The Quest for Happiness - in life and at work

The Quest for Happiness - in life and at work. That's a pretty lofty title to an article, huh?

One of my favorite speakers/authors/people to follow on social media is Jane McGonigal. The first time I ever heard her speak was in 2011 at an ISTE conference in Austin, TX, where she talked about her latest book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  She then asked the entire audience (20,000+) to play a game of thumb wars. Side note, I think we set a Guinness World Record that day for largest number of people playing thumb wars at one time.

Since that conference, I have been an active follower of McGonigal on twitter (her handle is @avantgame if you want to check it out), and I keep an eye out for new material. Last year, I stumbled across her TED talk, The game that can give you 10 extra years of life. It's about 20 minutes long, and if you take time to watch it (and play along during the talk), you can add about 7 minutes to your life span!

Jane McGonigal - TED Talk 2012

I decided to take Jane's talk and turn it into an interactive workshop for managers and employees. The first step was to get people interested, so I had to come up with a catchy name, and "The Quest for Happiness - in Life and at Work" was created.  Within about 10 minutes of posting the session, the registration maxed out, and I started hearing from people asking how they could get on the waiting list.  "The Quest for Happiness" was a very popular theme!

Here's a breakdown of the workshop:
Introduction: Spoiler alert: there is no magic pill for happiness. We are not giving away the secrets of life in this session.
Warning: we are going to make references to science and math, so be prepared.
Let's Get Started:  We led our audience in the same activities Jane did during her TED talk. A roomful of about 60 people did exercises in Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Social Resilience, and we talked about how doing things from each of these categories each day help make for a happier and healthier life.
Let's Talk About It:  Finally, we broke into groups and got people talking with each other and thinking about ways to incorporate those things into their daily routine at work.

The ideas people came up with were simple - and most of them were inexpensive.  Walking meetings and regular recognition - these are ways you can get people out of their same old work routine and add a few brain cells and synapses while you are at it.

If you have time, I recommend watching McGonigal's TED talk this week. And if you would like more information about the interactive workshop, send me a note or a comment, and I will be happy to share!

Creating a Shared Vision - hint: shared means working TOGETHER

A shared team vision is one that is developed and supported by leaders and team members. Before you can promote the shared vision, you have to create it. Many times, especially in top-down led organizations, leaders develop a vision or goal for a team and then expect the team members to get behind it and support it. When creating a “shared” vision, leaders have to “share” the creation and accountability with team members, so that everyone has a voice and contributes to the process. 

You need a combination of personalities and skills to create and implement a shared vision – whether it’s a large, organization-wide effort for a corporate team, or even on a smaller scale, when you’re trying to coordinate a fundraising team or a church cookout.  Once you’ve created the vision, a team leader coordinates and directs the team members to make the best use of individual strengths and promote that vision.

To promote the shared vision, a leader needs to:

•           Make sure the right team members are engaged and assigned to the right roles. As the team completes different phases of a project or objective, you may need to make adjustments to assignments or recruit additional team members.
•           Create visual reminders of the shared vision. In one organization I’ve visited, the shared vision and values are posted on the walls, in the taglines of emails, and even in the elevators! Having a visual reminder is a great way to keep the vision at the top of everyone’s mind.

Recognize team members who are “doing it right.” Many times, leaders only take notice when someone on their team is lagging behind or failing. One way to promote a shared vision is to recognize when team members are doing their part to support it. In one of our divisions at work, they have created a “Making it Happen” award – leaders or team members can recognize fellow employees and the recipients are honored in a monthly lunch. This gives a sense of accomplishment and camaraderie, and lets other team members know that, if they do a good job, they might be recognized, too!