How to be happy at work
Next week (November 11) I’m speaking about happiness at work at an event in Bratislava. Click here to read more and sign up (in Slovakian).
I have never been to Bratislava before, so I’m also excited to see the city. Do you know Bratislava? Have any good tips for restaurants or sightseeing?
How’s this for a ridiculously simple Monday tip: Invite a co-worker to lunch.
Don’t make a big production out of it, just ask another co-worker if they want to go to lunch with you. Then use that time to talk about something other than work.
You get extra points for doing it with a co-worker you don’t know that well yet. Who will you take to lunch today?
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.
Here’s a dog who’s hard at work – but still happy:
Have a happy weekend :o)
Steve Shapiro’s new book Personality Poker comes out next week (October 28, to be precise) and I really, really urge you to get it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to’ve read both an early draft and an advance copy of the book and it’s one of the best and most useful business books I’ve ever read. And of course it’s much more than just a book – it comes with a deck of Personality Poker playing cards, Steve’s brilliant invention for learning more about yourself, your co-workers and your employees.
We’ve been using Personality Poker for 2 years now in our work and it’s an absolutely awesome tool for creating more innovation, energy and happiness in teams. It’s fun, simple and fast but still give people a genuine insight into their personalities.
The book itself is a fun and easy read of about 240 pages with tons of real-life examples – exactly the kind of business book I love and actually manage to read. As opposed to those 400-page theory-filled tomes that I really ought to read, but which always end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.
Possibly the only drawback of the book is the section on page 195-199 about this weird guy from Denmark who is apparently some sort of workplace happiness guru… I mean, how bizarre is that :o)
Read more about the book here.
The Chief Happiness Officer says: “Buy this book!”
We recently did two full-day workshops for the Copenhagen division of Danish electronics wholesaler Solar, and they have really embraced workplace happiness. Last Monday, the two managers Carsten and Karsten decided to surprise their people with a friendly greeting. They stood in the reception area that Monday morning and gave each of their employees a friendly, high-energy good morning and a breakfast plate.
Watch this:
Several of their employees wrote us later to tell us how much they appreciated this simple gesture and the spirit it was performed in. Kudos to Carsten and Karsten for taking a good idea and running with it.
How could you greet your co-workers on a regular, gray, boring Monday morning to get their work week off to a happy start?
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.
The next edition of our happiness at work newsletter goes out in 12 hours. This one even has a naked CEO in it, so you do NOT want to miss it :o)
You can see the previous newsletters here and sign up for future editions right here:
When you sign up you will get:
I recently blogged about the value of nice bosses and why being nice, considerate and empathetic can actually be quite a challenge for managers. Basically, nice managers are much more likely to make their employees happy and nice managers get better results. However, some forces in business and psychology conspire to make bosses less nice than the could be. Read the article here.
In the latest edition of our newsletter (read more and sign up here), we launched a survey to get a feel for the level of niceness currently found among managers:
The survey only has 5 questions and takes about a minute to do – you can really help us out by taking it here.
So far, the results are… interesting.
First question was: Is your boss nice. Fortunately, it seems that most are:
76% say their boss is mostly or always nice. The pattern repeats when we ask about most managers in the organizations:
So far so good. But here comes the interesting part. Compare these two questions:
94% of you say that having a nice manager matters to you (88% even say it matters a lot) yet 72% of you say that being nice is not a required trait of managers in your organization. That is a major disconnect right there. I think we need to make many more workplaces realize that being nice is not just nice – it should be an absolute requirement for anyone in a management position.
This is reflected in many of the comments on the survey:
I’m lucky to work for a very nice boss right now, but I have worked for miserable bosses in the past. These miserable bosses breed miserable teams and employees. It was such a relief when a miserable boss left the company – a collective sigh of relief from employees.
Ouch!
I’ve often wondered if it’s the job that makes a director/manager into Uncle Joe Stalin or if they were that way to start with. Does anyone have an answer to that question?
I wrote about this in my original blogpost about nice managers. Being given power tends to do some bad things to us. So some managers are born Stalins, others go Stalin as a result of becoming managers.
It is so unfortunate how my boss is disrespectful to myself and others and how she gets away with it. She’s nice to those above her and behaves however she feels like it to the rest of the people below her. I just started this new job in June and am already looking to leave. It’s very unhealthy to be in such an environment. It’s too bad that the crappy bosses never get sought out and fired or, at the very least, reprimanded.
Double ouch!
People get ahead here regardless of whether or not they are nice. It is very discouraging. Nice guys get laid off. And they wonder why morale is poor.
Ouchouchouch!
But this comment takes the cake:
We seem to be naturally selecting for jerks – aggressive win-at-all-costs tyrants. Sad really. So much potential and people just end up checking out.
This is precisely what we need to avoid. Remember that people tend to hire in their own image – so nice managers hire nice people and jerks hire jerks.
Is niceness a trait you want to see in your boss? Who’s the nicest boss you’ve ever had? Or the nastiest? What did he or she do? What did that do to you and your colleagues? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.
I consider “work,” in its most universal sense, as meaning anything that you want or need to be different than it currently is.
Many people make a distinction between “work” and “personal life,” but I don’t: to me, weeding the garden or updating my will is just as much “work” as writing this book or coaching a client.
– David Allen in Getting Things Done
I’ve been exploring the question “What is work” on the blog recently. I even got sneaky and asked “What is the opposite of work“?
However, I’m really liking the definition above by David Allen. What do you think?
I’ve had to sit on this news for a while, but now I’m finally free to announce that I am one of the speakers at TEDx Copenhagen on November 30.
The theme of the event is “The good life”. As you know, Denmark is often called the happiest country on the planet. I’ll be examining if this is really true, what it takes to achieve the good life and look more at the good life at work. I also have a bone to pick with all the politicians and economists who want us to work more hours in the name of GDP growth. If you think that working longer is really the best path to success and growth, I’ll be showing you exactly why you’re wrong!
Sign up here – and you’d better do it fast. I hear the tickets are selling like hotcakes.
It’s almost weekend and thus time for another Friday Spoing. Don’t worry – this one has a happy ending:
Have a very happy weekend :o)
The Chief Happiness Officer Academy is our most in-depth 3-day training where we share everything we know about creating happier workplaces. Get an in-depth background in happiness at work, hear about the latest research in the field and learn how to use this in your own business.