Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

sloanreview.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 477 posts

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#51

Post by martneumann »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #40
ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

I think Americans are more optimistic and thus are happier. Someone somewhere said it was America’s super power, that we believe things will always get better and it creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

I once heard that Americans motivate themselves positively:

If I manage to finish this work today, great things will happen!

... while Germans motivate themselves negatively:

If I don't finish this work today, I'll lose my job, home, family and cat.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#52

Post by endymi0n »

robertlagrant wrote: post #47
endymi0n wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're entitled to your own opinion, I can safely say this study matches my own observations 100%. Having hired and led over a hundred engineers, I wasn't surprised of the magnitude of this finding at all. Yes, happy people get easily worn down in bureaucratical organizations. Some of them adapt and get cynical. Some of them quit and join organizations where they can be happy and effective. It's the best part o…

I thought the study was saying you need to be happy first.

I never stated something else.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#53

Post by neilv »

> 1. Measure happiness in both employees and job candidates. In many ways, “hiring the happy” requires a bit of perspective. While we do not believe that happiness should be placed ahead of the knowledge, skills, or talent needed for a job, we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators, or tiebreakers, because the risks are low and the benefits could be important.

How is instituting a hiring-time assessment for happiness and optimism going to do anything other than:

1. Sell more interview prep/gaming books and coaching services.

2. Bias hiring disproportionately towards to those who know the ritual of how to answer, as a proxy for class.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#54

Post by paganel »

MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #40
ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

I think Americans are more optimistic and thus are happier. Someone somewhere said it was America’s super power, that we believe things will always get better and it creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

Not sure about the happier part, I may be wrong as I've never been to the States but it looks like the meth/drugs epidemic is a major issue in much of the US. A happy populace wouldn't need to resort to drugs.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#56

Post by Aeolun »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #36

Most people, esp. in the US especially and in Western Europe in general fake happiness. esp in public. With true friends less. US: I lost my job. I am so happy. It was time for a change, and I know there are so many better opportunities out there. Russia: I was fired from my job. It sucks. How am I to find a new job in this economy? What am I to do? Followed by vodka with friends. (Stereotypes that may or may not be…

> That is because your faith is weak, and you have too much sin in your life. If you were a true believer, you would be healed.

This is just people projecting their own insecurities. Obviously they'd like to believe that if it was them that were sick they'd be healed.

A bit like the wishful thinking around Corona.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#57

Post by daniel_iversen »

cube00 wrote: post #6

> While many — if not most — of us are motivated by genuine caring for the people who power our organizations, we also intuitively know that employee happiness should boost job performance. I have a hard time believing that "many — if not most" people in management are actually motivated by this.

Why? Are you saying people in general don't care about other people's happiness, or just that managers are special and don't care? I believe we care about people in close connection to us (family, friends, employees) but it becomes harder to truly relate the further away and larger the number of people are and it becomes more abstract (hence why it's hard to fix global health and poverty etc). I think there's even a psychological need to care about others once we've fed ourselves and achieved basic securities.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#58

Post by vbezhenar »

martneumann wrote: post #51
MaxHoppersGhost wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Americans are more optimistic and thus are happier. Someone somewhere said it was America’s super power, that we believe things will always get better and it creates a self fulfilling prophecy.

I once heard that Americans motivate themselves positively: If I manage to finish this work today, great things will happen! ... while Germans motivate themselves negatively: If I don't finish this work today, I'll lose my job, home, family and cat.

That’s questionable. Germany is social state. It has great protections for ordinary people. It’s really hard to lose everything because of bad work. Sounds more like US where you could be fired any minute without warnings.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#60

Post by montebicyclelo »

> we suggest that leaders follow the science and take a structured approach to hiring for, promoting, and developing employee happiness

> Measure happiness in both employees and job candidates.

> we conservatively advocate using measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators, or tiebreakers, because the risks are low and the benefits could be important.

Good luck getting a job, unhappy people…

I don’t think they have the evidence to make this recommendation, since they surveyed people already employed (by the US army), who may have been unhappier pre employment.

> might dismiss these results if you believe that military data somehow doesn’t apply to the business world, but you would be wrong to do so. After all, the U.S. Department of Defense is the single largest employer in the world

Their entire argument for this also applying outside the military domain seems to be that the military is a very large employer… However, is not the military a vastly different environment from normal civilian workplaces?

Post reply on HN