Happiness for leaders: positive psychology and science of well-being
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This document discusses happiness and ways leaders can increase their own and their employees' happiness. It defines happiness and outlines several scientifically proven strategies to boost happiness, including savoring moments, expressing gratitude, kindness, social connections, managing time well, meditation, sleep, and exercise. The document notes that while life events only account for 10% of happiness, our thoughts and actions determine 40% and that managers can positively or negatively influence the emotions and happiness of their employees, even when not directly interacting with them.
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Happiness for leaders: positive psychology and science of well-being
- 1. School of something FACULTY OF OTHER HAPPINESS for leaders @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds #iwmw19
- 2. Marianne Kay Web Content Management Team Lead, IT University of Leeds @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders mariannekay.com | @marianne_ua About me
- 3. Happiness experts Laurie Santos Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University The Science of Well-Being Alexander Kjerulf Speaker, consultant author on happiness at work, Woohoo inc Leading with Happiness Daniel Gilbert Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Stumbling on Happiness @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 4. Happiness for leaders • What is happiness? • What makes us happy? What doesn’t? • Proven ways to boost happiness: • Savouring • Gratitude • Kindness • Social connections • Time affluence • Situation support • Meditation • Sleep & Exercise • Putting it into practice (WOOP) @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 5. What is happiness? Happiness is the frequent experience of positive emotions combined with an overall sense that life is good and meaningful. @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 6. Common positive emotions Common negative emotions Joy, serenity, hope, gratitude, amusement, pride, awe, love, inspiration Loneliness, disgust, indifference, anger, sorrow, fear, frustration, sadness, embarrassment, envy @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 7. Arbejdsglæde @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 8. Happy people are • More creative • Faster learners • More resilient in the face of set-backs and challenges • Make better decisions @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 9. Happy leaders • Positively affect their employees’ emotions • Employees of unhappy managers experience less happiness, enthusiasm and optimism, and experienced a slight increase in irritation, anger and anxiety • A manager’s leadership behaviours affect employees’ emotions throughout the workday even when the employees are not interacting with the managers Leading With Happiness by Alexander Kjerulf
- 10. Knowing is NOT half the battle Müller-Lyer illusion @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 11. Baseline happiness The Authentic Happiness Inventory 24 questions that measures overall well-being. https://yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dmWAB2LoFzOk25n PERMA Profiler A validated, 23-question survey that measures five pillars of well-being known as PERMA: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment. https://yalesurvey.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3sHNmRsXIeYAZCJ Signature Strengths 120 questions Every individual possesses all 24 character strengths in different degrees, giving each person a unique character profile. http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders
- 12. What makes us happy? ?
- 14. Marriage Average Life Satisfaction for a Sample of German Women (by year of marriage) Source: Clark, Diener, Georgellis and Lucas (2003), using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel. Note: Asterisk indicates that life satisfaction is significantly different from the baseline level.
- 15. Children
- 17. Good job
- 18. 24 Character Strengths Wisdom • Creativity • Curiosity • Judgment • Love of learning • Perspective Courage • Bravery • Honesty • Perseverance • Zest Humanity • Kindness • Love • Social intelligence Justice • Fairness • Leadership • Teamwork Temperance • Forgiveness • Humility • Prudence • Self-regulation Transcendence • Appreciation of beauty & excellence • Gratitude • Hope • Humour @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-Survey
- 21. Flow
- 22. Flow
- 24. Flow “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University
- 25. Happiness myths • Marriage • Children • Lots of money • Highly paid job • Awesome stuff • Perfect body • Good grades
- 26. Mispredicting Positive experiences Predicted Actual HIV negative result 47.4 59.1 HIV positive result 94.7 77.6 Negative experiences Lottery winners happiness 4.00 / 6 Control happiness 3.82 / 6
- 27. What determines happiness? Genetic Setpoint 50%Actions / Thoughts 40% Life Events 10%
- 28. Proven ways to boost happiness • Savouring • Gratitude • Kindness • Social connections • Time affluence • Situation support • Meditation • Sleep & Exercise
- 29. Gratitude Write a 300 words gratitude letter and deliver it in person – the effect lasts 6 months! Seligman et al (2005)
- 30. Social connections We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place. The Opposite of Loneliness Marina Keegan https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/05/27/keegan-the-opposite-of-loneliness/
- 32. Mind wandering • Our minds wander 46.9% of the time • Default mode network
- 33. Meditation
- 34. Happy team • vision of the future • a sense of purpose • great relationships
- 36. Summary • 40% of our happiness is determined by our actions and thoughts • People badly mispredict feelings in relation to both positive and negative future experiences • There are scientifically proven ways of increasing your baseline happiness • Managers influence their staff happiness even when they don’t interact with them
- 37. Find out more Leading With Happiness by Alexander Kjerulf Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
- 39. Marianne Kay Web Content Management Team Lead, IT University of Leeds mariannekay.com | @marianne_ua @marianne_ua @UniversityLeeds Happiness for Leaders Thank you The time to be happy is now.
Editor's Notes
- What happiness is and what happiness isn’t What makes us happy, what doesn’t and why We’ll practice some techniques that are scientifically proven to make us happier. We’ll argue that happiness isn’t dependent on external factors as much as we think - happiness is something that we do. Three reasons why I want to talk about it: We know more about happiness than ever before. Traditional psychology vs positive psychology. Neuroscience. Happiness is no longer a fluffy subject – yet we continue to rely on our intuitions which are often wrong. At work we often confuse happiness and achievement. Work hard – achieve success – be happy It’s good for anybody to be happy. But leaders by definition have a significant effect on others and have an obligation to affect them positively.
- I manage 5 web developers. 5 happy web developers – I would like to say one day.
- Professor Laurie Santos taught "Psychology and the Good Life" first in spring 2018 in response to concerning levels of student depression, anxiety, and stress. It became the most popular class in Yale's history and garnered national and international media attention. If you’re geeky like me – all the research is there Copenhagen
- The definition commonly used by researchers is
- A happy person often experiences positive emotions and rarely (but not never) negative emotions What happiness is not. One of the biggest misunderstandings of happiness is that we should constantly aim to be happy. This is an impossible goal. Faking happiness makes us less happy and more stressed.
- Happiness at work – Nordic countries – but not in French, Spanish or German. Japanese – karoshi – death from overwork. It is not work satisfaction.
- The only productivity boost associated with experiencing negative emotions is related to tedious tasks (cleaning)
- Don’t underestimate the effect you have on people when you walk into the office Happy leadership IS NOT faking happiness or demanding that everyone be happy at all times.
- I want to show you this optical illusion in order to illustrate that knowing is not half the battle Which of the horizontal lines appears longer 2 points: 1) We can’t always trust our intuition. It appears that what we are particularly not very good at is predicting our feelings. Events (unlike other species) – yes, we can plan and predict THINGS, but not feelings. In relation to happiness a lot of the things that we think will make us happy doesn’t make us as happy as we think. 2) Knowing is not half the battle when it comes to establishing new habits, putting things into practice. This is why we get so frustrated with training courses – some new info but no real change to how we do things. Managing difficult conversations was different – we practiced. So we’ll do some of that today – to REALLY benefit you have to do your homework, to put the work in. 10 weeks course.
- If you were serious about making this change you start with your baseline happiness, then at the end of 10 weeks course compare. How many people have taken it? Over 4?
- “It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?” – Chris Gardner *WHAT MAKES US HAPPY* Either from experience or what we think would make us happy (like winning a lottery) ***15 MINS***
- *DOES MARRIAGE MAKE YOU HAPPY*
- If you self report that your marriage is not a happy marriage than even worse. It's not marriage that makes you happy, it's happy marriage that makes you happy
- *DO CHILDREN MAKE US HAPPY*
- Older and more educated parents happier than younger and less educated
- *DOES A GOOD JOB MAKE US HAPPY* *WHAT IS A GOOD JOB* High Salary? Then see above. The job becomes a ‘calling’, part of your identity
- Virtues that benefit you and other people There isn’t an option to be the most famous / richest person etc
- The job becomes a ‘calling’, part of your identity
- There a lot of jobs that will fit – it buys us some flexibility Uni of York – recruitment – core competences replaced with self awareness
- Operate at your peak level Lose track of time Enough challenge but manageable – you have the right skills Fully immersed, in the zone ***30 MINS***
- Being happy at work does not come when work is easy or simple, but when you’re challenged and growing This is why I don’t like people who are ‘just happy in their roles’ Netflix doesn’t make you happy
- They are not bad things but we mispredict quite badly
- We mispredict our feelings Driving test – repeated failure – but we still don’t learn from it returned to their baseline levels of happiness after three months
- The good news is…
- More people value money than time (69%) Those who value time are happier than people who value money Thinking about time makes you happier too
- ***40 MINS***
- People who meditate concentrate better and experience more positive emotions *MEDITATE FOR 2 MINS* **TIMER** Think about the fact that you care about someone and that you want them to be happy and healthy – positive effect on how you think about other people Focus on breathing Think about your team and what makes them happy
- Connect your team to your customers. Consistently show your team how the work they do benefits the lives of the people they serve in a positive way.
- Sleep and exercise affect your mood but are difficult to put into practice – the hardest part of the run is getting out of the house IWMW – what is your wish in relation to this conference? ***50MINS***