work aside and spent the whole
afternoon teaching me to use the system.
This made me very happy,
because it made me much better at my job, but especially because
it told me that people at my new job were willing to take time to
help each other and teach others what they know.
One of the best ways to learn is to teach. As the story above
shows, it’s also a great way to make others happy at work. What
can you teach others? What tips and tricks can you pass on?
Swap jobs
At Southwest Airlines,
employees regularly swap jobs. No, the baggage handlers don’t
get to fly the planes, but they may get to follow a pilot for a
day, just to see what their job is like. And pilots get to be
counter staff, executives try working as ground staff, and flight
attendants get to be executives.
In one case a baggage handler
explained how he’d always envied the pilots. He was down on the
tarmac in the sun and hot weather loading and unloading luggage,
and from where he was standing he could see the pilot sitting in
the cool cockpit eating an ice cream. The lucky bastard! But
after following a pilot at work, he gained a new understanding of
the pilots’ work. That pilot has probably been up since 4:30 in
the morning, and has been flying almost non-stop since then. He’s
eating an ice cream because he doesn’t have time for a real
lunch—the plane is taking off again in ten minutes.
It also works the other way—if
a plane is late, Southwest pilots often leave their cockpit to
help the ground crew load or unload bags. That’s the attitude
of mutual respect and assistance a company develops when
different groups of employees have some insight into each other’s
worlds.
Most conflicts between groups of employees arise when people
don’t understand each other. If you can spend some time in
another person’s shoes, it’s a great way to meet, to engage
people, and to learn about their job, so you can work more
efficiently together afterwards.
Try stuff out
A ceramics teacher announced on
the opening day of the course that he was dividing the class into
two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said,
would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all
those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on
the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and
weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots
rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being
graded on “quality,” however, needed to produce only one pot
-albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a
curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all
produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that
while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of
work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group
had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little
more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile
of dead clay.
- From the book Art & Fear
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
If you always do things the same way, how are you ever going
to find a better way? Try new approaches out and see what
happens. Yes, you will fail once in a while, but failing is a
great way—sometimes the only way—to learn.
Make mistakes faster
Randy Nelson from Pixar has another great saying:
You have to honor failure, because
failure is just the negative space around success.
No matter how many times you tell yourself that “failure is
not an option”, failure always remains an option. Closing your
eyes to this fact only makes you more likely to fail. Putting
pressure on people to always succeed makes mistakes more likely
because:
People who work under pressure are less effective.
People resist reporting bad news.
People close their eyes to any signs of trouble.
This is especially true when people are punished for making
mistakes. Management über-guru Peter Drucker provocatively
suggested that businesses should find all the employees who never
make mistakes and fire them, because employees who never make
mistakes never do anything interesting. Admitting that mistakes
happen and dealing constructively with them when they do makes
mistakes less likely.
Failure is often the path to new, exciting opportunities that
wouldn’t have appeared otherwise. Closing your eyes to failure
means closing your eyes to these opportunities. Menlo
Innovations, an IT company in Ann Arbor, Michigan has a big sign
hanging in their office that reads “Make mistakes faster!”
They recognize that occasional mistakes are a part of doing
anything interesting or innovative, and that the key lesson is to
fail early and learn from it.
 Happy
action #3: Be open
Does your company allow you to be open and honest? Can you say
what you really think? Can you show how you really feel? Can you
be yourself, or do you need to hide behind a corporate,
professional demeanor to be accepted?
We’re much more likely to be happy at work if we can be
ourselves and behave openly. Conversely, having to always hide
our real thoughts and emotions will make us unhappy at work.
Openness also works the other way—from the company to the
employees. What is your company’s default approach to
information?
Almost everything is secret. We’ll tell people what
they need to know.
Almost everything is open. Only a few things are secret,
and only if absolutely necessary.
Most companies tend more towards secrecy, which is a mistake
as far as happiness at work is concerned. Sharing important
information with people makes them feel trusted and valued. If
employees really know what’s going on, it makes them more
efficient and better able to make good decisions.
Openness also entails honesty and fairness. If a company is
dishonest and unfair it’s not open, and if your job doesn’t
allow you to be open, honest and fair, it’s sure to make you
unhappy.
Say what you think
“Does it really have to be
this way?”
Anna couldn't help wondering
why her new boss treated her people so callously and rudely.
Didn't she see that this only made them negative, cynical and
demotivated?
Being the newest employee, she
was in a tricky postion. One that made it easy for her to see
that things were not right, but made it difficult for her to do
something about it.
Finally, after seeing how her
manager once again belittled a co-worker, Anna decided to do
something about it. With some trepidation, she arranged a meeting
with her. At the meeting she carefully explained how her boss'
behavior was affecting everyone in the department, and how she
felt things should be.
To her surprise, her manager
listened and gradually began trying to change her ways. With
Anna's help, she has begun to praise her employees, to seek out
their advice, to ask nicely rather than give orders. The manager
has also discovered that this kind of behavior is easier, more
enjoyable and much more efficient than her old autocratic style.
Difficult as this may seem, the only reliable way to create
openness is for each of us to say what we really think. We don’t
need to be rude or impolite about it, but we must express what is
really going on inside our minds, especially if it’s something
we find difficult to say. If you can’t speak your mind, you’re
likely to be unhappy at work.
Show what you feel
The IT support department at
the medical company Leo Pharma outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, is
a critical part of the organization. If IT aren’t picking up
their phones, Leo’s 4,000 employees have nowhere to go with
their IT-related questions and problems. To ensure that the
phones are always manned, a huge whiteboard with a space for each
support worker shows who’s at work and manning the phones at
any given time.
The IT department knows that
people have good days and bad days, and they’re fine with that.
They have a simple policy: When employees arrive in the morning,
they can place a green or a red magnetic tag next to their name.
Green means, “I’m having a good day,” and red means, “I’m
having a bad day.”
When a co-worker storms in the
door without saying good morning, places a red marker next to his
name, and sits at his desk scowling, you don’t have to wonder,
“Was it something I said?”
This is a great policy that does two things:
It makes it visible who is having a good or a bad day,
and people with red markers are given a little space and leeway.
If somebody puts up a red marker every day for a week then it is
clear that steps need to be taken to help that person.
It makes it permissible to have a bad day. We all have
bad days, but if you have to hide it and pretend to be chipper,
it takes longer to get out of the bad mood.
What often happens at Leo is that an employee will place a red
marker in the morning, and then change it to a green one later
that morning. When people are given permission to have a bad day,
they recover faster and there’s less chance that they will
spread their bad mood to their co-workers.
It’s interesting to notice the degree to which the full
range of natural human emotions are not welcome in the workplace.
There seems to be a widely-held belief that we’re professionals
at work, and professionals approach their work rationally and
without emotion. Businesses would prefer us to act more like
Spock, the Vulcan science officer on Star Trek, who famously
said, “Emotions are alien to me. I’m a scientist.”
Professor Teresa M. Amibile has been researching how the work
environment influences the motivation, creativity, and
performance of individuals and teams. In an interview on the
Harvard Business School website, she identified three main
points:
People have incredibly rich, intense, daily inner work
lives; emotions, motivations, and perceptions about their work
environment permeate their daily experience at work.
These feelings powerfully affect people’s day-to-day
performance.
These feelings, which are so important for performance,
are powerfully influenced by particular daily events.
So, we have strong emotions at work, they are affected by what
goes on in the workplace, and they have a powerful impact upon
our performance. Of course we do—we’re human beings whether
we’re at work or not, and human beings have emotions.
“Emotions are alien to me. I'm an employee of Acme Inc.”
That is not how we work.
It’s important that we show our positive emotions because
that is one of the best ways to spread happiness to others, as we
saw in Chapter 2. If you’re really happy and don’t show it,
the feeling will quickly die away in you and in others.
It’s also important to show negative emotions. If something
at work makes us angry, disappointed or sad and we’re not
allowed to express it, three things may happen:
The emotion becomes stronger—Because the situation
doesn’t get resolved and you’re not allowed to express it,
the feeling is likely to become more intense.
Saving it for later—Instead of showing your anger at
the meeting that made you angry, you lash out at a co-worker, at
the clerk at Starbucks who forgets to put soy milk in your
latte, or even at your family.
The ketchup effect—Feelings bottled up over a long time
suddenly get released all at once and you blow up over some
small matter.
All in all, it’s healthier to express negative emotions as
and when they arise. I’m not saying that we should all be
hyper-emotional—there are constructive ways to deal with
negative emotions at work. If you’re dissatisfied with
something, complain constructively.
Complain constructively
Complaining can be a great tool for initiating change. It’s
good to be positive, but if we were to outlaw complaining in the
workplace, as some companies seem to try to do, it becomes even
more toxic and powerful.
It is important to accept that complaining plays an important
role in business, but the key thing here is to know the
difference between constructive and unconstructive complaining.
Here are the differences:
Unconstructive: Complain to whoever will listen
Constructive: Complain to someone who can do something about
it
If your boss is the problem, complaining to your co-workers
can be a lot of fun, but it changes nothing. Complain to your
boss or your boss’s boss.
Unconstructive: Complain when you feel the most annoyed
Constructive: Complain at the right time
Choose a moment where there’s time, will and energy to deal
constructively with the issue. Five minutes before an important
meeting is probably not the time.
Unconstructive: Point fingers
Constructive: Look at yourself first
Before complaining, take a good look at whether it’s just
you who has a problem. Try to recognize those situations where
everything is actually fine and you’re just irrationally
annoyed. To what extent are you a part of the problem? How are
you contributing to the problem’s solution? Before complaining
about others, make sure you know your role in the issue.
Unconstructive: Complain about what bugs you the most
Constructive: Complain about the real problem
Is the problem really the problem? Or is there a deeper issue
at work? Complain about the problem, not just the symptoms.
Unconstructive: Seek to blame
Constructive: Seek to move on
Approaching a situation with the intention of making people
admit that they’re at fault is rarely productive. Does it
really matter whose fault it is? Forget the blame game and focus
on moving on and finding lasting solutions.
Unconstructive: Only complain
Constructive: Complain, but also appreciate what’s good
Complain when there’s a reason to, but remember to
appreciate the good stuff too—don’t just complain.
Basically, constructive complaining leads to change, whereas
unconstructive complaining traps a workplace in the status quo by
zapping everyone’s energy, optimism and belief that change is
possible.
Part of the attraction of unconstructive complaining is that
it reinforces a bad situation, but at least it’s a bad
situation you know and have learned to deal with. This reinforces
the status quo and protects you from change that might bring new
problems that you don’t yet know how to handle. People find a
degree of safety and comfort in this. However, unconstructive
complaining is a tar pit that can eventually trap even the
sunniest, most optimistic person in a sticky hell of perpetual,
ineffectual and petty dissatisfaction, from which people aren’t
really seeking a way out.
Open to-do list
Motek, located in California, makes warehouse management
software and have implemented openness in a very interesting way.
They have an internal, company-wide to-do list of all ongoing
projects, a list that all employees have access to. This open
sharing of information means that Motek’s employees can get the
information they need in order to make better decisions,
resulting in happier, more motivated people.
Motek’s customers and suppliers also have access to the same
to-do list, and customers and suppliers regularly offer to help
with an item on the list. Any Motek employee can take on any item
on the to-do list and set a deadline for it. If the employee
completes the task inside the deadline, they receive $100 towards
their next vacation. If they do not complete the task, but say so
and ask for help to meet the deadline, they still get the $100.
This is a great way of stimulating the right behavior—it’s OK
not to meet your deadlines if you take responsibility and ask for
help.
Open books
Ricardo Semler is my business idol. I’ve read his books and
followed his work and I’m a fan. Completely and without
reservation, probably in the same way that 14-year old girls are
fans of Justin Timberlake. If he ever comes to Copenhagen to give
a speech, I’ll be in the front row, screaming my little lungs
out!
Ahem. Let me rephrase that...
I deeply admire Ricardo Semler. His vision of leadership has
been the driving force behind an organization so different, so
innovative and so successful that the business world has been
forced to sit up and pay attention.
When Ricardo Semler took over
leadership of Semco, a small company of 100 employees based in
Sao Paulo, Brazil, he was the quintessential, tough, old-school
manager. He worked long hours, chewed people out for the smallest
mistakes, and focused only on profits.
Then one day, Ricardo collapsed
from overwork and was told by doctors that he was heading
straight for a heart attack—a mean feat for a 21-year-old. This
became a turning point, and since then Ricardo has led Semco on
an uncompromising quest to make it the best possible place to
work. They now employ 3,000 people in a number of businesses,
from internet development to facility management, and are happier
than ever.
One thing Semco practices is openness. They want their
employees to know as much as possible about the company, so they
publish their financial statements for all employees to read,
along with a guide to what the numbers mean. This offers
employees deep insight into the company’s present situation.
They have also made board meetings public, so any employee who
wants to can sit in and see how major decisions in the company
are made.
The result? Employees make better, more responsible decisions
because they know how those decisions affect the company’s
health, and they feel valued because they are “in the know”.
 Happy
action #4: Participate
“Last year my company started
looking for a new building for our headquarters. The old one was
designed for 120 people—we were nearing 200, and things were
getting seriously cramped.” Anette, a 38-year-old secretary at
a Danish shipping company looks a little stressed just thinking
about the old overcrowded offices. Then she smiles. “And here’s
the cool thing: Instead of making the decision on their own,
management invited all employees who wanted to, to participate in
looking for and choosing a new building.
“Ten people formed a
workgroup and we ran the whole process from the very beginning,
talking to other co-workers about what their dream office looked
like, looking at different possibilities and then recommending
one to management, who accepted our decision and signed off on it
right away.
“Because the decision
involved so many passionate people, we got a real good feel for
what we were looking for in an office and that enabled us to
choose just the right building. And best of all, when we made the
decision almost everyone in the company accepted it instantly.
They may not all have agreed that it was the best possible
option, but they’d all had the chance to contribute and
everyone who cared about the choice felt they’d been heard.”
Psychological studies show again and again that a fundamental
basis for our happiness is the ability to control our own
environment. When we are involved in the decisions that matter to
us, when we can participate actively in creating our future, when
we feel active rather than passive, we are much happier. Contrast
this with a work environment where big decisions that directly
affect you are made without your knowledge and without your
input.
I freely admit that there is a problem here: While you can
freely choose to be positive, to learn or to be open, it’s
difficult to participate unless you’re invited to do so and
your workplace and managers encourage it. This particular factor
therefore relies more on your work environment than the other
five. But this is no excuse. If you only participate when you’re
actively invited to, you will miss many opportunities. Instead,
you must sometimes invite yourself to participate. If there’s
something going on that you really, really want to be a part
of—ask!
Of course, we can’t all participate in everything, and we
can’t all be a part of every decision—nobody would get any
work done. So who should participate, and in what areas? The
yardstick is passion.
Follow your passion
When you are passionate, you always
have your destination in sight and you are not distracted by
obstacles. Because you love what you are pursuing, things like
rejection and setbacks will not hinder you in your pursuit. You
believe that nothing can stop you!
—Coach K
The best way to set yourself up to fail is to work in areas
where you don’t really give a damn.
“Oh, I suppose I should plan the new office layout. Well, I
guess I can do that. Let’s have a brainstorm. Maybe some time
next week?”
It won’t work! However, if your initial reaction is “YES!
It’s great that I get to plan the new office layout. I can’t
wait to get started. Let’s have a brainstorm right now!” then
things are sure to happen faster.
What are you passionate about? Do you currently work in that
area? What can you do to move the two closer together? Do you
take on a lot of tasks that you aren’t really passionate about?
Is there stuff going on elsewhere in your workplace that would
totally light your fire, if you could just be in on it?
Well, don’t just sit there—follow your passion! There's a
great exercise for discovering where your passion lies in Chapter
9.
Plan your own work time
Patagonia makes outdoor clothing and gear. The company has
grown from one man making mountain-climbing equipment part time
to raise money to fund his own climbing adventures, to a $200
million business. If you visit Patagonia’s headquarters in
Southern California, very close to the beach, you may wonder why
there are surfboards lined up in the hallways. Founder Yvon
Chouinard explains:
I’m a businessman, but I’m still
going to do things on my own terms. I’m going to break a lot of
rules, and we’re going to blur the distinction between work and
play.
So we have a policy here—it’s
called “Let My People Go Surfing.” A policy which is, when
the surf comes up, anybody can just go surfing. Any time of the
day, you just take off and go surfing…
That attitude changes your whole
life. If your life is set up so that you can drop anything when
the surf comes up, it changes the whole way you run your life.
And it has changed this whole company here.
If there’s any way for you to plan your own work time, grab
it. Being in control of our own work patterns is a crucial
factor. And seriously, who is better able to plan your own work
time than yourself?
Some jobs require your presence at certain times, but many
others are much more flexible. If you can take this into account
you can design your working week so that you get more out of your
time both at work and outside of it.
It all depends on how you work best. Is eight hours a day
optimal for you? Or do you prefer to work ten hours a day for
four days a week and take Friday off?
Of course, this can only happen if the company you work for
recognizes that employees are adults capable of making these
decisions on their own. At Motek, every employee has a designated
back-up available to provide cover while they’re out of the
office. Employees can leave for the day or for a week whenever
they want, as long as they first check with their backup to make
sure he or she is around before they leave.
Semco lets each and every employee choose their own working
hours. Some prefer to get in really early to avoid the hideous
rush-hour traffic in São Paulo. Some are late risers and
are more efficient if they get in shortly before lunch. Each
employee gets to decide for themself. When this approach was
introduced, some people were deeply worried. A factory line can
only operate when all the people are present, so what would
happen if some people decided to come in early and some late?
What happened was simple. The employees look at each other and
went “Want to start at 6.30 tomorrow?” followed by “Yeah,
6:30 sounds good!” Problem solved.
Contribute your ideas
I spoke with an elderly machine
operator at a Fortune 500 food company. Within minutes, he was
discussing a solution for quickly clearing bulk food material
from a clogged hopper, which happened regularly.
When I asked him if he had ever
told this idea to his supervisor, he just smiled and said,
“Nobody ever asks for these kinds of ideas around here,” at
which point I could feel the manager melting behind me. This
worker had spent 42 years in the plant and would be retiring in
six months. I wondered how many other ideas would be leaving with
him?
I’m sure you have many good ideas. Do you contribute them?
How often and how loudly? When Spencer Silver came up with
Post-it Notes at 3M in the 1970s, everybody thought the idea was
terrible. He had to sit through a lot of “Listen Spencer,
nobody's ever going to buy little, sticky, colored pieces of
paper. Why don't you give it up and go work on something useful
that might make the company some money,” before he received the
support to develop and market them.
If you have a good idea, spit it out. Repeat until someone
listens. More and more companies are finding that it pays to
listen.
Two American Airlines mechanics
didn’t like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got
dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts—a vacuum-cleaner
belt and a motor from a science project—and built “Thumping
Ralph.” It’s essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows
them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to
the company: as much as $300,000 a year.
Involve others
If you’re in charge of making a decisions, you have a great
opportunity to involve others. Sure, you can go it alone, finish
the work yourself, and make the decisions all by yourself. Or,
you can use the opportunity to find out who else is passionate
about this topic and involve them in the process.
The advantages are clear: You get more thoughts and ideas,
more energy and inspiration, and more helpers and allies in
bringing the idea to life.
 Happy
action #5: Find meaning
A traveller walks down a dusty
road. The sun is shining down mercilessly from a clear sky and
the heat is almost unbearable. As he pauses for a sip of water,
he notices three men sitting by the side of the road, chopping up
stones. The first one clearly has the look of a man wishing he
was anywhere else. No wonder—it’s hot, hard, unpleasant labor
after all. The traveller asks him, “What are you doing?”
“Cutting stones,” the man replies.
The second man looks fairly
happy with what he’s doing despite the hot air and hard work.
“What are you doing?” the traveller asks him. “I’m
cutting stones to make money to support my family,” the man
replies.
The third stonecutter has a
look that verges on blissful. He’s giving the stones his full
attention, precisely and powerfully cutting them into smaller
rocks. When he stops for a moment, the traveller asks him, “What
are you doing?” In a proud voice he replies, “I’m building
a cathedral.”
There are three levels of meaning you can find at work:
No meaning. Work makes no sense to you.
Work has meaning because it supports you and your family.
Work has meaning in itself because you’re contributing
to something great or making the world a better place.
This is not to say that every job has meaning, or even that
your job has meaning. Some jobs do, some jobs don’t. What
matters is that some people understand the meaning of their work,
whereas other don’t.
It’s much easier to be happy if your job has meaning to you,
and you keep that meaning in mind. Knowing how your work
contributes to the company’s success, to your local community,
or even to making a better world makes you proud of what you do.
Almost any job has meaning:
You clean at a hospital? Without efficient cleaning,
patients get sick and die in hospitals.
You’re a teacher? You’re shaping the next generation
of your country.
You write software? You’re helping your customers
become more efficient.
You’re a secretary? You’re making your co-workers
more efficient and productive.
It’s difficult to find meaning for some jobs. For example,
if your company produces landmines, it may be difficult to find
meaning in that. And that makes it harder to be happy at work.
The following are ways to discover or create meaning at work.
Where are you contributing?
We all want to make a difference, and we all love to get
results. We all want to know that what we do at work has
contributed somehow—that it has meaning.
To discover meaning in your job, if it’s not already clear
to you, ask yourself:
Who am I making happy in the company?
Who am I making happy outside the company through my
work?
Who is the company making happy? How am I contributing to
this?
George Bernard Shaw had the right idea when he said:
This is the true joy in life, the
being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap
heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish
little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world
will not devote itself to making you happy.
Finding your purpose at work, one you recognize as mighty, is
a great way to become happier at work. To paraphrase Shaw, “This
is the true joy in work.”
Make your results visible
 Achieving
results makes us proud and gives work meaning. Imagine going to
work every day and never really having anything to show for it.
It’s important to make results visible so that you can see
what you’ve achieved. Here are some ways to do it:
Keep a to-do list so that you can tick off completed
tasks and see how much work you’ve done every day or every
week.
Print out a list of finished tasks and hang the list on
the department bulletin board. The list showcases everyone’s
progress and accomplishments.
Write results on a whiteboard for everyone to see.
Publish statistics on the company intranet.
Hang a bell in the office and ring it every time someone
closes a case.
To any managers who still think that happy employees don’t
work hard—you’ve got it exactly backwards. Most people are
happy only when they do good work and get great results.
In September 2006 I asked the readers of my blog what made
them happy at work. The top scorer by far was getting results.
Here are some of the other things mentioned:
Seeing something through to completion.
Seeing positive change.
Getting a complex problem to solve.
Creating simple solutions to problems that were believed
to be impossible/hard.
Getting things done (finally).
Fixing problems and helping people.
Noticing how my proposals produce positive change once
implemented.
Contribute outside the company
Great Harvest is a US bakery franchise whose goals are, “Be
loose and have fun, Bake phenomenal bread, Run fast to help
customers, Create strong, exciting bakeries, and Give generously
to others.” They tell the following story on their website:
When the devastating tsunami
struck Southeast Asia in December of 2004, Great Harvest Bread
Co. owners Dee and Bernie O’Connor (Lansing, Michigan) decided
they needed to do something to help. In less than one week, the
O’Connors organized a benefit to aid the survivors of the
tsunami, enlisting the help of their crew, their community, and
neighbor Drew Kloven, owner of the downtown Lansing Great Harvest
Bread Co.
They didn’t know what to
expect. While word of their fundraiser had spread and the holiday
spirit was still strong, the weather was unpredictable and
people’s pocketbooks were drained from the holidays. So when
six inches of heavy snow fell on the morning of their event, the
O’Connors worried no one would show up.
But at 5:30 a.m. that morning,
a stranger pulled into the little shopping strip where the bakery
is located. In an act of generosity that would set the tone for
the day, he plowed the area in front of Great Harvest, just in
time for their 6 a.m. opening. Customers poured in and by the end
of the day, the two Lansing bakeries ended up raising more than
$5,500. Every penny that went into the registers that day—whether
for bread, cookies, or coffee—went directly to tsunami relief
efforts. “We’re just a small company,” says Dee, “but it
sure makes us feel good knowing we can make a difference in other
people’s lives.”
The O’Connors credit their
crew, who worked for free all day, and their customers for the
tremendous show of support. “There was a great camaraderie and
sense of significance over this event,” says Bernie. “We
couldn’t have done it without them.”
One of the best ways to find meaning is to contribute to
something other than yourself. You can use work as a springboard
to help the community, a charity, the environment, society,
developing nations—anything that makes sense to you.
Knowing that you have helped others through your work is a
tremendous source of meaning. It is direct evidence that you are
making the world a better place and helping people out. It’s
also immensely satisfying, and a great way to get happy at work.
Go green
In the excellent documentary The Corporation, Ray Anderson,
the CEO of Interface, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer,
explains his rude awakening to the fact that his company could
not continue to waste natural resources:
It dawned on me that they way I’d
been running Interface is the way of the plunderer. Plundering
something that is not mine, something that belongs to every
creature on earth.
And I said to myself, “My goodness,
a day must come where this is illegal, where plundering is not
allowed. I mean, it must come.”
So I said to myself, “My goodness,
some day people like me will end up in jail.”
Interface designed and manufactured a new kind of carpet that
was environmentally friendly, and while the design and production
of this new product was more expensive than their regular line,
it instantly became a bestseller and has made the company a
fortune.
More and more companies are starting to care for the
environment, and this is one area to which we can all contribute.
Can you get your company to recycle paper? To use less
electricity or water? To save on fuel or other resources? To
start buying more environmentally friendly products? Make
yourself heard, start a campaign, enlist support. Go green!
 Happy
action #6: Love
 Thyra
Frank is the leader of a home for the elderly in Copenhagen. She
is in her mid-fifties, outspoken, constantly cracks jokes, and
has a loud, infectious laugh. Working in the public sector means
facing a certain set of constraints: Not much money, plenty of
red tape, and very little leeway. In the face of this, she has
created what may be the best functioning home for the elderly in
Denmark.
Her employees love working
there, and the clients (the elderly) love living there, for the
positive mood and the happy employees, but also for the weekly
gala dinners with great food, wine, live piano music, and
after-dinner brandy. The only people who aren’t crazy about her
work are the authorities, because she continues to flaunt the
rules and do things her own way.
During her first Christmas as a
leader, her husband persuaded her to give the employees Christmas
presents. This is not normally done in the public sector, and the
home had no budget for it. Undaunted, Thyra went to a local
supermarket and bought a cheap bottle of red wine for each of her
employees at her own expense. She also wrote a note to each of
her employees, explaining what she enjoyed about working with
that person.
It may have been a small
gesture, but several of her employees ended up crying with joy.
Not so much at the cheap bottle of wine, but at the personal,
hand-written letter.
According to Maslow’s widely-known hierarchy of needs, our
most fundamental needs are physiological—food, sleep, etc. —and
our need for saftey. This is followed by our need to belong and
to feel loved. Our species has evolved in groups and communities,
and few of us can be happy unless we belong to a functioning
group.
Which brings us to love. When you ask employees what makes
them happy at work, they consistently rate these things highest:
Each of these is a sign of good relations, caring and, indeed,
love—simple signs that people like each other and communicate
well. These good relations don’t have to stop with co-workers
and managers, but can also apply to customers, suppliers,
shareholders, and the company’s wider community.
One company that understands the importance of love is
Southwest Airlines, and they even call themselves The Love
Airline. Southwest Airlines hire people first for their nice
personality, and secondly for their skills: “Hire for attitude,
train for skill.” To Southwest, a nice, sunny, outgoing
disposition matters more than degrees or experience. As a result,
Southwest is not only a happy place to work—it’s also an
efficient and profitable company.
Get to know the people around you at work. You don’t need to
make friends with everybody, but positive relationships are one
of the most important factors that ensure happiness at work.
Positive relationships can be fostered with co-workers,
employees, customers, suppliers, or even competitors.
It doesn’t take much to build and maintain good
relationships, but it does take consious effort. It’s important
to focus upon maintaining communication, otherwise relationships
can atrophy as co-workers become mere strangers that share the
same office building. The following sections offer some valuable
advice.
Random acts of workplace kindness
Patricia was leaving work after
a long day. She was almost the last to leave, and had to admit
that she hadn’t enjoyed her day much. People seemed so intent
on their jobs and nobody seemed to care about the people around
them.
When Patricia went into the
break room to wash her coffee mug, she spotted her co-worker
Lisa’s unwashed mug by the sink. She quickly washed both mugs,
and then, on a whim, wrote a post-it note saying, “Have a great
day,” drew a smiley on it and stuck it on Lisa’s mug. Then
she went home.
The next morning Lisa walked
through the entire department with her mug in her hands and a
huge smile on her face, saying “Who did this? What a great
thing to do! Who was it? This totally made my morning!” Once
Patricia admitted it was her, Lisa thanked her profusely. She
could be found smiling broadly for a long time after. Patricia’s
one-minute gesture made a colleague happy at work, not just that
morning but that entire day.
It's not like there's only so much happiness at work to go
around, and if others have too much, there won't be enough for
you. No, the very best way to make yourself happy at work is to
make others happy because:
Making others happy at work is a pleasure in itself.
Happiness is contagious, so more happy people around you
means more happiness for you.
If you make others happy at work, there’s a good chance
they’ll want to make you happy in return.
It’s
easy too:
Bring someone a cup of coffee without them asking.
Write a nice message on a post-it and stick it on their
desk or computer.
Offer to help with their work.
Pass out candy.
Leave a flower on someone’s desk.
Write someone a card.
Take time to chat.
Ask someone about their weekend.
There are many random acts of workplace kindness to try—and
they work wonders!
Say good morning and goodbye
David Valls Coma of Albertis Telecom in Barcelona told me this
story:
My company moved a couple of
years ago. When I first arrived in the new building I met a
serious security gard that looked at me like he was gruffly
asking: “Who are you and where are you going?” I said good
morning and entered the elevator. Next day I planned an
experiment to see how a smile would change his reaction.
When I entered the building I
looked at the man and wished him a good morning with a big,
sincere smile on my face. I meant it, and that made him change
his serious face to a grin. He wished me a good morning too.
I have been doing “the big
smile experiment” ever since and it has become an anchor. Every
time in, I enter the building saying “Good Morning!” with a
smile, and that makes me start the day with smile in my face and
in my heart.
And my relation with the
security guard is great. We chat for a moment when we run into
each other, making my day, and i hope his, more enjoyable.
As the result was so good I
have added this practice to my every day life and try to give
away sincere smiles to whom ever I found.
It’s an unpleasant experience to come into the office happy,
call out a cheerful “Good morning!” and then get nothing but
reluctant, unintelligible grumblings in response.
When you arrive in the morning, make a round of your
department and greet everyone there. The keys to a good greeting
are to:
When other people arrive after you, take a moment to greet
them. Repeat this at the end of the day with cheerful goodbyes
when you leave to go home.
It’s such a simple and banal thing to do, but it makes a
huge difference to relationships at the office, makes people feel
more connected to each other, and establishes better
communications throughout the day.
Take an interest in other people—as people
“The best boss I ever had was
a woman called Linda,” explains Mary, a secretary for a big
Scandinavian telecommunications company. “Not only was our
department consistently efficient and fun to work at, but she was
rated the best manager to work for in the company year after
year.
“How did she do it? Easy—she
took an interest in us. She knew each of us, not only as
employees but as human beings. She not only knew about our
hobbies, families, children, and lives in general—she sincerely
cared about us and always had time to chat.”
If all your conversations with co-workers are about goals,
deadlines and tasks, it's nearly impossible to create good
workplace relations. In the happiest workplaces, people care
about each other not just as workers but as human beings.
Help people out
Michael, a consultant in his
40s, wanted to cheer his co-workers up a little. He came up with
a great idea: One day he cleared his calendar, and announced to
everyone in his department that he was available all day to help.
Whatever tasks they didn’t have time for, had postponed forever
or found boring, he would do for them.
Michael was put to work for
various co-workers throughout the day. Everyone appreciated his
help, but even more importantly they had fun working together.
Michael and his co-workers learned a lot about each other that
day.
Workplaces in which people are constantly willing to help each
other out are sure to be happier than those where people only
help themselves. Helping others shows that you value them, that
you want them to succeed, and it feels good because it means you
can contribute actively.
I often hear people saying, “I simply don’t have time to
help others, I have too much work myself already.” However,
when everybody subscribes to this philosophy, everybody becomes
less efficient, and people have even less time. If, on the other
hand, you can take half an hour to help a co-worker, saving him
an hour of work, and that co-worker can return the favor some
day, then everybody wins. In effect, we don’t have time not to
do it.
Someone has to start this trend of mutual co-operation—might
as well be you, might as well be now!
Socialize
Kirsten Gehl, the HR manager at
Accenture Denmark, and her party team were forced to get
creative. Accenture had had a rough year in 2003 and were forced
to rethink their usual annual company summer party. Normally it
was a huge affair held at some fancy hotel or restaurant. That
was out of the question in 2003, so what would work? How could
she give the people at Accenture a much-needed positive
collective experience on a much more limited budget?
First the party team decided to
have the party at a smaller, cheaper and much more cozy venue.
Then they had the brilliant idea to get the partners to staff the
bar. At first some of the partners were apprehensive, known more
for their dedication to work, dark suits and businesslike manner
than for their ability to get down and party.
Kirsten and her party team
cornered a few senior partners and garnered their support, which
convinced the others to give it a try. The party became
Accenture’s best ever. Not only was it more fun than the
traditional parties, but suddenly the partners were approachable
to all employees, who could simply step up to the bar and order a
gin and tonic from them. The employees loved it and, maybe most
surprisingly, the partners loved it. Each of them had to be
forced to leave the bar when their shifts were over!
Even after the party, the
effect was felt—better relations and communication between
Accenture’s partners and employees.
Go bowling, go to a pub or café, have dinner at
someone’s home, to the park, have an office party—anything
that gives co-workers a chance to see each other outside of work
and to get to know each other as people. Whatever event you
choose, don’t make it too traditional, fancy or expensive—make
it personal and memorable instead.
Make love the foundation of your work
The most powerful force in business
isn’t greed, fear, or even the raw energy of unbridled
competition. The most powerful force in business is love. It’s
what will help your company grow and become stronger. It’s what
will propel your career forward. It’s what will give you a
sense of meaning and satisfaction in your work, which will help
you do your best work.
—Tim Sanders, in his excellent book
Love is the Killer App
What if your work was an expression of your love for the
world, for other people, for your community, and for yourself?
What if you worked not only because you have to support yourself
and your family, not only to advance yourself, not for the money,
the title, the status symbols and the power, but because your
work is a great way for you to express this love and to make a
positive difference in the world.
This may seem to be a high-flying and unrealistic goal, but
people who take this approach to work find that work becomes
incredibly fulfilling. Everything they do becomes imbued with
meaning and purpose, and their work days are spent improving
people’s lives—and that makes them really happy at work.
Using the six happy actions
It really is that simple to create happiness at work. Make
sure that you and other can be positive, learn, be open,
participate, find meaning and love.
These six actions can be added to any activity in the
workplace. Want to improve the quality of your meetings? Want to
run a great project? Want to make your department a happy
workplace?
In each case, the solutions is to find ways to make it easier
for yourself and others to practice these six happy actions.
This is great news! This means that almost any company can
become a happy place to work. Everything you need is already
present or can easily be found.
Unfortunately, many people and companies don't focus their
attention where it matters. They look to other, more traditional
and more complicated ways to create more happiness at work. Ways
that, unfortunately, don't work. We'll look at those in the next
chapter.
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Everyone
can do it.