Times are tough for for workplaces all over the world right now. I would like to share some of my tools in the hope that maybe it can help a little.
So I’m making my two main books available as pdf downloads free of charge for anyone who wants them. There’s also no annoying email signup required or anything – just click below to download either book.
Happy Hour is 9 To 5
“It’s very, very good. It’s incredibly well written, full of insights, and there are exercises to improve your own happiness at work. You can’t ask for more than that!” – David Maister, author of Practice What You Preach
“I have read well over 100 articles/books on topics covering happiness in the workplace and your book was by far one of the best. In fact, it was so informative that I went on and sent the link to your book to my entire professional network.” – Chris Hollins, President, talentgrade.com
This book clearly explains what happiness at work is (and isn’t) and what each of us can do to have work we love.
“What an inspiring book. Every leader should read it and learn how to promote happiness for employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and even the leader him- or herself. That type of leadership has been integral to our success and I know it will boost your results too.” – Garry Ridge, CEO WD-40 Company
This book presents a simple but radical idea: The fundamental goal of any leader should be to increase happiness in the world. Leaders who don’t do that are doing it wrong.
Drawing on fascinating lessons from psychology, neurobiology and philosophy, the book demonstrates why leaders should put happiness first – for themselves, their employees, their customers, and the wider world – and why happy leaders are more successful.
The beginning of a new year is a great time to take stock of your work life. Are you happy or unhappy at work? What would you like to change?
It’s important to evaluate, because how you feel at work has such a large influence on you at work AND at home. When you’re happy at work, you have better job performance and more career success. You also have better health and a happier private life.
Unfortunately most people look back and think exclusively in terms of what went wrong. The things they should have done. They goals they ought to have achieved. The progress that didn’t come.
We gain much of our happiness at work (and in life) by appreciating the good things we have and do. Sure, you should also make sure to improve your circumstances and address any problems but it is just as important to be able to appreciate the things that do work.
This is hard. Negativity bias is one of the most well-established psychological phenomena and it means quite simply that our minds devote more mental focus and cognition to the bad than the good. Our thoughts automatically go to problems, annoyances, threats and fears but remembering and appreciating the good in our lives takes effort and focus.
We think you can achieve much more by turning that around 180 degrees, so here’s our suggestion for a little new year’s exercise in happiness at work.
Think back at your work life in 2019 and answer the following 10 questions. It works best if you take some time to think about each question and if you write down your answers.
What went really well for you at work in 2019?
What did you do that you were proud of?
Who did you make a difference for at work?
What new skills have you learned professionally?
How have you grown and developed personally at work?
Who has helped you out at work in 2019?
Who have you admired professionally?
Which 5 things from your work life in 2019 would you like more of in 2020?
Which 5 things from your work life in 2019 would you like less of in 2020?
What will you specifically do to become happier at work in 2020?
Some people think that they must work hard to become successful – and that success will make them happy. The truth is the opposite: being happy makes you more effective and successful at work.
So this year, make happiness at work your #1 career goal – because being happy at work will make you more successful in your career.
Our latest Chief Happiness Officer Academy was a huge hit with 18 engaged participants from 12 countries who are now ready to go out and make workplaces awesome.
The only thing that wasn’t great about the Academy was the Copenhagen winter weather, but that might be a good thing. One participant wrote this in LinkedIn afterwards:
“It’s been raining most of the last four days here in Copenhagen, which has probably been a blessing, because otherwise I might spontaneously combust from all the incredible energy that’s been generated at the Chief Happiness Officer Academy.”
We had a great time going through the latest research and best practices on happiness at work. We also had a fantastic visit to DHL Express Denmark, where their HR Manager Sarah Olsen gave a passionate tour and talk about their happy culture.
Here are some of my favorite pics from this Academy:
Measuring happiness at work is a great idea and every workplace should do it because:
It shows employees you care about them
It identifies problem areas and strong points in your culture
It shows you what exactly to do to make employees happier and more productive
In short, if you’re not effectively and reliably measuring happiness at work, you’re missing out on one of the most effective tools to create a happier culture.
Sadly, the way most organizations do it just doesn’t work, because they measure too rarely (typically once a year) with too many questions and fail to follow up on results quickly.
We desperately wanted to fix that, so we created HeartCount – a tool that measures employee happiness weekly with very few but very relevant questions so that the organization can follow up immediately on any issues.
It’s incredibly simple:
Every Friday all employees get an email with 3 questions about their week.
They reply to those questions directly in the email. No login, no apps, no additional hassles.
Employees see immediate results of their input and management/HR can immediately access the data and act on any problems or wins right away.
Disclaimer: I am a cofounder/co-owner of HeartCount and the one who came up with the idea for it, based on all the frustrations I noticed with the “regular” way of measuring satisfaction.
Our latest Chief Happiness Officer Academy was a huge hit with 23 engaged participants from 14 countries who are now ready to go out and make workplaces awesome.
We were completely blown away by how engaged and passionate the group was and how open they were about sharing questions, stories and experiences.
We had a great time going through the latest research and best practices on happiness at work. We also had a fantastic visit to Irma, where their CEO Søren Steffensen gave a talk on their happy culture.
I started Woohoo Inc back in 2003 so we have been spreading happiness at work for over 16 years. Our keynotes, workshops, articles, conferences, videos and books have reached millions of people all over the world.
But something is wrong. For the last couple of years I have been unhappy at work and that won’t really do for someone in my business :)
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why work stopped being fun for me, but here are three reasons that have played a role:
For a long time we’ve been working on the same level, i.e. the same number of clients, the same number of readers on our articles and books, the same number of views on our videos, the same number of participants at our events, etc. I’ve tried many things to develop the business to reach more people but little of it has worked and when things stand still, I get bored.
There are too many people in this field who attract attention by saying either platitudes or unverifiable nonsense. For instance, some recent bestselling books have claimed that positive feedback is bad for you, that we should resist growth and development, that we should ignore emotions at work or that work should be duty – not passion. It’s frustrating to have to refute dumb claims like this over and over again.
My previous longest stint in the same job was 5 years, so this has been 3 times as long. Maybe 16 years doing the same thing is simply enough for me.
Simply put, it’s time for me to take my own medicine and do something to become happy at work again so from January 1st I’m shutting the company down for 6 months to go traveling. What will happen after that? I have no idea :)
Fortunately we have built a fantastic international partner network over the last 3 years who have all been trained in our methods and who are doing amazing work around the world. They are ready to step in while we’re gone.
So if you’re looking for a speaker or consultant to come in and make your organization happier and more profitable, don’t hesitate for a second to book any of them.
I think that’s complete nonsense! I know – what a shocker :) But worst of all it’s poorly reasoned nonsense that relies on a string of terrible arguments and deliberate ignorance of the research in the field.
Here are the top 5 fails from DeBrarander’s article and why you should most definitely seek work you’re passionate about.
1: He blames the long US working hours on people’s passion for their jobs
The United States offers a curious paradox: Though the standard of living has risen, and creature comforts are more readily and easily available — and though technological innovations have made it easier to work efficiently — people work more, not less.
Why is this?
One theory is that Americans have come to expect work to be a source of meaning in their lives.
There are no studies showing that people who find work meaningful work more hours than those who don’t.
If you want to actually know why working hours are still on the rise in the US, I think it makes much more sense to look at some of these factors:
Bad management practices
Workplace cultural norms
Economic insecurity caused by a hugely challenged middle class that are one pay check away from financial disaster.
The high cost of college educations and the huge amount of debt that many young people graduate with – meaning that they absolutely must work or face personal bankruptcy.
Put people with huge financial insecurity in a workplace that expects and demands 60, 70 or 80-hour work weeks, and they most often have no option but to go along and work themselves to death.
2: Being passionate about your work means that you experience constant bliss
Most people are certainly guaranteed to fail in this pursuit [of passion at work]. Even people who love their jobs will report they must do thankless tasks from time to time. Few, if any, experience nonstop bliss, where sheer passion sustains them through long hours on the job.
Notice what DeBrabrander did there? He just redefined being passionate about your work to mean that you experience nonstop bliss and sheer sustained passion.
This is what’s known as a strawman argument, where you exaggerate, misrepresent, or just completely fabricate someone’s position, to make it easier to attack.
Just to be clear: Being passionate about your job does not mean that you experience nonstop bliss. Everyone has bad days at work – and that’s perfectly OK. And of course every job contains a mix of tasks that you enjoy and tasks that suck – and that’s OK too.
3: Young people burn out because they seek passion at work
There is plenty of evidence that our high-octane work culture has serious consequences. It is at least partly responsible for high levels of burnout among millennials.
And while there definitely is an increase of stress, burnout, depression and mental problems among young people, it’s intellectually lazy to just conclude that it’s caused mainly – or even partly – by their search for passion and meaning at work.
Young people are also facing many other pressures, including a global climate disaster that no one is doing much about, while they are of course the ones who will have to live with the consequences of that inaction. Might that be a source of stress for them? No, says DeBrabrande – their real problem is that they expect their jobs to be meaningful.
4: If you seek passion in your work, you will fail
A recent study of priorities among young people found that achieving one’s career passion ranks highest of all… Finding a fulfilling job is almost three times more important than having a family, teenagers in the study reported.
It is daunting to contemplate. Most people are certainly guaranteed to fail in this pursuit.
Got that? If you seek passion at work, you are almost guaranteed to fail. Really? How would he know? Of course, he’s previously redefined passion at work to mean constant bliss and if that’s your goal, of course you will fail.
And just to make it worse, the study he links to in support of his claim is not even about passion at work. The actual finding is that 95% of US teenagers surveyed say that “having a job or career they enjoy” is important to them.
5: Passion means that work is the ONLY source of meaning in your life
We might begin by rejecting the notion that work should consume our lives, define and give meaning to them…
Again, the article dishonestly redefines passion to mean that work consumes your life and gives meaning to it.
In reality, passion for your job simply means that you are passionate about the work you do – not that it’s the only thing are passionate about.
Why you absolutely should seek work you’re passionate about
This kind of attack on happiness at work is nothing new. Many serious people are coming out of the woodwork to declare that happiness at work is stupid, impossible, naïve, silly, manipulative and/or bad for you. In the video above we cover their 20 most used objections to workplace happiness and why they’re wrong.
DeBrabrander’s analysis is poorly argued and of course also wrong. Everyone should absolutely seek work they’re passionate about. There are many reasons why, but the most important are these:
It will make you happier at work
It will make you happier in life
It will make you more successful at work
It will protect you from doing harmful work – whereas not trying to find meaning at work makes it more likely that you will end up doing work that exploits or harms others
Work is where you will spend many of your waking hours – of course you should spend that time doing something you care about
Work is where you will invest most of your energy, skills and competencies – all of that effort should be invested in the service of a cause you care about
Paradoxically, I actually think DeBrabrander agrees! When he talks about approaching work as duty rather than passion, he bases this on an understanding of duty that comes from stoic philosophy. I have many, many issues with stoic philosophy – not least that it is based on the idea that we are all subjects to a predetermined fate – but it has recently become very fashionable, especially among silicon valley tech bros.
In the NYTimes pice, DrBrabrander recounts The advice of Seneca, one of the most prominent stoics to define duty like this:
Seneca’s advice to Serenus is to focus on doing his duty. He must perform the job he is best disposed and able to perform, as determined by his nature, and the needs of those around him. And he must forget about glory or thrill or personal fulfillment — at least in the near term. If he performs his duty, Seneca explains, fulfillment will come as a matter of course.
Duty, in this definition, is not just about having a “Shut up and do your job” approach. It’s about doing work that you’re good at and which meets the needs of those around you.
In the “calling” orientation, people are working not for career advancement or for financial gain, but instead for the fulfilment or the meaning that the work itself brings to the individual. People who see their work more as a calling see the work as an end in itself that is deeply fulfilling and regardless of the kind of work they’re doing, they tend to see the work as having a societal benefit.
It’s ultimately about working for something bigger than yourself.
The upshot
This opinion piece is poorly researched and dishonest – so of course the advice it gives is bad.
Seeking passion and meaning at work is the path to more career happiness and success and less stress and burnout. It’s also one way you can help create a better world, by making sure that all of your professional skill and energy is spent in the service of something that you can clearly see is making the world a better place, rather than in just obtaining a pay check or career advancement.
I have to say, if you make your career choices with no consideration for where your passions lie, I honestly pity you.
Participants from 16 countries at the CHO Academy in June 2019 in Copenhagen
Our regular CHO Academy in June sold out very quickly and had a long waiting list so we added an extra one in November. That one is now also sold out, so we’ve added an extra extra Academy in Copenhagen on December 8-11 2019.
If you want a deep dive into the theory and practice of creating happy workplaces then this is the training for you.
Previous participants loved the training, and said things like:
“Without a doubt, the best training I have ever experienced.”
“I came back to my organisation full of ideas, plans and time lines on how, who and when this was going to happen.”
“An inspiring and energising academy. LOVED every moment of it.”
Our amazing international partner network have arranged the Global Online Happiness at Work Summit and you can sign up right now and get access to 40 online keynotes from international experts completely free of charge. One of the keynotes is by yours truly on “how to build a strategy for happiness.”
The whole thing takes place on September 23-27 2019 during the International Week Of Happiness At Work – also arranged by our partner network. Check out the website to see all the other activities happening that week around the world.
“What an inspiring book. Every leader should read it and learn how to promote happiness for employees, customers, suppliers, investors, and even the leader him- or herself. That type of leadership has been integral to our success and I know it will boost your results too.”
