Book Report – The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor wants you to “cultivate the mindset and behaviors that have been empirically proven to fuel greater success and fulfillment.” In The Happiness Advantage, his excellent chicken-and-egg examination of feeling good and performing well, the author challenges us to stop moving life’s goalposts farther out every time we experience victory. He cites Aristotle’s go-to term for happiness – eudaimonia – which more accurately is defined as “human flourishing.” Happiness breeds success – not the other way around – and we should start with the proper perspective, namely that human beings flourish when they strive for their full potential with successes then naturally falling in line. Note that Achor is a long-standing Harvard lecturer and globe-trotting Fortune 500 consultant, not some street corner dealer slinging vials of enthusiasm crack. This is science, baby, so take heed.

The wisdom either developed, or simply shared, by Achor will surely benefit any manager of people. If you’re charged with making your team successful, you must have at least 2.9013 positive interactions with your direct reports for every negative one. If that sounds overly specific, it’s because it was the conclusion drawn by psychologist Marcial Losada after a decade of research on teams and their various performance levels. Pop quiz, hot shot: what’s your ratio? Think it’s 3:1, as is suggested as the rounded-up baseline for inspiring others? That’s terrific and know this: the ideal balance is 6:1. Imagine for every sarcastic comment, eye roll, and dressing down in public of others that you do, the goal is six – count ’em, six! – positive moments, sometimes known as strokes. I’ll bet you $20 and a six-pack of your favorite brew that it’s far more likely you’ve worked for someone who’s done the precise opposite and ripped you a new one exponentially more often than they passed out carefree attaboys and attagirls. Managers think they’re making everyone around them feel warm n’ special and yet if they kept a tick sheet of all their careless comments one wonders what the actual results might reveal.

As it turns out, we should also let our people surf the web and yuk it up in the hallways rather than worry that they’re costing the company precious productivity. Why? Because allowing a bit of fun will “provide exactly the kinds of quick bursts of positive emotions that can improve [their] performance on the job.” Allowing antidotes to stress and anxiety improves focus and therefore performance. Another best practice: replace job descriptions with so-called calling descriptions. Through this process, you’d write an employment ad aimed at enticing applicants to come forward, highlighting the meaning derived from doing the work. You’d then help folks connect seemingly meaningless tasks to their goals and values. Sure, some of the book is corny and yet nearly all of it makes good sense in addition to the stacks of scientific evidence with which Achor backs it up. Before you write all this off as soft hogwash, consider the disparaging remarks Direct Report Darcy made about you behind your back just last week in the break room.