The dark side of happiness

Three leadership lessons from the twenty-year study

Which is better; being happy or happier? The other way of asking this would be, “Do you want to be happy?” To which almost everyone would say “Yes” and when asked “Do you want to be happier?” people would say a loud “Yes”.

It means everyone wants to be happy and even happy people want to be happier. Now the question is whether it is good or not! On the surface level both desires are good; reinforcing the adage “the more the merrier.”

But a deep dive psychological study by Oishi, Diener & Lucas in 2007 into it says something else about this happiness level. The twenty yearlong study involved more than a hundred thousand people and examined how people’s happiness score impacted their income, education level and relationships.

The results were surprisingly insightful. Extremely happy people have better relationships, more socially involvement but lagged in income and education. The study also saw an interesting correlation; people who were slightly dissatisfied earned more academic degrees and bigger paychecks.

The study is not a cause-effect relationship. It does not clarify whether dissatisfaction leads to higher education and income or not. However, higher education & income are common among people who are not continuously satisfied with their life.

So, here are three lessons every leader must know from this study:

Leadership Lesson One:

What is the optimum?level of happiness required for your team?

Happiness in the workplace is good but up to a certain level. What we usually observe at the workplace?is, a pleasant?mind is a productive mind. It reinforces the point that happy people at work are more productive than people who feel dissatisfied. But extreme levels of happiness is found to be counterproductive.

Because elevated level happiness interferes with the quality of work. Sometimes people with elevated levels of happiness become overconfident, careless, or forgetful which results in poor level of productivity.

So, leaders must learn to assess the base level of happiness for their people and set the optimal level of happiness for a progressive work culture.

?

Leadership Lesson Two:

Do different departments need different levels of happiness?

Extreme levels of happiness can produce different results in different workplaces. Elevated levels of happiness would mean differently to an emergency ward in a hospital than a Disney world in Paris. When we are happy, we become good at certain aspects of our job while making other aspects suffer severely.

So, a leader must consider all aspects of a job in different departments to decide how much happiness is too much. The level of happiness required for surgeons would be different than the nurses in caregiver role. Similarly, extreme levels of happiness would mean different to the sales team than the people in accounts.

?

Leadership Lesson Three:

Don’t make happiness a job requirement?

When you make happiness a job requirement, you put pressure on your people to be happy. Numerous happiness research has proven that the more pressure you put on people to be happy, the less likely you can succeed. Because no one can be happy all the time and under pressure even if they put on a smiling face, it would be utterly fake. This continued pretension to be happy will have its consequences. Eventually these people will burn out and become frustrated.

As a leader, don’t put too much emphasis on happiness, rather keep a safe room for negative emotions. Because often negative emotions provide us with clarity on the need of the hour, it pushes us out of our comfort?zone, and we move ahead to achieve better results. In greenfield projects, we have found that a little dissatisfaction leads to continuous improvement by paying attention to details.

?

The bottom line is as a leader you must promote happiness, but only after carefully assessing the people & their job requirements. Being happy is good but being happier is always contextual. .

Published earlier in the newspaper tabloid "The Desert Trail"