Managers: Teach Your Team to Pursue Happiness

On Sunday 30th October at 2am the clocks will go back one hour. The evenings and mornings will start drawing in, making the days much shorter with less sunlight.

Winter Depression

This is when a lot of people in the northern hemisphere may experience SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sometimes known as ‘winter depression’, SAD can cause low mood.

Turn it around

Let’s turn this concept around and think about how people can be happier. How can we as managers teach our team to be happier? We spend so much of our waking hours at work, if we can help our teams pursue happiness in the workplace, it is going to help them in their overall life.

Do you bounce?

Stats show that roughly only 25% of people bounce out of bed in the morning and want to go to work.?Most people don’t enjoy their work, so it’s an underlying factor that potentially sets the scene for compounding other issues and pressures that eventually lead to mental health issues and despair.?So, what are the strategies to improve your level of happiness at work???How can we remove the roadblocks to happiness, so you don’t end up in a sad state of mind in the first place??

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness expresses that our brain has a tendency to mistake what actually makes us happy. Our brain focuses on short-term gains, not understanding long-term happiness.

Emotional Fitness

Preventative mental health measures rather than first aid are key for long term happiness. Bringing emotional fitness into our life, so we do not have a casualty in the future would be a daily activity. This is why I wrote the book, Emotional Fitness: A-Z for Positive Mental Health. It is all about bringing activities into your life every day to be positive. Do something small every day for self-care.

It’s something that I’m seeing with people and work – i.e. not being fulfilled in what they’re doing and not seeing something for their efforts.?

What can we do in the workplace to help our team be happier?

I know when I have been the happiest at work, I have had a purpose, felt like what I am accomplishing counts, felt a part of a team, felt like I was valued.

What we need to understand is that this is not the same for everyone. What makes one person happy, may not make the next happy.

Motivation

I find it very interesting when I interview someone and ask the question, what motivates you in the workplace and their answer is ‘money’. Yes, we all work for money, to pay the bills and live the life we want, but what is behind the money? Why do we want the money?

For some of us, we are happy to live on the bare minimum, do not need the luxuries in life.

Others have different priorities, making them feel more fulfilled.

The pursuit of happiness

When we are helping our team to pursue their happiness, we need to make sure they work out what really makes them happy, in the long-term, not just a quick fix.

If we can build relationships with our team to really understand them, and their changes in values as they develop in their role, we will be assisting them to continue to grow and pursue happiness.

If you want to find out more about how to connect with your team, understanding what makes them tick, book in Calendly Research Call:?https://calendly.com/novaassociates/research-call