The Happiness Advantage, Part 2: Micro Changes with Macro Results
In last month’s article, Positive Psychologist, Shawn Achor reminds us “we focus so much on the negative that we forget to remind people how powerful the positive can be.” He posits that we are putting the cart before the horse when we think happiness will come after we achieve something; instead we need to start at positive and then watch our numbers skyrocket, our projects run smoothly, and our employees engaged. That is the power of “The Happiness Advantage”.
Developing your staff is being pushed to the forefront of your job responsibilities. As the baby boomer generation begins to leave the workforce and the explosion of the Y generation into the workforce, it is becoming even more critical to develop a talent pool that can respond nimbly to the changing landscape. Also, the push to do more with fewer resources is a constant stressor; not to mention the hustle and bustle of everyday life. So it begs the question, “How do we use ‘The Happiness Advantage’ to improve sales, develop stars, increase output, tap into creative insight, and have healthy work environments?”
As pointed out in the previous month’s article, 75 percent of your success is based on:
- Changing the way you view stress; no longer as a threat but as a challenge,
- Raising levels of optimism, and
- Investing/deepening social support connections
To begin adapting new behavior is to start with baby steps. Some of these “micro steps” are:
- Writing down three new positive things that happen to you, everyday
- Doing random acts of kindness, and
- Sending an email of thanks or praise to someone new everyday
In these small acts is the beginning of the dismantling of old behavior, as Dr. Achor points out, “We do not have to be just your genes or your environment.”
Just think, if everyone who read this article did just one of these behavioral retraining concepts listed above, what kind of ripple effect would it send out within your team, department, unit, school, college, or clinic..? It is certainly a win-win, so why not give it a try? And if you happen to come out with a more positive attitude, well then just make a note on your Performance Evaluation! Try doing any or all of the three behavioral changes for 21 days, and send us an email of any results!
Don’t forget – The Happiness Advantage workshop will be coming in Fall 2015. We’ll announce the training dates and times for these workshops via this newsletter and on Human Resource’s Training & Development website.
Recommended Workshops and Reading Materials
Fall 2015 – HR Training & Development will begin offering Happiness Advantage workshops. If you would like more information about this workshop, contact Maria Fischer-Boothe.
Reading Materials
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Dan Pink
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink. In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
Give and Take, by Adam Grant
For generations, we have focused on the individual drivers of success: passion, hard work, talent, and luck. But today, success is increasingly dependent on how we interact with others. It turns out that at work, most people operate as either takers, matchers, or givers. Whereas takers strive to get as much as possible from others and matchers aim to trade evenly, givers are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.
Using his own pioneering research as Wharton's youngest tenured professor, Adam Grant shows that these styles have a surprising impact on success. Although some givers get exploited and burn out, the rest achieve extraordinary results across a wide range of industries. Combining cutting-edge evidence with captivating stories, Grant shows how one of America's best networkers developed his connections, why the creative genius behind one of the most popular shows in television history toiled for years in anonymity, how a basketball executive responsible for multiple draft busts transformed his franchise into a winner, and how we could have anticipated Enron's demise four years before the company collapsed--without ever looking at a single number.
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. Distilling vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives that take us from the boardrooms of Procter & Gamble to sidelines of the NFL to the front lines of the civil rights movement, Duhigg presents a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential.
At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work by Shawn Achor
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.
A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.
Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change by Shawn Achor
Why are some people able to make positive change while others remain the same?
In his international bestseller, The Happiness Advantage, Harvard trained researcher Shawn Achor described why happiness is the precursor to greater success. This book is about what comes before both. Because before we can be happy or successful, we need to first develop the ability to see that positive change is possible. Only once we learn to see the world through a more positive lens can we summon all our motivation, emotion, and intelligence to achieve our personal and professional goals.
In Before Happiness, Achor reveals five actionable, proven strategies for changing our lens to positive:
· The Most Valuable Reality: See a broader range of ideas and solutions by changing the details on which your brain chooses to focus
· Success Mapping: Set goals oriented around the things in life that matter to you most, whether career advancement or family or making a difference in the world
· The X-spot: Use success accelerants to propel you more quickly towards those goals, whether finishing a marathon, reaching a sales target, learning a language, or losing 10 pounds
· Noise-Canceling: Boost the signal pointing you to opportunities and possibilities that others miss
· Positive Inception: Transfer these skills to your team, your employees, and everyone around you
By mastering these strategies, you’ll create an renewable source of positivity, motivation, and engagement that will allow you to reach your fullest potential in everything you do.