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July 2010 Podcasts for Managers - Why Happiness at Work Matters

By Marianne Jacobbi
July 2010

Host: Hi, I’m Marianne Jacobbi. Welcome back to our series of Podcasts for Managers. Our topic today is why happiness at work matters. Our guest is Dr. Srikumar Rao, author of a new book, “Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful -- No Matter What You Do.” Dr. Rao has taught at leading business schools in the U.S. and abroad, including Columbia Business School, Kellogg School of Management, the University of California at Berkeley, and London Business School. We’re delighted to be on the line with him today. Dr. Rao, thanks for joining us.

Dr. Srikumar Rao: My pleasure, Marianne.

Host: So let’s begin by talking about where we are. It’s been a tough time for organizations, managers, and employees alike over the last year. How happy or unhappy are people in the workforce these days?

Dr. Srikumar Rao: Ah, I must say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen it as bad as it is right now. The number of people who are feeling insecure, disgruntled, and generally disengaged from what they do is legion. In fact, my personal observation is that perhaps the majority of persons who are in the workforce are not particularly happy with what they’re doing right now.

Host: So how do we change that? One of the messages in your book is that happiness is connected to finding meaning in life and that when we derive a deep sense of meaning from the work we do, for instance, we’re happier at work. Can managers help facilitate that for employees and also achieve it for themselves?

Dr. Srikumar Rao: Absolutely, yes, they can. Let me begin by saying, it’s very important to think about how you define what you do. These are times of stress because of globalization and the recession that we’ve had. Competition is very keen and more is expected with fewer resources given and less time to do things in. So everybody feels this stress and there is a tendency in times of stress to think of what you do in terms of tasks. And if you define what you do as a series of stuff, like I prepare balance sheets and income statements and reconcile them, or I create marketing programs for new products, then you either are burnt out or you’re going to be burnt out very soon. Perhaps the best way to explain that is with an example. I was speaking at a major publishing company and all of the managers were very concerned about meeting their numbers. Are they going to get laid off or not, and how do we deal with the Internet and new forms of competition? And they lost sight of why they are in business to begin with. It so happens that when I was child in India, I grew up using books of this publisher and because they had an operation there they were able to put out textbooks very cheaply and that’s the only reason I was able to afford it. And it completely opened a wealth of knowledge for me that might not have been possible but for their operation. So I talked to them about how much it meant for me, and not just for me, but maybe tens of thousands of others and what a role they had to play in the shaping of an entire generation. That is why the manager should get up in the morning and come to work. And if you are really anchored in that, then the day-to-day tribulations you face, they’re a bump in the road as opposed to a major mountain. It is up to each individual to find that for himself or herself, but the manager can help a) by living it himself or herself and 2) constantly pointing this out. When you have a bigger picture that you point to, then people tend to look up and feel better. Look at the rainbow in the sky. Don’t look at the pebble on the ground that you stumble over.

Host: You have exercises in your book on ways people can achieve greater happiness at work by doing things like shifting their mindset and the mental models they live by. Could you talk about how that works and how to change your mental model?

Dr. Srikumar Rao: Certainly. Let’s take an example. Something happens and we immediately label it either a good thing or a bad thing. Ah, most of us tend to use the bad thing label at least four or five times as often as they use the good thing label. And the way things work, if you label something a bad thing, you will experience it as a bad thing. Let’s look at a work-related situation. I had someone who was rejected in a job interview and he was feeling absolutely terrible because he really wanted that job, and he spent a lot of time being depressed, dejected, and down on himself. A few months later, he got an even better offer, something that was close to his ideal job, and he would not have been able to accept it if he had not been rejected earlier. So when something happens to you, you honestly don’t know whether it really is bad. Look back on your own life and think about how things at one time you thought were terrible, but with the wisdom of hindsight, you can say, “Hey, it wasn’t so bad, and maybe it was even good.” So if you don’t label something a bad thing, then you don’t fall down, you don’t get depressed and rejected, and all of sudden you become open to possibilities that you might not even have considered before. That’s a good example of how you start shifting your mental models.

Host: Yes, and that gets me to something that you write about in the book, which I found really interesting. It’s about how to cultivate extreme resilience. Could you talk a bit about that and how it relates to happiness?

Dr. Srikumar Rao: Yeah, and actually it’s related to the mental model that I just gave. We become unhappy because we want the world to be a certain way and the universe isn’t cooperating with us and what we get is an outcome different from what we expected. And therefore we feel dejected and we need positive thinking to shore ourselves up. This is an unnecessary struggle and we completely create it ourselves. By extreme resilience, what I mean is when something happens that we did not want to have happen, we don’t feel dejected. We don’t feel depressed. We don’t waste any time beating ourselves up. We simply say, “OK, this is what happened. Not what I would’ve wanted, but hey, you know, that’s life. So where do we go from here? And you do it so fast that you never get down at all. So what I invite people to do is consider how they approach life and take the approach of the civil engineer who’s building a road. Now if you’re a civil engineer and you’re building a road and you run across a mountain or a swamp, you don’t say, “Oh, this a terrible thing.” You simply say, “OK, you know that’s the terrain I’ve been given with, now what do I have to do to build my road, and can I go over it, under it, across it, around it?” And that’s where you focus all your energy on. That is an approach that can be cultivated once you have that determination, you find that it’s not that difficult to cultivate.

Host: You talk about passion for work and life. It’s what every manager wants on his or her team. How do we find that passion for work?

Dr. Srikumar Rao:Actually it goes deeper than that, because what I’m talking about is not passion for work per se, but passion for life, and this passion exists inside you. Any manager who says they want a team of passionate workers is not going to succeed unless he or she is passionate in himself or herself. And when the manager is so passionate, when the manager holds onto a vision which is larger than the person and can consistently point the way, then he has a good opportunity to ignite it in others. One of the problems we have in our workplace is too many of us live in a me-centered universe; and in a me-centered universe, what we do is we evaluate everything that happens in terms of, “What’s the impact on me?” So if your boss leaves the company, you think, “Who’s going to replace that person and what are my relations going to be with the new person, or am I going to get promoted?” If you live in a me-centered universe, you’re guaranteed to have more than your share of frustration angst, dejection, depression, and all the things that make life terrible, comes with the territory. The only way you can get out of it into a place where you are fulfilled is if you are part of a cause which is literally bigger than you are and that cause brings a greater good to a greater community. And I give tremendous flexibility in defining what is the greater good and the greater community. So the manager has to understand this and be anchored in that reality and constantly be pointing it out to all of the people who report to her. And when she does that, when people are down and you point out, “This is part of the greater cause that is happening as a result of her combined activities,” that gradually bit-by-bit you get people looking up rather than down.

Host: Dr. Rao, your words and book are inspirational, and I want to thank you for all the helpful information you’ve shared with us today and thank you so much for joining us and taking the time.

Dr. Srikumar Rao: My pleasure, Marianne.

Host: You can find Dr. Rao’s book Happiness at Work at bookstores and libraries, and more about his work on his Web site, areyoureadytosucceed.com, and also follow him on Twitter. To receive helpful information all year long, remember to subscribe to our monthly manager newsletter. You can sign up on our Web site. And be sure to stay tuned for our podcasts throughout the year. Thanks for listening.

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