The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Book review: Open Space Technology

    If you want to read about open Space Technology, this book is the only place to start. Harrison Owen who came up with the concept, explains the practicalities and the history of Open Space meetings in his usual clear, engaging and entertaining way.

    Open Space meetings are characterized by their ability to consistently create the right background for incredible achievements. They are amazingly efficient and they also create enthusiasm, stimulate the open exchange of ideas and avert most conflicts. To me, Open Space is the meeting form that most acknowledges us as independent, self-reliant humans capable of taking responsility for ourselves and others.
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  • In the media

    My main project (happiness at work) has come to the attention of the media. It’s actually a little too soon for my taste, I’d have liked to have more results before we “go public” but hey, it’s nice that people are interested.

    Yesterday we were mentioned in Denmarks largest newspaper, in an article about how best to start work after a vacation. This is what I wrote about in an earlier post.

    And today I was live on national TV (on Good morning Denmark), being interviewed by Michael Meyerheim. I’ll try to convert it to a digital format and post it on the site.
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  • Tips for returning from a vacation

    The summer holidays are ending and as you or your colleagues return to work, it’s worth taking a moment to think about the best way to ease back into your job. Sometimes it seems as if all the energy you’ve gained on your vacation disappears very quickly, so here’s some tips on how to keep that good mood a little longer.

    There are tips both for people who are returning from vacations and for their co-workers.
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  • Pride on the job

    Once again an excellent article from Fast Company on the importance on pride at work.

    There`s one thing I’d like to add, namely that you can’t “do pride”. Pride is not a practice, it is the result of one or more practices. The article even shows some of these practices like caring for employees, focus on learning, including employees in decisions and focus on long term results. Here’s the list of practices, that I believe promote pride and happiness at work.

  • Job satisfaction and the bottom line

    Gallup have a report from a study involving 200.000 emplyees from 36 different companies, that clearly links high job satisfaction with good financial results. Among other things the report shows that satisfied employees result in:
    * Much lower employee turnover rates
    * Higher customer loyalty
    * Higher sales
    * Higher profit margins

    This is great news for my Project Happiness at Work. And I would love to add something to this study.
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  • Book review: Man’s search for meaning

    This is a very unusual book, spanning topics rarely encountered in one and the same volume. The author, Viktor E. Frankl, was a pshychologist and he spent most of world war 2 in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. And these two backgrounds have gone into this book which is both an account of his experiences in the concentration camps, a psychological analysis of how people react under such extreme conditions and a short introduction to his psychological school called Logotherapy.

    The basic underlying theme here is meaning (logos in greek). Frankl argues, that what made some people endure the trials of the concentration camps, while many others gave up, was their ability to see meaning in their suffering. And in general, Frankl sees the drive to discover meaning as our most basic need, and he believes that many psychological problems (from neuroses to alcoholism) stem from a lack of meaning in peoples lives.
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  • Book review: The inner game of work

    I discovered Inner Skiing about 15 years ago, and enjoyed it immensely. That book describes how the inner game principles pioneered by Timothy Gallwey can be used to create better learning conditions for skiers. Gallwey originally used it for teaching tennis, and the method basically consists of teaching not by telling people what to do, but simply by helping them direct their attention to different aspects of what they want to learn.

    In this book, subtitled Overcoming mental obstacles for maximum performance, Timothy Gallwey applies the same principles to work. How can we create the best learning conditions at work and what advantages would this give us?
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  • Fun

    The more balanced your life is and the more diverse your interests are, the better your thinking will be. If you work 20 hours a day, your product will be crap
    – George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research Inc. in an article in Fast Company

  • Spreading happiness at work

    Last wednesday Project Happiness at Work had it’s first paying customer!! We held a seminar for 15 secretaries at nch, and judging from the feedback it was a great success. This is of course only the beginning, but it did prompt me to create a page for companies on the project’s website, outlining the products we intend to market to businesses.

    Over the next two months we’d like to find 10 companies interested in trying the workshop. The workshop is an excellent way to start spreading happiness in any workplace. It can be done in one or two days, with up to 40 participants. Afterwards the participants have all the knowledge they need to hold more workshops in the company themselves, and they also get all the necessary workshop materials. This can make the spread of happiness self-reproductive within the company.

  • Yes, and…

    Lately I’ve been using a very simple but VERY powerful method called “yes, and…”. This method comes from improvisational theater, where it is the most basic rule. When you’re on the stage doing improv theatre, every idea proposed by another actor must always be accepted. You can add to it, but you can’t reject it – and you’d look pretty foolish on the stage if you tried. Hence the “Yes, and…”

    But “yes, and…” can be used in many other situations, and mainly it can be used to counter the ingrained tendency to say no, that many people today exhibit, particularly when pressed or stressed. It’s often safer , easier and more comfortable to say no.

    One case where “yes, and…” works especially well is when brainstorming for ideas. When people know in advance, that any idea proposed will be received positively, they feel much more free to suggest any ideas they may have. In this way you get many more ideas to work with. Ultimately, “yes, and…” can teach us a positive and healthy attitude of saying yes to life, and to whatever reality surrounds us.

    More info here and here. Try it!