Leadership for a Happy Workplace

Motivation & Performance

People excel when their morale is high. That happens when they are happy. When people excel, organisational goals and objectives are met. The organisation therefore, has a vested interest in the happiness of its people.

Learning & Development

Happy people do not just excel at given tasks. They also excel, at learning, and therefore improving themselves. And in that way, they also excel at growing.

Retention & Acquisition

Besides excellence, when people are happy where they are, they stay where they are. And they attract other happy people, to grow that happiness in that place.

Well-Being

A happy place is a healthy place. Happy people, somehow are more resistant to ailments. They bring less sickness to the workplace to share. Less sick leaves occur. And work sees better continuity therefore, in happier environments.

Leadership vs Management

All definitions, theories, methods and approaches aside, management is about ensuring, a planned process that sums the intended effort to achieve goals and objectives is followed through from start to finish, with minimal deviation. Not as easy in practice, but for the sake of understanding what management is, that pretty much is it. Straightforward enough. Nothing complicated.

Leadership, goes beyond management. It is not about process. It is not about system. It is not about method. It is not about technique. It is about the human. The individual human, that is being lead. Leadership is personal. It is about answering the question within each unique individual, of why he or she should immaterially want to do, execute or achieve something. Employment can be found elsewhere. Money, can be earned by other means. Yet, as to why an individual commits to a purpose, an objective, a cause and gives what is necessary, to ensure it is well achieved, the answer is the leadership.

True Leadership in Practice

True leaders, don't ever preach what they themselves do not practice. They also do not practice what they preach. What true leaders do, is that they preach, only and exactly that, which they themselves already practice. They also do not preach everything that they practice. They only preach that, which they are certain will help others, whether those whom they are leading or those whom they are not leading. And this behavior is a symptom of a deeper characteristic.

The first requisite to leadership, or leadership that is at all effective to be precise, is that the leader is a genuine person. You know, the sort of person, that is exactly what you see when you look at him or her. The next requisite, is that this genuine person, genuinely cares about others. Ambition and personal objectives make managers. Love and desire for greater common good make good leaders that will take you where you otherwise will not get to.

Leadership for a Happy Workplace

The best place to achieve the best results is a happy workplace. You know, the sort where the boss is not dreaded, politics is conspicuously missing, there aren't enough conflicts going around to warrant the mention of the word mediation, and the recruiters' mailboxes keep getting flooded everyday, but nobody in HR remotely seems to remember what an exit process or interview looks, feels or sounds like. That sort of a happy workplace becomes possible, when there is a leadership in place that is genuinely interested in making the workplace happy and is interested in maintaining a workplace that is happy.

The first step is to recruit or appoint or promote people into leadership roles, who themselves are genuinely intrinsically happy people. Them being happy themselves is not enough though. They need to be happy people, who find happiness in seeing the happiness in others around them, unconditionally. It is not important if they do not like the subject of Human Resource Management. It is critical, that they love human beings in general and they love human joy.

The second step, is the enlightenment of happy people assuming leadership roles, that the happiness of others around them, negates the potential for toxicity in the environment, and precludes that much of obstacles in the path to success in that environment. They also need to be enlightened to the fact that the happiness of others around them, translates to those people being at peace, enough to focus sufficient energies to do the jobs expected of them well. For this reason, each leader needs to be the sort of the person that sees happiness for everyone in his or her leadership as a business priority.

The leaders need to be wise enough to realize, that happiness does not need to mean everybody spends 365 days at Disneyland on the organisation's salary, while expecting the work to do itself. Each individual can however, be as happy on every single work day, at work, as he or she would be at Disneyland. A leader, for the purpose of creating and maintaining a happy workplace, needs to believe that, and needs to be keen to learn the means to achieve that. And he or she should definitely want to achieve that.

The Case

Consider the evidence. Think of the most successful companies in the world today. How are they faring on the lists for best places to work at? And why? The answer is, the happiness people find there.

Implication

If you have read this far, then you would agree that everything you have read so far, warrants a revisiting and revision of the idea of leadership and the competencies as well as qualities for leadership. The roles of leaders remain unchanged. Who the leaders should be and what they should be like, requires a new set of lenses.

Harish Shah is a Professional Futurist , Management Strategy Consultant and a Coach. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include the Future of Work, Leadership, EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing.