We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
I’ve talked before about how practicing acts of kindness increases your positivity. Well it turns out that helping others not only makes you happier, but it also makes you healthier. Drs. Oz and Rozien discuss the health benefits of giving back in a recent article in Success magazine.
They explain that when people give to others, whether it be money, time, or some other act of kindness, they experience a rush of endorphins similar to a runner’s high. Even just thinking about helping people can boost positive emotion, strengthen your immune system, reduce stress, and decrease pain. In one study 20 percent of the people lost weight after they started volunteering. I know, they probably didn’t have time to eat! But seriously, studies of longevity show that people who help others have a 60 percent lower mortality rate.
So maybe more people should consider accepting the challenge by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet to give half of their personal net worth to charity. The fact is, among people with the same amount of money those who donate are happier than those who don’t. And they will also probably live longer.
But you don’t have to give money to help others. According to a survey done by United Healthcare and Volunteer Match people who volunteer report feeling physically healthier and having lower stress levels, in addition to the fact that volunteering provides them with networking opportunities and a sense of purpose in life.
Be creative. What are your talents? How can you use your strengths to help others? Are you good with children? Do you have financial knowledge from which others might benefit? Could you give resume-writing advice to people looking for work? What about going to a residence home to teach older people how to use the internet? Or maybe you could help with the choreography for the youth choir performance at your church?
Give your positivity a double boost by using your strengths to help others and enjoy the health benefits you will gain as well.
Use Assessments to Identify Strengths
An important step for increasing organizational positivity is to focus on people’s strengths. In order to do this, leaders first need to help their employees identify their strengths. Below I describe three different web-based assessments that can be used for strengths identification.
VIA Survey of Character Strengths
This is a free questionnaire that measures 24 character traits. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson identified these to be ubiquitous strengths valued in cultures around the globe. They are grouped into six categories: Wisdom and knowledge, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and Transcendence. The survey consists of 240 questions and the results provide test-takers with their top five strengths. There is also a VIA Youth Survey. Both surveys can be found at www.viasurvey.org.
StrengthsFinder
StrengthsFinder is an assessment created by the Gallup organization that has 180 questions and measures individuals’ talents related to 34 signature themes. This inventory also provides test-takers with their top five talents or signature themes. It was developed specifically for organizational settings, so the strengths that are identified are more directly applicable to work than are the strengths identified using the VIA Survey. To take the StrengthsFinder assessment you can purchase one of several books, including StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath and Now, Discover your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, that provide a unique access code.
Realise2
This inventory was developed by the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology. The items in this survey assess a large number of strengths based on energy, performance, and use. Results identify realized strengths, unrealized strengths, learned behaviors, and weaknesses. In addition to assessing strengths, Realise2 includes action-planning tools to help people develop a plan for applying their strengths. The Realise2 survey can be purchased at www.realise2.org.
Why not start by assessing your own strengths? Great leaders not only help their employees to identify and apply their strengths, but they know what their own strengths are and they use them to serve others.
Improve Your Odds of Survival by 50%
According to a recent study done by professors at BYU, “social connections – friends, family, neighbors or colleagues – improve our odds of survival by 50 percent.” And actually the odds are probably even higher because both negative and positive relationships were included in the study. The professors explain that relationships influence our health because our loved ones can encourage healthy behaviors like eating well, exercising, and going to the doctor. They also mention that having social relationships can lower stress levels and can provide meaning and purpose to people’s lives.
I agree, but I think another big reason for the finding that relationships improve our odds of survival is that relationships increase our positivity and positivity is directly related to better health and, therefore, survival. One of my favorite studies of positivity and longevity looked at the autobiographies written by Catholic nuns in their early 20s. The autobiographies were analyzed to determine the frequency of positive emotions that the nuns expressed. Years later, when the nuns who had written the autobiographies were between 75 and 95 years old, the researchers determined that 25 of the nuns from the group with low levels of positivity had died, while only 10 from the group with high positivity had died. After analyzing the data further, they concluded that nuns who experienced the greatest amount of positive emotions lived an average of 10 years longer than those who experienced few positive emotions.
Makes you want to get right to work increasing positivity in your life, doesn’t it? As the BYU study shows, nurturing your relationships can be a great way to do that. But is it hard for you to find time in your crazy schedule to strengthen your network and deepen your relationships? If so, Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, has some good tips for ritualizing relationship building so that it can become a habit over time. Let me know which ones work best for you!
3 Reasons to Focus on Strengths
Focusing on strengths is an important step toward creating a more positive work environment. Below are three specific reasons why a strengths-based approach to managing people leads to higher levels of engagement and effectiveness.
Increased positive emotions
A major benefit of focusing on strengths at work is the impact that applying strengths has on positive emotions. When people are using the abilities that come naturally to them they experience satisfaction, joy, fulfillment, and pride. In fact, simply discovering what their unique strengths are gives people emotional satisfaction. So helping people to identify their strengths and giving them the opportunity to do what they do best at work has a direct impact on their positivity.
Greatest potential for success
Another reason to adopt strengths-based management is that people’s greatest opportunities for success come from using their strengths. The same effort it takes to improve a weakness just a little bit can improve a strength significantly more. People become successful by capitalizing on their strengths.
Take baseball, for example. It is often the case that really great pitchers aren’t all that good at batting. Focusing on improving their weakness would require that pitchers spend most of their time in the batting cage attempting to improve their batting skills. Yet baseball coaches realize that this would be a huge waste of time. They will win more games if the pitcher focuses on what he does best and spends his time perfecting his pitch.
Enhanced self-confidence
A final reason to emphasize strengths is that focusing on weaknesses can actually undermine people’s strengths. Trying to improve a weakness leads to negative emotions and lower self-confidence. Lower self-confidence in one area of someone’s life will eventually spread to other areas. People feel worse about themselves in general and start doubting their potential even in areas where they have strengths.
Make sure this doesn’t happen in your organization! Help your employees to identify their strengths and make an effort to match their strengths to assigned tasks. Also, spend more time during performance appraisals discussing what your employees are doing well and figuring out how they can do more of it.
Evidence that Work Sucks
Scientists at Harvard and Northeastern Universities used the social networking cite twitter to study moods. The researchers coded words that were linked to positive, negative, and neutral moods and tracked the hourly fluctuations of over 300 million tweets. Results revealed that people were most negative on Thursday and were happiest on Sunday morning. Throughout the day people were happiest in the early morning and late in the evening and were most unhappy during standard work hours.
I think this is pretty strong evidence for the fact that work sucks for most people. They are generally unhappy while at work and are in especially bad moods by the time Thursday rolls around. So much negativity at work means that companies are missing out on the benefits associated with positivity including higher levels of job performance, perceived customer service, leadership potential, and prosocial behavior.
So what can be done to avoid the negativity that builds as the workweek progresses?
Trust
Managers can create a positive work environment by establishing trusting relationships with their employees. Trust is demonstrated when managers focus on results rather than constantly checking up on their employees. Employees experience more positive emotions when they have the freedom to work when, where, and how they choose.
Strengths
Another way to increase positivity at work is to help employees shape their roles so that they are using their strengths. Applying a strength releases positive emotions like joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Employees who use their strengths at work are more engaged and also more successful. Often small changes can be made, like modifying or trading tasks, so that people are responsible for tasks that require their particular strengths.
Meaningfulness
Employees also experience more positive emotions at work when they feel their work is purposeful and significant. Managers need to communicate how the work their employees do serves a valued purpose. Meaningfulness is created by making sure people know the significance of the tasks they perform and by articulating the organization’s mission so that employees can identify with the company’s goals and values.
The Twitter study reveals the negativity that most people experience at work. Make sure your employees don’t have to wait for Sunday morning to feel positive. Focus on trust, strengths, and meaningfulness to create a work environment where positive emotions are experienced all week long.
Amigos + Familia = Felicidad
When I lived in Spain one thing that really caught my attention were the close relationships that Spaniards maintain with their friends and family. You see it everywhere. At the airport whole families wait at the arrival gate to welcome a family member home. At the beach there are umbrellas with entire families gathered around; babies, grandparents, cousins. In the parks most every picnic table has a group of people sitting around playing cards or chatting.
The other day my daughter commented that in Spain she knows her cousins’ cousins from the other side of the family. One reason that Spaniards maintain such close relationships is that they don’t move around. They value living close to family and friends more than a better paying job in a different city.
You really see how important relationships are in Spain when it is time to eat. Spaniards can spend hours at the dinner table! They have their meal, a first plate then a second plate, then dessert, then coffee, then maybe an after dinner drink. The whole time they are talking and laughing, and, yes, sometimes arguing; but nurturing their relationships nonetheless.
So I wasn’t surprised when I read the other day that Spain is the second happiest country in Europe. The results come from a Coca-Cola survey of the top sources of happiness in 16 countries. The survey revealed that contact with family and partners was people’s greatest source of joy and the biggest highlights of their day included catching up with loved ones in the evening, eating with the family, and chatting with friends or colleagues.
Close relationships increase positivity. So make nurturing your relationships a priority. The next time you are tempted to eat lunch alone at your desk DON’T! Go find someone to have lunch with. Make sure you get home in time to have dinner with your family. If your parents or siblings live out-of-town give them a call to see how they are doing, or even better, plan a vacation together.
And for those of you who are wondering, according to the Coca-Cola study Romania was the happiest country in Europe, Spain ranked number 8 in the survey overall, Mexico was the happiest country, and the USA was number 6. Although I’m guessing Spain would have ranked higher if the survey had been taken after the Soccer World Cup. Lots of celebrating with friends and family then!
Often our first reaction when something goes wrong is to look for someone to blame. But assigning fault is counterproductive and it undermines respect. First of all, identifying whom to blame requires looking backward, while solving a problem requires looking forward. So you will never solve the problem if you are focused on assigning blame. Furthermore, blaming someone shows a lack of respect by signaling that they are incompetent or irresponsible. They will be put on the defensive and will be unlikely to provide much assistance in resolving the problem.
Collaborative problem solving is the most effective way to handle problems. Better decisions are made when everyone is involved in the search for and evaluation of alternative solutions. Involving others also shows respect by demonstrating trust in their abilities to successfully resolve the situation.
You can encourage collaborative problem solving by using descriptive communication. Descriptive statements avoid judgment by objectively describing the situation or event that occurred. Evaluative statements, on the other hand, are judgments such as “You are wrong” or “You are lazy”. These types of statements show a lack of respect for the person who is being evaluated.
Descriptive communication follows three steps. The first step is to describe the behavior or event, focusing on what happened rather than evaluating the person. Second is to identify the consequences of the action or the feelings it caused without placing blame. The third step is to focus on finding a solution. In this way the communication centers on the problem and how best to resolve it. The communication is supportive because the individual doesn’t feel personally attacked.
The next time something goes wrong at work, don’t undermine respect by looking for someone to blame, instead encourage collaboration and stay focused on resolving the problem.
Expressing appreciation for the people you work with, communicating to them that they are valued members of the organization, helps them feel respected. And not only that, it will help you to retain talent. One of the number one reasons that people leave their job is because they don’t feel appreciated.
So how do you show people you appreciate them? You can start by learning as much as you can about the people you work with. Actively seeking information from them, by asking about their families or hobbies, shows people that you are interested in them. Also, the more you learn about people the more likely it is that you will find something you have in common and discovering similarities strengthens relationships. So try to have a short conversation with a different person each week to get to know everyone better.
Another way to show appreciation is by letting people know that you care about them. Rejoice with them when they are joyful and express your sympathy when they are troubled. If you know someone has been putting in extra effort on an important project, tell them you are aware that it has been a tough couple of weeks and you appreciate all of their hard work.
It is easier to appreciate people when you see them in terms of their strengths. So before you meet with someone, actively think about his or her positive attributes. Then make it a point to highlight one of them at the beginning of your conversation. If you start conversations off on a positive note by expressing appreciation people will feel respected and will be more likely to engage in conversation and to listen to what you have to say. The result will be a more open conversation with more sharing of information.
Do the people you work with know how much you appreciate them? Are you sure? Why not make sure by getting to know them better, by showing that you care, and by directly telling them what you appreciate about them.
Respect Others by Listening
Treating others with respect is a basic foundation for establishing positive relationships. Leaders show respect by giving others their undivided attention. They ask people for their ideas and really listen to what they have to say. This lets people know that they are genuinely interested in them and value their opinions. It makes people feel respected as worthwhile, competent individuals.
Being a good listener isn’t easy! It requires being mindfully attentive, setting aside whatever it is you are doing and giving your full attention to what the person is saying. Candace Matthews, chief marketing officer at Amway Corporation, attributes her ability to build relationships to following her mother’s example of making “every person she spoke to feel they were the most important person at that moment.”
It helps to use empathy. By putting yourself into someone else’s shoes you better understand their perspective, where they are coming from. Your body language is an important cue that you are listening. Leaning forward and making eye contact express interest and a desire to listen. Minimizing distractions is also critical. Show people you plan on giving them your full attention by putting away your papers, turning off the computer screen, and not answering the phone. Try to stay present with the conversation, don’t let your mind wander or start formulating your response while they are still talking.
When the person you are listening to finishes speaking, pause before you respond. As my friend Kellye says, “Listen to the silence at the end of people’s sentences.” Pausing shows that you believe that they have something to say that is worth waiting for. It also gives you a moment to prepare a mindful response. Now for extroverts like me that is easier said than done. Moments of awkward silence can seem like hours! Becoming a good listener requires a conscious effort and lots of practice. I still work at it every day!
How good are you at showing respect by giving others your undivided attention? Why not set a goal this week to really listen when someone is talking to you? It can do wonders for improving relationships!
Mindfulness with Nature’s Help
I have mentioned before what a challenge it is for me to be mindful. I just feel like there is too much I need to get done to not be doing something every minute. And in those rare moments when I can’t be doing something, like when I am driving, I am usually thinking about what I need to do next. I really have to make a conscious effort to be mindful; to stop doing, to stop thinking and just be.
But things are so different when I am at the beach! I can spend hours sitting at the edge of the water listening to the waves roll in and watching the sand slowly bury my feet. I gaze at the pelicans as they fly by, so close to the water in perfect formation, and I smile listening to the laughter of my kids as they dive over the waves. I also love to look for shells, actually sand dollars and sharks teeth are my favorite finds. I am completely focused as I walk on the beach with my head bent, searching for a treasure from the sea.
According to Barbara Fredrickson, connecting with nature increases your positivity. She says that nature carries fascination, which draws your attention to it, and it is so vast that it can fully occupy your attention. Nature encourages you to be mindful. Henry David Thoreau experienced this during the two years he spent at Walden Pond. And I experience it when I am at the beach. I am so enthralled by the beauty around me that my mind doesn’t wander to other things. There is always another wave or bird or shell to hold my attention. I am completely in the here and now.
No wonder I am always so happy at the beach! But you don’t have to go to the beach to enjoy the mindfulness that nature brings; just go outside. Studies show that spending 20 to 30 minutes outside in nice weather boosts positivity. So go for a walk, eat lunch outside, work in the garden, anything you can do to connect with nature. And enjoy the happiness it brings!
