In an AOL jobs article, Alexander Kjerulf propose 5 easy tips to make your work life happier. He reminds us that happiness at work is important for employees as it is most likely the activity to which we give the more time per week, because it is also good for our health (A Gallup’s report clearly indicates the possible huge financial benefits of having happier employees as they will be less sick and less prone to switch employers) and also because it will lead to success.
This last point is also supported by a 2005 scientific article of Lyubomirsky & King, “The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?” in which the autors suggested that evidences indicates that it is happiness that creates conditions to success and not only the successes that makes people happy (although their is also a positive spiral effect here).
Many successful leaders (Jobs, Branson, Hsieh,…) have often repeat that they never worked as they always did what is a passion to them. They were not looking for success at first but more to make what was making sense to them. At the same time, such mindset creates better condition for success as you will likely not be devastated by your failures to the same extent as your goal is not to reach a result but more to do what you like. It is the same difference like between the optimalist and the perfectionnist (if I refer to Tal Ben- Shahar definition in his book “Pursuit of Perfect“), you will enjoy the path to success instead of waiting the success to be enjoyed.
“Delivering happiness” from Tony Hsieh, the CEO and co-founder of Zappos, the first online shoe store in the world, recently purchased by Amazon for about a billion Euro, is providing probably the best example of a new way to manage a company. First define your values, create the right culture and the rest will follow.