Work is Love Made Visible

by Frances Hesselbein

  Our dreams may change; they probably should. As we grow wiser and more experienced, inevitably older, we value some things more and others less than in earlier days. But our need for fulfillment, for the mystery of new horizons, the challenge of opportunities to learn and solve significant problems, to contribute to the improvement of our neighborhood or the world, in large ways and small, should never leave us. We may move from one passion project to another, disrupting ourselves again and again as one dream is abandoned or fulfilled and another takes its place. Whatever your dream(s), I challenge you to throw down your pompoms, or your joystick, and get in the game.

  Until you take them up again. Because true confession: My first dream will probably be my last. I am a cheerleader at heart.

  Reflection Questions:

  In what ways are you a cheerleader for others in your personal life? In your workplace?

  Do you have a saying like, “Throw down your pompoms and get in the game” from your youth that you apply to your present life? How is it still relevant? Have you had to adjust it?

  Do you think that men and women face the same or different challenges in the workplace? To what do you attribute this?

  Note

  1. Nicholas Eberstadt, Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2016).

  32

  Silver Linings

  Asheesh Advani

  Asheesh is the CEO of Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide, a global NGO dedicated to educating young people about entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and work readiness. With offices in over 115 countries, the JA network serves over 10 million students annually and is one the world’s most impactful NGOs. Asheesh is an accomplished entrepreneur, having served as CEO of Covestor (a financial marketplace acquired by Interactive Brokers) and Founder/CEO of CircleLending (a social lending company acquired by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group). He helped pioneer the social finance industry by working with regulators and credit bureaus to develop guidelines for peer-to-peer lending and crowd funding. Asheesh’s experiences have been chronicled in case studies at Harvard Business School and Babson College. He is actively involved in the World Economic Forum as a member of the Civil Society Advisory Council and Global Agenda Council for the Future of Education, Gender, and Work. Asheesh is a graduate of the Wharton School and Oxford University, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.

  ■ ■ ■

  There is a short story from Hindu mythology about two brothers that my mother used to tell me when I was young. Both brothers had the same teacher and were about equal in ability. One of their assignments was to go out in search of someone who could teach them new skills. The first brother returned and said to his teacher, “Everyone I met has certain skills that I do not have, so I can learn from everyone.” The second brother returned and had concluded the opposite for his teacher, “I have certain skills that each person does not have, so I cannot learn from any of them.”

  When I look out the window, I see a world filled with people from whom I can learn. I see a world filled with opportunities. I see a world where young people strive to become more confident by learning new things – and where most learning occurs by interacting with others. When I look out the window, I feel impatient and think there is so much more to learn, so much more to do.

  Seeing the world in this manner does not make me a popular person at dinner parties. I’m too optimistic and don’t have much capacity for gossip. Seeing the world in this manner does not make me a great project manager. I usually assume that employees who miss deadlines have good reason for doing so and seek to understand their need before passing judgment. Seeing the world in this manner does not make me the best husband. My wife, whom I’ve been with since our freshman year of college, does not appreciate my sunny outlook when she’s had a bad day and needs someone to commiserate with rather than look for silver linings. (I once made this comment, for example: “Even though your 7 a.m. meeting did not show up today, at least you got a chance to have breakfast alone to plan your day.”)

  When I look out the window, I see a constellation that includes optimism, gratitude, and a thirst for learning, which are linked together like the Big Dipper. Let me explain.

  Optimism is not something that you’re born with. It is learned over time. Gratitude – being thankful for what you have – breeds optimism. In my family, we have developed a practice of telling each other three things that we are thankful for on a regular basis. My wife started this exercise with our kids while driving them to the school bus each morning. The first one or two things are easy to identify – a good grade on a test, a goal scored in a game, a dinner that was followed by a favorite dessert. It becomes harder to find a third thing and nudges the mind to turn neutral and otherwise negative experiences into positive ones, for example, missing the school bus, but still getting a ride to school; dealing with a health issue for a loved one, but still being able to care for them. The mind starts to develop the habit of looking for the positive in everything.

  I don’t fully understand why I look at the world in this way. My friends once tried to figure it out. I’m part of a forum group of eight friends who meet monthly, organized as part of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). During a forum retreat, we hired a professional moderator who asked us to dig deeper to understand each other. In my case, the group explored my relentless optimism and learn-from-everyone outlook on the world, asking questions about my past, probing my childhood experiences, seeking inner demons that would explain my behavior traits. The conclusion was that, as a young immigrant from India, I had tried hard to fit into my adopted homeland of Canada. Growing up, I watched movies and tried to emulate the main characters. I was like a sponge, learning from everything and everyone I could, so that I could fit into my new surroundings, particularly during my teenage years. Therefore, I must have inadvertently turned each negative experience into a positive experience as a coping mechanism to avoid unhappiness. This created a habit at an early age that became a lifelong, ingrained practice. I don’t really know if this psychoanalysis is accurate or not. For example, I don’t understand why others with a similar immigrant experience would have had different outcomes and behaviors. It seems clear to me, however, that optimism, gratitude, and a thirst for learning are inextricably linked in my personality.

  I am currently working as a leader of a nonprofit organization that teaches young people to have a similar can-do attitude that I developed in my youth. The organization is called Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide. Founded in 1919, it has grown substantially over the years and has spread to over 115 countries – as diverse as Gabon and Sweden – with programs reaching over 10 million young people per year. We like to say that JA activates youth for the future of work. I am convinced that one reason for the growth of the organization is the hunger and desire for entrepreneurship and self-confidence that pervades today’s youth. I travel a lot for my job and everywhere I go, I find that young people love learning if it is presented to them in the right way – as a game, a field trip, a business start-up project, or a chance to shadow a manager or leader in the workplace. Young people crave positive feedback and they want to learn how to become confident, if someone would just tell them how to do it.

  Self-efficacy is a multiplier, a skill that makes all other skills possible to learn and master. Some people call it self-belief or self-confidence, but the meaning is similar enough. Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura1 tells us that there are four ways to increase self-efficacy:

  Mastering skills through hands-on experience

  Observing others with self-efficacy achieve success

  Hearing that others believe in one’s ability to succeed

  Rerouting negative thoughts into positive ones

  Of these, the first (mastering skills) is overwhelmingly correlated with learning self-efficacy, and that makes sense: success begets success. If students practice setting a goal, working toward it, staying with it in spite of setbacks, and achi
eving it, they’ll learn that such a process will work in the future. The next time they need to learn a skill, they’ll believe they can.

  I see this every day in my work at JA, especially though the JA Company Program. Middle- and high-school students roll up their sleeves and start a flesh-and-blood company, complete with a business plan, company officers, a product that has to be manufactured or assembled, suppliers to source, bills to pay, and customers to woo. The JA Company Program is often a student’s first experience being a CEO, CFO, CMO, or any number of other jobs, and instead of reading about famous entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, they’re creating real products with real colleagues and earning real revenues. Living it and experiencing it give them a taste of what’s possible in a manner that can’t be fully digested from a textbook. And each success (individual ones and those shared by the team) sets the stage for the expectation of future success.

  Students also learn self-efficacy by observing others achieving success, but the correlation is a bit less strong than with hands-on skill mastery. Still, whether observing their peer groups or adults, students who see others believe in their abilities to succeed – and then actually do so – are more likely to believe in their own future successes.

  Until I met Marshall Goldsmith, I didn’t fully understand the power of daily routines to improve self-efficacy. Marshall’s book, Triggers,2 is a prescription for taking personal responsibility for behavior change and recognizing environmental and psychological triggers that set you back. One of Marshall’s recommendations is to use a daily routine of “active questions” that measure our effort, not our results. For example, if you’re facing a challenging relationship problem with your friend, don’t blame your friend, your social circumstances, or your bad luck. Instead, he recommends asking yourself daily (daily!) what you have personally done to address the issue. Self-efficacy is borne from personal responsibility.

  When I look out the window, I see a world filled with people who I can learn from. I see a world filled with opportunities. I see a world where young people strive to become more confident by learning new things – and where most learning occurs by interacting with others. When I look out the window, I feel impatient and think there is so much more to learn, so much more to do.

  Reflection Questions:

  How does your view of the world compare to that of those around you? What impact does this have on your relationships?

  How important do you consider an optimistic attitude in your life? In your work? Do you have such an attitude?

  What elements in your life contribute to (or diminish) your sense of self-efficacy? What strategies can you take to foster your feelings of self-efficacy when it is low?

  Notes

  1. Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Self-Control (New York: Worth Publishers, 1997).

  2. Marshall Goldsmith, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts – Becoming the Person You Want to Be (New York: Crown Business/Random House, 2015).

  33

  Are You Happy at Work? (And Why It Matters)

  Annie McKee

  Annie McKee, PhD, is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a best-selling author, speaker, and advisor to top global leaders. Her latest book, How to Be Happy at Work: The Power of Purpose, Hope, and Friendship (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017) follows several HBR bestsellers, including Primal Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, and Becoming a Resonant Leader. As a coach to executives in Fortune/FTSE 500 companies and public sector institutions, she uses a person-centered approach to help leaders develop their emotional intelligence, enhance their strategic thinking abilities, and build resonant cultures.

  ■ ■ ■

  Are you happy at work? If you are, you are one of the lucky ones. You have trusting, warm relationships with colleagues. You feel that what you do is important and your daily actions are an expression of your values. Your future is bright, and work is an avenue to your dreams. Your life is richer, fuller, and more meaningful than if you are bored or miserable at your job – as so many people are. After all, we spend nearly a third of our lives working, and for many of us it’s more than that. If those hours are full of stressful interactions with people you’re not sure you like and who may not like you either, or if you feel that you aren’t making a difference or that the future is bleak, it is very unlikely that you will feel the deep and abiding enjoyment that all of us yearn for in life.

  Common sense tells us that happiness matters at work just as much as it does in the rest of life. We now have research to back this up: Happy people are better workers. We are more creative, committed, and engaged when we are fulfilled by our work. We are more adaptable, we learn faster and better, and we are more successful, too.1

  Happiness Matters

  With both common wisdom and research pointing to the same conclusion, it is baffling to me that so many of us are not happy at work. The now-legendary Gallup statistics paint a dismal picture of boredom and disengagement – not exactly a recipe for happiness (or success).2 And in my own experience with people all over the world, I’ve heard a common refrain: “I want to love my job. I want to be happy at work. But I am not, so I am holding back.” This is often followed up with the first reason why so many of us aren’t happy when they say, “And does it matter anyway? Isn’t work supposed to be tough? Do I even deserve to be happy?”

  It’s time to debunk these myths. Happiness is a human right – a right that can and should be available to all of us, no matter where we work or what we do. Happiness impacts the quality of our lives, our health, and our relationships. It also impacts our success at work.

  Our performance suffers when we are disengaged, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled at work. The destructive emotions that take over when we are in this state – emotions like fear, frustration, and anger – interfere with our reasoning and kill innovation. They also compromise our health and our relationships. And it’s not only our personal performance that suffers; our companies do, too.3 In fact, companies with happy and engaged employees outperform their competition by 20%.4

  How to Be Happy at Work

  I have been truly unhappy at work twice in my life. In the more recent situation, there were two issues that pushed me from delight to misery. The first problem was that I had been overworking for so long that I burned out.5 The second (and related to the first) was that I’d made some decisions and allowed some things to happen in our workplace that were contrary to my personal values.

  Stress, I found out, is a happiness killer. There is virtually no way for us to enjoy our daily lives when every moment is filled with worry, or too much work for any one human being to do. Unfortunately, I am not alone in having lived like this for so long that stress became burnout and burnout led to bad decisions and feeling trapped.

  I know how this happened to me and I know I am not alone. We live in an always-on world where it is possible to work all the time. In some companies, we are expected to be available around the clock, on weekends and on vacations. How, then, can we step off the path and make sure we remain healthy?

  Reclaiming Happiness, Step One: Emotional Intelligence

  Avoiding burnout – or pulling back from it – starts with self-awareness in the form of a foundational emotional intelligence (EI) competency.6 For me, tapping (back) into my knowledge about myself – what I needed emotionally, physically, and intellectually at work – took some time and effort. Like other leaders I’ve worked with, I had to take a good, hard look at what had happened to me over the many years of working so hard. This wasn’t easy and, frankly, it took courage. Then, I had to make tough decisions about things that affected me, my colleagues, and others that I worked with. I had to pull back. Again, this took effort, and self-management, another EI competency. It’s not easy to change patterns we’ve created and that others have gotten used to. With growing awareness of the negative impact of stress on my life and my work – not to mention my happiness – I was ready to
move proactively to make things better.

  Reclaiming Happiness, Step Two: Bring Values Back to Work

  To start, I had to look at some of the fallout from burnout – most importantly, that I’d gone along with some decisions in the business that were counter to my personal values. This wasn’t as easy or as clear-cut as it sounds. There was no lawbreaking going on in the consulting project we were working on, and some would say there were no ethical violations, either. But for me, what the company was doing was wrong. For a long time, I had justified our collective actions, telling myself, “We are helping people, at least,” or, “You can’t throw stones from the sidelines – get in there and try to fix things.” These justifications were sensible and reasonable, at first. But, over time, I realized that our company’s activities weren’t truly helping people or making things better. Instead, our efforts were a cover, making it look like the client wanted to make positive changes when, in fact, it became quite clear they did not.

  The lesson of this story for me was that if we let go of our core values, or compromise our beliefs, we can’t possibly be happy. And, as it turns out, at this same time we were studying quite a lot of organizations around the world in terms of their leadership, culture, that sort of thing. As I began to look at these many studies, I found that, yet again, I wasn’t alone in what I needed in order to reclaim happiness: We all want to know that our efforts are making a positive difference and that we are living our values at work.