Can We Find Happiness in This Digital Era?
Technology influences everything today that might lead to happiness. Find out how.
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Technology influences everything today that might lead to happiness. Find out how.
“Loyalty means leaving when you are no longer motivated,” writes Lee Caraher in her new book The Boomerang Principle. At the heart of Caraher’s quote is the new meaning of employee loyalty. It reflects a significant mindset shift for those of us who believed that loyalty was a one-way commitment. And that one-way commitment centered on an employee’s gratitude toward their employer. This now outdated mindset went something like this: “You, employer, hired and trusted in me to do a good job. So in return, I’ll work hard for you.” As such, the term “company man” took root and became a
Working in the modern world can be hectic. The pace is unrelenting. The expectations are high. The hours are long. And for many, the pay is underwhelming. So, when I hear from managers that they have no time to recognize, or show appreciation for their employees, I cringe. Essentially what these managers are saying is, they’re not interested in increasing employee commitment to the cause. They want to make their job more difficult. They want their employees to feel taken advantage of. Now, I know this isn’t the message well-intentioned leaders want to send. But not recognizing employees for their hard work is management malpractice. Management malpractice also
You and your team deserve to enjoy work. The workplace should be a positive influence on people and their lives. Yet for too many it’s just not the case. In one study, 48% of employees frequently feel a lot of stress in their work. This adversely affects their wellbeing. Boutique consultancy Root found that 68% of workers feel that their managers are more focused on their own success instead of inspiring their employees. The workplace has become lopsided—too much negativity and not enough optimism. I’ve written about workplace optimism here and here and here. In short, though, it is a mood in the environment that gives people hope that good
John is an average person of the workforce. A 4-year veteran, he has worked at the same company since he moved on from the military and graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Now, with newborn twins at home, John’s priorities have changed. While he remains a professional committed to his career and his employer, he now requires more flexibility in his work schedule. John is not alone. Many members of today’s workforce are asking for more flexible work schedules. In one study, 45 percent of men want more flexibility in their work arrangements. (Surprisingly, that’s slightly more than the 39 percent of women who
We’ve got a crisis of competitiveness right under our noses, and heaven knows we’re not making enough progress to solve it. Period. I’m talking about our inability as a collective workforce to retain women as they rise up the ranks in corporate America (or more appropriately as they don’t rise up the ranks). Here are the sobering facts: only 14% of executive suites in America are occupied by a female. Even in companies as broadly recognized as best-in-class for retaining women (companies like Abbott, Ernst & Young, or KPMG), only 23% of the top floor hosts top women. So other than for
Business has been and always will be built on the back of relationships. It’s the water that gives life to an eco system. Without relationships, business becomes a solo endeavor. And, therefore, it fails to generate the value its owners and employees aim to create. So, why then, do too many businesses treat the most valued relationship they have as one sided—the relationship with employees? Historically, the relationship with the organization was considered to be a privilege: “You get to work for us, the organization, and for that you should feel grateful; you get to contribute to our brand and make it
We all want to feel good and true happiness is the answer, right? Well, according to Harvard Medical School psychologist, Dr. Susan David, it’s more nuanced than “happiness equals goodness.” In Dr. David’s book Emotional Agility, she writes, “The paradox of happiness is that deliberately striving for it is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of happiness itself.” She goes on to explain that for happiness to be meaningful it must come from finding intrinsic value in the activity. “Striving for happiness establishes an expectation, which confirms the saying that expectations are resentments waiting to happen,” writes Dr. David. Dr. David’s point about “intrinsic value”
Accountability is one of those buzzwords that was quickly recognized in management and leadership circles as an important concept. The unfortunate outcome of a buzzword is it minimizes the importance of the buzz-worthy topic. The concept then quickly becomes misunderstood. Despite the ubiquity of the term “accountability,” it remains a vital input to results and high performance. The question is, however, how do you turn accountability into a positive experience? Too often most of us experience accountability like a slap on the hand–a result of something I forgot to do or didn’t do. Three Barriers to Holding People Accountable “It takes courage and it
In the digital age, it’s easy to present a persona online that follows a carefully crafted narrative. That story line may be true or have elements of truth. We can be whomever we want online. I know people who appear online to have it all figured out, but offline are a hot mess. The converse it true, too: people online who appear kind and genuine are indeed both. Being one’s self has become a pursuit of integrity and maintaining authenticity. Admittedly, I hate the word authentic. It’s become cliche. And like all cliches, they become one due to overuse and misunderstanding.
Leadership is no longer about command-and-control. Barking expectations don’t motivate people. It irritates and diminishes a leader’s effectiveness. After all, leadership is learning how to motivate people to want to do something. So what does leadership look like in the 21st century? These 15 writers have a body of work that can help you adapt to a more relationally-driven approach to motivating people to want to do their best. Brene Brown: From Rising Strong to Daring Greatly, Brown lovingly, and with humor, shines the light on leadership topics many of us want to ignore: getting back up when we fall, courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness.
It turns out that our brains haven’t evolved enough to keep up with our 24/7, always connected society. According to Bob Nease, former Chief Scientist at Express Scripts, our brains are stuck, evolutionarily, in the past. And this makes it difficult for us to choose to take action when pursuing something important. In his new book, The Power of Fifty Bits, Nease explains that our brain consumes ten million bits of information per second, yet our conscious brain can only process fifty bits per second. This might explain why our attention span seems to be shrinking—we’ve become a society in a
A problem has been percolating in organizations for some time. Its adverse affects have become common place and too little is being done about it: The problem is destructive management. A Workplace Gasping for Air Today’s workplace is hardly a reflection of our best work. Choking the workplace and creating intolerable work environments are outdated manager mindsets about the role work plays in people’s lives and in society. Making matters worse, moldy cultures and climates linger. Workplace fulfillment is absent. Strategy firm Root found in their research that 68 percent of survey respondents believed managers are more interested in their own
In the basement without windows of a fairly non-descript building in Ann Arbor is a mighty software development company—Menlo Innovations. When I visited Menlo I expected a gloomy environment. Instead when I arrived, the basement was brightly light and electric with conversations. The industrial funkiness of the space was immediately charming. Menlo had turned a would-be bummer location into one perfectly suited for their work. In my new book, The Optimistic Workplace, I feature Menlo as an example of a workplace that wows employees. That wow factor created a place they love to work. I studied Menlo and multiple other organizations
