About 90% of my Executive Coaching time is spent helping executives deal with difficult people. Mostly, the struggle comes from resistance - where people refuse to cooperate or even follow leadership guidance from the executive. This rarely happens in self-owned business for long because the front door is always open but in organisations, that door is shut due to legal, cultural and legislative controls. Hence, many execs in business' they don't own have to deal with massive doses of distraction, emotional unconsciousness and consequently placate people who really would be better off somewhere else. This article is as much about survival in business as a good human as it is about leadership. I hope you enjoy it.
So far we’ve spoken about internal and external happiness. We’ve recognised that external happiness is what we can call high maintenance and internal happiness is what we call contentment, low maintenance.
We’ve come to recognise that the laws of nature help people find contentment and therefore happiness that is not vulnerable. We’ve seen that sometimes the most successful and the most attractive people are the most internally unhappy because they are seeking what is missing and they are seeking a in every place possible.
Our ego is designed to look after our happiness. If we are unhappy it protects us, if we are wrong it defends us, if we are in pain it seeks pleasure. So our ego can achieve many things including happiness but this is all external, high maintenance and short lived. Sustainable happiness comes from the inside before the ego has a chance to play with it.
Self leadership
Given that we spend so much of our lives at work it’s wise to examine the cause of happiness at work.
Achievement and success do not have to come at the cost of personal happiness. Given that both are conditional on self leadership this is where we’ll start.
7 levels of happiness
It comes as a significant surprise to people that happiness and success are linked. As we’ve discussed in previous articles there are short-term causes of happiness and long-term. We’ve seen that short-term causes are high maintenance and very vulnerable and we’ve seen that long-term causes of happiness don’t necessarily make you laugh.
We don’t have the time to go through each of the 7 levels of happiness. So, I will give you the scale and you can interpret the gradations in between. At the bottom of the scale, short-term happiness are things that we perceive we have got to have. I guess in another language this can be called security: a roof over our head, food on the table, health and support. And although these things make us happy once we have them they don’t.
At the other end of the scale is love. Doing what you love and loving what you do.
So you can see two people doing the same job can approach it from diametrically opposite directions. One can perceive that the job is fulfilling their “got to” list while the other, doing exactly the same task list, may perceive that they love their work and are doing what they love.
Happiness varies with approach - Free will and leadership
Every human being has the right to think for themselves and therefore perceive their work as they choose. Bullying is inappropriate and so we can’t force people to perceive things the way we want. We can try all sorts of tricks such as bonus schemes and parties but at the end of the day it’s people’s private life that impacts their work-life and we have no control over that.
As a consequence of this huge resources are wasted trying to cause happiness in work. I have been in the industry of human development for 35 years and I know that when a person chooses to resist change and hold onto their perceptions and lifestyle habits, no matter how unhealthy, they do so with great enthusiasm.
So often in business we misinterpret our power over others as a leader. We really don’t have much control. We can influence emotions, we can motivate people and we can cause the working environment to be good, however we cannot change another person’s consciousness and this is where the problem begins.
I was born with a consciousness of a peanut. Through a lot of trial and error and many mistakes and hard work I have changed that consciousness. My happiness has improved dramatically but my productivity hasn’t changed much at all. Simply, this means that an extremely unconscious person can bring results in business in just the same way as a conscious person the only difference is the well-being, happiness and private life.
Work-based relationships
More than 50% of the energy spent in the workplace is spent dealing with things that are absolutely tangential to the productivity of the individual. Everybody is trying to be their best based on their perception of what will make them happy. Because there is a range of definitions of happiness, the 7 levels, there is infinite opportunity for misalignment in process. This leads to overt and covert sabotage.
99% of all conversations I hold with leaders are about people they cannot manage. Now this is not a reflection on poor leadership but a reflection of compassion and idealism.
Firstly there is a premise that people can be changed. This is wrong. Secondly, there is a premise that tolerance of behaviour that is counter-productive to results will eventually cause people to be thankful and therefore change their behaviour. Again this is wrong.
Happiness is a Lifestyle Choice
A person who has a “got to” mindset around happiness at work will be un-thankful for any support. The got to mindset is a lifestyle mindset and has nothing to do with the job itself. We carry our mindset where ever we go. So, the perception a leader might have that they can encourage improvement in an individual at work by changing work circumstances is fictional. To change and individuals level of consciousness around happiness one must approach the individual holistically and include all 7 areas of their life.
Holistic leadership is difficult because people do not give permission to leaders to impact other areas of their life. Most life coaches fall short in their capacity to support people holistically because they have expertise in only one or at best two areas of life.
Technology will ultimately solve this problem. The less emotion involved in human interaction in a business world the better the business functions and a more productive it is. However when it comes to customer service, such as a bank teller, technology has a long way to go before it can influence the way the bank teller and their emotional state becomes irrelevant to good customer service - but it will eventually.
Teamwork
Under the banner of good teamwork I have run hundreds of workshops around the world. The problem with these teamwork workshops is that the mission is not really teamwork. It’s compliance.
The idea the leader has is to think alike encourage a group of people to think alike, to get on well together, to agree, to support each other, to have a common culture, to be a happy family, to be willing to communicate authentically. Such an objective is myth. A good team has a process of disagreement not agreement. In other words a good team agrees to disagree.
The nature of teamwork is a balance of opinions. The nature of teamwork also includes recognition that varying levels of consciousness in a group will cause varying opinions about one topic. For example; in a team of 20 people one person’s lifestyle might dictate a “got to” strategy for achieving budget while another person in that team might have a “love to” strategy to achieve the same budget. Both individuals are right but they will argue because they see the world differently and their happiness is generated from different process.
Masculine and feminine leadership
This is a sensitive topic. When I talk about masculine and feminine I do not mean male and female. Masculine leadership is authoritarian. Feminine leadership is cooperative. Ideally in any organisation there can be flexibility to move from one to the other because there are times where authoritarian leadership is essential especially during times of change and uncertainty. Then, for stability, ownership and continuity the feminine cooperative model is more suitable. Really two teams in organisations understand these fluctuations in leadership and usually have a preference for one or the other depending on their level of consciousness in regard to happiness. Again, people’s consciousness in regard to happiness is a lifestyle decision and not a work based decision and therefore is not easily changed.
Time off does not solve unconsciousness.
The most common solution people try to apply to stress and unhappiness at work is more time off. When an individual asks for more time off work to deal with the stress of work it should be an alarm bell. Most commonly the cause of this stress is the consciousness (unconsciousness) lifestyle, or mindset, rather than the work itself. However, work and leadership gets the blame.
One of the great oxymoron is of business is time off. A clumsy mental approach to happiness at work does not transform itself into an efficient process when time is taken away from the workplace. I live in a neighbourhood of executives and business people and I can promise that the more time off these people have the more violent their home lives become. They simply take what they were expressing at work and express it at home.
Time for a change
If there was ever an opportunity to change the way people think at work, now is it. But the first step is not to throw the full responsibility of this change onto the shoulders of human resources departments or leaders within an organisation. The responsibility is a holistic one and focuses purely on individuals recognising the cost of unconscious lifestyles and unconsciousness in thought.
Some of this change is structural. If we live hand to mouth we have little choice but to think “got to” so this would be an educational process to teach individuals about their consciousness, structure and self leadership in a way that doesn’t cause them to be at the bottom of the happiness seeking continuum.
Conclusion
Realistic expectations of what can be done in a business to cause productivity and happiness amongst individuals needs to be blended with personal responsibility for consciousness. This consciousness is not a work based issue but more a lifestyle choice.
Enjoy Your Day Inspired By Nature
Chris
We’ve come to recognise that the laws of nature help people find contentment and therefore happiness that is not vulnerable. We’ve seen that sometimes the most successful and the most attractive people are the most internally unhappy because they are seeking what is missing and they are seeking a in every place possible.
Our ego is designed to look after our happiness. If we are unhappy it protects us, if we are wrong it defends us, if we are in pain it seeks pleasure. So our ego can achieve many things including happiness but this is all external, high maintenance and short lived. Sustainable happiness comes from the inside before the ego has a chance to play with it.
Self leadership
Given that we spend so much of our lives at work it’s wise to examine the cause of happiness at work.
Achievement and success do not have to come at the cost of personal happiness. Given that both are conditional on self leadership this is where we’ll start.
7 levels of happiness
It comes as a significant surprise to people that happiness and success are linked. As we’ve discussed in previous articles there are short-term causes of happiness and long-term. We’ve seen that short-term causes are high maintenance and very vulnerable and we’ve seen that long-term causes of happiness don’t necessarily make you laugh.
We don’t have the time to go through each of the 7 levels of happiness. So, I will give you the scale and you can interpret the gradations in between. At the bottom of the scale, short-term happiness are things that we perceive we have got to have. I guess in another language this can be called security: a roof over our head, food on the table, health and support. And although these things make us happy once we have them they don’t.
At the other end of the scale is love. Doing what you love and loving what you do.
So you can see two people doing the same job can approach it from diametrically opposite directions. One can perceive that the job is fulfilling their “got to” list while the other, doing exactly the same task list, may perceive that they love their work and are doing what they love.
Happiness varies with approach - Free will and leadership
Every human being has the right to think for themselves and therefore perceive their work as they choose. Bullying is inappropriate and so we can’t force people to perceive things the way we want. We can try all sorts of tricks such as bonus schemes and parties but at the end of the day it’s people’s private life that impacts their work-life and we have no control over that.
As a consequence of this huge resources are wasted trying to cause happiness in work. I have been in the industry of human development for 35 years and I know that when a person chooses to resist change and hold onto their perceptions and lifestyle habits, no matter how unhealthy, they do so with great enthusiasm.
So often in business we misinterpret our power over others as a leader. We really don’t have much control. We can influence emotions, we can motivate people and we can cause the working environment to be good, however we cannot change another person’s consciousness and this is where the problem begins.
I was born with a consciousness of a peanut. Through a lot of trial and error and many mistakes and hard work I have changed that consciousness. My happiness has improved dramatically but my productivity hasn’t changed much at all. Simply, this means that an extremely unconscious person can bring results in business in just the same way as a conscious person the only difference is the well-being, happiness and private life.
Work-based relationships
More than 50% of the energy spent in the workplace is spent dealing with things that are absolutely tangential to the productivity of the individual. Everybody is trying to be their best based on their perception of what will make them happy. Because there is a range of definitions of happiness, the 7 levels, there is infinite opportunity for misalignment in process. This leads to overt and covert sabotage.
99% of all conversations I hold with leaders are about people they cannot manage. Now this is not a reflection on poor leadership but a reflection of compassion and idealism.
Firstly there is a premise that people can be changed. This is wrong. Secondly, there is a premise that tolerance of behaviour that is counter-productive to results will eventually cause people to be thankful and therefore change their behaviour. Again this is wrong.
Happiness is a Lifestyle Choice
A person who has a “got to” mindset around happiness at work will be un-thankful for any support. The got to mindset is a lifestyle mindset and has nothing to do with the job itself. We carry our mindset where ever we go. So, the perception a leader might have that they can encourage improvement in an individual at work by changing work circumstances is fictional. To change and individuals level of consciousness around happiness one must approach the individual holistically and include all 7 areas of their life.
Holistic leadership is difficult because people do not give permission to leaders to impact other areas of their life. Most life coaches fall short in their capacity to support people holistically because they have expertise in only one or at best two areas of life.
Technology will ultimately solve this problem. The less emotion involved in human interaction in a business world the better the business functions and a more productive it is. However when it comes to customer service, such as a bank teller, technology has a long way to go before it can influence the way the bank teller and their emotional state becomes irrelevant to good customer service - but it will eventually.
Teamwork
Under the banner of good teamwork I have run hundreds of workshops around the world. The problem with these teamwork workshops is that the mission is not really teamwork. It’s compliance.
The idea the leader has is to think alike encourage a group of people to think alike, to get on well together, to agree, to support each other, to have a common culture, to be a happy family, to be willing to communicate authentically. Such an objective is myth. A good team has a process of disagreement not agreement. In other words a good team agrees to disagree.
The nature of teamwork is a balance of opinions. The nature of teamwork also includes recognition that varying levels of consciousness in a group will cause varying opinions about one topic. For example; in a team of 20 people one person’s lifestyle might dictate a “got to” strategy for achieving budget while another person in that team might have a “love to” strategy to achieve the same budget. Both individuals are right but they will argue because they see the world differently and their happiness is generated from different process.
Masculine and feminine leadership
This is a sensitive topic. When I talk about masculine and feminine I do not mean male and female. Masculine leadership is authoritarian. Feminine leadership is cooperative. Ideally in any organisation there can be flexibility to move from one to the other because there are times where authoritarian leadership is essential especially during times of change and uncertainty. Then, for stability, ownership and continuity the feminine cooperative model is more suitable. Really two teams in organisations understand these fluctuations in leadership and usually have a preference for one or the other depending on their level of consciousness in regard to happiness. Again, people’s consciousness in regard to happiness is a lifestyle decision and not a work based decision and therefore is not easily changed.
Time off does not solve unconsciousness.
The most common solution people try to apply to stress and unhappiness at work is more time off. When an individual asks for more time off work to deal with the stress of work it should be an alarm bell. Most commonly the cause of this stress is the consciousness (unconsciousness) lifestyle, or mindset, rather than the work itself. However, work and leadership gets the blame.
One of the great oxymoron is of business is time off. A clumsy mental approach to happiness at work does not transform itself into an efficient process when time is taken away from the workplace. I live in a neighbourhood of executives and business people and I can promise that the more time off these people have the more violent their home lives become. They simply take what they were expressing at work and express it at home.
Time for a change
If there was ever an opportunity to change the way people think at work, now is it. But the first step is not to throw the full responsibility of this change onto the shoulders of human resources departments or leaders within an organisation. The responsibility is a holistic one and focuses purely on individuals recognising the cost of unconscious lifestyles and unconsciousness in thought.
Some of this change is structural. If we live hand to mouth we have little choice but to think “got to” so this would be an educational process to teach individuals about their consciousness, structure and self leadership in a way that doesn’t cause them to be at the bottom of the happiness seeking continuum.
Conclusion
Realistic expectations of what can be done in a business to cause productivity and happiness amongst individuals needs to be blended with personal responsibility for consciousness. This consciousness is not a work based issue but more a lifestyle choice.
Enjoy Your Day Inspired By Nature
Chris
RSS Feed
