Are you happy? What kind of person tends to be happy? In their classic study in a 1995 issue of  Psychological Science, David Myers and Ed Diener reported studies have consistently identified five characteristics associated with happy people. Do you have a propensity toward happiness? Ask yourself these questions based on Myers and Diener.

-- Do you like yourself? Happy people tend to agree with statements such as “I am fun to be with.” They believe they are easy to get along with and feel good about themselves.  They have high self-esteem. Happy people like themselves. 

-- Do you feel you have some personal control in your life? Studies show that people deprived of control have lower morale. Consider people trapped in poverty, people in repressive regimes, people held prisoner, people in poor health. 

-- Are you an optimist or a pessimist? People who come at life expecting good outcomes and success tend to be happier than people who are pessimistic. Research supports numerous benefits derived from an optimistic approach to life. 

-- Are you more introverted or extraverted? Extraverts tend toward more happiness than introverts. The authors speculated that it may be due to extraverts having more social contacts and relationships. In general the positive benefits of relationships outweigh any negatives.

-- Are you religious or spiritual? People who are religious or spiritual tend to be happier. One Gallup poll found “the highly spiritual were twice as likely to say they were ‘very happy’.”  

Happy people: good self-esteem, a sense of personal control, optimistic, extraverted, religious or spiritual.

Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1995). Who is happy? Psychological Science, 6 (1), 10-19.

Image of Mount Edgecumbe. © John Ballard, 2013. All rights reserved.    

On a recent trip as I flew from Alaska, I was very happy to see Denali in early morning light. From the ground I had only seen it in clouds. A few days later I was cleaning up my office and came across a classic study on happiness.  David Myers and Ed Diener published their report “Who is happy?” in a 1995 issue of Psychological Science. Although the study is almost two decades old, my guess is the major findings are still pretty accurate. Their review of previous studies on happiness was very extensive and covered several decades in many cultures. Here are some of their findings:

• “No time of life is notably happier or unhappier than others” (p. 11). The kind of things that affect happiness may change with age but age alone is not a key to knowing how happy a person is. (supported by a study of over 16,000 people in 16 countries).
  


• Although there are differences between women and men in the experience of happiness, overall the levels of happiness are about the same for women and men.
  


• The empty nest when children leave home is more often a happy time. The “empty nest syndrome”, depression from children leaving home, “turns out to be rare.”
  


• Knowing how happy a person feels does not tell you anything about how bad they might feel. People who are intensely happy tend to experience bad events or difficulties intensely also. 
  


• Nations do vary in reported overall levels of happiness. For example, Inglehart (1990) found 10% of the people of Portugal indicated they were “very happy” whereas 40% of people in the Netherlands indicated they were “very happy.” In general countries that are more collectivistic (emphasis on family, groups, community) report lower levels of happiness than individualistic cultures, where the emphasis is on the individual. 
  


• The relationship between money and happiness is “modest’. “Wealth  . . . is like health: Its absence can breed misery, yet having it is no guarantee of happiness . . . Satisfaction is less a matter of getting what you want than wanting what you have” (p. 13).
  

Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1995). Who is happy? Psychological Science, 6 (1), 10-19.

"Denali." © John Ballard, 2013. All rights reserved.

That life is a journey is illustrated in the story of Maurice Clarett. Clarett helped the Ohio State University Buckeyes win the 2002 BCS football championship game. Convicted of aggravated robbery and weapons charges, Clarett spent 43 months in prison. In prison he read and wrote and reevaluated. His story is chronicled in Sports Illustrated’s Summer Double Issue (July 8-15). Here are two bits of wisdom from that story worth repeating.

In prison Clarett encouraged a fellow inmate, Orlando Payne, giving him hope, and sharing his books (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People; Rich Dad, Poor Dad, etc.). He encouraged Payne to read the dictionary. “Every day, Maurice taught me to never let my past dictate my future.”

My Take-away: We are creatures of habit. We take what is before us. But we have the freedom to make changes, though some may be very hard. Bono and Edge echo this them in “Rise Above” from Spiderman: Turn off the Dark. A corollary is that over time we may change incrementally and fail to recognize how we have changed. As Crosby, Stills, and Nash once sang, “Don't let the past, remind us of what we are not now.”

SI also tells the story of Clarett and Matt Overton. Both played for the Omaha Nighthawks of the now defunct United Football League. Overton was cut by the Nighthawks. According to SI, Clarett “offered Overton his couch and a daily workout partner for as long as he wanted them.” Today Overton plays for the Indianapolis Colts: “Maurice never let me quit. Sometimes I’d slack off –- not encouraged, not motivated—and he’d ask me, ‘Where do you want to go?’”

My Take-away: Setting goals can be motivational. As I wrote in an earlier blog, the difference in many aspects of life and careers is goal setting. Do you have goals? Do you know where you would like to be in a year, 5 years, 10 years? Do you have plans to get there? What do you need to do this year? This month? This week? Today? Do you have your goals in writing, typed on your computer, visible on your smartphone? Are they specific? Are they measurable? Are they achievable? At least once a year I set aside time to revisit my goals in various aspects of my work and life. I have a written list and have done this for many years. In my opinion a major key to personal and organizational success at all levels is goal setting. Where do you want to go?

Image of Denali in the clouds. © John Ballard, 2013. All rights reserved.

An advertisement in Sports Illustrated caught my attention. At first I thought it was regular story but then I noticed the words “Special Advertising Feature.” It was Champ Bailey’s advice to rookies, football players going to their first preseason training camp “as told to Jeff Bradley.” Champ Bailey plays cornerback for the Denver Broncos. He has played in 11 Pro Bowls and selected for 12, the most of any cornerback in NFL history. Bailey’s five pieces of advice seemed appropriate to anyone new to a job, new to a workplace. Here are his words and my thoughts:

--- “It takes time to feel at home.”  To be comfortable in a new job with new co-workers does take time. The climate and culture of the organization can make shorten or lengthen the time needed. Where people are valued and everyone pulls together, the time will be less. Likewise, a negative culture where people do not like their work or do not like their supervisors should take longer. Leaders need to be aware that the behavior of a new employee is different. The new employee is learning. Are you facilitating that process? Are you pointing out good role models in the workplace? 

--- “Watch the veterans closely.” Be aware of what is happening around you. It should become clear who gets recognition, who has the respect of others, what the norms are in your work group. This is one of the most important ways to ease into effective performance in a new job. 

--- “Stay sharp by studying hard.”  New to a workplace, there will be much to learn. Part will be about how your organization or work group gets things done, the performance standards that are expected. But you may need to brush up on skills, perhaps a different software program. Going the extra mile in the first few months of a job will usually pay big dividends later. People are watching the new employee. Show them what you are made of.

--- “Remember: Mind over matter.” Champ Bailey was talking about the challenge of pushing through pain. In the workplace we look for those who persevere, who have stick-to-it-ness, who persist at the task at hand, who make things happen. Leaders depend on such people when it is crunch-time. 

--- “It gets no worse than this.” It is easy to see this in the context of an NFL rookie’s first training camp. In the workplace, I see this differently. I see this as how one comes at the world around them, the meaning we give to the events that unfold in our lives. We all live with dissatisfactions and disappointments of various sorts, some bigger than others. But ultimately how we deal with these dissatisfactions, how much we “suffer” depends on us. We choose how we respond -- or telospond – to the events that unfold. Our anger, our misery, our joy, our happiness we make. This can be a tough idea to grasp, and perhaps even tougher to live, but the peace that comes from living this perspective indeed means that “it gets no worse than this.”

Thoughts on an advertisement.


Image of Champ Bailey from Jeff Beall from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Champ_Bailey_2010.JPG
Used by permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Compassion in organizations is a topic about which I have been thinking. In previous blogs I have discussed:

• the benefits of being compassionate and the importance of compassion for leaders
• research from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds indicating compassion can be trained through meditation. 
• questions from an Academy of Management Review (AMR) article about compassion in the workplace and the growing scholarship in this area.

I can see training programs to grow compassion in an organization’s culture. But it may grow naturally without the organization doing anything formally. This is an idea about which Laura Madden and her co-authors elaborate in the October 2012 AMR journal previously mentioned. Madden and her colleagues have described an “emergent organizational model for compassion.” Greatly simplified and in a nutshell, it goes something like this.

Tragedies happen. People suffer. Co-workers suffer. This “spills over into our professional lives as well” (p. 689). When someone notices this suffering, feels another’s suffering, then the behavior of that person changes. This is called a pain trigger. Pain triggers disrupt ordinary workplace functioning as people respond compassionately to the sufferer. As others become aware, a self-organization occurs informally. People express sympathy, people offer “Is there anything I can do?” The form compassion takes depends on the situation, the nature of the suffering, and the culture of the organization. Over time trigger events elevate the role of compassionate behavior among people in the workplace. Compassion becomes a norm, something the work group expects of others. It may in time become a core value.

I had a trigger event a few years ago. Seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of the night I nearly died. For three days my life was in doubt. It took many months to recover from my surgeries. My classrooms were disrupted. Others had to carry my workload. During those months as I recovered, I felt the compassion of my colleagues, the college staff, and the students. Card after card arrived. And then repeated cards from the same people. And then more cards. And e-mails. And inquiries and offers of help to my wife. And eventually visits to my home, an hour’s drive for most. I felt the compassion of others in my organization. It renewed my passion for teaching and my commitment to my colleagues and our college. But what if a different place? Different people? Perhaps a different result.

Grow compassion.

Madden, L. T., Duchon, D, Madden, T. M., & Plowman, D. A. (2012). Emergent organizational capacity for compassion. Academy of Management Review, 37 (4), 689-708.

Card image by reDeFyne Ratnam from http://www.flickr.com/photos/redefyne/88624891/
Use with permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

© John Ballard, PhD,  2016. All rights reserved.
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Author of Decoding the Workplace, BEST CAREER BOOK Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2016.
 
"Decoding the Workplace: 50 Keys to Understanding People in Organizations is as informed and informative a read as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking. . . Decoding the Workplace should be considered critically important reading for anyone working in a corporate environment." —Midwest Book Review
 
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