• Happy link collection weekly roundup

    Links by you!Here are this week’s highest rated links from the Happiness at Work Link Collection:

    25 Ways to Improve Your Mood When People Around You Are Miserable. Includes 2: Make friends, 3: Do things you love, 6: Take a walk, 11: Smile, 25: Get out of the office

    Learn How to Take Criticism. “Criticism is your friend. Love it, embrace it, cherish it, cultivate it, and most importantly, never fear it.”

    2008 Sick Day Calendar. “A new year is upon us and that means it’s time for the Official Sick Day Calendar from your friends at Jobacle. Get your excuses ready now! Remember, only a sucker loses days at the end the year!”

    Do What you Love and Money Will Follow. A study of business school graduates tracked the careers of 1,500 people from 1960 to 1980. From the beginning, the graduates were grouped into two categories. Category A consisted of people who said they wanted to make money first so they could do what they really wanted to do later after they took care of their financial concerns. Those in category B pursued their interests first, sure that the money eventually would follow. After 20 years, there were 101 millionaires in the group. Only one came from category A, 100 from category B.

    Work-Life Balance: A Conspiracy of Optimism. “Work-Life balance is, at best, a fabrication. At worst, a cruel hoax. It’s time to stop believing all the hype. As adults, we well understand that it’s never been a question of balance. It’s always been a question of choice. As the Spanish proverb reminds us: “Take what you want, says God, just pay for it.”

    You can find more great links about happiness at work here – and you can vote for your favorites. You can also contribute great links yourself.


  • Death to job titles at Quicken Loans

    Death to job titles

    Matt Cardwell used to be the Web Marketing Director at Quicken Loans. Not any more.

    He came across a post of mine called Who cares about your job title – tell me what you DO! and was inspired to kill of all the traditional job titles.

    He explained it further in an email to employees:

    If you are concerned about someone not recognizing how important you are because you no longer have a standard title, then here’s your chance to create a title for yourself that will convey exactly how important you are. And because you are creating it, it will be all yours. No one else will have that title. Think of the conversations your new title will start with complete strangers. Think of the opportunities it can create for you in terms of expressing who you are, not what someone CALLS you.

    “But what if I don’t like my description in three months …” you ask? What if what I do CHANGES? Well, then you can change your description. It’s that simple. No one ever stays the same … we are all growing … so let your “title” do the same when it’s time.

    Here’s your chance. You have until the end of the day to let us all know who you are. Have fun, be creative, be humorous, but above all, be real and true. Remember, this will be on your e-mail signature, so please be aware of that.

    I can’t wait to see what all of you come up with.

    DEATH TO TITLES!

    So what titles did people come up with? Well, as I said, Matt is no longer the Web Marketing Director. He’s now the Idea Salesman, Energy Focuser and People Unleasher. Some other new titles are:

    • Royal Storyteller & Propaganda Minister
    • Supreme Challenger of the Status Quo & Wicked Web Site Innovator
    • Innovation Maven and Revenue Raiser
    • Mastermind of Possibilities, Visual Linguist, and Czar of the High Fiber Revolution
    • Art Juggler
    • Flasher
    • Idea Launcher
    • Conceptologist
    • Head Brother In Charge of Chat
    • Reality Check Provider
    • Sentence-smoother-outer with an Ad Girl twist
    • Pixelardo da Vinci

    Woo-hooooo!!

    I know the whole choose-your-own-wacky-job-title things has been done before, most notably during the dotcom days, but I still love it. And I still marvel at the fun, creative titles people come up with.

    Death to business titles, indeed!

    A great big thank you to Kelly LaVaute for blogging about this!


  • Really?

    I passed this sign on my way to a meeting today:

    PC Fixer

    You don’t say…


  • Top 5 reasons to let employees telecommute

    Work from home

    Should a company let its people telecommute? Is it good or bad for productivity? Does working from home make employees more stressed because it blurs the boundary between work and private life? Or is it good for families because it cuts down on time commuting and gives people more time at home? And is it true that most of the employees who work from home do so in the nude?

    Pennsylvania State University have just published a meta-study that looks at these questions. It’s called “The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta-Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences.” Catchy, huh?

    The study analyzes the results of 46 other studies on telecommuting involving a total of 13.000 employees. The overall conclusion? Telecommuting is good for both employees and for the workplace. You can find the whole study here (pdf).

    Main findings

    Here are the findings that struck me as being the most interesting. For some reason, the study completely neglected to look at the nude/clothed aspect of telecommuting. On that one, your guess is a good as mine.

    1: Telecommuting gives employees a sense of freedom at work
    In other words, you feel that you have more control over your work environment. In fact, this turned out to be the root cause of many of the other effects found in the study.

    2: Telecommuting is good for the family
    A lot of people fear that telecommuting harms family life because it blurs the boundary between work and private life and pressures people to work when they’re at home.

    This study found that the opposite is true and that telecommuting reduced conflicts between work and family.

    Telecommuting
    From the study: The main effects of telecommuting

    3: Working from home 1 or 2 days a week does not harm relations to co-workers or managers
    However, working from home 3 days had a positive effects on the family, but also had a negative effect on workplace relationships.

    The study also says that managers must adapt to accommodate telecommuting, or it won’t work:

    4: Telecommuting makes employees more productive
    The study looked at both self-perceived efficiency and how efficient managers thought their telecommuting employees were.

    And while employees themselves did not feel more productive, the study did find a positive link between telecommuting and the manager’s rating of employees’ efficiency.

    The study also looked for signs that spending less time in the office would harm employees’ career expectations by giving them less time to demonstrate value to managers. The study found no indication of this.

    5: Telecommuting makes people happier at work
    There was a positive link between telecommuting and job satisfaction. The study also showed that employees who can work from home are less likely to quit.

    My take

    All of these findings make a lot of sense to me, and it just underlines what I always say: Who knows better than you, when and where you do your best work?

    I’ve always assumed that the employees of any given company are responsible adults, capable of making decisions for themselves. If they’re not, why were they hired in the first place?

    The great thing about this study is that it clearly suggests that even though the effects may not be huge huge, telecommuting is good for both employees and for the workplace.

    Your take

    What about you? Do you work from home? Would you like to? How would working from outside the office a few days a week affect you?

    Related posts


  • More accolades

    Top HR bloggerYaaaay: HR World has named me one of 2007’s top HR bloggers.

    The funny thing is, I don’t consider this to be an HR blog – but it’s obvious that happiness at work is if interest to HR professionals. I mean, the ultimate goal of HR has to be to make employees happy at work, right?

    Some previous accolades for the blog:


  • HP and I team up to make the UK happy at work

    HP

    I am proud to announce one of my most exciting projects ever: I’m teaming up with HP to make small and medium sized companies in the UK happy at work.

    The project is officially launching today, and up till now I’ve been under strict orders not to reveal anything. Finally, I can blog about it!!

    From the press release (pdf):

    As part of its ongoing ‘Happy People’ marketing campaign, HP will be providing free consultancy to UK businesses on how to improve ‘happiness’ within the office through the use of HP mobility technology.

    At the same time, HP has launched a nationwide competition for small to medium-sized businesses, giving them the chance to win a £10,000 office makeover – including HP products, ‘happiness’ workshops and free consultancy from an independent expert and an HP team of experts.

    “We’re absolutely thrilled to be working with Alexander, one of the world’s leading experts on happiness in the workforce,” said David Wright, vice president and general manager of HP Personal Systems Group, UK & Ireland. “Over the coming months, HP will be addressing the areas where technology can help make some offices throughout the UK happier places to work.”

    The idea is that HP’s mobile products (laptops and mobile phones) allow us to work more flexibly – and flexibility, ie. having more choice over when and where to work, makes us happier at work.

    The main elements of the campaign are:

    I’m especially excited about the contest. UK-based companies with 100 employees or less can sign up and the grand prize is an office makeover by HP and a full-day happiness workshop with yours truly! Four other companies get the runner up prize: Full-day workshops with me.

    So if you’re working in a small UK business and you’d like a little more happiness at work, go to the campaign website and sign your workplace up. Right now!

    I’m incredidbly happy to be a part of this project. First of all because it gels so well with my take on happiness at work; giving employees their freedom is a prerequisite for happiness at work, as I also wrote in my book.

    Secondly, my talks with HP have convinced me that they are genuinely committed to happiness at work. This is not just a PR exercise for them – this is about creating more happiness and thus more success for HP’s customers.

    And finally, this gives me a great opportunity to work with some UK companies for the first time. It’s funny that I’ve been hired by companies in America, Estonia, Croatia and India (just to mention a few of the places I’ve gone recently) – but none in the UK so far…

    So all in all, a great project with the potential to create a lot of happiness at work.

    Full disclosure: HP are paying me to participate in media activities related to this project and to do the workshops for the winning companies.

    Related:


  • How not to manage geeks – in Italian

    How not to manage geeks

    Marco Bertola has translated one of my most popular pieces in Italian – a post that lists the 10 most common mistakes that managers of geeks make. It is consistently one of the most widely read on my blog – probably because geeks and managers still approach work in very, very different ways.

    You can find the Italian version here:
    How not to manage geeks / Come NON dirigere i geek

    Grazie Marco!

    This post is also available in:

    And of course, the original (in English) is right here.


  • How to deal with anger at work

    Dealing with anger at work

    Here’s an interesting question that I got yesterday:

    My husband and I are currently sitting on the sofa, enjoying our day off and writing down our goals for 2008. While doing so, my husband has brought up the topic of work. Here is his statement in a nutshell: I think you are very angry about work in general and need professional help.

    In searching for “help,” I came across your website.

    Here’s my question: after being laid off in September and being forced to change careers from the mortgage industry to a more secure industry is there “help” out there for dealing with the anger I now have because I was forced to change careers at 39 years old and what can I do in the meantime so that my “anger” doesn’t spill into my new career?

    Thank You,
    Yvonne

    This question is interesting for many reasons, most notably because this is obviously making Yvonne unhappy at work in her new job. If it’s come to the point where her husband believes she needs professional help, it’s probably also affecting her at home.

    Also, Yvonne is far from alone. A lot of people face major changes at work. When they are laid off, when their company is bought by a competitor or when major reorganizations fundamentally change their working conditions. Large scale change has become a fact of corporate life and many of us react to it by getting mad.

    Below you’ll find my top 5 tips for dealing with anger when when you’re going through major change at work.

    I apologize in advance for venturing maybe a little too close to therapy-land in this post. I honestly don’t want to go all Dr. Phil on you guys, but dealing with anger is not possible without taking a look at what goes on inside your head. OK? OK!

    5 steps for dealing with anger at work

    Step 1: Accept that being angry is perfectly natural
    When we’re faced with large changes in life and at work, we all have to go through the grief cycle, which has the following stages:

    1. Denial: The initial stage: “It can’t be happening.”
    2. Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair.”
    3. Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”
    4. Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
    5. Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”

    I’m honestly not sure how scientifically established this model is, but I certainly find it very useful in the work I do with organizations that are going through major change.

    Last year, I did some work with a branch of the Danish Tax Authority – an organization that has gone through enormous change and reorganization in the last year.

    When I presented a simplified version of this model to them, I could see people breathing sighs of relief. One participant even exclaimed “NOW you tell us!” Many of them had been angry or depressed about these changes, but nobody had told them that this is normal. Consequently, many of them felt bad about what they were feeling – which of course only made them more angry or depressed.

    It’s important to accept your own anger as perfectly OK. Being angry is hard enough. Being angry while telling yourself “I really mustn’t be angry” is infinitely worse :o)

    This does not give you blanket permission to throw tantrums right and left – it just means that being angry is OK, not that every display of anger is allowed.

    Step 2: Find out what your anger does for you – good or bad
    What does being angry do for you? Think back to previous situations where you have been angry at work and ask yourself how it affects eg.:

    1. You
    2. Your relationships with co-workers
    3. The quality of your work
    4. Your energy
    5. Your well-being and health
    6. How you feel outside of work
    7. Your relationships with friends and family

    For each of these, include both the good and the bad. Maybe being angry gives you a lot of clout and influence on the job… but it also means that co-workers tend to avoid you. Maybe being angry feels stressful… but it also saves you from being taken advantage of at work.

    And here is a crucial question: What other emotions, questions and doubts are you free from dealing with because you’re angry? When your anger consumes you, which other painful or difficult considerations are you free from thinking about? What would you have to feel/think about/deal with/do something about if you were not angry?

    Step 3: Find out what makes you angrier and less angry
    What makes you angrier? Which thoughts, situations, people, conversations set you off?

    Conversely, what makes you less angry? I’m sure you’re not angry every second of every day :o) What gives you peace – or at least distracts you from the anger?

    Find out – then start doing less of what makes you angry and more of the things that calm you down.

    Step 4: Focus on gratitude
    What are you grateful for? As I mentioned above, anger is part of the grief cycle which is associated with loss. Gratitude is the polar opposite of loss, because it obviously comes from the good things you have in your life.

    It’s simple. Every evening, sit down with a piece of paper (and maybe a glass of wine) and make two gratitude lists:

    1. 3 things I was grateful for at work today
    2. 3 things I was grateful for in life today

    It can be big things or small things – obvious stuff or weird stuff. Whatever makes you feel happy and grateful.

    If you need some inspiration, check out Scott Nutter who has been doing daily gratitude posts on his blog for 334 days running now.

    Step 5: Shift your focus from “What was done to me” to “What I can do”
    I know, I know – this is the basic staple of all self-help advice.

    As in “When life gives you lemons make lemonade.”

    As in “Life is 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you deal with it.”

    As in “You must take responsibility for your own situation, rather than be a victim of.”

    That kind of advice can get pretty nauseating. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

    3 things NOT to do

    There are also some things you should avoid doing.

    1: Don’t vent
    Common knowledge holds that when you’re angry, you should vent to get it off your chest. Interestingly, studies indicate that venting just makes us even angrier.

    2: Don’t try to justify your anger
    When you’re feeling angry don’t waste time and energy justifying it – either to yourself or others.

    Well that guy was a jerk at the staff meeting and the way I was treated in the last reorg was totally unfair and my manager still hasn’t apologized and some guy cut me off in traffic on the way home and…

    You’re angry, that’s enough. You don’t have to list all the reasons why you’re angry. Again, that just makes you even angrier.

    3: Don’t stay trapped in your job
    There is an amazing amount of peace and calm to be found in the simple fact that “I’m free to leave and find another job.” Conversely, knowing that you’re trapped in your current job makes everything much worse.

    Read my previous posts on How to lose your fear of being fired and the Top 10 advantages of low-rent living for more on this.

    Your take

    What about you? Have you tried being really angry because of major changes in your work life? How did it affect you? How did you handle it? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know!

    Related posts

    1. The Feel Factor – Why no workplace can afford to ignore what people feel
    2. How not to let annoying people annoy you
    3. How to turn around a bad day at work

  • Happy New Year. Now drop all of your New Year’s resolutions!

    2008

    I wish all the readers of this blog a spectacularly happy 2008. And I believe that one of the best way to get yourself just that, is to NOT make any new year’s resolutions.

    Steve Shapiro says it best:

    Once again it is that time of year when we look forward into the new year. We set our resolutions. Lose 10 pounds. Stop smoking. Get out of debt.

    Unfortunately, most resolutions are about fixing what is wrong with you rather than bringing pleasure into your life.

    In addition, most resolutions are target- and time-based goals (e.g., lose 10 pounds by the end of the year). These just set you up for failure. It’s no surprise that according to a survey of mine, only 8% of people are successful in fulfilling their resolutions.

    And those who do achieve their resolutions are often no happier. When you focus on a target-based resolutions, you are focused on the future rather than the present. As a result, you miss the “hidden” opportunities around you, and miss out on the joy of every day life.

    Steve, author of the excellent book Goal-Free Living, has a much better idea: Set yourself a theme for 2008. How is a theme different from a resolution?

    1. Having a theme for the year is about setting a general direction you want to move in. It’s not about having specific goals.
    2. A theme is something you want to achieve. Most resolutions are about something people want to avoid.
    3. With a theme, you can’t fail. With resolutions, you’re almost certain to fail.

    Go check out Steve’s excellent post on this topic, which also has a video of him presenting the idea in a TV interview.

    I heartily recommend having a theme for your work life in 2008. And I definitely recommend themes that have something to do with enjoying work more. But then I would, wouldn’t I? :o)

    What about you? What might your theme for 2008 at work be?


  • Who cares about your job title – tell me what you DO!

    Business card

    “What do you do for a living?”

    Whenever you meet new people, some variant of this question is bound to come up, and probably pretty early on in the conversation too.

    And here’s something I’ve noticed: When you ask people what they do, most people will give you their job title. As in
    “I’m an engineer” or “I’m a project manager” or “I’m a writer”. Or consultant, speaker, software developer, manager, contractor, freelancer, secretary, or…

    But that’s not what you do – that’s just your title. It really says nothing about you or your job, so I always find myself asking follow-up questions. “So what kind of projects do you manage.”

    Some titles DO say what you do. If you’re a pilot you fly planes. Teachers teach. Builders build. Coaches coach. But most titles are more ambiguous.

    So think about it for a moment. How much does your job title really say about what you do? And what would be a better way of telling people what it is you do in just a few words.

    Whenever people ask me, I always tell them that “I make people happy at work.” That is what I do.

    This may look like just semantics, but it matters. See, your job title is never going to make you happy at work, but knowing what you do, may. Knowing your contribution, how you add value, how you make a difference – THAT can make you happy at work.

    So now it’s your turn. Think of what it is you do in your job and put it a comment here.



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