The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • How to complain constructively

    Constructive complaining

    Last week I wrote about chronic complainers at work and what to do about them.

    Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m opposed to complaining as such. Complaining can be a great tool for initiating change and if we outlaw complaining in the workplace, as some managers try to do, all we do is drive it underground where it becomes even more toxic.

    So we should 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 some of the differences:
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  • How to recieve praise

    Yaaaaay!I’ve been getting a lot of amazingly nice praise recently, which has .given me a chance to practice receiving praise gracefully.

    I use a method that helps me avoid some common mistakes in receiving praise:

    • Don’t explain the praise away – as in “Aaww, it was nothing special”
    • Don’t reject the praise – as in “You don’t need to thank me, I was just doing my job”
    • Don’t ignore the praise – as in “How about them Dodgers!”

    Remember when people take time out to praise you or something you’ve done, it’s nice to accept the praise in the spirit it’s given.

    I recommend this 2-step process for receiving praise:

    1. Shut up
    2. Say “Thank you!”

    Step 3, jumping up and down, pumping your fist in the air while yelling “I’m the MAN!” is optional and should probably be avoided in many situations.

  • A challenge to all managers: Do you know your people?

    How happy?

    I’m going to risk provoking business leaders everywhere and state that any leader worth her salt knows how happy her people are at work. This is a leader’s most basic responsibility. You shouldn’t need to see a pie chart – you should know already.

    The question of “How happy are people in our organization??? is typically handed over to HR who can then distribute a job satisfaction survey that results in a lot of statistics which can then be sliced and diced in any number of way to produce any number of results. You know – “lies, damned lies and statistics???.

    I’m not saying these surveys are worthless. Wait a minute: I am saying they’re worthless. They’re a waste of time and money because they very rarely give a company the information or the drive necessary to make positive changes.

    As I said, you as a leader/manager shouldn’t need a survey to know how your people are doing so I challenge you to a simple exercise. It goes like this:
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  • Fill your office with kids, dogs and happy people

    Christian of think:lab visited a Montana printing company called Printing For Less. Some teasers from his post:

    The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them.
    …
    Spaces were vibrant. Team members were free to work in a variety of settings. And the place had a learning buzz about it.
    …
    The dog to the right was one of at least 12 that I saw, roaming happily around the Printing For Less offices/halls. Talk about a perk for employees!
    …
    Man, there just weren’t any spaces in the building that didn’t suggest learning, collaboration, experiment, and team.

    Kinda sounds like he liked it, huh?

    And so do I. It’s a nice break from the traditional, sterile office environment that many other businesses think is necessary for productivity and professionalism. I think this type of office atmosphere lets people be themselves and is much more likely to make them happy at work.

    Also check out my previous post about an ad agency that allowed babies and subsequently dogs, cats and other pets to the workplace. Though they did have to draw the line at goats, they found it to be a real boost for the company and for the employees.

    Via Lifestylism.

  • The strongest force in business (no, not money)

    Driving force

    As a leader, manager or executive, what is your driving force in business?

    Think about it for a second. What gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you take that drive to work? What is behind the choices you make? How do you set your goals and ambitions?

    There are many possible answers. Ask a thousand people and you’ll get a thousand different answers. Money would probably show up quite often. So would power, influence, getting ahead, recognition, security and success.

    But I believe that there is one underappreciated driving force in business. One force that spurs people on to stellar results, wise decisions and strong business relationships. One strong force that, when harnessed in your work life, will make you more efficient and let you enjoy work more.

    One that all business leaders everywhere need to know about and build into their businesses at the most fundamental level.

    Curious yet?

    Here it is: The strongest driving force in business is happiness! Yes, happiness at work.
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  • Monday Tip: Praise a co-worker

    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsHere’s a fun, easy thing to do, to give one lucky co-worker a great start to the work-week.

    First choose a co-worker you want to give a boost. Someone who deserves it or maybe a person who could really use it.

    Grab a piece of paper, and write “Things we appreciate about John Miller” (Or whatever his/her name is) at the top. Then write one thing you appreciate about John and sign your name underneath. Pass it on to another co-worker with instructions to do the same and pass it on.

    Do all of this without John noticing – which can be kinda fun in itself.

    When everyone has written one thing they appreciate about John, it’s time to give the paper to him. Here are some ways to do it:

    • Tack it to his PC screen when he’s not looking and let him find it there.
    • Hang it on the department bulletin board for everyone to see.
    • Go wild and let the whole department/team show up and hand it over to John in an improvised ceremony that could even include balloons, a song and a speech or two.

    You could also arrange the writing thing via email, but handwriting on paper has a nice personal touch.

    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.

  • How to get people to arrive on time for meetings

    ClockIt bugs me a little when meetings don’t start on time. I’m fairly punctual myself and while I have no problem waiting five minutes for a meeting to start, it pains me to see ten people waiting fifteen minutes for one or two other people who’re late. It’s particularly annoying when it’s the same people who’re late every time.

    Also, when some people are habitually late other participants start thinking “hey, meetings never start on time anyway, I’ll drop in ten minutes late.” It’s a downward slide from there :o)

    Here are three steps you can take to get your meetings started on time – including one slightly weird suggestion that works amazingly well.
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  • Friday links

    EyeRussian employers are using stressovoye, stressful interviews, to find the best candidates: Throwing a glass of water in someone’s face is said to be especially revealing: the interviewee is considered to have strength of character and leadership qualities if they react aggressively. I think this mostly reveals something about the company and the interviewer…

    Fred Gratzon explains how he lights his iner fire and sets goals: I come up with my goals in a most lazy and relaxed manner. In fact, relaxation is THE essential ingredient for this process to be successful. No sweat, no effort, no strain, no pain, no pressure, no aggravation, no commute, no bosses, no deadlines, no distractions, no work; just relaxing with a quiet desire to have a new goal. Then I play with my imagination throughout the day, every day.

    Another post also wants IT people to be lazy: For example, you want an environment where sysadmins kick back and read IT magazines occasionally, because their run-of-the-mill administrative tasks (adding users, managing disk space, etc.) are all scripted and/or automated.

    Bob Sutton writes about Lovaglia’s law and choosing CEOs: Rakesh found that when he asked corporate directors if CEOs are worth all that money, they reacted with anger and surprise, as if he had raised a taboo subject. He found that they had “virtually religious??? convictions on the subject, which led them to dismiss any evidence showing that CEO quality is not a primary and powerful cause of company performance.

  • How to handle chronic complainers

    Complainers

    Got any chronic complainers where you work? It seems like every workplace has them – the people for whom the weather is always too warm or too cold, the boss is a jerk, the food is lousy, work sucks and … you fill out the list.

    No matter how good things get they still only see the bad – and they go to huge lengths to point it out to everyone around them.

    I’m not saying we should outlaw complaining, but workplaces need to do something about the chronic complainers because they tend to make people around them unhappy at work. It’s a fact that negative people are highly contagious and one chronic complainer can easily get an entire department down.

    We try many different strategies to deal with complainers – one german IT company even bans whiners from the workplace. Yep – if you have a bad day you are not allowed to come in.

    But most of the strategies we normally use on complainers don’t help and often make matters worse. I’ve outlined these strategies below.

    And then at the end of the post, theres a simple, devious trick that works amazingly well. Try it!
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  • Traci Fenton on democracy in the workplace

    Traci FentonMy good friend Traci Fenton has an excellent op-ed piece in the paper today on democracy in the workplace. From the article:

    Command and control ways (as in, “do what you’re told because I’m the boss and I know best”) of the Industrial Age are dead. A Democratic Age demands a democratic approach to business that engages employees fully, taps their reservoir of talent, builds on their strengths, and rewards them in the process.

    She cites W.L. Gore, Semco, Whole Foods, GE Durham and Great Harvest as great examples of successful, democratic companies.

    I believe that democracy and involving employees in decisions is one of the very best ways to make them happy at work. People want to be involved and become happy, motivated and committed when they are allowed to help shape a company’s future.

    You can read more about Traci and her work with freedom-based organizations on her company website www.worldblu.com.