Key Takeaways:
- Compliments and recognition—from you to your team, and from team members to each other—are more powerful than most people think.
- Having serious, meaningful conversations with your people can boost mutual trust and happiness in the workplace.
- Loosen the reins where you can—give employees more autonomy.
As a business owner, you want your employees—your team—to be happy.
At least, that better be the case. Staff happiness isn’t merely a “nice to have”—it’s a key component of highly successful companies. For example:
- “Well-being and optimism matter greatly” in exceptional performance within a work context, and “it is not just [that] high negative feelings … interfere with good performance, but that high positive feelings may boost performance as well,” according to research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
- Disengaged employees make 60% more errors, while companies with low engagement ratings are 16% less profitable than those with high engagement ratings, according to Gallup research.
Of course, your people also want to be happy themselves—so there’s a shared goal here that everyone in your business can, and should, be working to achieve.
The challenge is that there’s often a knowing-doing gap when it comes to creating a culture of happiness in the workplace. You can recognize that you want to build a happy, engaging environment, but not understand what it takes to actually make that vision a reality. And you can bet that if you’re not leading by example here, your staff won’t have a good handle on how they can contribute to this important mission.
With that in mind, here are some science-supported ideas for how to lead a team of happy employees.
Give – and encourage – compliments
It might seem painfully obvious that complimenting someone on their efforts and achievement at work will make them feel better and motivate them to do a better job.
Trouble is, compliments don’t always work as intended. Consider research showing that almost 70% of workers say the process of being recognized causes them some embarrassment or discomfort. It also doesn’t help that many people worry about their ability to give good compliments in the first place. Researchers at The Wharton School found people often have “considerable anxiety” about their level of competence in complimenting others.
Such associations and concerns can put mental barriers in our way that stop us from dishing out professional praise as often as we should. And if the recipient of our compliment responds awkwardly, we may be hesitant to approach that person in the future to say “nice work.”
The good news: On balance, compliments do make a positive difference. The same research showing that compliments can be embarrassing also reveals that a greater percentage of workers—88%—said they associated recognition with the feeling of being valued. And if you’re worried about your complimenting skills, relax. The Wharton study found that those giving out praise tend to underestimate just how positively the receiver will feel about that praise. Oh, and it’s good for you, too: The compliment givers said they felt better after having recognized someone else.
In short, your compliments can bring value to the team, to you and ultimately to your business.
Important: Don’t make yourself the only driver or passenger on the compliment bus. Encourage your people to support each other and highlight when a team member does well. A happy workplace with all the benefits it can bring isn’t created by one person, nor does it need to be built from the top down. It’s truly a group effort.
Use check-ins effectively
Do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to? Researchers from various universities who posed that question found that when we check in or “touch base” with others, we typically underestimate the importance of that action to those people. In other words, people you reach out to are happier about it than you realize. The researchers believe understanding the full extent to which our reach-outs are appreciated is important “because it would likely contribute to people initiating social contact to the benefit of themselves and others.”
That said, some check-ins are more positive than others. When reaching out to an employee, or when staffers reach out to each other, some smart moves include:
- Don’t include an “ask.” The point of the check-in is to show you are interested in, and care about, the other person. If you add a task—“Oh, by the way, could you start working on…?”—the other person quickly sees your check-in as a work request wrapped in a nice-looking but insincere package.
- Make it unexpected. Some bosses and managers schedule regular check-in times each day or week with specific people, departments and so on. That’s okay, but it can quickly start to seem rote, cold and robotic to the people you’re checking in with. A better approach is to check in at random intervals, or at least at a different interval from the last time. Why? Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that surprises “can make a positive event more positive” and that “surprise amplifies the pleasantness or unpleasantness of an experience, such that an unexpected gain of a smaller amount can feel more pleasurable than an expected gain of a larger amount.”
The upshot: When your positive, ask-free check-in occurs unexpectedly, the element of positive surprise for the responder likely leads to “an amplification of the positive experience and, thus, a corresponding boost in feelings of appreciation.”
Here again, encouraging your people to touch base with each other from time to time will show them that a happy work environment is an outcome everyone can help make happen.
Go beyond the weather and the big game
Small talk has its value and its place, but it’s what most of us end up focusing on more often than not with our team members and co-workers. To deepen engagement, be open to—even encourage—having more serious and substantive conversations.
Reason: When your people trust that you have their best interests in mind, they feel safer and less fearful and become more motivated. And all that stems from being ready and willing to discuss important issues that are relevant to your team as well as encouraging them to ask for help and be open. Essentially, you want employees to feel they can come to you if they’re experiencing challenges (personally or professionally) and that you’ll hear them out and actively listen to them. Likewise, facilitating conversations that center on people’s passions and the things that give their lives meaning can help create a happier and more connected group that works together better.
In fact, some research conducted by various business schools suggests that people feel happier than expected after having a serious conversation.
That said, you need to make sure you don’t cross boundaries—which may be at the company level, the personal level of each employee or both. Being a good leader means tailoring the relationship you have with each person so that it reflects their needs and preferences.
Ultimately, you need to invest the time with your people to discover who they really are—and really listen to them when you allocate that time. An additional bonus here can occur if a valued employee goes to work at another company. The culture of trust and happiness you created with that ex-employee can potentially help you if you need a favor or introduction from that person.
Loosen the reins a bit
You can also potentially create a happier workforce by doing less. Research published in Psychological Reports shows that “a generalized sense of control is important to well-being in daily life.” Look for ways to give your people more autonomy over their roles. You might, for example, allow them to have a bigger say in how they do their work for your company—working some combination of on-site and off-site that is flexible based on their needs or challenges (childcare, etc.).
Increasingly, having greater freedom in the workplace is becoming more important than traditional rewards (like promotions) for many workers. Discover what your people want in terms of how their work life is structured, and how you can make some (or all) of that wish list a reality.
Conclusion
A happy, positive work environment is something all entrepreneurs—and their people—should strive for. It not only makes for a more pleasant experience for all involved, but also can help businesses generate superior financial results through fewer mistakes, higher productivity, better engagement with the company’s mission, and stronger connections that can enhance teamwork.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This article was published by the VFO Inner Circle, a global financial concierge group working with affluent individuals and families and is distributed with its permission. Copyright 2024 by AES Nation, LLC.
This report is intended to be used for educational purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation to purchase any security or advisory services. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. An investment in any security involves significant risks and any investment may lose value. Refer to all risk disclosures related to each security product carefully before investing. Securities offered through Fischer Financial Services. Vern Fischer is a registered representative of Fischer Financial Services. Vern Fischer and Fischer Financial Services are not affiliated with AES Nation, LLC. AES Nation, LLC is the creator and publisher of the VFO Inner Circle Flash Report.
