After many months we have published a new collection of stories, research and helpful guidelines linked to building and maintaining our happiness at work. Thank you for your patience.
Here is a flavour of what you will find amongst this edition of more than 100 articles and videos…
21st Century Relationships at Work
The Importance Of Having Friends At Work
The recent Friends in the Workplace survey squashed the myth that most employees are preoccupied with salary levels above all else, and showed that for more than 60% of respondents, happiness at work was far more important. Those people who did rate salary as their prime concern also acknowledged that a workplace where friendships and happiness were given the space to develop could provide significant benefits to companies. More than half of those surveyed said that their work life was much more enjoyable due to the fact that they had a good friend at work, around a third said that an office friendship had helped them to become more productive and over one in five responded that it boosted creativity levels…
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21st Century Leadership
Teamwork, Social Events and Company Culture are Vital to Happiness at Work
Workplace happiness isn’t just about competitive pay and benefits, increasingly workers are placing greater value on company culture
The UK’s savviest employers have always known that the key to a productive business is investing time and effort in understanding what makes people happy at work. Why do people love their job? What to employees want their workplace to look like? Understand and act on this and you should never have a problem with motivation or morale.
Yes, competitive pay and benefits are important, but employee happiness is dependent on so much more. Increasingly, workers are placing greater value on things like wellbeing and working conditions, where flexible working, collaboration, career progression and a great team spirit are part of the company culture.
“This is the human era of the workplace,” says Mark Batey, senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Alliance Manchester Business School. “The best places to work are those in which people can flourish and be their best selves – instead of pretending to be someone else five days a week. The perfect workplace also gives people flexibility and autonomy as to where and how they work, built on a culture of growth and trust.”…
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Workers Care More About Others During Organisational Change
Our research analysed employee reactions to 23 change projects in a large police organisation, what we found was that workers were genuinely worried about what happens to their colleagues and for the fate of the entire organisation. Some even said they would consider the change project a failure if their colleagues suffered, even though they might profit themselves from the change in terms of their own career…
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Why Warmth Is the Underappreciated Skill Leaders Need
When it comes to success in leadership, there has never been just one playbook. Some leaders are extroverts, natural mentors, and charismatic speakers; others prefer to lead by example and take a more hands-off approach.
There is, however, one simple fact that leaders ignore at their peril: those who demonstrate high levels of “interpersonal warmth” have a better chance at long-term success.
“Warmth is the differentiating factor,” says Loran Nordgren, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School. He cites a Zenger Folkman study that looked at 50,000 managers and found that a leader’s overall effectiveness is predicted more by warmth than competence. “If you’re seen as low-warmth, you have something like a 1-in-2000 chance to make the top quartile of effectiveness as a leader.”
The lesson for aspiring business leaders is not to smile more broadly. Instead, Nordgren recommends simply being aware of one’s perceived warmth and taking steps to manage that perception whenever possible.
Just as it pays to consciously demonstrate one’s own competence—by accepting challenging projects, say, or solving an issue without being asked—it helps to be more proactive, even strategic, about expressing warmth.
“There isn’t a single way to do this, but we know from social psychology that conveying warmth can be powerfully effective for just about any leader.”…
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The Six Signature Traits of Inclusive Leadership: thriving in a diverse new world
Diversity of markets, customers, ideas, and talent: These simultaneous shifts are the new context. For leaders who have perfected their craft in a more homogenous environment, rapid adjustment is in order. Of course, the core aspects of leadership, such as setting direction and influencing others, are timeless, but we see a new capability that is vital to the way leadership is executed. We call this inclusive leadership, and our research has identified six traits that characterise an inclusive mind-set and inclusive behaviour…attributes of leaders who display the ability to not only embrace individual differences, but to potentially leverage them for competitive advantage…
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Science of Happiness
Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance (and Much More)
Our People Innovation Lab developed gDNA, Google’s first major long-term study aimed at understanding work. Under the leadership of PhD Googlers Brian Welle and Jennifer Kurkoski, we’re two years into what we hope will be a century-long study. We’re already getting glimpses of the smart decisions today that can have profound impact on our future selves, and the future of work overall.
We have great luxuries at Google in our supportive leadership, curious employees who trust our efforts, and the resources to have our People Innovation Lab. But for any organization, there are four steps you can take to start your own exploration and move from hunches to science:
1. Ask yourself what your most pressing people issues are. Retention? Innovation? Efficiency? Or better yet, ask your people what those issues are.
2. Survey your people about how they think they are doing on those most pressing issues, and what they would do to improve.
3. Tell your people what you learned. If it’s about the company, they’ll have ideas to improve it. If it’s about themselves – like our gDNA work – they’ll be grateful.
4. Run experiments based on what your people tell you. Take two groups with the same problem, and try to fix it for just one. Most companies roll out change after change, and never really know why something worked, or if it did at all. By comparing between the groups, you’ll be able to learn what works and what doesn’t.
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A Positive Outlook May Be Good for Your Health
There is no longer any doubt that what happens in the brain influences what happens in the body. When facing a health crisis, actively cultivating positive emotions can boost the immune system and counter depression. Studies have shown an indisputable link between having a positive outlook and health benefits like lower blood pressure, less heart disease, better weight control and healthier blood sugar levels…
Psychologically, a positive view can enhance belief in one’s abilities, decrease perceived stress and foster healthful behaviors. Physiologically, people with positive views of aging had lower levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of stress-related inflammation associated with heart disease and other illnesses, even after accounting for possible influences like age, health status, sex, race and education than those with a negative outlook. They also lived significantly longer…
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Balance and Mindfulness
Can Mindfulness Training Help Organizations Be More Effective?
Eleven members of Forbes Human Resources Council discuss the practice of mindfulness and list some of the main benefits of mindfulness for both employees and their organizations, including achieving self awareness and compassion, finding what’s essential, creating headspace, achieving greater collaboration, improving the career experience, strengthening the company culture, listening to understand not to respond, allowing employees to decompress, sharpening employee’s focus, being fully present, and getting a modicum of control on the uncontrollable…
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21st Century Time Management
Taking Breaks Is Good for You — But Scheduling Your Breaks Is Even Better
…the best advice anyone can give about structuring your day is to do whatever works for you. More productive in the morning? Tackle the tougher items on your to-do list before switching gears. Get a caffeine crash sometime in the mid-afternoon? Maybe that’s when you go out for your snack run.
Across the board, though, there’s one thing that holds true: No matter when you take your breaks, you should be scheduling them. That’s the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, which found that downtime is more refreshing — and more effective at helping people get back to the top of their game — when it’s planned in advance…
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Resilience and Sustainability
5 Ways To Build Resilience, From Sheryl Sandberg And Adam Grant’s New Book ‘Option B’
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton Professor of Psychology Adam Grant wrote Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resistance And Finding Joy, addressing the loss of Sandberg’s beloved husband Dave Goldberg and how she is managing her grief and moving forward. The personal anecdotes, which include stories of acquaintances, friends and family are interwoven with research and studies that touch on personal and professional methods to strengthen resilience.
Here are five things Sandberg and Grant teach us about building resilience:
1. Personalization, Pervasiveness, Permanence “Hundreds of studies have shown that children and adults recover more quickly when they realize that hardships aren’t entirely their fault, don’t effect every aspect of their lives, and won’t follow them everywhere forever.”
2. Kick The Elephant Out Of The Room Though everyone makes their own decisions about when and where they want to share their feelings, Sandberg and Grant write there is a lot of evidence that speaking about traumatic events improves mental and physical health, helps people understand their own emotions and feel understood by others.
3. Self-Confidence & Self-Compassion “I didn’t have to aim for perfection. I didn’t have to believe in myself all the time. I just had to believe I could contribute a little bit more…Over the years, this lesson has stuck with me whenever I feel overwhelmed.“
4. Contribute Contributions are active: they build our confidence by reminding us that we can make a difference.
5. Pay Attention To Joy “Rather than waiting until we’re happy to enjoy the small things, we should go and do the small things that make us happy. ” When you seize more and more moments of happiness, you find that they give you strength…
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Health, Fitness and Flourishing
Beyond hygge, what other wellbeing trends are ripe for the picking?
Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept that celebrates imperfection. For Leonard Koren, author of Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, wabi-sabi is the opposite of the Western notion that beauty is perfect, enduring and monumental. The idea encourages followers to appreciate the beauty of “what is” rather than wishing for something else. According to Koren, this is as applicable to our wrinkled faces as to our worn-out old sofas (both of which are stunning in the eyes of wabi-sabi, by the way).
Can you have too much of a good thing? Yes, according to the Swedes. Lagom, which translates as “just the right amount”, is a popular Swedish philosophy that revels in moderation. Matt Kallenberg, author of Lagom, explains: “Lagom is basically the idea that it’s better to have just the right amount of a good thing than too much of it.”…
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See also Alex Fulton teaches us the art of ‘hygge’
Hygge is a Danish word roughly translating to ‘coziness’. But more than that, it’s about creating a warm atmosphere, enjoying the good things in life with good people…
Changing the World
Independent’s Happy List 2017: The Full List of People Who Make Life Better for Others
The Independent’s ninth Happy List is a collection of 50 inspirational heroes and heroines whose kindness, courage and selflessness make our country a better place to live. The Happy List was founded in 2008 as an antidote to those tedious lists that celebrate wealth and big bank balances. Instead, it honours the Great Britons doing extraordinary things for others with no thought of personal gain, who often go largely unnoticed and unrewarded…
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Creativity and Artistry
Tete-a-tete: the art of conversation – Steve McCurry’s photo blog
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
― William Hazlitt, Selected Essays, 1778-1830
See Steve McCurry’s ravishing life enhancing photo collection here
Happiness at Work edition #135
See our full collection of articles, videos, research and and helpful tips and techniques here
