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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#91

Post by ajuc »

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…

As a guy from Poland working for American and English companies for a while and playing a lot of D&D with Americans. The culture shock is real.

Exhibit 1:

    (boss) great job team, could you maybe fix this one thing?
    (me) ok, if you say so, I thought we did pretty badly this sprint actually
    (my friend) he means that, it's just how British people say you're not doing great
Exhibit 2:

    (my american Dungeon Master in the game we play) any feedback on the last session? I want to hear your thoughts.
    (me) it was great but I thought that X, Y and Z were kinda boring
    (other players) why are you so mean?
Exhibit 3:

    (any American person) how are you?
    (me) actual response.
    (they) shocked.
Exhibit 4:

There was a poll in a huge american corpo I contract for recently, where teams from all over the world had to grade their experience with other teams. Mostly we don't interact with other teams so we don't have any experiences, the matrix is sparse, but we had to put a percentage in every cell anyway. Anglosaxons graded everybody 90%+. Eastern Europeans graded everybody but the few teams we actually interacted with - 50% :) There was a huge meeting for "solving the problems" and people couldn't believe it's normal here :)

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#92

Post by theclansman »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #74
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…

Happiness is only measurable in relation to sadness. If you were "happy" all the time you wouldn't feel like you were happy because that would be your default state - you would just feel normal. >One could aim for "contentment". Even that is unattainable for most people. That has been my goal, which has been more or less achieved. What more can you really ask for or expect out of life? Sometimes extraordinarily bad t…

Yeah I agree, whatever they do at work to help you being happier is just gonna be your new normal. Obviously there should be some minimum standards, but saying that being happy makes you a better worker and therefore your employer should worry about you being happy is silly to me, because that comes from the inside. I'm not saying the environment doesn't affect you, but if you depend on external things to be happy you're always gonna come back to a default unhappy state, waiting for more new good things to happen to you. Being happy is a choice.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#93

Post by sdoering »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #69
vbezhenar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not entirely true. Outside of government workers who are set for life, getting fired in Germany is definitely possible for various reasons, I know many cases. There are legal processes the employer must follow in order to fire employees but nearly all companies have lawyers that take care of that process to let employees go without getting sued. And you can fall on financial hardship if for example, you took massive…

Yes, you can loose your job in Germany. But definitely not as easy as for example in the US. Companies need valid reasons for letting people go. And then it doesn't work like: You are fired - this is your last paycheck (only in really, really extreme cases like you stealing from your employer or punching him in the face kind of reasons).

Then there is the fact that for a time after being let go you receive a relevant share of your average salary for the last 12 months from the state while you keep looking for work.

Does it suck to be let go? Sure. Is it the end of the world in Germany? In more cases than not - it isn't.

I work in a company with even stronger employee protection as we have a so called works council. A body representing the workers towards upper management and standing in for their rights. Additionally there are strong unions in some industries in Germany that also help a lot.

Ar there areas where companies sometimes already on the side of illegalities abuse the system and workers - for sure. Esp. in the low wage sector.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#94

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#95

Post by paganel »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #81
paganel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>A happy populace wouldn't need to resort to drugs How about instead of blaming the population, we pin the opioid addiction to big pharma and their illegal practices of lobbying and bribing their way into doctors prescribing opioids for toothaches and headaches. See Purdue. Also, Finland is constantly rated as the happiest country in the world yet suicide rates are relatively high and alcohol abuse is rampant, so may…

To be fair I also have my doubts about the Finnish statistics. I agree with your first point, much of the dire situation we have now was caused by big pharma companies.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#96

Post by dazc »

endymi0n wrote: post #38
NalNezumi wrote: post #33

>You 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, dwarfing Walmart by nearly 1 million employees I don't think anyone dismiss the data taken only from the military because of their workforce size & variety of positions (as indicated later…

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've worked for a couple of businesses where bullying, spitefulness and a generally unpleasant atmosphere were the norm and where it was clear from the outset that no one was happy and happiness in others was not to be tolerated.

I would describe myself as 'optimistic' rather than 'happy' but, in both cases, these businesses sucked the life out of me and the happiest days were when I left. Both times to my initial financial detriment.

Neither business is currently operating though, so no loss to me long term.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#97

Post by sdoering »

martneumann wrote: post #72
vbezhenar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right. It's a societal, imagined instability. In the US, if you lose your job, you're "between jobs". In Germany, you're "arbeitslos" (jobless), which some people use as an insult. There are entire TV channels that make fun of jobless people - think TLC type shows, but strictly about poverty and joblessness.

There is also the term "arbeitssuchen" (= "looking for work"). It depends a little bit on the way one looks at it.

But being "arbeitslos" ("jobless") is really a stigma in Germany. At least I feel a significant share of people see it that way.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#98

Post by niek_pas »

paganel wrote: post #61
avgcorrection wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitter, happier, more productive Comfortable (Not drinking too much) Regular exercise at the gym (Three days a week) Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries At ease Eating well (No more microwave dinners and saturated fats) A patient, better driver A safer car (Baby smiling in back seat) Sleeping well (No bad dreams)

No ofense to you in the slightest but your comment made me think of the darkest of dystopias. Re-reading it and getting to the "A patient, better driver" part I had to think of an un-patient, bad driver to sort of erase that feeling from my head, the best I could find was this scene with Harvey Keitel in "Bad Lieutenant" [1]. It also helps that I'm a Mets fan and, as such, we are almost never happy. [1] https://www.y…

I think you're missing the fact that these are the 'lyrics' to Radiohead's "Fittier Happier", which is absolutely intended to convey a distopia.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#99

Post by VBprogrammer »

hathym wrote: post #89
montebicyclelo wrote: post #60

> 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 the…

even if they recruit only happe people, what guarantee they will stay happy? should they fire them once they are not?

"The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#100

Post by hooby »

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…

You can't engineer happiness, but there are things that can be done to support and foster happiness.

Some very important key factors to happiness that can be provided in a job environment are: .) self-determination \ .) a feeling of mastery/competency (or growth towards it) \ .) independence \ .) being treated fairly and equally

Managers expecting their workers to be happy and show (fake) happiness, actually goes against several of those points.

Older studies show, that small, mostly self-sufficient, self-organized teams with little managerial interference are both the happiest and most productive.

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