Happiness at work

Positive psychology is gaining in popularity. No longer is it enough to find ways to cure mental illness, but psychologists are now researching ways to help people live more fulfilling lives. I wanted to dig in deeper to see what positive psychology has to say about happiness at work. Does happiness really matter for productivity? And if it does, what can we use from the current research that can be applied in today’s workplace?

The Gallup Management Journal Employee Engagement Survey shows a strong correlation between employee engagement and happiness. Happy employees are more equipped to handle change and new challenges. According to another Gallup poll, employees who considered themselves happy spent 80% of their work time on task, versus unhappy employees who only spent 40% of their time on task. Professor Teresa Amabile from Harvard Business School studies employee innovation and performance. Her research discovered that employees were more creative on the days when they were on a good mood.

To increase happiness, there are elements we can control and some that we can’t. Research suggests that some people are born to be sunnier personalities than others. But, even the grumpsters can increase their level of happiness by focusing on the controllable factors. Our level of fulfillment improves, when we find a greater purpose and focus in our daily activities, play to our strengths, learn and grow, and have meaningful relationships. A good workplace can contribute to these happiness drivers.

Purpose and meaning

Organizations that are able to communicate a greater purpose and create an emotional attachment with their employees can reach over 50% increase in discretionary effort. Organizational communications and employment branding do part of this, but the most critical role falls to the managers who create the link between the organizational goals and the day-to-day work.

Strengths and growth

Recognizing individual strengths and letting employees leverage them not only creates happiness, but is a wise investment for the company. The most intense level of happiness is experienced in Flow, where the level of challenge is highest and skills are stretched to meet it. Continuous learning and growth guarantees on-going opportunities to reach Flow.

Meaningful relationships

One of the strongest engagement drivers is to have a best friend at work. Human connections create a sense of purpose and belonging. Organizations should be cautious of evaluation and reward systems that incentivize individualism and internal competition. Cultures that nurture teamwork and service orientation are more likely to promote happiness and loyalty.

Last but not least, positive language by itself is a self fulfilling prophesy. When employees and managers pay attention to positive events, they are more likely to feel happy. Positive feedback, gratitude and recognition are small gestures that go a long way to promote happiness and productivity. What’s the downside?

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Revving up your sales force

Revenue must go up. That is pretty much the mantra for most companies this year. Many companies have to operate with fewer sales people now. Every sales rep counts. Those who are left must be optimized to close more business. The keys to success are a consistent sales methodology, sales management, sales skills competence, functional support and company culture.

Consistent sales methodology speeds things up

There are many top providers selling proven off-the-shelf methods on solution selling, opportunity management and key account management, or you can develop your own. Pick your religion. It really doesn’t matter which one, as long as you stick with it. Not many companies do. Consistent sales methodology creates a common language, speed of execution and baseline performance through the whole sales organization.

Sales management and healthy pipeline

Define the sales manager role clearly. A good sales manager is not a top producer who got promoted just because. The best sales managers are coaches who hold their teams accountable to developing all stages of their pipelines and prevent sales forecast surprises. These sales managers look beyond the hottest close, and challenge their teams on the status of their opportunities in the pipeline.

Sales skills competence

Companies that sell solutions depend on an increasingly sophisticated sales force. Not only do they need deep technical expertise, they also need  consultative selling skills. Add solid sales methodology on top of that. To add value to the customer, the sales person must have solid knowledge of the industry, and deep business acumen to truly relate to the customer’s business issues. These competencies are not developed overnight but require a concentrated effort. Many companies differentiate between ‘hunters’, who go after new business, and ‘farmers’ who nurture existing accounts. These jobs usually require different personal traits that can best be determined through assessments in the selection process.

Functional support for targeted customer face time

To truly shorten the sales cycle and provide support to the sales force, it should be designed together with marketing. The sales cycle should mirror the decision making process of the profiled customer. Marketing provides information about the customer profile, what the ideal customer type is to go after, and what the best communications are for each stage of the sales cycle. Marketing provides the talking points that resonate with the customer – not the list of features, but their pain points and the value of the solution.

At the same time, the organization must do everything in its power to unburden the field sales from administrative tasks. The more customer interaction time they have, the more revenue there will be. Every unnecessary report or meeting takes away from customer face time.

Customer focused culture

How the sales force is treated may be a good indicator of how customer focused the organization really is. The sales force is the conduit for the customer’s voice. If they don’t have an easy way to give input for new product ideas they heard from the customer, the customer voice gets drowned. If they are not the number one priority when trying to resolve customer issues or request, it does tell something about the company’s overall priorities.

2010 is the turning point. Prepare your sales force to go out there and take some market share.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved. SVPGMGDX8TEC

Meaningful relationships at work

One of the Gallup’s Q12 questions is whether you have a best friend at work. At first glance, this seems like a strange question to have risen to the top 12 questions to ask, but Gallup has proven that having a best friend at work correlates with retention, engagement and profit generation.

Meaningful relationships at work build trust. Where you find trust, you will also find accountability. Smart employers will create a work environment that nurtures relationship building. Leadership style is the most critical in creating the right environment. A participative style that engages the team members and values everyone’s input is more likely to create deeper relationships than a top-down directive leadership style.

The overall company culture will clearly impact the work environment. If the culture is very fast paced and task oriented, and relationship building is not valued, the employees will feel discouraged to take any time away from their tasks to get to know their coworkers. This will make the relationships transactional. A sign of a task oriented culture may be that the employees prefer to send a thread of e-mails instead of simply picking up the phone to resolve an issue.

Another organizational mechanism that may complicate trust and relationship building is the forced ranking process. By its nature, it has a risk of promoting an individualistic and competitive culture, unless the process is managed with care, and the managers are highly trained about the performance standards and knowledgeable about potential rating biases.

To build more relationships, the company may just create more opportunities to do so. It can happen in team meetings, happy hours or more elaborate team building events. Eventually, it boils down to a chain of small moments when people get to know and trust each other. They come out of their cubicles, or look around in their production lines.

At the personal level, most of us spend more time at work than at home. It should be time that we enjoy, with people whom we appreciate. Challenge yourself to find out one new unique thing about your coworker. Make a real connection.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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Crystal clear goal setting

If you haven’t done so already, hurry up and huddle up with your team to clarify this year’s priorities and set goals. Goals give direction. Goals give purpose. Goals improve productivity. Managers are absolutely critical in goal setting. Their role is to create a crystal clear line of sight between the company strategy and the individual team member’s daily work. This not only ensures that company resources are aligned to drive the highest priorities, but it also improves employee engagement.

After the company has announced its top priorities for the year, it is the business units’ and functions’ turn to align their key strategies to make sure that the company goals will be achieved. Once the business unit goals are clear, the department or the team gets together to decide how they can best rally behind the unit goals. The team meeting should include robust debate and discussion on how to best use the existing resources. With the leadership of the team manager, the team will come up with their own goals. The team goals must drive the achievement of the higher level goals.

Now, the team members should see the alignment all the way to the top. They should understand why these particular team goals were selected as the highest priorities. Individual goals are needed to execute the team goals. If the roles in the team are similar, it is possible that all team members set the same goals. If the talents are different, the goals will vary.

Let’s review SMART goal setting: It is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. Specific goals drive performance better than “do your best” goals. If the employee can describe the success, it is more likely to happen. Measurable and Time-Bound refer to your agreement on how and when or how often you will review the goal completion. If you are not prepared to review, don’t make it a goal. To have goals that drive performance and motivate, they must be challenging. Employees find intrinsic motivation in work that has clear and challenging goals, sometimes so much that they can get in the Flow. Goals that are perceived as unrealistic disillusion employees from trying to meet them. Goals will be Relevant, when you use the cascade process to align them.

As a rule of thumb, basic job expectations should not be goals. A goal is a part of a company priority to take it to the next level. Everybody just doing the bare minimum is not going to cut it. To set a goal is raising the bar. When you meet your goal, it’s an accomplishment. Set the goals accordingly. Don’t set them to fail. Set them to be proud.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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Are your employees in the Flow?

Dr. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi first described the phenomenon called the Flow in the nineties. It is deep engagement in an activity, where you get so engrossed that you may lose your sense of time. People report deep satisfaction when getting to experience the Flow. Often, they experience it at work, but it can happen during leisure time as well, for example while reading or skiing.

Some call it the High, the Rush, the Groove at work. They would do it for free, and then again, you couldn’t pay enough to force anyone into the Flow. However, you can create an environment conducive to Flow.

Based on Dr. Csíkszentmihályi’s research, the Flow is more likely to emerge in the following conditions: There is a clear goal, a challenge that is commensurate to the skill level of the employee, light amount of pressure, immediate feedback on progress to goal, and no distractions.

Let’s look at distractions. How many of your employees are able to take even a couple of hours to work on a task, and not be expected to return calls, e-mails, IM’s, text messages. Uninterrupted work time is becoming a rarity. With it, we sacrifice the Flow, which is the most creative, the most productive and the happiest time among our workforce. How much Flow time can you afford to lose? You can start by scheduling some on the team calendar.

Clear goals do not equal dictatorial micromanagement, but sharing a clear vision and a clear purpose. When the manager knows the strengths and hold-ups of the employee, it is easier to work together to select the right level of challenges. Good Flow goals gently stretch the earlier limits of the employee’s capabilities, but are not too unrealistic. A light amount of pressure seems to help with the Flow, so “Take all the time that you need”  and “I need it by yesterday” are both extremes that will not help.

Immediate feedback on progress does not mean “Good job!” from the manager on frequent intervals. In fact, evaluative feedback is not helpful. Useful feedback in the Flow shows the employee how the work is progressing. This means metrics, charts, user comments etc. For a software developer, the code itself shows feedback on progress. The painter gets the immediate feedback on the canvas. The finance specialist sees it in the summary reports. The manager can simply help the employee to plan how to get to see the ongoing progress, if the link is not as clear.

What about rewards? For the employee, the intrinsic reward of getting to work in the Flow is the best reward of all. There are numerous studies that have proven that dangling an extrinsic reward such as a cash award in front of the employee makes them focus on the reward and find the least effort path – not necessarily the best path – to complete the task. As a side effect, they lose part of the intrinsic motivation for the task itself.

Switching your company culture to a more Flow culture will not happen overnight. You may need to teach your employees concentration skills, help wean them out from constant multi-tasking and gently push them to dare to stretch their limits. This will be a paradigm shift for your managers as well. The pay-off will be amazing creative solutions, completed in intense Flows, and employees who LOVE their jobs and your company.

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Copyright 2010 Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks, all rights reserved.
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