From the Diary of a Chief Happiness Officer

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!

Nia

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.....

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