happiness as a leadership lever · happiness raises every business and educational outcome from...
TRANSCRIPT
Happiness as a
Leadership Lever
#AWSAinWI
Happy People Value Others…
Introductions
1. Their life has purpose and meaning.
2. They concentrate on positive thoughts.
3. They judge their wins and failures the same.
4. They prioritize what's important.
5. They don't compare themselves with others.
6. They cultivate meaningful relationships.
7. They invest in diversity.
8. They're constantly growing.
9. They do what they say they're going to do.
10. They believe in themselves.
10 Amazing Secrets of Happy and Successful Leaders
In Companies, where happy people work…
Profits/Results
Work Related Injuries
Personnel Turnover
Customer Satisfaction
Productivity
Source: Harter, Schmidt 2002
Bank of America Study
What happens to your new teachers after their first year, after 5 years, near the end of their career?◎ What is their outlook?◎ How do they view the workload?◎ What makes them worry, view
initiatives as negative, disengage from collaboration?
Impact Bias... can lead us to avoid certain decisions or activities out of an
inflated fear that they will harm our happiness or to covet certain
outcomes that don’t actually boost our happiness as much as we think it will.
Shawn Achor◎ Harvard student and professor◎ Positive psychology researcher◎ Story Teller
Michelle Gielan
◎ Electrical engineering and systems architecture
◎ News anchor◎ Positive Psychology researcher
The Brain is a Newsroom
As a leader, on what do you get people to focus on?
Research Conclusions:
1. A positive brain fuels performance
2. Optimism predicts success3. Broadcasting happiness gets
results
According to research done at UC Riverside:● 50% of our happiness comes from our
genes● 10% life circumstances● 40% intentional activity
Researcher = Sonja Lyubomirsky
What determines our happiness?
The Happiness Advantage: Cliff Notes
◎ Happiness is the precursor to greater success, not merely the result. ◎ Happiness raises every business and educational outcome from productivity to
sales to intelligence. ◎ Your brain is designed to perform better at positive than at negative, neutral or
stressed. ◎ If you train your brain to be more positive in the present, you can raise your
success rates signi!cantly.◎ The brain can perceive large goals as overwhelming, limiting forward progress.
Our brain needs to record a “win” in order to maintain the belief that behavior matters
◎ A certain amount of activation energy is necessary to create a change. ◎ We procrastinate because our brains magnify how much energy we need to start
the task.
◎ High skill/low challenge = boredom. Low skill/high challenge = anxiety. Challenge and skills are both perceived, which means if you change your perception, you can align them more effectively.
◎ Optimism and positivity can actually change the effect stress has on our system◎ A single positive change you make can influence how you and other people are
experiencing the world.◎ When people are stressed, they usually hunker down and divorce themselves
from social support. Instead of disconnecting from social support, positive outliers increase their social investment.
◎ Gratitude allows your brain to most adaptively use its finite resources when scanning the world
◎ Conscious acts of kindness allow for and encourage positive praise and collaboration
◎ Doing multiple tasks just one at a time allows you to devote your brain’s resources more effectively and to decrease stress on the system
The Happiness Advantage: Cliff Notes
How can praise affect your school?
➢ If you solely praise outcomes, staff believes that only good outcomes matter.
➢ If you praise the process, staff begins to recognize that their behavior matters.
➢ Long term, praising the process helps people to become more resilient in the midst of the ups and downs.
➢ If you want to raise outcomes, focus praise on the process.
Three keys to creating positive growth and predicting success at work:
How do we keep our culture a place of happiness amidst ___?
The 4 C’s
1. Creates social CAPITAL2. Gives CONTEXT to the situation3. Expresses COMPASSION4. Stays COMMITTED
7 ways to capitalize on our happiness daily
1. Taking five minutes every day to meditate will help reduce stress levels in our lives.
2. Finding something to look forward to can significantly raise endorphin levels. Anticipating future rewards can actually increase pleasure centers in the brain just as much as the reward itself.
3. Creating conscious acts of kindness. Giving to friends and strangers decreases stress and contributes to improved mental health.
4. Infusing positivity into our surroundings keeps negative emotions out. The less negative we watch, read or see, increases our happiness.
5. Exercise not only releases endorphins but can also boost mood and enhance work performance.
6. Spend money, but not on stuff. People who buy things for others feel better about themselves.
7. Exercise a signature strength. Everyone has a propensity for something. If you find a positivity boost is in order, revisit a skill/talent/hobby you haven’t exercised in awhile.
METHOD EXPERIMENTList three things that you could do at work or at home to raise your level of happiness in the present.
For the next three days do one of those things, intentionally trying to reverse the formula. Observe like a scientist, what was the effect upon your energy level afterward.
Write down what your current stressors are. Circle one item on your list of stresses and come up with one concrete action you can do to decrease that stress.
Identify a trigger or an event that causes you to feel distress.
Make a list of the resources you currently have to help you effectively deal with the stress including new tactics.
Acknowledge places and spaces where negativity occur.
Cut out negative news stories from your daily diet for one week. At the end of the week, describe any changes to your levels of happiness.
Increase social investment Make it a goal to learn one new piece of social information from everyone you talk to (hobbies, favorite vacation spots, kids’ talents) for one week.
Raise your optimism with gratitude. For 21 days in a row, when you first open your inbox, before reading any emails, write a 2 sentence email thanking someone in your social support network
Did you know?
◎ Regular exercise is the equivalent of taking an antidepressant.
◎ Exercise trains the brain to believe that your behavior matters, raising optimism.
◎ People who exercise in the morning have higher intelligence and creativity at work.
Things to consider…
● If you want to lead a team to greatness, the first step is to instill in it a belief that change is possible.
● Meetings can be life giving or soul draining…● Researchers found that including the word “together”
had motivated people to work substantially longer and produce better quality work (Stanford)
● Because people have limited bandwidth with which to experience the world, when you reorient their brains to positive, they can develop new ways to overcome old and new challenges.
● Everything about our “broadcast” can paralyze or activate another person’s ability to create and sustain positive change.
Happy Leaders... “... are realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. It’s about learning how to cultivate the mindset … to fuel greater success and fulfillment. It is a work ethic.”
Shawn Achor
“Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need
to change, is is the realization that we can.”
Resources Adapted from:
Achor, S. (2010) The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance At Work. Broadway Books
Gielan, M. (2016). Broadcasting happiness: the science of igniting and sustaining positive change. Benbella Books.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of the bestseller The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want
Strategies:
Praise the toxic employee when they choose the positive route. This helps them channel their brain’s resources toward a belief that their behavior can matter (optimism).
Stop giving toxic employees the control. Remember that the social script is written by the most expressive person. Increase how verbally and nonverbally expressive you are