Last week we held our Chief Happiness Officer Academy in Copenhagen and we had an absolute blast with the participants – including 5 from 5 different companies in Serbia.

They came from companies in Tech, Logistics, Science, Hospitality, Child Care and Finance and can now take a massive amount of new knowledge and tools back to their companies to make them happier and more successful.

They all took the exam at the and and I’m proud to announce that they all passed! Kudos!

These Academies are my favorite thing to teach and a great chance to really cover all the crucial theory and practice of happiness at work over three days.

The Academy is happening again in November 2026 and June 2027. Read more and sign up right here.

WOOHOO! Our newsletter about happiness at work is so good, it was just featured as a case story by MailerLite – the platform we use.

They were especially impressed that the newsletter is:
Valuable – we share all our best tools freely
Effective – people actually read the email
Not pushy – we’re not just trying to sell stuff

I’m already super proud of our newsletter because our main focus is to share everything we know about happiness at work and inspire people to take action, and this case story just makes me even prouder!

And it really seems that the more materials we share openly and freely, the more attention and business we attract.

Also, if you’re looking for a platform for your newsletters, MailerLite is great – it has every feature you could want and it’s really easy to use!

Read the case story here. It has a ton of tips for using email effectively to spread your message.

And you can sign subscribe to our newsletter here – it’s FREE!

Here’s the problem: There are so many happy workplaces and great leaders out there but we rarely hear about them. Instead, we keep hearing about the stressful workplaces and the jerk bosses who make everybody’s work lives miserable.

When we overfocus on the negative cases, we reinforce the notion that happiness at work is impossible or at least unrealistic. It makes people give up in advance rather than try to make their workplaces better.

I think it’s much more productive to look at the positive cases and try to learn from what they’re doing right. And make no mistake about it: they can be found in every country and in every industry.

There are two advantages to looking at the happy workplaces:

1. It gives us confidence and optimism that it can be done
2. We can steal their best ideas that are clearly working

At the Chief Happiness Officer Academy in Copenhagen on June 2-5 you will hear about a ton of these happy workplaces and we will even go on a site visit to one to see it for ourselves.

Learn more about it and register here.

If you want to create some workplace happiness today, here’s a super simple and easy thing you can do: Perform a Random Act Of Workplace Kindness.

This is where you do something nice for someone else at work, out of the blue.

If you’re stuck for ideas, here are a few suggestions:

• Bring someone a cup of coffee, without them asking
• Leave candy on someone’s desk
• Write a nice, hand-written note of appreciation for a co-worker
• Offer to help someone

Do you have more suggestions? Ever done something like this? Write a comment!

Positive surprises make us happy

Why are random acts of kindness so effective at work?

According to research, we become a happier when good things happen to us (duh!) but the effect is even bigger when good things happen to us unexpectedly:

Emory University and Baylor College of Medicine researchers used Magnetic Resonance Imaging brain scans to measure changes in human brain activity in response to a sequence of pleasurable stimuli.

They used a computer-controlled device to squirt fruit juice or water into the mouths of 25 research participants. The patterns of the squirting were either predictable or unpredictable.

The researchers found that the MRI scans showed a brain area called the nucleus accumbens to be much more active when the subjects received unpredictable patterns of juice and water.

So here’s what we know:

• Something nice happens that you expect = good
• Something nice happens unexpectedly = even better

This is interesting in the context of happiness at work because many of the things companies do to make their employees happier are utterly predictable: Summer parties, Christmas parties, bonuses, team events, and so on happen on a fixed schedule, which makes them less effective.

This is why we advocate also doing random acts of workplace kindness. According to this research, a small well-meant surprising gesture towards an employee or a team may make them much happier.

Kindness also bolsters relationships at work

The other reason why random acts of kindness are so effective is that they promote good relationships at work.

When we do nice things for each other, we show that we care about other people and are interested in their wellbeing.

If we never do this, we risk creating a selfish culture at work where everyone is just looking out for number one. This is of course how some people think of work, but research shows that teams and workplaces are much more effective when people respect each other, like each other and take care of each other.

Companies tend to massively undervalue the importance of good workplace relationships. That’s a mistake because the research CLEARLY shows that organizations that foster good relationships get better results, because people like each other, trust each other, work better together and communicate better.
In this video, we show why good workplace relationships are crucial and how to build them,

Check out this great example

Here’s a great example: I did a workshop for a client here in Denmark and afterwards their two managers did an amazing random act of kindness where they handed out breakfast (unannounced) one Monday morning.

So try it out today and report back how it went.

Imagine two salespeople at the same company.

Johnson is a consummate professional. She’s an accomplished rep who is always ready to support her clients and colleagues. However, due to circumstances beyond her control—perhaps a major account goes bankrupt or her region hits a recession—she misses her quarterly target.

Smith, on the other hand, is lazy. He’s incompetent and never goes the extra mile. Yet, by pure luck, he hits his numbers. Maybe a massive order falls into his lap by chance, or his territory is experiencing an unrelated boom.

Which of them deserves recognition? To me, the answer is clear: it is fairer and more beneficial for the company’s future to reward the person who delivered the superior effort.

The “Luck” Bias

Most companies do the exact opposite. They give out recognition and rewards based on results alone, probably because results are easier to measure.

But there’s also something else going on: a systematic bias we chronically underestimate: the “luck factor.”

Daniel Kahneman is the only psychologist who’s been awarded a Nobel Prize. He won it in economics, since there is no Nobel Prize in psychology, for his work in identifying how humans make decisions and founding the field of behavioral economics.

One of his most intriguing findings is that we massively overestimate the effect of our own actions while ignoring the role of chance. When things go well, we take the credit—even if we mostly just got lucky.

It is demoralizing for high-effort employees to watch less competent, luckier colleagues walk away with the accolades and the checks.

The Problem with Bonuses

Some companies try to fix this with more complex bonus structures, but these rarely work. Experience shows that bonus schemes are either so simple they are unfair, or so complicated that no one understands them. Research even suggests that heavy reliance on these rewards can lead to poorer results and lower motivation.

The solution is simple: Leaders must focus more on rewarding effort than on raw results. We must recognize those who do an amazing job and, crucially, those who help others improve.

A Better Way

Next Jump, a New York-based company, provides a brilliant example. Their most prestigious award isn’t based on sales performance, but on who helped their colleagues the most.

In this video you can see their 2014 awards ceremony:

Shifting focus this way isn’t easy—results are easily measurable, while recognizing effort requires leaders to have a closer connection with their employees and deeper insight into daily work.

But there are three reasons why it’s worth the extra energy:

1. Effort is not reliant on luck: While results can be a fluke, great effort is a product of talent and attitude. These are the traits that should be celebrated.
2. Effort wins the long game: We shouldn’t just optimize for this month; we should be optimizing for the next many months.
3. It prevents suboptimization: If I am only rewarded for my own sales, why would I ever help a teammate? Focusing on effort builds a culture of long-term health rather than short-term greed.

The Upshot

Leaders should acknowledge the work, not just the win. In the long run, this creates more fairness, higher motivation, and—ironically—better results.

Your Take

What is valued most in your workplace—results or effort? How does that approach affect your engagement and your team?

Leave a comment below—we’d love to hear your take.