Happiness@Work Leadership Lessons I Have Learned from the World’s Greatest Thinkers
Ingrid Ashwin | July 2013. Ingrid Ashwin is the Event Producer for The Progress Conference series.
For 20 years, Ingrid has built personal relations with the world’s top thought-leaders. By staying close to the local business community she has built a very real understanding of the challenges and opportunities required to create and grow value in South African organisations. In response to these requirements she has sought out and secured the participation of the most relevant thought leaders to inspire and develop new management competencies in marketing, leadership, human resources, strategy and finance.
Ingrid’s work has afforded her first hand personal insight to the thinking of Tom Peters the “uber-guru”, Professor Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School, Professor Dave Ulrich, the leading HR authority, the late Steven Covey, Dr Edward de Bono, Philip Kotler, Rudi Giuliani, Richard Koch, Martin Lindstrom, Dr Martin Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology and others. Most recently she is working with Ricardo Semler, Tal Ben-Shahar and Jessica Pryce-Jones to develop solutions for South African organisations to achieve happiness at work.
It is Ingrid’s belief that by refusing to accept the status quo we can achieve progress.
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During a recession we suggest that leaders face some new questions: “What makes work either stressful or engaging, rote or rich with meaning? In either good or bad times where do you and your people find meaning? How do you foster abundance in people? How do you think the story of your work and your life might become a legacy of meaning for your and for others?” Professor Dave Ulrich.
The lessons I have learned from eight of the world’s greatest business thinkers.
They are unanimous on one thing. The business leaders most likely to succeed are those that expect and plan towards a business environment that will be very different in a few years’ time, never mind a decade of half century. The 20th century work model is no longer relevant and there is no contest between the company that buys the grudging compliance of its workforce and the company that enjoys the enterprising participation of its employees.
– Leaders DO People and kindness is free.
– Take care of the people. The people take care of the service. The service takes care of the customer. The customer takes care of the profit. The profit takes care of the reinvestment. The reinvestment takes care of the reinvention. The reinvention takes care of the future.
– Celebrate the small wins on your journey to the BIG wins.
– You hire adults – treat them like adults
– Corporate pyramids are the cause of much corporate evil. They emphasise power, promote insecurity, distort communications and make it difficult for the people who plan and the people who execute to move in the same direction.
– The “Seven Day Weekend” is not an elaborate game of hooky. Going AWOL is sometimes necessary. If we want people to do only the company work while they are in the office, shouldn’t we have corporate police to makes sure they are not working on weekends.
– Don’t tell your employees you trust them and then audit and search them when they go home.
– Don’t send your people on a motivational course – change their job and let them choose their own boss.
– Making meaning makes money.
– Put delight at the top of your list of contributors to meaning at work.
– Create tiny moments of appreciation.
– Notice something beautiful.
– Get a kick out of a shared joke.
– Cultivate moments of playfulness. Brainstorm sources of pleasure and fun.
– Build mental toughness, signature strengths and strong relationships.
– If your business involves setbacks. Risky decisions and problems hire optimists.
– For every negative piece of feedback your people need 3 positive inputs. It is 3:1 to sustain positive emotions and in turn resilience.
– When the going gets tough use your signature strengths.
happiness pays!
– Get people to experience positive emotions so they become more engaged in that they do, their creativity levels go up and relationships improve.
– Where there is democracy there is choice and without choice happiness is but impossible to attain.
– Encourage employees to take regular breaks for recovery to recharge their psychological batteries to fulfil their potential for creativity and productivity.
– happiness@work is not a flaky, happy- clappy new religion – it is a science.
– If you’re conscientious you’ll put in the hours, you will work hard at what you do but it may not make you happy. Engagement in isolation does not promote career and business success.
Give people the opportunity to raise issues that are important to them and to voice their perception that they are doing something worthwhile.
– Ask your people if they would be willing to recommend your organisation to a friend?
Gen X and Y people are likely to stay two years longer if they believe they are learning.
Let people do the work that puts them in “flow: – the feeling where the task is almost effortless and time passes by without them noticing.
– If your mind is dull you have no hope of impressing people in any situation. It doesn’t need a high IQ or reams of knowledge. All it needs is creativity, imagination and empathy.
– Life is something to be enjoyed and lived rather than a well of suffering to be endured on the way to better things.
– For 2400 years we have been obsessed with argument as a way of thinking. It has served us well but is ego driven and adversarial. When people think in parallel they look at the matter from the same point of view.
With final words of advice from Ricardo Semler, the CEO who leads the most unusual workplace with extraordinary financial success.
“The ostrich that buries its head in the sand has a bigger problem than limited vision; its rear end is an enormous target. It’s very simple – the repetition, boredom and aggravation that too many people accept as part of working can be replaces with joy, inspiration and freedom.”
