Job satisfaction is archaic!

One of the three life principles that my guru, Aniruddha Bapu, proposes is happiness or joy. The other two being truth and love. Happiness is much understated and not in focus. Even in the corporate world, happiness can create significant impact on the workforce and the organisation at large.

Personal life is not driven by rules. You can choose to be happy and choose not to be so. In my previous post, I have delved deeper into the concept of happiness. I have seen both kinds of people in equal number. You need to have the will to be happy. If you do, you will find ways of being happy. If you don’t have the will and focus on what is not so good in life, you will always struggle to be happy. You are the master of your happiness or sorrow.

In professional life, however, things are a little different. You are not the master of what all you do and will have to comply by the rules of the organisation, unless you are an entrepreneur and make rules for your own organisation. Though the rules are different, one thing is common in personal and professional lives – happiness creates magic. Through my working life I have been part of teams/organisations that are unhappy and also those that are happy. What I say next is not conjecture but a conclusion based on keen observation of dynamics within teams and organisations.

There used to be a time when job satisfaction was the measure of whether a person likes his job or not. Job satisfaction is a dead term today. So what does job satisfaction entail? Good salary, good boss, good team, good future, etc. Everything put together that would make you stick in the organisation. Given today’s lifestyle, job satisfaction seems incomplete. You may have all that job satisfaction would need as ingredients, still something would be missing. You may be satisfied but not happy. Ever heard the statement, “Something’s missing!”? That something, the X-factor, is happiness.

Supervisors, team leaders and organisation leaders have a huge task of driving happiness in their teams. Happiness in professional life doesn’t come the same way as it does in personal life. That makes it more challenging. When the organisation’s management does not believe in driving happiness but you do, it makes it even tougher.

As a supervisor, here are certain behavioural traits that can help build a happy team.

1. Freedom to work

The toughest thing to do when transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager is the unwillingness to let go of control. It is tough to give away the things that brought you success thus far. That is precisely the reason why you will cast a shadow of unhappiness on your team. Let go. Let them work as you liked working. Give them freedom. Oversee and guide but don’t control.

2. Be a superman

No, don’t wear your underwear over your trousers. What I mean is that your team would look for a person who can salvage a situation, no matter how bad they get. This is closely linked to my earlier point on freedom. Only when the team has the confidence that failure will not result in disaster, will they value freedom and only then will it drive an aspect of happiness. Celebrate failures but don’t make failures a habit for your team.

3. Don’t expect them to be you

Huge mistake when supervisors expect their teams to reflect how they were. There is a reason why they are supervisors; their exemplary performance. Stop declaring that you did much more at their age and that you achieved a lot more at their age. Neither it motivates them nor makes you a person to look up to. All it does is frustrates them, something you can’t afford if you want your team to succeed. A constant focus on ‘I’ makes the team become distant and detached, and when that happens, happiness suffers.

4. Spend time outside of work as well

Go for lunches, Friday drinking sessions, dinners, etc. with your team. Helps them know you as a person and helps you know them as people. Many a time you will learn something about them that you would never have imagined. That little knowledge could be your trump card in making a happy team. But when you go out of office with your team, don’t be the boss. Be a friend. Drop the authority. No work discussions, just fun and laughter. Be one of them and see them connect with you like you never imagined.

5. Develop a sense of humour

In my experience, I have noticed that team leads who have a sense of humour, are loved more than the ones who are serious. The reason is simple. You need that time off, that time when you can ‘lol’. We spend more time at work than at home. Creating moments of laughter therefore becomes very important. Having a good sense of humour makes the team come closer to you. It demolishes the barriers that may otherwise exist. And when the barriers are demolished, when your team starts liking you, automatically you start driving happiness in your team.

I read a definition of job satisfaction once that stuck with me – If you get up in the morning and do not feel the urge to skip work, you are experiencing job satisfaction. How very true! This is the litmus test. However, I would go further. If you haven’t been to work for a bit and miss being there, you are a job happy person.

Gone are the days when people would come to work and spend the mandated hours and head back home. There is more involvement and dedication at work today than there was ever before. That is the reason why creating happiness becomes all the more important. We are spending far too much time at work than at home. Home is where love is, relationship is and that’s the reason home is home. You can’t make work as good as home. How about creating the degree of happiness that makes it a place you would like to be in?

Creating a happy team needs only one investment – happiness. Trust me, in my experience, it is not difficult to drive happiness in the team. And a happy team is a successful team. The success will be exponential. Unlike a rule of the stick where success would be immediate, in a happy team, success will be slightly delayed. However, when the tipping point is reached, success will start pouring in, much more than what you would see in the rule of stick.

Last but definitely not least, people who are happy at work and happy at home will help create a happier world, a brighter world, a better world. So, what kind of team would you like to build?