Happiness Matters - It Improves Your Bottom Line

Walk the Talk

Think of when you have been at your best. What was happening in your life at that time?

Chances are you were not under stress, feeling undervalued or bullied, wandering along without clarity around your purpose.

So why aren’t all organisations focussed on creating the optimal environment for their teams to be at their best?

I have seen amazing results using positive psychology to ensure our team is happy in the workplace and I thought I would share things we have done which may help your organisation.  

While it is incredibly important, it is not complicated – we all know what makes us feel valued, respected and important.  We all know how amazing it feels when you are part of a team which is kicking goals and absolutely achieving to its purpose.  

It is not complicated and we all know how good it can feel however, the missing piece is often an absolute commitment to making this part of an organisation’s DNA .

It is not some tick box. It is not something you do occasionally. It is about commitment which is consistent and authentic.

It is about ensuring you walk the talk.

Go Flourish Somewhere Else

To start with every organisation must have clarity around purpose and this needs to be shared with everyone. Team members should understand the purpose of the organisation, be clear on the vision and the mission, and be aligned and engaged, not only to the organisation mission but importantly, to their individual role in delivering.

Organisations cannot achieve their end game unless every person is pulling in the same direction in a positive way.

I often refer to this as the “on the bus” scenario, and you need everyone to be ON THE BUS. Not only in terms of understanding the destination you are going to, but also having clarity around the route which you are taking. You cannot have team members with one foot on the pavement and one foot one the bus – all this will do is slow you down.  Therefore, the engagement and alignment piece is key.  

A little-known fact is the profit for purpose sector often has lower engagement than the commercial sector. This is because people can be so personally invested in the cause they feel they know best and want things to be done differently. They constantly try and pull in a different direction – their personal commitment can mean that they are not aligned with the organisational strategy or the “route” you are taking.

For those people who are not aligned and engaged, they often become divisive, and try and pull other people into their “disengaged” corner. This is clearly not good for the individual or for the organisation.

In this situation you need to have a conversation, understand where the disconnect is coming from and try to do everything you can to support them to be aligned and engaged. However, if this isn’t possible, you need to ask them to question why they are with your organisation.

These conversations can be challenging but people will never be the best they can be while they are not aligned.  It will continually eat at them in a negative way.

I always hope you can get the alignment you need. If you can’t, I’m also really open about the fact I want people to be able to flourish and if they are not aligned it will be so much better for them and the organisation if they leave and move somewhere they are aligned. It really is OK to leave.

I have sometimes been heard saying “Go flourish somewhere else”. And while this might sound cheeky – there is a lot of truth in this statement.

Positivity is a “No Brainer”

Before ‘positive psychology’ was something you heard about, happiness was a core principle at Starlight. We only exist to brighten the lives of seriously ill children. And this supports their wellbeing and resilience.

I like to think we were way ahead of the positivity curve.

Happiness as a child is one of the clearest indicators to someone’s ability to be successful in their education, employment and importantly to also ensure healthy life behaviours. Why? Because happiness matters.

In brightening the lives of sick kids, we also noted the impact positivity had on their parents, their siblings and our wonderful paediatric health care professionals working tirelessly to provide the highest quality of care.  

We could see the positive impact of being more positive in all our programs – therefore it was a “no brainer’ that to be a truly authentic organisation we needed to provide the same positive psychology support to our Starlight team. Why would we not support their wellbeing and resilience?

It made complete sense this would deliver the same impact in the workplace. If we wanted to have a high performing team bringing their best self to work every day, we needed to create a positive work environment.

We had always practiced positivity; it is the heart of Brightening lives. However, we never articulated it as ‘positive psychology’ until 2013. We needed to have an organisation which was the most effective and efficient we possibly could be. Therefore, we needed a high performing team. And you will never have a high performing team in a negative, undermining, divisive culture.

Positivity studies have shown that you truly achieve your best as an individual when you are feeling positive and supported and it is not just some superficial fluffy thing - it genuinely impacts the bottom line.

It improves the creativity of the organisation and all the individuals within. It increases innovation. It increases inclusion – you look more for what is similar with other people when you are in a positive environment and actively seek out similarities with those around you, rather than noticing the differences that distance you. It improves decision making and promotes fair, robust debate.

A positive workplace is all about wellbeing and resilience, not only for the individuals, but for the entire organisation. And with what is happening now, don’t we all need organisational resilience?

Be Values Driven

Values are passionate. Values are not intellectual ideas. How might you discover your core values? And that’s the keyword: you don’t set core values; you discover your core values.

Jim Collins

Values are not something that you try to create for the organisation, values exist within the organisation.

A couple of years ago we reflected on our values. I did a scan and surprisingly  found lots of similarities between organisational values. The top 50 banks in the world all had very similar values and then when I scanned the top 50 Charities – they had pretty much the same. The same as each other and as the top 50 banks! I found this curious & so I set a challenge for some of our leadership team, listed the values separate to the organisations and asked them to match the values to the correct organisation. They got very few right ??.

We then started to work on what could be a truly ownable set of values for Starlight.

Individual words become very important in these types of exercises. We word smithed and word smithed. We were getting close when I then cast my “simplification” lens over what we had done.  

We then decided to move forward with a single value at Starlight and this, single value is “SHINE”.

We SHINE for our purpose, we SHINE with Positivity, we SHINE by being exceptional and we SHINE brighter together.

This is an incredibly positive position and it is very simple – at any moment you can assess what you are doing and ask yourself “what can I do to make myself shine more brightly?” We know we shine brighter together, and this speaks to collaboration, innovation, working together as a team

The Leadership Toolkit

It’s not just about having a group of “always happy” people to begin with (although how cool would that be!), It is about learning how to be more positive.  It’s about developing your team and providing techniques which enable people to be authentically more positive across all aspects of life. You can learn and choose to be more positive, so if you have positivity training, you can learn about the things which can disrupt your flow and the feeling of positivity you have.

One point to remember is that this is not about everyone ‘drinking the cool-aid’, being superficial and walking around with smiles on their faces. Positivity which is not authentic is just bulls*#t. A positive workplace is about people being comfortable and confident in their role and with their team, knowing their wellbeing is supported so that they are resilient and able to have robust debates and face challenges head on. 

Being a positive workplace means when challenges arise, it is not about being personal and it gives people the strength to work through difficult times together and come out shining.

Things don’t always swing along merrily.

I also often talk about ‘ANTs’.  These are Automatic Negative Thoughts which will inevitably pop up for everyone at some point.

You know what it is like, you’re asked to go to a function and you have “ANTs” crawling all over you as you ruminate how boring it is going to be and put yourself into a negative mindset – from that moment the function probably doesn’t stand a chance.  

But now I recognise these ANTs for what they are and stop myself by thinking of more positive alternatives or outcomes. I cannot tell you how powerful this has been for me to recognize this and  I also can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed some of those scenarios where ANTs could have ruined the experience for me. . . you can truly learn ways to make choices and put yourself into the position to recognise the ANT early and consider things  from a different, more positive viewpoint.

Connected & Compassionate Leadership

You must also show compassion and care – this is a vital part of being a leader in a positive organisation. As an example, due to recent events we had team members who were not covered by the Job Keeper payments and for whom we had no shifts. They were doing it really tough. So, we were true to our value and rallied to ‘shine brighter together’ and created an initiative where team members could donate annual leave to enable us to grant a hardship payment to help those individuals.  This demonstrated true compassion, care and shows the organisation leading in a positive way.  This was an incredibly proud moment for me – to see people donating to this initiative and it sent a very clear and positive message to everyone

Finally, connection to your team and their ability to be connected to you is paramount. In a positive organisation, people have transparency. We have something called “CEO Connect” which gives the team an opportunity to ask me questions at any time and my commitment is I will answer it publicly to the whole Starlight team within 24 hours. It’s amazing the stories people can make up about an organisation if you are not accessible, transparent and constantly communicating with your team. I say to people if you have a question, chances are there are another 5, 20 or 50 people who may have the same question. So please ask.

I can’t tell you how many water cooler myths this has flushed from our organisation and how much trust this has built

So, from where I sit positivity isn’t something fluffy – it is not a nice to have. Positivity is imperative for your bottom line. Every business metric will be improved when you have a high performing team, and you can only have a high performing team if everybody is in a positive place, committed to your purpose and flourishing together.   

Why? Because Happiness matters.