1.
Published
on
LinkedIn.
May
15,
2015.
How to measure Happiness & Emotions to Influence
Performance
By Rash Khan (https://au.linkedin.com/in/rashkhan1)
Our emotions have a strong influence on how we behave, act; make decisions
consequently how we perform on a day-to-day basis. Also it has been scientifically
proven that the happier we are the better we perform. Given the fact our 'happiness'
and 'emotions' have strong correlations to our productivity and performance it makes
a lot of sense to measure these two key human performance attributes to generate
knowledge that would help us positively influence performance.
Measuring happiness (team temperature) is a common technique used in many
organisations to understand team engagement and there are many ways to do it. Ever
since I started learning about emotional intelligence, thanks to Daniel Goleman,
Richard Boyatzis's awesome literature, I have coupled measuring emotions
with happiness , which gave me powerful insights on my team's state of mind that
helped me be a better leader for them.
Sharing what I practice
I use two simple questions using an Anonymous SurveyMonkey survey as a tool to
measure happiness and emotions. It takes literally less than 2 mins to respond.
Anonymous nature of the survey gives team members an opportunity to be brutally
honest.
1. How happy are you at work this week from a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 being
the Happiest?
Purpose: Response from this question gives leaders an indication of our team moral,
happiness, engagement.
2. Describe how you feel this week in three words?
Purpose: For team members - By default we avoid talking about emotions because its
perceived as being soft which is why most people struggle to express how they feel
and finds it awkward to discuss emotions. This question makes people really think
how they feel in order to express in 3 words, as a result over time this question
influences them to get better at expressing how they feel enabling them to be more
attuned to their own emotions and feel comfortable expressing it.
Purpose: For leaders - It generates great insights that enables leaders to be more
attuned to the team's state of mind equipping them with knowledge to influence
performance.

2.
Published
on
LinkedIn.
May
15,
2015.
Mechanics of the practice -
• I created a free Anonymous Survey-monkey page to collect responses and then
plot the weekly average happiness score in excel for trend analysis. (see
'example insights')
• Work out average happiness of the particular week. Not everyone will respond
which is Ok. As long as over 70% team members responds you get a strong
indication.
• I recommend running the survey on Wednesdays to ensure unbiased response
because Monday, Tuesday people are either too stressed or too busy and
Thursday, Friday they are mostly happy due to the weekend ahead :)
• Use http://www.wordle.net/ to generate 'word cloud' that gives greater
prominence to words that appear more frequently in the emotions expressed
by the team members. (see 'example insights')
• I shared outcome, 1) Average weekly happiness score and 2) Word cloud each
week with the team to keep it transparent and keep me honest as a leader.
Example Insights -

3.
Published
on
LinkedIn.
May
15,
2015.
A personal story of how insights could help influence performance -
Insight - Few years ago I received a consistent average happiness score of below 6
two weeks in a row and prominent words were, 'direction', 'lack', 'lost' and 'worried'. I
had a large globally distributed team and from the surface I had no way of knowing
people were feeling that way.
Action - After getting such powerful yet concerning insights I started talking to people
straight away without waiting for the next scheduled one on one catch-up. I learnt
team was struggling to understand 1) how multiple projects we were working on fits
in the big picture to drive business value, 2) should we still be even doing some of
them. I realized I needed to do a better job of communicating to my team how our
projects are aligned to business strategy.
I developed a visual roadmap showing all our projects on a timeline and collaborated
with business stakeholders to explain to the team how delivery of these projects in
target timeframe will generate value for business. This exercise gave them a sense of
purpose and magically average happiness score rose to above 7 over few weeks. We
managed to deliver the projects on time. I strongly believe if I didn't have the insights
from 'how people were feeling' those projects would have been at critical risk to meet
the timeline because people simply weren't engaged.
Call to Action
Our happiness is a key ingredient in our productivity. Lets measure happiness to
generate actionable insight so that we have engaged, inspired, happy teams thriving to
make a difference.