Monday Tip: Appreciate your co-workers

This week’s Monday Tip is about appreciating the people around you at work. Who do you like? Why do you like them?

Make a list of your closest co-workers. Not necessarily the ones you like the best, but the ones you have the most dealings with. Then, for each person on your list, write down at least five things you appreciate about that person. Things they’re good at, ways they make your life easier, their personal or professional skills and qualities… as long as it’s something positive.

That’s it. You don’t need to show your list to anyone, just take a moment to make it.

Now, when you make that list, there may be a person on it that really annoys you. Every workplace I’ve ever been in, there’s always been at lest one person who really honked me off. The trick here is to also find five things you appreciate about that person too. As the saying goes, there’s some good in everyone and if you can’t see it, it’s because you don’t want to see it.

And then I usually get the counter-argument: What about Hitler? (Or Stalin, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden). Is there something good in them too? And I say let’s skip that entire discussion – if you work with one of those guys, you may leave them out of the exercise :o)

By the way: Do you have any ideas for future Monday Tips? How do you make yourself and others happier in fun, simple, easy ways? Write a comment if you have a suggestion.

The Chief Happiness Officer’s Monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.

Previous monday tips.