#020 Chris Smith | Finding happiness at work

Chris Smith, guest · [03:26]So I, I think I may have told you the story before. I went to dinner once, probably about eight years ago or nine years ago when I was in Joburg with staying with some family, and the rest of the family at the table and I, all discussing our work, it just hit me suddenly that all of us were doing a career that we'd studied for, that we wanted to be doing. You know, we were accountants and In insurance, and I was an engineer, and we were all working for companies that were making a bit of a difference. You know, no one was doing anything terrible. The companies weren't unethical. And we each had a fair bit of autonomy in our, in our jobs. We weren't at the lowest rung. And yet we were all incredibly frustrated by our organization. We all wanted to see our organizations do better. And yet we all felt misheard or, you know, not understood, and just frustrated in, in what we were doing. And it just struck me that surely there must be a better way for employees to feel, not only for ourselves that we, you know, in regards to the dinner, we're not griping about our job, but also for organizations. Surely we would be better in our organizations, more effective and more motivated if we were feeling positive about it instead of seeing all this negativity. So that is actually one of the things, that also one of the factors that made me want to do the EMBA was, you know, is there a way to make organizations better, whether it's my current one or, or other ones? and then, you know, I was When it came to my study topic, they said, choose something close to your heart. And so I was a little bit worried that I was veering into sociology, but I, I stuck with it and, and definitely I think it's, it's, been a, an interesting business topic.

Chris Smith, guest · [06:53]So I, I was struck during the course, you, you mentioned other things that came out during the course, and, and I'm dancing a little bit around in my answers, but There were so many things that popped up during the course that I wanted to explore further, and, one of those was design science, which is kind of based on the premise that the world consists of natural, phenomena and artificial elements, which are created or designed by humans. And an artificial element can be made up of natural parts, so like, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town is made up of natural plants and trees, but the design of it is, is human. It's laid out by humans, with a particular design. So the science of the artificial world, which was introduced, by Herbert Simon, says that, you know, we can, it's human designed, and so humans can improve it. And I see organizations as that, you know, humans create organizations, and therefore humans can improve organizations. So I started with the design science framework, which Is a fairly broad framework. It's not a very tight research methodology, but it gives a, an outline of kind of assessing the problem, defining the problem, and then looking at various options to improve it, and then testing those options. So when I started with the interviews, I realized that this was an incredibly, human phenomenon that I was trying to study this happiness, and really the definition of happiness that mattered for each interview was the individual's understanding of happiness. And so I decided to use a, a, an approach called phenomenology, which is a bit of a philosophy and a research methodology, and it entails interviewing people or interviewing texts and trying to understand the, the real essence of an experience, that occurs before somebody interprets it and, and describes it, which is difficult because you're trying to understand that through the interpretation and the description of the, the individual that has described it. But basically through the interviews then, I wanted to understand the real life happenings at work that made people feel happy or feel unhappy, and, so that those could be repeated.

Chris Smith, guest · [11:03]And I did about twenty-two interviews, each person described sort of two to four experiences, happy and unhappy. And what was amazing for me was how their personal accounts matched the literature. So the literature said to me that happy employees are more motivated. they are absent less. They want to stay with the organization more. They'll go out of their way to work more for the organization. money becomes less important, you know, financial reward. And I found exactly that in the interviews through very personal, descriptions. So one interviewee said to me, you know, in a previous job where they weren't very happy, they would take the odd sick day when they weren't quite sick. You know, and that's absenteeism in a very personal human expression. And, and she said, you know, in her job now, she will work on weekends, without being paid. She just wants to see the organization succeed. So that was, the, one of the most, amazing things or one of the most sort of beneficial things, I think, for my research was to, to prove that although I'm looking at human, employee happiness, it really does have better benefits to organizations and leaders should invest in it. And then the other interesting thing was how of those, say, eighty or a hundred experiences that were described, Every single one of them was a more eudaimonica type experience than a hedonic happiness. So nobody told me that they were happy one day when they got a huge raise or when they got a big promotion. Some people did say to me that they were happy that their company gives raises, incrementally, and bases it on their, their achievements during that quarter or during that, half a year. So, yeah, it wasn't the financial, the financial reward didn't make them happy for the financial sake, it was for the recognition. So I came up with around seven human emotions that we want to have met and about 20 odd sort of experiences, type of experiences that contribute to those emotions. And, the, probably the biggest emotion or most, the, the emotion that was affected most and affected happiness most was purpose and authenticity. Where people, again, tied to your demonic experience of happiness, where people felt that their purpose was aligned with the company's purpose, and that what they were doing each day was aligned with that purpose and, and furthering the interests of the company. they were much more motivated at work, they were much happier at work. They, they got an additional level of happiness beyond just doing a good job, and enjoying the, the parts of the job. And some of the other, there were so many insights, we could spend a few hours talking about this, this, this topic. But, another one was how, where people are unhappy, it doesn't actually matter how much money you, you pay them. people that I spoke to left jobs to go to lower-paying jobs, they left jobs to go to no job, they moved back in with their parents because they didn't have a job, and they just couldn't handle being unhappy at work. So I think those were two of the, the, the most amazing, things, but I'll, I'll come back to some more later if I, if they come back to me.

Chris Smith, guest · [16:12]So I'm thinking that, you know, many organizations, leaders kind of are just chosen from individuals within the organization, not necessarily based on leadership capability or leadership skills, but because they've either been there longest or because they're the best accountant or best engineer. And often those people are put in a position where they are now managing a team, and then that's it. And, you know, what the company often cares about is the performance of that team, as accountants or as engineers, and they don't look at the soft side. And what came out, through what I've spoken about, through the eudaimonic experiences that people spoke about, through the actions of the leaders, through that purpose, is that it goes beyond the, you know, the day-to-day tasks of accountants or lawyers and how they do the job, the relationships they form at work while they're doing the job become incredibly important. And so leaders, when they're put in that position, need to be trained on how to develop that, and often I feel they don't. So while I'd like to talk immediately to CEOs and change massive organizations, I think the first entry point for me is looking at, recent managers and training them on just making them aware, yeah, there are things that I really wasn't aware of that affect people's happiness at work. that I became aware of through this, that I can teach people and help them to engage with their, direct reports or employees or team members, more effectively, understand them better, and help them to be better employees. You mentioned, about how leaders have an impact on life, and, you know, it's also always struck me, you know, for, for years we know we spend most of our waking hours at work, and what happens at work, yeah, we take home. We're, we're not robots. And so if, if you have a bad day at work, you take it home on your family, to your kids, to your, to your partner. and so by improving people's happiness at work, we actually really can be improving people's happiness in life.

Chris Smith, guest · [21:22]So I think one thing I just wanted to mention was when we were discussing Some of the findings, and I was overwhelmed with a couple of them, like the fact that people really remember the, the big long-term experiences, eudaimonic happiness rather than hedonic immediate pleasure, and the power of purpose in their lives and the power of leaders. I think one of the biggest, sort of interesting findings that came out of the study was that we've got these, what I'd labeled, mediating emotions, which is what people are kind of seeking to, to meet. And so those I found were, they want authenticity, in themselves and in their leaders. They detect very quickly if a leader is, or an organization is not authentic, and they want purpose, as, as I mentioned. And then they also, they want to feel supported. they want to feel trusted by their, their superiors and by their organizations. they want to feel valued, and, they want to feel appreciated. There was an opportunity for growth, not just in their career, but in their personal sort of skills, and development as well. And then the one thing that really caused unhappiness across almost all the unhappy experiences that, that were described to me was uncertainty. People don't like uncertainty. And so as leaders, even if there's something unpleasant, if we can be upfront about it, And honest and transparent with, with our organizations, with our employees, with our suppliers, customers, everyone, then really that can remove a lot of unhappiness. So that is, that was for me quite interesting.

Petro du Pisani, host · [22:50]Yeah, I mean, in the last two years have been very uncertain. So how do you remain or provide some sort of certainty in an environment in a world that's really uncertain at this point in time? Although I don't think it's going to get any more certain going into the future. it's sort of probably creating those little islands of sanity that Chris Breen talked about, you know, within a very, very uncertain world, how do we create some sort of island of sanity within the organization that we're working in so that people can feel valued and, and purposeful, in what they're doing?

Chris Smith, guest · [23:23]I, I think so. I think as, as leaders, If, if we can provide confidence in uncertainty and also help, and I think that's something that leaders have actually been learning, that, that, yeah, the world has been changing the last two years and showing that leaders don't, don't need to be right all the time. They don't need to have all the answers all the time. But if they can be confident that there will be a way out of this, that they are working to find a way out of this and with the, with the team members to find a way out of it, and saying that it's okay to be a bit uncertain, to be anxious in the uncertainty, that is natural. And because I think that what happens with anxiety and uncertainty is it becomes a downward spiral as well, and then you, you kind of get lost. And so if you just have somebody saying, we're not certain, it could go either way, this is what we're preparing for in case it goes this way, this is what we're looking at in case it goes that way, and whatever way it goes, we will help you through it. I think that's all we as leaders can do.