Nic Marks shares how happiness is a key signal for how we’re doing, both at work and in life. He explains why feeling just “OK” can hold us back and offers practical tips to boost happiness and get unstuck.
Happiness is a good-bad signal - it provides a deceptively simple measure of how we are feeling, helping individuals, teams and organizations. Yet there is a space in between happiness and unhappiness.
When we feel happy, at work or in life, it is a sign that we are good fit with our environment. Our inner and outer worlds are aligned. When we feel unhappy, it is showing us that we need to change something. But feeling OK… we are not happy and we are not unhappy, just OK.
OK is OK, sometimes. It’s unrealistic to think we can be happy all of the time. But the danger is that we can stuck in OK.
Unhappiness is uncomfortable and we are almost compelled to take action. When we feel OK, then things aren’t terrible, but they aren’t great either. There is no strong signal to change things like there is when we feel unhappy. There is nothing urgent that is demanding our attention, but clearly things aren’t optimal either. Things could be better.
This is as true for teams as it is for individuals. Maybe feeling OK at work would be fine, if it wasn’t linked to two major risk factors for organizations: underperformance and staff turnover. I say risk carefully, as being OK doesn’t necessarily mean that someone, or some team, definitely is underperforming, but more of them are than happy teams. For example, teams where the majority of people in them are only feeling OK are nearly 3x more likely to report that they are missing their targets than happier teams, and alongside that their staff turnover rates are 2x higher.
This really illustrates why team happiness is a genuine win-win, employees are happier (and who doesn’t like being happier!?), and the organization is more successful.
Effectively OK is a weak signal of things not being OK. It isn’t really OK for us and it isn’t really OK for our organizations. It is a lose-lose situation
Our data shows that OK isn’t only a business risk, it is also sticky. People and teams can all too easily get stuck in OK. Only 20% of teams that consistently scored OK during a quarter reported being happy in the next quarter. The majority were stuck in OK.
The way to get unstuck is to understand more about the drivers of team happiness. At Friday Pulse we have honed a questionnaire that asks 15 questions about people’s experience of work. It is based on The Five Ways to Team Happiness: Connect, Be Fair, Empower, Challenge and Inspire. There are three questions about each of The Five Ways. And we always use an odd number of response options in our questions, the middle option helps identity that OK feeling.
When I look at the tens of thousands of responses people have recorded on Friday Pulse, it is clear that people who score OK for happiness at work don’t tend to have lots of things in those 15 questions going badly. Typically, they only have two or three areas that they respond negatively to. Instead they have lots of areas which they respond neutrally to. They are not worn down by big dramatic problems but instead by an absence of things going well. And whilst this is a bit sad and it also a sign for optimism. You don’t have to stay stuck in OK. There are ways of escaping!
So, if you, or your team, are feeling a bit stuck in OK, then I would recommend you look at those areas which you have scored neutrally on. Not all these scores will be easy to change but identifying one or two to focus on will give a specific aim. Shifting might be as simple as taking time to notice what you have achieved and not just rushing on to the next set of challenges. Showing appreciation of each other’s efforts is another great way to build team happiness.
When I look at the teams and individuals that do get happier, they have typically made improvements in three areas, shifting them from neutral to positive. This highlights that people and teams can make positive changes and get themselves unstuck.
Try Friday One now to get your own personalised report with your results on the Five Ways to Happiness
Stuck in OK: How OK isn’t OK, and how to get unstuck – watch the webinar now:
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