3M Post #39 – Happiness at Work

I took a bit of time off between jobs from posting my Mindy’s Monday Motivation blog. There were many different reasons, but you can guess why one of the reasons was to adjust to my new company. You know how it goes when one starts a new position – lots of training, lots of activities trying to understand what’s going on and who is who, etc. It’s especially difficult when we are in such a remote environment these days. Though I am experienced in remote working, I always had the luxury of at least meeting one person from my workplace before I started with a new company, not to mention some places requiring at least a full week if not two at headquarters to meet with everyone and learn the ropes, so needless to say, it was tough to start off not meeting anyone in person at all for the first few weeks. All sort of emotions, even doubt, started surfacing – did I make the right decision coming to this new company? I have to say that what changed my attitude from negative to positive was a combination of things and this recent training course on how to train your brain for happiness that I took on Linkedin Learning. It helps solidified my confirmation that Smile CDR was the right place for me. What were this combination of things? Using Dr. Jay Kumar’s words, they were precisely Comfort, Contribution, Connection.

One thing that I love about my old company, Linguamatics, part of IQVIA, was that we had a TEAM channel for fun stuffs to chat about. At Smile CDR, there are Slack channels for fun stuffs and more! Maybe a little too much! However, what is amazing is that everyone seems quite comfortable posting and sharing their ideas. We also have a company-wide call every Tuesday where everyone can feel empowered to ask the CEO, CTO, and various other executives questions after getting an update on what’s going on in various departments. I haven’t posted too many things on the various channels, but I am feeling more and more comfortable posting and sharing my viewpoints.

The next thing that helps generate the feeling of belonging for me is a trip that I made to the Bay Area a few weeks ago for a partnership conversation. Honest to goodness, I had no idea why I was there and why I should be, but I tried my best to make myself useful. However, that trip helps me to understand more of the company leadership’s vision and guide me to where I can make contributions aside from my main job duties. It also was the first trip where I got to meet any person from my company and it happened to be our CEO, our CFO, our head of partnership, my manager as well as our head of engineering. Listening to them talk about our company’s product offerings and their vision of the future energized me. Though my contribution has been limited so far, I am looking for ways to make contributions to build out that vision.

Lastly, one of the tasks that I was required to do in my new hire list beside the litany of training videos and reading materials was to connect with a host of people who I might or might not work with in my role. Let me tell you, the list was long. However, those half hour conference calls help me to understand a bit better about the people who are my colleagues as well as leaders in the company. These connections made me feel supported. Just this past week, I was also invited out to a social hour with the training team who happens to live in Greater Phoenix area. We spent a good three hours talking about anything but work, but it created a great feeling.

Watching Dr. Jay Kumar on the LinkedIn Learning today, I realized that I am happier at work because my company created an environment that fosters happiness. If you have been feeling isolated lately at work, I highly recommend you checking out this course. If you don’t have Linkedin Learning, you can also purchase his book. His four pillars are: Comfort, Contribution, Connection and Compassion. I didn’t touch on Compassion, but I am sure you can understand why Compassion makes for happy people. One thing that he said about Compassion is that it is 50% contagious. One act of kindness is 50% likely to induce another act of kindness. I can attest to that as just a few days ago, I allowed someone into traffic while I was driving. A few blocks later, I saw that same car allowing another car to get into traffic. It’s a domino effect, so let’s be kind to one another. Hope you all have a fabulous week! Happy Monday!

Mindy