From the Diary of a Chief Happiness Officer
From the Diary of a Chief Happiness Officer
Knowing Self-Aware Leadership
Hello KSKOers
It’s a special Friday edition of the Knowing Self-Aware Leadership newsletter!
I wanted to share with you the brilliant few days I’ve had doing Chief Happiness Officer training with Woohoo Academy experts Fennande van der Meulen and Maartje Jansen in the beautiful city of Prague. It was an intensive 3 day course of learning new things, unpacking assumptions, uncovering biases and setting out actions for the future.
Join me on my learning journey!
I’ve been wanting to do Chief Happiness Officer training for about 4 years! At the beginning of COVID, I stumbled on the Happiness at Work conference and from that point, I was hooked.
Happiness at work isn’t about smoothies, free breakfast bars and having meetings on bean bags. Happiness at work is about all of those things that contribute to that feeling you get on a Sunday evening about a Monday morning, like flexible working, engagement, psychological safety, a comfortable environment - and after all that then maybe, it’s also about the bean-bags.
Fennande and Maartje have discovered that people’s definitions of happiness at work fall into four categories: purpose, people, progress and positivity. Throughout the course, we talked about these four pillars and how they apply to us as individuals, teams and organisation.
Here are my reflections from the course, learning in a foreign land and what happiness at work is all about…..
Reflections on a Day Well-Travelled
I jumped in the car, got on the tube, transferred to the train and hopped on a plane. Then I got on a bus and the metro before getting to my final destination in the centre of Prague. I headed off for a welcome dinner with Fennande, Maartje and my fellow CHOs in training. As I finally headed to bed that evening, these were my reflections……
A charged battery and internet access are essential for travel and navigation: as a solo traveller, google maps is an essential component to safe travel.
You are capable of more than you think - just because you haven’t, doesn’t mean you can’t: navigating a strange city and finding your destination gives you a huge sense of achievement!
Meeting new people opens up a whole world of learning and possibility: our band of CHOs in training were from all over the world - Australia, Vienna, UK, Czechia and Lebanon. We all brought different perspectives meaning we challenged each others’ assumptions - which is essential for learning and growth!
Reflections on Day 1
Our course was hosted in the office of a Czechian tech company, which was friendly, comfortable and inviting. They welcomed dogs in to the office too!
Here are my thoughts at the close of day one….
Happiness is subjective but you have to do the self-awareness work to determine what it is for you: If you don’t know what makes you happy, you can’t move towards it. If you don’t know what influences and contributes to the happiness of your people, you can’t create a happy workplace.
Taking ownership demonstrates leadership both of yourself and of others: Owning your thoughts, and taking responsibility for your choices and decisions is the first step to happiness. Your mindset and leadership of your ‘self’ determines your ability to create a positive culture for others.
Ownership is reflected in what you say you’ll do and what you actually do, so use your words carefully: To create a positive culture and psychological safety, you have to operate with integrity. You have to do what you say you’ll do and show up authentically in order to set the culture for others to do the same. If you want to be trusted, do what you’ll say you’ll do.
Reflections on Day 2
Day 2 was the most intensive day of learning and growth. We started the day with a talk from
and moved on to consider the meaning of happiness at work for teams. We closed the day with an introduction to work place culture. Here are my reflections on the day….Focus on measuring happiness at work not job satisfaction: Job satisfaction only tells you how nice the coffee is and whether the salaries are high enough. If you’re interested in the simple tangibles you’ll miss the reason why you have high staff turnover and high rates of sickness. Measure the intangibles if you really want to understand your people.
Let’s flip the idea that leaders cast a long shadow to leaders casting a radiating light: Leaders have the greatest impact on organisational culture and standards. If we think of the positive impact leaders can have rather than the negative, we can change the narrative from leading with authority and fear to leading with happiness and collaboration.
Your first, best and worst managers set the baseline for your leadership growth and development: The things we learn from others influence the way we behave. We learn from both the good and the bad. As we grow into leadership position, we influence others, like we were influenced by others. Consider your sphere of influence and recognise the impact you now have on those around you.
Nothing you do at work to generate happiness is rocket science but if you don’t actually get on and do it, it may as well be brain surgery: If you want your colleagues and people to be happy, fulfilled and satisfied in their roles, you have to be curious in finding out what it takes, determined in getting it done and resolute in assuring it’s achieved.
Whether there are values on shiny posters on the wall or not, there are values that live and breathe in your organisation: Values are like air. You may not be able to see them, but they will be there, nourishing or stifling your people. You have the ability to mould them and create something positive. Remember, culture eats strategy for breakfast, so be deliberate in living the values as you intend them
Reflections on Day 3
Day 3 was one of both learning and celebration! We finished our exploration into organisational culture and took time to plan our actions to take happiness back to our countries and to our office. Here are my reflections on the final day….
A Chief Happiness Office is not a euphemism for ‘the social committee’: Think values, behaviours, relationships, psychological safety and you’re on the right track. It’s not fluffy and woo woo. Happiness impacts our mental and physical health. If you’ve worked in a very unhappy situation you’ll know just how impactful it can be. Let’s ensure we create happy workplaces for others. Someone’s life might just depend on it.
If you want to support your people and your organisation to progress towards happiness, start from where you are and work with what you’ve got: Work with your people to find out what they need and what they want. Recognise that everyone comes to this from a different perspective and you won’t be able to achieve everything for everyone. Start with the resources that are available to you and work to achieve the agreed priority of all of your people.
What you see, feel, touch, taste and smell in an organisation is what’s really valued - regardless of what the strategy says: What’s taped to the wall will tell you more about an organisational culture than what’s on the 43rd page of an unopened strategy. Observe the artefacts that are given prime position over desks, on doors and on desks. Dog beds, green plants and certificates of achievement tell you a lot about organisational values
When mistakes are made by anyone, anywhere, take a “How fascinating!” approach and get curious about what you can learn from it: No-one goes to work to do a bad job. To err is human, so take a curious approach to the things that go wrong and learn from them to support your people to do differently next time. Review and improve your processes to help prevent errors by being fascinated not furious.
We will always be steered by our biases: Some biases we will work to overcome and others will be hard stops. For me, the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults will always be my hard stop. If the values of an organisation, a place or a group of people do not align with yours, you have the opportunity to find a better fit. Search carefully and choose wisely.
The Last Word
When we take a bigger picture, professional view of happiness, it’s anything but pink and fluffy. Maintaining good relationships, positive cultures and engaged people is hard work that takes effort, commitment and perseverance. It starts with people-centric organisational values and flows through organisations like oxygen: invisible but essential. Happy people create happy families, happy homes and happy workforces. Happy workforces create productive organisations and successful businesses. Happiness is a win-win option. Forget your troubles, come on, get happy!
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Nia is an expert leader who talks the talk and walks the walk. She is an academically awarded thought leader in self-aware leadership and practices self-aware leadership every single day in her role as a Director in a Children’s Charity.
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Such an interesting article - thank you for sharing your experience! So much of the learnings you've offered here align with meaningful work, and I love hearing how things like core values are being discussed and prioritized in different professional communities. Sounds like a terrific experience and I'm glad you wrote about it here!
What a wonderful opportunity and what wonderful insights!