6 Science-Backed Ways to Raise Happiness (and Success) at Work

Welcome back to Office Hours with Arthur Brooks. In this episode, I turn to a place where many of us spend most of our waking hours: the workplace. Whether you’re an employee, a manager, or leading an organization, happiness at work is not just a nice-to-have; it is a proven driver of productivity, loyalty, and even company performance. Drawing on research from Irrational Capital and insights from my book The Happiness Files https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Files-Insights-Arthur-Brooks/dp/B0F4MFQ6VN, I share the six factors that truly make people happier at work, and explain why gimmicks and perks cannot compare. I discuss: • The most important factor that drives happiness at work • How direct, honest communication reduces fear and builds trust • The surprising impact a manager’s mood has on team morale • One of the easiest and fastest ways to boost happiness and productivity at work • How investing in learning, mentorship, and growth creates lasting engagement • Should you be making friends at work? • The leadership styles that fail employees and the two that actually inspire loyalty and performance • How much do your pay and perks directly impact your happiness? • Audience Q&A on knowing if there is a God, if your personality makes you more likely to be unhappy, and dealing with temptation We’d love to hear any feedback you have. Please email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. And please leave a review on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening! — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • X: ⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps (00:00) Intro (04:46) A no-gimmicks approach to workplace happiness (06:06) What research shows about happiness in the workplace (12:20) Six factors that drive workplace happiness (14:35) #1: Innovation: Openness to input and ideas (16:43) #2: Direct management: Clear, direct communication (20:08) #3: Organizational effectiveness: Focus on efficiency and limit meetings (23:17) #4: Engagement: Invest in employee growth (26:40) #5: Emotional connection: Fostering a culture of friendship (31:36) #6: Organizational alignment: aligning external mission with company culture (33:49) Intrinsic benefits vs. extrinsic benefits (35:20) Daniel Goleman’s 6 leadership styles (36:24) Four leadership styles to avoid (38:53) The two most effective leadership styles (40:00) A quick recap of the six factors that contribute to employee happiness the most (41:58) How do you know there is a God? (44:30) Are you predisposed to lifelong unhappiness due to your personality? (47:00) How to deal with temptation — Referenced: • Leadership and Happiness course: https://www.hbs.edu/coursecatalog/1885.html • How to Build a Life: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/how-build-life/ • The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life: https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Files-Insights-Arthur-Brooks/dp/B0F4MFQ6VN • The 8 Stupidest Management Fads of All Time: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-8-stupidest-management-fads-of-all-time/ • Does Employee Happiness Have an Impact on Productivity?: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4766 • Happiness and Productivity: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/681096 • J. P. Morgan Research: https://www.irrational.capital/jp-morgan-research • Why Meetings Are Terrible for Happiness: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/11/why-meetings-are-terrible-happiness/672144/ • Dear Manager, You’re Holding Too Many Meetings: https://hbr.org/2022/03/dear-manager-youre-holding-too-many-meetings — Production and marketing by ⁠⁠https://penname.co/⁠ https://penname.co/⁠. Production provided by www.thebluewave.net http://www.thebluewave.net/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Arthur Brooks?

  Happiness doesn't come because you're buddies with the boss. Happiness comes because you're buddies with your coworkers. If you waste people's time, they're going to hate their jobs. That's just the case. I'm not into gimmicks. I don't do hacks. I talk about habits that treat people like people. Am I going to get a raise? You know, what does the future bring? People hate that sort of uncertainty. Listening to people in a serious way, that's one of the basics of human communication. People want to feel that there's some faith in what they do and there's a future for them.

• 1:38Arthur Brooks?

  Hi friends, welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas. I study the science of happiness. It's what I teach at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School. I also write about that in The Atlantic in a column that comes out every Thursday morning called "How to Build a Life." This is a show about big topics that you can use. Things that academic scholars are working on that might not be apparent to you necessarily, but can be very useful to you in your life. Every week, I'll be bringing you big ideas in terms that non-academics can actually use. That's my mission in life.

• 2:24Arthur Brooks?

  Now, I hope you've had a great summer. This is the second show and we're still in August. I hope you've had a good vacation. Probably you're getting ready to head back to work if you've been on vacation before. And that's the subject of today's show. I want to talk about happiness at work. How you can be a happier person at work. And if you're a manager, how you can help other people to be happier at work. Here's the thing. This class that I teach at the Harvard Business School is called Leadership and Happiness because my students are going to go on to become managers in the workplace. Almost all of them are going to have employees. I want them not just to be good at their jobs. I want them to be happiness teachers. I want them to lift people up. I want them to understand the happiness science so they can use it for the good of their

• 3:07Arthur Brooks?

  companies and good of their careers, but for the good of humanity as well. And that's my main topic today. Now, as always, this being a new show, I want your feedback. I want to know what you think. So, please do send an email to [email protected]. That's right down here. Look at that email address. I'll give it to you again. Also, put in some comments. If you're watching this on YouTube, please do comment. I'll look at it. Well, my team will look at it too. And if you don't like it, you'll say that. And if I feel really aggrieved and it seems unfair, I'll probably complain about it to my wife. But I do need to know your opinion. So, thanks for giving that to us. Also, leave a review if you're watching us on Spotify or on Apple, on iTunes.

• 3:51Arthur Brooks?

  And just in general, recommend this to your friends. If this is something good for you, it's probably good for somebody else. And we're trying to make this as popular as we can because we want a happier world. One quick announcement. I have a new book out. The new book is called The Happiness File. So, see the graphic here. That's what it looks like. It's brand new on the market. Insights on Work and Life. It's actually my 33 most popular columns in The Atlantic over the past few years. It's about happiness at work, what I'm talking about today, but also how your life can be happier depending on what you're doing in your work life. So, pick that up if you want to. It's a great stocking stuffer, getting ready for the holidays, ahead of the holidays, just getting in front of that.

• 4:35Arthur Brooks?

  Who doesn't want a book on happiness? Well, if you're watching this show, you probably do. So, thanks in advance for that. What I want to talk about here today, happiness at work is information I really could have used some years ago. I'm a lifelong kind of academic type. I've done a lot of different things in my life. I was actually a classical musician all the way through my twenties. Went to college around age thirty and then got my PhD and became a professor, a behavioral scientist, what I do today. But about ten years into that academic career, I stepped back and actually took ten years off and went and ran a big nonprofit. I was the president of a think tank in Washington DC. We had hundreds of employees and I had to raise tens of millions of dollars every year.

• 5:18Arthur Brooks?

  And I wish I had known the things I'm going to tell you today about the secrets to bringing greater happiness to the people who work for you, the people who work with you, how you can be a happiness teacher in the workplace. Life would have been better for me and probably the people who worked around me. So this is news that I could have used and so I hope it's news that you can use, whether you have employees or not. How can people in the workplace use happiness science to improve business performance and improve the lives of other people? Well, that sounds an awful lot, maybe, like I'm going to say that happiness is a gimmick. And there's lots of business gimmicks to make a business work better. I mean, I've seen them come and go for a long time. I've been teaching off and on at business schools for my whole career and, you know,

• 6:03Arthur Brooks?

  all kinds of stuff. I remember one that was a really big deal called Six Sigma. I remember that where, you know, you were trying to make processes work better in the workplace and had protocols for doing that and training manuals. And managers, when they would pass through greater levels of skill in this particular business technique, they would get like martial arts colored belts. And I kid you not, and so you can imagine, you know, some middle-aged guy, ponchi guy in a suit, coming into your office with a red martial arts belt tied around his suit and, you know, giving you tips on how you could tighten up your, your business practices or something. Suffice it to say that it wasn't super popular and there's actually even some evidence that didn't work that well.

• 6:48Arthur Brooks?

  I'm not into gimmicks. I don't do hacks. I talk about habits that treat people like people. And the case in point is what you can do to bring greater joy to the workplace. Now, let's start with a little bit of evidence on, on, on happiness and work. Is it true that when people are happier, they do better work? And the answer is yes. There's two kinds of evidence on this that I want to tell you about. And once again, as always, when I refer to academic journal articles, they're going to be in the show notes. When I refer to anything, it's going to be in the show notes. So don't worry about taking notes on this unless you want to. You can go to the show notes on YouTube and you can actually click on the links and find everything that I'm talking about here. No ambiguity on that. Okay.

• 7:33Arthur Brooks?

  The first kind of study asks, when people are happier, do they do better work? And so there's one study, a 2023 study on, a study on, on telesales workers, people who are making calls for sales. That might not sound like the kind of job that you want, but it's a job that some people are really good at. Some people really like it. I've talked to people who just love doing it because they're extremely social people. And what they did was they measured before people started their shift in telesales, their, their mood, how happy they were on a particular day. And, and sure enough, when people are happier before they start their shift, the more sales they initiate, the more calls they do, and the more sales that they actually complete. On every measure of productivity for sales, people do better when they're happier.

• 8:18Arthur Brooks?

  Now, the second type is when you have an intervention to make people happier, whether they do better work. Not just how happy they happen to be on a particular day. So what they did was, in, in, in a different paper, this is a, this is a paper from 2015 called Happiness and Productivity. This is in the Journal of Labor Economics. People were brought into the lab and they were shown clips from funny movies, so, from comedies. And it made them happier because you watch a funny movie, you laugh, you get happier. It's one of the greatest ways to get happier is by laughing, of course. And then they were asked to do different tasks and they performed better on tasks when they had been laughing than when they hadn't been laughing. Okay, now. All this is to say, happiness leads to greater productivity, leads to greater

• 9:03Arthur Brooks?

  performance, it's just better for people working. But that's not useful. Why? Because we're not going to say to employees, if you're a manager, I'll tell you what, come into work on the days when you're feeling good. That doesn't work that way. I can't do that in my job. You know, when I'm like, you know, I'm just not feeling it today. I'm feeling kind of grumpy. I'm not going to go in because I probably won't get any good ideas today. That's not how it works. I work on days when I'm feeling grumpy and I, I try not to be grumpy, but you get my point. So that's not very practical. Even less practical is if you're running an organization to show funny movies before everybody starts the workday. Sorry, that's not going to work at all. All it shows is the, is the correlation between happiness and productivity.

• 9:47Arthur Brooks?

  I have something way better than that. It comes from a, a research company on Wall Street. It's a, it's a, an investment research company called Irrational Capital. And this is a group that has been collecting data, proprietary data from companies on workplace well-being. Some of it actually is from public sources, but some of it actually field surveys inside companies, thousands of companies as a matter of fact, to see how well people are doing, how happy people are at work, and, and what are the characteristics of their managers? What are the characteristics of the workplace? Why? Because they want to find out how happy people are, how well the companies are performing, how those two things correlate.

• 10:29Arthur Brooks?

  And then the aspects of work that's actually leading to this greater level of happiness from people at the companies, which we hope are performing better than the companies where people are unhappy. You get my point? Right? In other words, when people are happier, do their companies perform better? And what do managers do to actually create this environment of greater happiness? Therefore, when we get these data, what can you do, whether you're a manager or not, to create greater workplace happiness? This is going to be super practical and a bunch of news that you can use. Now, one thing right off the bat, Irrational Capital, terrific company. I have no financial relationship with them whatsoever. I know the people who run And I've seen their data and that's it. And that's important, obviously, because it would be a conflict of interest.

• 11:15Arthur Brooks?

  Now, what do they find? They're looking at companies in the S and P five hundred in the index of, of, you know, big, important companies in the United States. Five hundred companies in the United States. They're looking across a bunch of different dimensions of well being. At those that perform in the top twenty percent in workplace well being. And those that perform in the bottom twenty percent in workplace well being. They're comparing the happiest companies, the happiest one fifth of companies with, I guess, the unhappiest one fifth of companies. And what do they find? They find that the stock price, because these are all publicly traded companies. And the top fifth performed at about six percentage points above the bottom fifth. I mean, this is, this is a lot.

• 11:58Arthur Brooks?

  If you're, if you have a stock portfolio and you're an investor, like a serious investor, you have a hedge fund or, you know, financial management firm. And you're consistently six points above an index. You're going to be in the financial hall of fame. You're going to make a lot of money. So this is a huge difference and something that really gets the attention. It also should get our attention in the world of social science, because you don't see, I mean, this is, this is real differences. This is not theory anymore. This is actual performance of companies. They also find that, that, that they're able to trade on this. So this company, Irrational Capital, has, has created an ETF, an electronically traded fund. Which actually buys systematically those companies in the top twenty percent of happiness.

• 12:43Arthur Brooks?

  And, you know, bundles them all together into this fund and people can buy it themselves. It's actually, it's actually a traded fund. And that fund has performed at about ten percent above the S and P five hundred consistently. So that's evidence that what I'm going to talk about here actually works. Okay, I'm not giving you investment advice. That's not the point of what I'm doing here. You got to go to somebody else for investment advice. I'm giving you happiness advice. I'm just getting it from some investment information. Okay, so that's a wind up. It turns out that the happiest companies, the, the employees. In those companies are experiencing six things. That the employees in the unhappiest companies are not experiencing.

• 13:27Arthur Brooks?

  As a matter of fact, that the employees in the average company is not experiencing. These are the best practices now. Most people don't know, I mean, like, I want my employees to be happier. And not just because they're going to work better, but because. I want them to be happier. I like them. I care about them. And that's great. That's really important thing. But people don't know what to do. And so, you know, I spend a lot of time talking to companies. It's a big part of what I do as part of my business. And, you know, they're like. Let's put in a ping pong table. Um, let's have unlimited avocado toast. Like they're. People my age are tearing out their hair.

• 14:02Arthur Brooks?

  Not me, obviously, um. About what to do to satisfy Gen Z workers. It's like this big mysterious thing. And so, well, you know, they say they want breakfast, so let's give them breakfast. They say they want, you know, stuff to do to goof around, a dartboard or something. That's not right. I mean, people might give you these answers. We do know what actually works, and it's not just for Gen Z. And millennials, it's also Gen X and and and the boomers that that continue to be in the workforce. Because it turns out these things work for absolutely everybody. Side note. All that research that we have about differences between generations and what they want. Most of it doesn't stand up. It's mostly about age and not about generation. There's not these huge.

• 14:44Arthur Brooks?

  You know, flagrant differences between Gen Z'ers and baby boomers. It's just that Gen Z'ers are younger than baby boomers and. And when I was the age of Gen Z, um, I wanted different things too. So the truth is that when it comes to a lot of fundamentals with respect to love and happiness. We're all the same. We're just at a different place in our life's journey. And and case in point is what I'm going to talk about here. So. Now the big news. Here's the big information that you can use. There are six things. That happier people at work experience that managers are bringing and that you can engage in. That will result in a better workplace experience for yourself and others, whether you're a manager or not a manager. Okay?

• 15:27Arthur Brooks?

  Now I'm going to give you these things in order of how important they are with respect to how well companies perform. Okay, so this is number one, number one, it's not avocado toast. Number one is what the researchers call innovation. Again, that's too general, right? What they mean is managers, leaders inside companies where people are really happy are super open to input and ideas. We want everybody's ideas. Now, everybody says that, but does, do people actually mean that? When they mean it and they take these ideas, when people feel like they can make things better at work, when you come up with a good idea and people are like, huh, wow, or we tried that, or whatever, but when you feel like you're listened to and you're part of

• 16:12Arthur Brooks?

  the solution to problems and you're getting rid of inefficiencies, it's, that's the number one thing, and making you like your job more, is, is having a say in actually how things work. By the way, this is true in families, this is true in any sort of organization, any sort of grouping of people, when you have no say in anything and things aren't going right, it's extremely disheartening, it's frustrating, it's disappointing. And that's number one when it comes to that. Now, I've seen managers try to do this and do it really, really poorly. I was giving this advice to the managers of one company, as a matter of fact, and I said, get more input, like, listen to people's ideas. I'm like, okay, okay, okay. And so the CEO of this company has a town hall meeting with all of his employees, he

• 16:57Arthur Brooks?

  had something like 200 employees, and he gets them together in this room and he's like, okay, I want all your best ideas, I want all your best ideas. And a guy puts up his hand, he's like, um, I would love it if there was decaf in the break room. And the CEO looks at him and said, decaf? Decaf is for losers. Okay, next idea. Okay, that's not how to do it. Okay? Listen to people's ideas. Take them seriously. You don't have to implement everything, but listening to people in a serious way, that's the, one of the basics of human communication, and that's number one in happiness at work. The actionable advice is actively seek and show appreciation for feedback. That's number one.

• 17:42Arthur Brooks?

  Okay, number two.

• 17:45Arthur Brooks?

  Number two is what's called in the research, direct management. Once again, when I say number two, this is number two in importance, meaning it's still really super important. All six are really important, but number two is right up there. Direct management means clarity and truthfulness of communication. People hate it when they don't feel like they're getting the whole story. And this is especially true in turbulent times in business, which we're absolutely going through right now. I mean, there's this big argument, you read the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times today, it's like, good times in business, bad times in business. I don't know, we're oscillating between that. You'll see an article that says one and the other on the same front page of kind of all these financial papers these days. It's extremely confusing.

• 18:27Arthur Brooks?

  And the reason for that is that it's kind of both. We don't know a lot of what's going on in the financial world and in business today. And that's especially hard on people inside companies where they don't think they're getting the straight scoop. A company might be suffering and people wonder, what's going to happen to my job? What's going to happen to my bonus? Am I going to get a raise? You know, what does the future bring? People hate that sort of uncertainty. And there's a reason for that. In the social science literature, uncertainty leads to fear. And it makes perfect sense, in the ancestral environment, we wanted to be able to control what's going on around us as much as we possibly can. And when things are really uncertain, you can't deal with it.

• 19:09Arthur Brooks?

  What it does is it actually stimulates the amygdala and the limbic system of your brain to say, danger, uncertainty is a sign of danger. What do we want to do? We want to be able to, we want to be able to deal with it. We want the straight scoop. Then it becomes kind of risk. And we can manage risk. We can create our own sort of insurance mechanisms. How do I think about the job market? How do I think about the future? And that starts with managers being truthful, being direct, being clear in their communications, which is why it's so critically important when people say, yeah, my boss is, you know, even want to have bad news. Even when he's giving me hard information, he's giving me truth. That is critical.

• 19:53Arthur Brooks?

  That means that being frank and explicit, even when there's uncertainties, is a kind of a non-negotiable. Good news and bad news, and even worries. People want to know when something's on the boss's mind, which is one of the reasons, by the way, that there's all this literature, all this research out there that shows that when the boss is being really moody, it bums out employees because they're like, uh, what's going on? It's like, did he, you know, eat a bad steak last night? Did he get, you know, screamed at by his spouse last night? Or did he actually see something that's going to give him a bad earnings call this week? It's hard on employees to see that. And even when there's a lot of uncertainty in the boss's mind, there's a tendency for

• 20:38Arthur Brooks?

  managers to say, like, if I don't know, I'm not going to say anything. It's better to say, I don't know, but I'm going to tell you when I do. I've seen data on this, and I've experienced this myself, that when I would say as a CEO, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, but you're going to be the first one who knows when I do. You can trust me on this. It really puts people at ease that there's not something going on that they don't know about. Direct management means being clear and honest all the time, and that's number two. All right. Number three. Number three is what researchers call organizational effectiveness. Now, again, these things could mean anything, but what this means is being non-bureaucratic and being efficient.

• 21:21Arthur Brooks?

  A lot of people think that employees are like, you know, I'll come in, I'll do what you want me to do, you know, you can use my time however you want it. That's not true for anybody who's even remotely motivated in the workplace. If you waste people's time, they're going to hate their jobs. That's just the case. You know, when they have, you know, filling out forms and, you know, triplicate and all sorts of nonsense in the workplace that's bureaucratic and where they have to do things several times, they hate it. They feel like their time is actually being wasted. There's one thing above all that people actually hate that you can do something about, and that's cutting out meetings. I've done a lot of research on meetings over my life. I hate them, right? I mean, I hate meetings.

• 22:03Arthur Brooks?

  I have to say this, this is my bias. I don't like meetings. I like doing stuff instead of talking, just talking about stuff. Now, sometimes they're necessary. We all have to be on the same page. We have to know what other people are doing in the workplace. But so much of meetings are not helpful, are useless, or even worse, they destroy productivity. I've been an academic for a long time, and meetings in academia are brutal, are brutal. I mean, you could be shocked at how long professors can talk and complain about the university dental plan. I mean, it's just, it's just terrible. And you're like, I want to go back to my office and, you know, work on my column, work on my paper, prepare my classes, do stuff.

• 22:46Arthur Brooks?

  And that's how people feel, not just in universities, all across the workforce. So I have a whole bunch of, and I'll put in the show notes, some things that I've written about actually how to make meetings better. And the number one way to make meetings better is cancel them if you possibly can. Where do I see this the most, by the way? In workplaces that are so-called democratic. Democratic leaders are those who are completely committed to making sure that everybody has their say all the time. Newsflash, people don't like that, and your highest performers like that the least. The democratic leadership model is not an effective leadership model. This is particularly true often in nonprofit organizations. Now, some people like it, but your highest performers actually don't, and there's research on that.

• 23:31Arthur Brooks?

  If I have time in the end of this podcast, I'm going to give you something on that research as well. So, don't hold meetings for people who don't need to be at meetings. You need fewer meetings than you think. Have them super short. By the way, there's one piece of research on this that shows that if you limit meeting times to 30 minutes or less, you'll get rid of the niceties. So, did you go sailing this weekend? None of that. You get into it, get in, get out, get the business done, and people will love it. That's number three. Organizational effectiveness, especially around meetings. If you do something on this.

• 24:05Arthur Brooks?

  If you say, "Today's meeting is canceled. I don't think it's a good use of your time." Boy, you'll be shocked at how much the morale goes up. Let's continue with number four. Number four is engagement. Could mean anything, right? It doesn't mean just anything. Engagement refers to leadership that supports learning and growth. People inside companies want to feel like you're investing in them. People want to feel that there's some faith in what they do and there's a future for them. And the future for them depends on their progress inside the company, inside the workplace, inside the context of their career. Human beings are made for progress. You know, people often mistake employees or any other person.

• 24:49Arthur Brooks?

  It's just people who want the paycheck at the end of the week or month or year. No. What people want is to do better at what they're doing. They want to create more value. We're inherently value-creating creatures and we know when we're creating more value. The best way for me to understand if I'm working for you, then I'm creating more value, is that you're investing in me. What does that mean? That means that my learning and growth are something you're paying attention to and that you're acknowledging and you're rewarding and that you're fostering along the way. If you're the kind of manager that can actually bring out the best in people, it's almost always because you're making these human capital investments. People are getting smarter. People are learning new skills and you're putting in the effort and maybe even the resources to make that true,

• 25:32Arthur Brooks?

  which is why it scores so highly in happiness. Create a culture where people are learning and people are growing. And that means just sometimes an overt investment in education and training and mentorship. What you find is that bosses, they do best when they see themselves as mentors. And by the way, that is especially true after bosses are in their mid-40s and above. And part of that is because something I've done a lot of research on, which is called crystallized intelligence. This is the intelligence that actually people manifest when they're in the second half of their adult lives. It starts to increase in your 40s and 50s and 60s, which makes you a naturally better teacher in the second half of your life. That's one of the reasons that CEOs who are teaching people skills all the time,

• 26:16Arthur Brooks?

  who are bringing people along, they tend to be older. They have this kind of wisdom and pattern recognition about what they do. But the older you are, think more and more about your role as a mentor. Think about yourself as a talent scout and you'll be naturally doing this engagement function that makes people so much happier. Supporting learning, supporting growth, bringing education and training and mentorship to everything that you do. So the actionable advice is fostering a culture of improvement of everybody through the mentoring and the training and the continuing education that you bring along and just the way that you talk to people. Ask people, you know, what would you like to learn? You know, or give people suggestions on how they could actually get better. And when people do get better, make sure that you comment on it while you really learned

• 27:01Arthur Brooks?

  that thing. Or ask people, you know, what do you think that we all should be learning here to get stronger and better as people? Bringing information to your learning management system in your company, if you've got something like that. That's one of the reasons I do so much of the work that I do is bringing leadership and happiness, the science of happiness to companies because people like it a lot. They find that it actually makes them better, makes their leadership better, but also it makes people more effective in what they're doing and more joyful along the way. So this is an example. This podcast itself is an example of how you can engage this number four engagement. Okay, number five. Emotional connection. You may have noticed that I didn't say very much so far about people's relationships

• 27:46Arthur Brooks?

  with each other in the workplace. It's gotta be important, right? Yeah, that's where this one comes in. Friendship at work is really critical. And so, one of the ways that people get happier at work is when there's a culture of friendship, a friendly culture, and the ways in which people can actually have really even close friends at work. Now, don't roll your eyes. I know, especially if you're young, I know it's something that people often say today, which is, "I don't go to work to have friends. I go home to have friends." Or, "I have friends outside of work." I get it, I get it, but I have the data. Gallup has shown that people who have a best friend at work, they tend to be happiest. And that's completely consistent with what we're doing here. Fifty-five percent of people who say, "I have a best friend at work," wouldn't take a job for higher pay. Now, I'm gonna get back to this in a second.

• 28:31Arthur Brooks?

  All the things that I'm talking about here, one through six, are way more important than pay and benefits. You have to earn enough and get benefits, obviously, but these are things that actually are more important for people in the workplace. And when we're talking about emotional connection, I'm really talking about friendship at work. Now, one side note, I'm not talking about friendship with a boss. There's a really interesting study from 2004 from Daniel Kahneman and Alan Krueger at Princeton.

• 29:01Arthur Brooks?

  That's, I mean, it's in the show notes, of course. It's called "A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experiences, the Day Reconstruction Method." Sounds dry, right? It's actually super interesting. What you find is the most negative and positive mood that people experience over the course of their day? The number one negative mood experience interaction that people experience in the average workday, people who work at companies, not bosses? The number one negative mood experiencing interaction is time with the boss. If you're a boss, sorry. You know, I saw that and I'm like, ah, you know? I started eating at my desk when I was a CEO and I read that, because I don't want that to be true. But it makes perfect sense. People don't like to be bossed. You're not a bad person if you're a manager,

• 29:46Arthur Brooks?

  but it's stressful to feel like you're with somebody who can evaluate you. That's natural. It's normal. I get it. And I felt it, as a matter of fact, when I haven't been the supervisor. And so I have to recognize that. But here's the basic point. Happiness doesn't come because you're buddies with the boss. Happiness comes because you're buddies with your coworkers. That's a really important part of the happiness ecosystem inside any workplace. And that means you, if you are a leader, you need to foster that and get out of the way. Find ways that people can actually spend more time together and enjoy each other's company and make it more relaxed in the workplace. And don't get all bummed out when people are having conversations, et cetera. Make so that people want to maybe even know each other

• 30:29Arthur Brooks?

  outside of the workplace and don't get involved. Now, I know, I know. That's not necessarily an easy thing. And it's especially hard, by the way, in the era of remote work. How do you do that in remote work? You know, I've seen workplaces that say, "We're just gonna have a Zoom meeting that's not about work." And we're going to talk about where we're going on vacation and what your favorite favorite restaurant is and all that. And like, nobody wants that either. And part of the reason for that is that that Zoom work is a happiness killer. One of the reasons that this that this is the case, that these this emotional connection is so important for happiness is because in-person emotional connection vis a vis eye contact and to a lesser extent, touch, you know, hesitant to talk about touch in the workplace for obvious reasons,

• 31:14Arthur Brooks?

  but you get my point. That elicits a neuropeptide in the brain called oxytocin, the the bonding neuropeptide. And you don't get that through Zoom. You get a tiny trickle of that through Zoom, which is one of the reasons that people felt so crummy during the coronavirus epidemic. And everybody, well, not everybody, but a lot of people watching this went home for work. And they it's like, I work just as much. I see people all day long through the Zoom screen, but I feel so lonely. Or, or I don't know, it's like, I feel terrible. I don't know what I want. What you want is that neuropeptide. It feels like you have a monkey on your back. It feels terrible not to have enough oxytocin. And so the idea that if you have an all remote workplace, you're going to foster these these happiness through these friendship connections, through the Zoom screen, you're kidding yourself. You're

• 31:58Arthur Brooks?

  you're not right. That's not actually going to happen. That's one of the big arguments about making sure that people are together in person, a lot, as much as possible, as a matter of fact. You figure out what's going to work for your workplace. You figure out what's going to work for your career. I'm just here to report the facts. You need oxytocin. From that, to get that, you need emotional connection. If you're working all day long, you need that from the people that you're working with. And that means working in person with people. How do you get that? Figure it out. But that's number five. The happiest workplaces, how people can get more of it in their lives and more of that in lives of people who work for them. And number six. Number six. This is the last one, but it's still super important, because it actually makes the top six. So all of these things

• 32:42Arthur Brooks?

  are things that you can do and should do. And that's called organizational alignment. Organizational alignment is making sure there's a good match between external your external mission and your and your internal culture. There are so many companies out there that talk of Big game about making a better world, but then inside their companies, they don't actually treat their employees with respect and kindness. And by the way, this is especially true in the nonprofit world. I've worked often on a nonprofits my whole career and, and man, I mean, I see it all the time where, you know, they work you to death and they exploit you and they're, and they're disrespectful to you and then they say, yeah, we love everybody, we're going to lift everybody up and, and people quit. People will quit when they feel that the external mission is so hypocritical that it doesn't even extend to the people who are, who are trying to undertake that mission.

• 33:28Arthur Brooks?

  So, so ask yourself, if you're a manager, is what I'm saying and what I'm doing, do they match? Your employees will notice if they don't. I mean, it'll be just like nails on a chalkboard every time you talk about, you know, all the good things that we do and this company's changing the world and then internally this is a, is a miserable salt mine of a company. It's just, it's no good.

• 33:51Arthur Brooks?

  So many nonprofits have failed, as a matter of fact, or they can't keep their employees but for profits too, because everybody's got this big noble mission. So, so how do you do this? What's the practical implication of this? Ask to be held accountable. Say, look, this is our mission. Are we living up to it? Do a 360 accountability review where people, if you're the boss, if you're a manager, where people are anonymously saying whether or not you're living up to that. Invite people to say ways that you personally and the organization itself can live up to its own mission. It's hard, it's hard. And sometimes people are going to be really unreasonable with you, but you gotta be tough about this because this is critical. This is, this is compensation for people.

• 34:33Arthur Brooks?

  And when this is a mismatch, when what you say and what you do are not in sync, that's like lowering their salary. They're gonna quit. Now, all six of these things are really important. How do they compare to, I don't know, the most common way of all to make people love their jobs, which is better benefits and pay? And the answer is all six of these things utterly eclipse these benefits. Now, what I'm talking about here are called intrinsic benefits. Things that actually make people happier. You don't actually make people happier. What you do is you create the conditions and they get happier. That's intrinsic to who they are. Some people can't dig it. Some people won't follow it. Some people don't like it or don't appreciate it and they leave.

• 35:15Arthur Brooks?

  But to the extent that you have a culture where people want these things, that's a good culture. Where people want to be happier, that's a healthy culture of intrinsic benefits. Pay and benefits, it's gotta be right. You can't exploit people. People have to pay their rent. You have to pay people fairly and have good benefits. But those are extrinsic benefits and those are actually less important to people. The things that I've been talking about here, between the top 20% of companies on these dimensions and the bottom 20%, these companies are performing at 600, 700 basis points above in terms of share price, in terms of performance of these companies. They're making way, way more money and investors in these companies are doing way better. What about the money, the pay and benefits?

• 36:00Arthur Brooks?

  The top 20% in pay and benefits versus the bottom 20% in pay and benefits? The difference is about 200 points. So the things I'm talking about here are about three times as important. Pay and benefits are table stakes. Get it right and then move on to happiness is what I'm talking about here. Okay, now, one quick side note about the kind of person you can be if you are a manager, about the kind of manager you want to be that gets all of this stuff right naturally. What's the persona of the manager who just tends to get these things right? The answer to that comes from the work of Daniel Goldman, who is a researcher on business, has written really a bunch of important bestselling books.

• 36:45Arthur Brooks?

  I'll put one of his articles in the show notes called "Leadership That Gets Results." It's from the Harvard Business Review and it's also, he's written it in a book. It's worth reading the entire book. And what Goldman does in his research, in this particular piece of research, is he looks at thousands of managers, then he classifies them with respect to six basic models. And it turns out that the managers who do the six things I've talked about here are a combination of two leadership styles that I want to tell you about right now. Now, to begin with, there's six, so let me go through the four that don't do this, starting with the worst. The worst kind of management style is called coercive management.

• 37:25Arthur Brooks?

  This is barking orders down the hall and forcing people to do things and basically being a dictator. Look, there's times when you have to demand immediate compliance. They're rare. And people who do this all the time, people quit these jobs. They don't want to be around these people is what it comes down to. People don't want to be in a family with these people, let alone in a workplace with those people. What somebody tells me, I hate my job. Nine times out of 10, it's because there's somebody like this in management, a coercive leader like this in management, who's just being a jerk and forceful and just generally not nice. So, duh, don't do that. The second ineffective leadership style,

• 38:06Arthur Brooks?

  which actually often is mistaken for that, is called pace setting. Now, pace-setting leadership style is one where the boss is a hopeless workaholic and works harder than everybody else and then makes the excuse of, look, if I don't work harder than anybody else, how can I expect people to be dedicated to their jobs? This is bad management. Being, working for a workaholic is extremely disheartening and frustrating. So, don't be that person. The reason for that is because you can never live up to what are perceived to be the expectations of that person. When I first became a CEO and I was panicking about everything, I had somebody very close to me come to me and say, you can't send emails to employees at 5 o'clock in the morning or at midnight because they feel like they have to be on email to respond. I said, they don't have to. And they said, well, they don't know that.

• 38:51Arthur Brooks?

  And so, I put timers on my emails so I don't look like a pace-setting maniac. So, that's not so great either. The third that's not so great is democratic leadership that Goldman found as a leadership style. And that's the thing I talked about before, the type of leader who says, everybody gets a say. Let's hear what everybody has to say and that leads to endless meetings and it makes your best performers fail. Probably everybody watching me here has quit a job because of well-meaning management that says, everybody's equal and everybody gets a say and you're a genius and you're a genius and we're all geniuses here. No. The fourth that's sounds good, but really isn't is called the affiliative leadership model, which is all about loyalty, usually loyalty to the boss. I'm going to make you love me so much that you'd run through a wall for me, but because

• 39:36Arthur Brooks?

  because of your personal loyalty to me. That's not a company, that's a cult. And, and, and by the way, there's nothing in the mission statement for any organization that says undying loyalty to the boss. So that's not so great either. Here are the two that are really great. One is called the authoritative leadership style, not authoritarian, different, right? The authoritative leadership style is one that, that, that asks of people that they understand the mission, that they know their place in it, and that they're really going to be encouraged always, always, always to live up to that mission. It's not about your loyalty to me, it's about your loyalty to our customers, and our loyalty to our mission, and our loyalty to our excellence, and our loyalty to your own career in being excellent.

• 40:19Arthur Brooks?

  People that can do that are just great cheerleaders, and people want to work for them. But that's usually paired with this other leadership style called the coaching leadership style, that helps people understand how to be that great employee, how to be that great team member, which means it has a lot of coaching, a lot of mentorship, a lot of education, a lot of training. Which gets us back to what we were talking about here. The authoritative plus coaching leadership style, that tends to be magic, because that's what brings these six facets of a workplace where people are happier, they want to stay, they want to work, they don't want to quit. Let me recap here. Employee happiness drives productivity and growth, okay?

• 41:04Arthur Brooks?

  Profitability. It makes companies do better, it makes organizations do better, it makes nonprofits perform at a higher level as well, government agencies, you name it. To do that, if you're a manager, or an employee for that matter, focus on these six things. Innovation, and you know what that means now. Direct management, organizational effectiveness, engagement, emotional connection, and organizational alignment. If you can't remember what these things are, look in the show notes, go back across this, across this podcast, watch it again if you need to, but this is news that you can use, you will, according to this research that we've got here, all of the social science

• 41:45Arthur Brooks?

  literature, as well as the data from Irrational Capital, which is putting real money where the research is, will make things better. And we all need that today, at least I need it, and I assume that you do too. Okay, I'd like you to reflect on your own management style if you're a manager, I'd like you to reflect on the management style of your manager, if you're just working inside of a company, because you deserve to be happier, and you need to make the environment where other people can be happier as well. This can be a game changer. Now, a lot of this stuff is what I'm talking about in my new book, The Happiness Files, up on the screen here on the graphic, so go get that if you want to see this, and you know, this is one of 33 big ideas in this book that you can actually use to grow your

• 42:30Arthur Brooks?

  career, grow your company, grow your happiness, inside your company, whatever you want to do. Okay, before we finish, as always, I want to take some questions, because the questions are coming in from social media and they're so great. Each one of these could be a show, and maybe will be, but let me address them right off the bat. These are mostly coming in from Instagram, so thanks, keep, keep, keep bringing them in. This is from Angelo Florescu. What's the definitive thing that convinces you of God's existence? Just a little one, thanks Angelo, just, you know, it's a little light topic here. There is no definitive proof of the existence of God, that's called faith.

• 43:13Arthur Brooks?

  That's why faith and, and reason, faith and reason, science and faith, that's why they're different. People think you gotta choose, but you actually don't have to choose between these two things. Here's the reason that those two things go together incredibly well, in my life, and in the life of a lot of, of viewers and listeners, and, and, and maybe in the future lives of a lot of you too.

• 43:39Arthur Brooks?

  My mother was an artist and she was not just a painter. She was really interested in the greatest artists. And we had this huge library of books dedicated to different artists and their work. And it was interesting because I started reading them when I was a kid, when I was, you know, fifth or sixth grade or something and learning about them. And I remember reading about the life of Vincent van Gogh. They, you know, the troubled artist, the greatest artist of the impressionist period. And I had seen his paintings a lot because my, you know, we would look at them. We would, you know, I would look at them in books and my mother would talk about them. But they really came to life for me when I learned about the life of Vincent van Gogh.

• 44:20Arthur Brooks?

  Now, I could have looked at Van Gogh's paintings my whole life, just stared at those paintings and not learned about Vincent van Gogh. But to get the full experience of what this art was and the full appreciation for it, to have the emotional connection with it, to have it enrich my life maximally, I needed to understand the creation and the Creator. And they weren't the same thing. You can read the Harry Potter novels the rest of your life and not find J.K. Rowling in those novels. It's not the same thing, and yet both pieces of information are interesting and useful for you. And that's what life is all about. That's for me as a scientist, what's the most interesting thing. The more that I understand the marvels of the scientific universe and all the things

• 45:05Arthur Brooks?

  that I can learn scientifically, the more I stand in awe of the creation of that universe as well. So what convinces me definitively of God's existence? Really, the question is, what is the basis of my faith? The basis of my faith is that the creation is amazing. And so I want to learn more and think more and worship more the Creator. Question number two. This is from Christodoulides Christos.

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• 46:35Arthur Brooks?

  I'm glad we're getting to the Greeks here. A minute ago, we were with Romanians with Angelo, and I think we're with the Greeks now. This is great. Are some people predisposed to lifelong unhappiness due to their personality? Let me say it again. Are some people predisposed to lifelong unhappiness due to their personality? Yep. Who are they? Me. Yeah. Now, lifelong unhappiness, no. But predisposed against the ease of finding greater happiness and predisposed to finding greater unhappiness. How do we know this? Well, because there's studies on identical twins separated at birth and adopted into separate families. That was not a diabolical experiment at Harvard University.

• 47:20Arthur Brooks?

  That just happened naturally between the mid 1930s and mid 1960s generally. Those identical twins generally didn't know they had an identical twin and were reunited as adults voluntarily. This was ethical and beautiful. And you can see some of these videos on YouTube. They're so fun to watch and funny and just lovely. But of course, behind these meetings where they were reunited, you had nerds like me in white lab coats and clipboards following around, asking impersonality questions. And what do they find? A lot of their personalities are genetic, usually between 40 and 80% of every personality trait, and that extends to their natural levels of happiness, which depending on the study you're looking at is between 40 and 60% genetic.

• 48:04Arthur Brooks?

  Your baseline mood levels are about half.

• 48:08Arthur Brooks?

  Genetic, your mother literally made you unhappy. Sorry. But that's not bad news. What that means is that if you're like me, and you had gloomy parents, and happiness was hard for them, and happiness is naturally hard for you, you gotta work more on it. You gotta get better at it. You gotta take the other half more seriously than other people. Look, I know people, they got the worst happiness habits, but they're happy. Why? Because their genetics are so good. Well, you know what? If that's you, you're annoying. By the way, that's, you're not watching. Because you don't need to. Happiness, for people who are generally interested in the subject of happiness, is because they're trying to get better at it, and you can. So yeah, some people are predisposed toward greater unhappiness. And guess what? Doesn't matter.

• 48:54Arthur Brooks?

  Work on your habits. Have a better life. I want that for you, because I want that for me as well. And finally, last but not least is, here's a good one. Monte Romaine writes in, "How do you contend with temptation?" We all have temptation. Let me end on this note. Every major religious tradition, and many philosophical traditions that are not religious, they see human beings as having kinda, kinda two natures. You might say, one is animal and one is divine. And this is, this has to do with the incredible complexity, the prefrontal cortex of the human brain, which is beyond the realm of complexity of any computer that has ever been envisioned, as a matter of fact.

• 49:36Arthur Brooks?

  It would be the equivalent of a computer with something like 880 trillion transistors. This makes it possible for us to do all kinds of amazing and complicated things, but also to have instincts that we, that we act on and decide not to act on. The instincts that we act on, that's our animal nature. Some are good, some are bad. The things that we don't act on, the decisions that we make notwithstanding our temptations and inclinations, that's our divine nature. That's something that's the better person that we have decided to be. That's the essence of what free will actually is. The difference between your...

• 50:13Arthur Brooks?

  Between your animal inclinations and your moral aspirations, that's how you contend with temptation. When you decide the person that you want to be, envision the person that you want to be, and it's not the person that you feel like being right now, you don't eat that piece of cake in a really trivial case. When you don't betray somebody's confidence, even though you feel like doing it, those are cases where you've chosen the divine path. So here's my last question. What are you going to do today to choose the divine path?

• 50:47Arthur Brooks?

  That's always worth living up to. Well, I'm going to sign off now. I hope you've enjoyed this second edition of Office Hours. As always, send me your thoughts. [email protected]. That's the email address. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple. Leave reviews, leave comments, leave everything, everything you possibly can. I'm going to read it. I want to know, I want this thing to get better. Send me topics that you want me to be talking about. Follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on every other social media platform where you might find me. And make sure that you order The Happiness Files, my new book, today, so that you can learn about what we talked about today and lots and lots of other topics. Stay happy this week. I'm looking forward to talking to you again.

• 51:32Arthur Brooks?

  Invite your friends. I hope you've enjoyed it. I'll see you soon.

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