Why leaders should be focusing on Work Happiness

Running a business is challenging at the best of times, so it’s understandable right now that many leaders are preoccupied with navigating the current economic climate and staying in business. 

As you develop new business strategies and priorities, make sure that you also create space to think about those around you, your team and wider organisation, as ultimately they are your greatest asset, and if they are happy and thriving then you have a greater chance of collective success.

Research has proven time and time again that if people are happy at work then they are 3 x more creative, innovative, have a greater ability to problem solve and are more productive.  We know who we would want on our team!  

So, what can you do to create work happiness for your team and organisation so that you can work together to ride the current economic and social climate and not just survive, but thrive?  Here are some top tips from us:

As this article by Gartner rightly acknowledges, leadership styles have really had to adapt and evolve these past few years and become a lot more ‘human’ than ever before. We like this model they have designed as it shows how these three core components of human leadership (Authentic, Empathetic and Adaptive) make a human leader.

There have been many claims and news articles that senior leaders are the most opposed to hybrid working and believe productivity will improve when their employees return to the physical working environment. This may resonate with you and your leadership team. The key is to understand how the rest of your team feel and understand where and how they like to work and co-create best working practice together

This Harvard Business Review article about Redesigning how we work provides four crucial questions leaders and their executive teams need to ask themselves to enable them to develop a future-proof workplace culture. 

There’s no ignoring that we are in an economic crisis right now and it’s obviously important to be sensitive to it but also consider how you can be the best leader to help pave a way through it. This article, How to be a good leader in a bad economy, highlights that there are three balances leaders need to get right: 

1. Moving closer without suffocating others
2. Moving faster without turning frantic
3. Taking on or assigning a bigger workload without sacrificing relationships.

Too often leaders forget what a positive and inspiring impact they can have on employees when they talk directly to them. If you have internal and external communication functions in your company,  then make sure you are collaborating with and taking counsel from the professionals in your business as they are experts who can support you. 

Quite often less is more in terms of what you say and here are four great pointers as to how you as a leader can communicate with impact.

As a leader you are expected to be a continual cheerleader for the organisation but it’s equally as important to ensure you focus on developing your Work Happiness and your own mental health and positive professional attitude. 

Become familiar with the emotional labour of being a leader and then use that self-awareness to keep you and your leadership team motivated and in-check. 

1. Talk to us - Calli and I have both held leadership positions during our career and now support many leaders within organisations through 1:1 coaching and mentoring. 
2. Tell us what’s going on in your organisation - We provide supportive consultancy to managers, leaders and companies managing through organisational change. We can also co-create training workshops and coaching programmes for your team to support, motivate, and engage them

Do get in touch with us, we are on a mission to help every organisation create Work Happiness!