Happyness at work

© 2016 Chandan Lal Patary
About the author:
I am doing Research on Organization Development
and Sustenance. I am a Practitioner and I am capturing
my analysis and sharing my observation through my
Writing. My focus areas are Operation Excellence,
Innovation, Strategy, Execution excellence and
correlation with People Leadership and impact of all
these into Organizational growth.
I am currently working as agile coach. I have nearly
two decades of deep experience in developing
software products across various domains and has successfully executed many
Projects. I have worked on product development for domain like Healthcare,
Aerospace, Building automation, Power automation, Industrial Automaton under
real time mission critical product development to large scale application
development. I am having near to two decade of industry experience. I am a certified
PMP from 2008, Green Belt certified holder from 2005. I am an agile practioner and
Certified Scrum Master from 2011. I completed Bachelor’s from National Institute
of Technology (National Institute of Technology –Agartala, Tripura) in Electrical
Engineering-1998. I have completed one year Executive General Management
program from Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Karnataka in 2007.
I was the Speaker at PMPC -2013 conference PMI-Bangalore, on “Organizational
Survival know-how in Transforming Era”
I was the Speaker at Agile in Business – Conference-2013, Bangalore, on “Effective
usages of Metrics for Agile project”, Received Star speaker recognition.
I was the Speaker at ICSE conference-2013, Bangalore, on “Software Effort
Estimation -Industrial Product development”
I was the Speaker at India Testing week -2013 Bangalore, on “Challenges with Agile
testing process and How to debug and troubleshoot these Challenges”
I was the speaker for 14th Annual International Software Testing Conference 2014
(STC 2014) scheduled for December 4th - 5th, 2014 in Bangalore and many more.
I am sharing all my learnings and know-hows through these book.
I can be reachable through email/LinkedIn: patarychandan@gmail.com

11/16/2016 Find and Recognize Those Toxic Handler | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
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Find and Recognize Those Toxic Handler
Published on October 28, 2015
A great Harvard Business Review article titled “The Toxic Handler: Organizational
Hero—and Casualty” reveals the scientific basis for the importance of this role and how
it should be rewarded and encouraged.
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For this article, the authors interviewed and observed 70 executives who
were either toxic handlers themselves or who had one working for them. The
authors defined a toxic handler as “a manager who voluntarily shoulders the sadness,
frustration, bitterness, and anger that are endemic to organizational life.”
In the article, the authors provide further insight into how beneficial
these unsung heroes are. “[Great] ideas dry up when people are hurting or when
they are focused on organizational dysfunction. It is toxic handlers who frequently
step in and absorb others’ pain so that highquality work continues to get done.”
The work of the toxic handler is absolutely vital to success when large teams have to
collaborate and overcome every obstacle, even those erected unintentionally by the
organization. Toxicity is frequent, and deadly to productivity.
Peter Frost, author of Toxic Emotions at Work, notes that many organizations and
their leaders generate emotional pain, which is a form of toxicity. Some toxicity can
demoralize employees, damage performances, and ultimately contaminate the health of
the organization.
Toxicity often creates the kind of pain that shows up in worker’s diminished
sense of selfworth. One or more workers who are depressed or angry can poison
team or department morale.
Research identifies five specific ways in which the impact of toxic handlers
is felt:

1. They listen empathetically . In essence, they always have time for people who need
to talk. In fact, I always told people my door was open, and I meant it. As a result, team
members stopped by to chat. Sometimes they needed reassurance, and others just
wanted face time. Either way, I was a very good listener. Most important, I would never
judge why they came, what was bothering them, or how important it was. All that
mattered was it was important enough for them to stop by. Research confirms that being
nonjudgmental
is critical.
2. They suggest solutions . Compassion is all about helping. Alleviate
the pain if you can by listening, but help directly by intervening if that is what it takes.
Every minute a professional is cognitively off the air, you are losing partial or full
productivity. As a leader, you must address this for the welfare of the team.
3.They work behind the scenes to prevent pain . If you know someone
is going to face a situation that is very unpleasant, intervene if doing so makes sense.
Preventing a painful situation is better than dealing with the aftermath, so be alert, and
be proactive.
4. They carry the confidence of others . To be in this role, you must
be absolutely trustworthy. If not, who will ever come to you? And,
rest assured, if you violate an individual ’s trust, it will spread. Humans
have tremendous survival skills, and one such skill is group members
alerting others to danger. Sometimes this is referred to as gossip, but
it is how we are wired, and bad news travels fast. Be a confidant.
5. They reframe difficult messages . As just noted, reframing difficult
messages is valuable—especially if you work in an organization where
a senior leader or the chief executive doesn’t understand the feelings
of others. It can keep you busy, but the dividends are high.

As an Agile coach and leader we need to recognize those team members who create
positive work place, we need to produce such team members more and more.
Reference: P. Frost and S. Robinson, “The Toxic Handler: Organizational Hero—
and Casualty,” Harvard Business Review (JulyAugust 1999, 97–106
Tagged in: leadership development, leadership
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11/16/2016 Workplace Optimism | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
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Workplace Optimism
Published on November 16, 2015
Workplace optimism is the belief that good things will come from hard work.
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Chinese businesses, Alibaba, the site that brings together consumers, merchants, and
thirdparty service providers to sell products to customers around the world, has carved
out an optimistic climate for its employees.
The company’s CEO, Jack Ma, is known to appeal to people’s aspirations for doing
good in the world and not just making a quick buck.
While Alibaba’s climate has been characterized as intense, employees are loyal, self
motivated, and cheerful.
Ma’s leadership style is strategic in nature, as is evidenced by how clear the
company’s mission is to employees.
In one report from Forbes.com, employees are said to always have the company on their
minds.
Ma’s style is also relatable. He’s known for spending time with employees to
understand their needs and help them feel welcome and wanted.
To promote freedom, Ma had all the punch clocks removed, a stellar example of
mirroring the climate to cultural practices.
In another example showing Ma’s ability to relate to people, he said at a company
event, “People don’t believe in dreams anymore.A lot of young people. And we

want to tell them it’s the dreams you have to keep.”
Ma’s ability to relate to people helps him create a climate that attracts people who want
to stay with the company.
While it’s too early in the company’s relatively short history to say how profitable
Alibaba will become, Ma and his leadership team are building a strong cultural
foundation. But they are also creating a climate that inspires people’s loyalty and desire
to do their best work.
“I always tell myself that we are born here not to work, but to enjoy life. We are here to
make things better for one another, and not to work. If you are spending your whole life
working, you will certainly regret it.” This sentiment lies at the heart of Jack Ma’s
lifestyle. Life is for experiencing the world and helping out other people. If money is
your goal, you have to change your mindset. Jack Ma
Tagged in: team building, leadership development
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11/16/2016 Employee Happiness Index | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/employeehappinessindexchandanlalpatarypmpcsmcssgb?trk=mpreadercard 1/4
Employee Happiness Index
One of our favourite business books is Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness
(BusinessPlusUS, 2010).
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11/16/2016 Employee Happiness Index | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
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The author founded a company called Zappos in 1999. Zappos grew from zero sales
in 1999 to $1 billion worth of sales in 2009.
Hsieh says this success was the result of making customers happy — and he
achieved that by making his employees happy.
Zappos has a set of 10 core values that the staff created together. They provide the
foundation of the company’s culture and are a guide to how to treat customers,
suppliers, employees and sales reps in a mindful way.
These values include:
✓✓ Creating fun and a little weirdness
✓✓ Being adventurous, creative and openminded
✓✓ Pursuing growth and learning
✓✓ Building a positive team and family spirit
✓✓ Being passionate and determined
Happy people show greater activation in the left prefrontal cortex.
Happier staff are more productive, creative, take fewer sick days and are more
likely to be promoted.
So good work doesn’t make you happy but being happy creates good work.

11/16/2016 How Satisfied are you at WORKPLACE? | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/howsatisfiedyouworkplacechandanlalpatarypmpcsmcssgb?trk=mpreadercard 1/7
How Satisfied are you at WORKPLACE?
Published on January 17, 2016
Psychologist Peter Warr has carried out studies on job satisfaction and wellbeing at
work for decades. He has identified 10 aspects in which workplaces differ from one
another and which directly contribute to employee wellbeing. They are:
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1. Opportunities for personal control
2. Opportunities to use skills
3. Externally generated goals
4. Task variety
5. Clarity (clear expectations and feedback)
6. Adequate pay
7. Workplace safety
8. Supportive supervision
9. Opportunities for interpersonal contact
10. Social rank or position
The best offices have all of these qualities. Really good offices have many of
them. Warr thinks about work in terms of its emotional content and consequences.
He suggests that when these 10 elements are in place, workers will experience more
pleasant than unpleasant emotions.
Further, some of these aspects of work, such as externally generated goals and task
variety, can lead to more arousal, while others, such as safety, can lead to lower arousal
of positive emotions.

Some amount of these things can be stimulating, but too much can lead, according to
Warr, to high anxiety and low comfort.
Interestingly, having too few opportunities for personal control tends to lead to
greater depression and lower enthusiasm as opposed to higher anxiety.
Thus, it is not just that these 10 elements are the markers of good workplaces, it is that
each affects worker wellbeing in a different way.
In their book, The Levity Effect, authors Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher
take this latter approach, arguing that levity—humor, laughter, and a light sens of

camaraderie—translates directly to desirable work outcomes including
more productivity and less turnover.
How do these great companies do it?
There are several ways (in fact, Gostick and Christopher list more than 140 of
them in their book!).
First, your clients can hire fun people. Introducing play and fun can begin with the
recruitment interview and can be one of the elements upon which candidates are
evaluated.
Second, new hires can learn on the first day that the office is fun as opposed to
oppressive. They receive these signals from openminded managers, such as Dr. Vic at
Zappos, who keeps a throne in his office and photographs employees and guests sitting
in it while wearing crowns.
Most importantly, however, Gostick and Christopher caution that levity in the
workplace is predicated on trust. Before your clients force their employees to play
swivel chair soccer they must earn their trust by treating these workers with respect.

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11/16/2016 Do you have HAPPY Friends/Colleagues? How YOU will recognize them? | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
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Do you have HAPPY Friends/Colleagues?
How YOU will recognize them?
Published on March 16, 2016

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Research on the subject of wellbeing shows that happy people share several
characteristics (Myers, 2000; Diener & Seligman, 2002; Otake, Shimai, & Tanaka
Matsumi, 2006; Nisbet,Zelenski, & Murphy, 2011):
Happy people have high selfesteem. Particularly in Western cultures,
which emphasize the importance of individuality, people who are happy like
themselves. They see themselves as more intelligent and better able to get along
with others than the average person. In fact, they often hold positive illusions or
moderately inflated views of themselves as good, competent, and desirable (Taylor
et al., 2000; BoydWilson, McClure, & Walkey, 2004).
Happy people have a firm sense of control. They feel more in control of
events in their lives, unlike those who feel they are the pawns of others and who
experience learned helplessness.
Happy individuals are optimistic. Their optimism permits them to
persevere at tasks and ultimately to achieve more. In addition, their health is better
(Peterson, 2000 ; Efklides & Moraitou, 2013 ).
Men and women generally are made happy by the same sorts of
activities—but not always. Most of the time, adult men and women achieve the
same level of happiness from the same things, such as hanging out with friends.
But there are some differences: For example, women
get less pleasure from being with their parents than men. The explanation? For
women, time spent with their parents more closely resembles work, such as helping
them cook or pay the bills. For men, it’s more likely to involve recreational

activities, such as watching a football game with their fathers. The result is that
men report being slightly happier than women (Kreuger, 2007).
Happy people like to be around other people. They tend to be
extroverted and have a supportive network of close relationships.
---------------------------------------------
Happiness and other emotions and behaviors are contagious.

Happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, partners and family.
A large study (by Nicholas A. and coauthor James H. Fowler. ) for the first time shows
how happiness and other emotions can copy through clusters of people who may
not even know each other.
We are influenced by the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of
friends people up to three degrees of separation away from us who we have
never met.
You increase the likelihood that you will be happy by being better connected to happy
people.

"Most people will not be surprised that people with more friends are happier, but
what really matters is whether those friends are happy," says Nicholas A.
Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has
pioneered much of this work.
"You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices
and actions and experience, but it also depends on the choices and actions and
experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly
connected. Happiness is contagious" said Christakis.
When one person in a network became happy, the chances that a friend, sibling, spouse
or nextdoor neighbour would become happy increased by between 8% and 34%.
The effect continued through three degrees of separation, dropping progressively
from about 15% to 10% to about 6%.
==============================================
Researchers at Wake Forest University, the University of Nebraska and Washington
University in St. Louis found that college students who were more inclined to rate their
peers positively—as being trustworthy, nice and emotionally stable—reported greater
life satisfaction, less depression, and better grades and test scores. In general,
women were more likely to rate others positively than men, although the study did
not examine why.

And a survey of the volunteers’ classmates showed that people who rated others
positively were more likely to be well regarded by their peers and to be judged as
being agreeable, conscientious and emotionally stable.
On the other hand, those with negative opinions of others were more
apt to be disagreeable, antisocial and narcissistic. “You stand to learn a number of very
different things about a person from just observing whether the person describes others
positively or not,” says lead author Dustin Wood, an assistant psychology professor.
Most surprising, Wood says, was how little those perceptions changed a year later. “The
stability of these tendencies means that they may consistently act as a lens that darkens
your experience of other people or brightens it,” he says. And therefore, Wood says,
your perception of others “may be hard to change.”
—Winnie Yu
====================================================
Find them......

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11/16/2016 ARE YOU THE TOXIC EMPLOYEE? | Chandan Lal Patary | Pulse | LinkedIn
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ARE YOU THE TOXIC EMPLOYEE?
YES! I am the toxic employee who is causing havoc in the system! BUT
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How I have tagged as a Toxic employee ? Try to understand me.
Some time I also do not know that I am acting like TOXIC employee!
Have you come across employees like Me?
WORKING WITH YOU IS KILLING
ME!
My thought process which team members does not like,are
Problem 1: I try to do everything in perfect way , best in class and set high standards.I
have tendency to win and get the award whatever I do. I expect same from others !
Some time I spent more time on the given assignment as I go through the granular
details with care. I always think I should not fail on my obligation. That Irritates others
including my boss.
PEOPLE DOES NOT LIKE THIS ! they tagged me as an toxic employee. :(
Problem 2 : Any assignment comes to me, I believe I can do anything , as I am
determined to learn always something new.I do not show any weak emotions.
According to me anybody can do anything , learn anything and should be able to do

anything whatever may be the task complexity. I help others as a team to achieve the
goal , expect the same from others.I expect others also to demonstrate the same
mindset.I do not like to take any help from others as I believe I can manage everything
on my own.
PEOPLE DOES NOT LIKE THIS ! they tagged me as a toxic employee. :(
Problem 3: I feel I have to achieve everything in short period of time , there is not
much time left and same I expect my colleagues also to do. I am always running and
achieving one after another assignments. I do not like to waste time by doing trivial
activities which does not add any value. I expect my team members also to do the same
with their assignments.We are in serious business and we have do achieve growth fast
before someone takes away our market share.I reach my destination always on or before
time.
PEOPLE DOES NOT LIKE THIS ! They tagged me as a toxic employee. :(
Problem 4: I always want to learn, grow , get promotions, get recognition, get more
"likes" in Facebook etc. until I get all , I can not sit quite. I will give my best to achieve
all these social recognition, monitory benefits. I have to improve myself and be the best
whatever I do , whatever I target for.I have to continuously improve. I always expect my
team members to give their best , stretch a little and improve on daily basis.Sometime I
miss my deadline which I do not like,I feel bad, I think there is something wrong with
me. If some one say anything about my effort I can not accept that.

Problem 5: I must make other people happy. I am always smiling and make others also
to smile by helping them whatever way possible. Some time I have to overwork. I can
not say "No".I am worry about other people , they should not feel bad.I am tagged as
"Yes Sir' person.
Most of the time I am in my world(self centered) and look through my glass only. I
never understand other side of the view points.I never put myself with my colleague's
shoes. Today I am managing 100 team members! They might be thinking I am a Toxic
Boss!
WHAT SHOULD I DO? SHOULD I STOP DOING ALL THE ABOVE?

let us try to understand me vs others and align as much as possible with other emloyees
I have become more empathized employee.
I take feedback
I control my emotions

I encourage people not to become judgmental
I am no more selfish person
As an coach I come across like ME employee! I coach them how to detoxify this
mindset. No more HERO mindset.

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