Inspiration and news
Don’t worry, be happy!
Who remembers Bobby McFerrin's catchy tune “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which was played up and down the radios at least during my childhood and teenager years? In the meantime, happiness research has become part of positive psychology to find out what it takes to live a happy life. Sonja Lyubomirsky's research is particularly worth mentioning: She interviewed identical twins who were separated at birth and later reunited to be able to derive the genetic influence on the feeling of happiness. The resulting findings are exciting.
Our sense of happiness is 50% influenced by our genetic base,
but 40% is a conscious decision.
According to the research results, the general feeling of happiness – whether we are rather optimistic or rather pessimistic – is influenced by our genes to about 50%. Lyubomirsky speaks of the happiness fixed point, which is controlled by messenger substances in our brain and the resulting drive and the associated well-being. Our sense of happiness also depends on the circumstances of life, although this influence is reduced to about 10% as soon as a general satisfaction with it is achieved. Lyubomirsky justifies this by saying that we quickly get used to improved life conditions and that the happiness-making effect, for example of a wage increase or a positive experience, quickly fades. Thus, accordingly, around 40% of the individual feeling of happiness is in our own hands: Whether we experience an event as bringing or reducing happiness can be decided by us.
Strategies to strengthen our sense of happiness
In her book *The How of Happiness*, Lyubomirsky describes 12 strategies on how we can strengthen our sense of happiness and create new habits. My personal favourites are:
• Avoid unnecessary thinking and social comparison: The more we focus on what we have, the more we do not compare ourselves with seemingly more beautiful, richer, better people, it is easier to feel gratitude and thus "happiness" for our own lives. A renunciation of social media, no look at the seemingly more successful colleagues, becomes a contribution to one's own happiness.
Cultivating our circle of friends: People who mean us well, who listen to us and whose lives we can participate in are good for us. Regular reunions, spontaneous contact or the sharing of experiences should find just as much place in our everyday life as our e-mails or urgent pending issues.
Learning to forgive: If we hold on to anger and resentment, the past poisons our present and we miss the chance for current happiness. Forgiving does not mean approving, but describes learning, classifying and letting go of past emotions and events.
Taking care of our body and mind: Whether it's sports, relaxation, an exciting book or meditation, if we do something that is good for us and our body, we automatically feel more positive and thus happier.
Contentment instead of short-term happiness
In the meantime, the understanding of happiness has evolved. Seligman argues in his book "Flourish" that happiness is a fleeting emotion and that contentment is the more appropriate term for a positive attitude to life because it describes a longer-lasting, stable state of peace and fulfilment. Regardless of the name: Recent research confirms that Appius Claudius Caecus was right about 300 years before the birth of Christ with his statement that we ourselves are the architect of our happiness in life. This makes it even more important to take the genetic happiness point only as a start for even more life contentment!
Would you like to increase your "feeling of happiness"?
Finding out what is good for me
Whether as a diary, as a weekly calendar or with a post-it: For two or three weeks, take notes of the activities which create feelings of satisfaction, and then in a second step plan such activities more consciously and thus ensure sufficient moments of happiness.
Finding out who is good for me
Draw a diagram on a piece of paper with the axes "quality" and "frequency" and note how often and with what quality of happiness you meet people to then in a second step consider where adjustments are needed and how these are made possible.
Expand my knowledge of happiness research
Take half an hour and listen to the summary of Sonja Lyubomirski’s book *The How of Happiness*
Do you want to strengthen your team's "feeling of happiness"?
Share "moments of happiness" during team meetings
At the beginning as a check-in or during the meeting, share (professional) moments of satisfaction and flow and reflect together on what it takes to create them and how they can become more frequent.
Working on psychological safety within the team
If you can be who you are without getting eye rolls or criticism in return, this leads to more openness, mutual trust and psychological security. Not having to pretend does not lead to an immediate feeling of happiness, but it creates the relaxation to be able to perceive contentment. And the more open everyone is with each other, the more you know who is satisfied with what and can contribute yourself. On Psych Safety Training there are many simple exercises that strengthen the psychological safety of a team.
I absolutely must find out which bakery my new team likes best so that I can bring the right croissants!
First impressions count – as a job applicant at an interview, just as much as when meeting the team for the first time as a new manager. The choice of croissants suddenly becomes the subject of intense consideration, so that any gluten intolerances or team-specific bakery preferences can be considered.
But: The first impression is just the beginning of Tuckman's team phases of forming, storming, norming and the desired performing. Large German companies such as Bosch and Daimler there-fore consciously invest time in the onboarding process for new managers. Transition workshops with the team and transition coaching with their own line managers are designed to ensure a smooth start in the new role, and the time investment pays off.
Goals and resolutions that are put into practice.
The start of a new year motivates us to think about what is really important to us and what we still want to achieve. The fact that the number of resignations rises from January onwards is an indication of the big decisions that can be made during the festive season. However, it is usually smaller plans that emerge. Surveys confirm that around 60% of Swiss people make New Year's resolutions on New Year's Eve. However, sticking to them and putting them into practice is often difficult once you're back to your everyday routine.
Grazie – Tak – Merci – Dank je – Spasibo – Danke – Gracias – Thank you
Moments of gratitude – throughout the year or especially at Thanksgiving in the USA or at the end of the year in Switzerland – are doing good things for us. What self-help books call “practising gratitude” is described as “counting your blessings” by the English. It refers to the attitude of focusing on what is there, on what is going well. This does not mean denying or ignoring the difficulties. But gratitude for the good things creates the energy and confidence to deal with life’s challenges, too. Research about resilience and happiness has investigated the effect of gratitude, with some exciting insights.
"I'm glad when things remain objective at work. When things get emotional, I always feel a little overwhelmed."
While enthusiasm for the job, commitment to the team and the company as well as contentment about success are desired or even demanded, anger, rage, sadness or helplessness remain unwelcome guests in a professional context. However, as Laloux describes in his book Reinventing Organisations, if you want employees who invest themselves in the company with their minds and hearts, the darker side of emotions cannot be cut away or suppressed. Everything is needed, and studies show that companies with a healthy conflict culture are more innovative and therefore more profitable.
"We want to build a feedback culture in our team!"
Teams and managers come to me with such requests and ask for feedback training: “We want to give each other regular feedback, learn from each other and evolve.” There is often a difference in understanding what feedback is, and when clarifying the request for support, I ask whether feedback is understood as an information on something that I may not yet be aware of (blind spot), or whether it is more about offering criticism with an included desire for behavioural change. Once the understanding of the term has been clarified, the focus of the ‘training’ quickly becomes clearer, and it is usually less about how to give feedback but about building motivation to do so.
"When do you need team development as a team?"
If one has never experienced team development and the associated added value of it, it can remain unclear when a team needs such a team-out. However, the experiences associated with team development are not always positive, as my own first experience many years ago shows: the external facilitator had not been informed about the team-internal conflicts, the day’s agenda was as a consequence chosen inappropriately, the tensions exploded an hour before the end of the day, and on the same evening the team leader resigned.
Maybe that is why it is important to me to repeatedly explain what good team development can be, as I hear too often from teams that a day ended in tears, that individuals felt exposed, or that team dynamics were even worse afterwards. Yet, with the right set-up and the appropriate methods, great things can be achieved.
"Whenever an ambulance drives past me, I know I have to be careful today!"
I remember this statement and the exercise that went as if it was yesterday. 2016 in Berlin on a gloomy Friday afternoon during my training as a change process facilitator. We were given the task of choosing a question that was currently on our minds. To then go outside. To completely clear our minds and connect with the world. “Flirt with the world, and the world will flirt with you!” was the invitation. I do not remember the question I chose, nor do I remember my attempts to flirt with the world. But the subsequent debriefing and the comment made by a fellow participant “When an ambulance passes me on the way to a workshop, I know that today I have to be careful” is still with me today.
"It should be possible to use a few questions to find out where a team's strengths lie and where the areas for development are!"
"It should be possible to use a few questions to find out where a team's strengths lie and where the areas for development are!" A participant in the ETH leadership seminar asked me this in a slightly demanding tone. I thought for a moment and replied: "There are various questionnaires and models for teams and team dynamics, but they each focus on one aspect of a team. As far as I know, there is no collection of questions that looks at a team as a whole. But something like that can be developed.".
Feeling a bit like Heidi Klum!
A little Heidi Klum feeling: an impressive CV and the skills required for the next step in your career. An assessment center as a stopover to achieve this goal. Me as a coach at my side, helping with the preparation and suddenly feeling a little bit like Heidi Klum sending her models onto the catwalk.
Can you kiss the frog prince?
Can you kiss the frog prince? This question stuck with me and I still differentiate between HR and organizational development based on this logic today. While HR development is about helping employees realize their potential and turning them into princesses, organizational development is about a system that cannot be kissed.
"Since I turned my vocation into my profession, working feels like leisure time!"
This feedback pleased me particularly, as I feel the same way since the change into my current role but also because the starting point for the coaching regarding a professional reorientation had not been the easiest: a position that had been achieved through a lot of effort and personal investment, with the prospect of a next career step. Further education in a field that did not immediately promise career change opportunities combined with the desire for more meaning and fulfilment at work.