One step at a time with our teams…
Since I became a mother, I have had some doubts: how can we explain to our children what happiness is? How can we make them happy? And above all, lately, I have wondered, are we delighted in our work environments? Being a professional mother during the pandemic has made my life have complexity and stress like never before.
According to the World Happiness Report (2018–2020), Mexico has oscillated in recent years between the 23rd to 24th place out of 156 countries ranking the world’s happiest nations (2017–2020).
This study considers people’s perception of their quality of life and variables such as life expectancy, generosity, and corruption perception.
Hugo Sánchez, academic from the Faculty of Psychology (FP) of the UNAM, explains:
Our country’s place in the happiest nations' ranking is related to the importance we give to the family. “If individuals isolate themselves, they can present negative emotions, they become more depressed; if they meet, the symptoms decrease. Here the approach is evident: we greet each other, we hug each other, and that allows us to perceive ourselves happier”. (Por qué los mexicanos son felices pese a todo; expertos te lo explican. Por infobae, 2019)
By taking the perception of happiness as a starting point, the problems that I notice lie more with the personal sphere, with life history and habits, directly impacting the work environment and the family.
On a typical day, after work, I usually get to have dinner with the girls, get them ready for sleep and check out their school and home, chat over dinner, and work on some earrings before going to rest for a bit.
Since I started my working life about fifteen years ago, I have had a high rhythm, either because I had to study and work almost simultaneously or because later I started to freelance, along with having full-time jobs. I have never been still. Another additional factor is my natural taste for studies. I discovered that it was — and is — an excellent way to have a better future.
However, the pandemic raised stress and uncertainty levels, so finding a guide on continuing to take small steps to avoid losing ourselves in said uncertainty has been of great help.
The 12 Steps to Happiness are that condensed and practical guide to walking the path to happiness. You can view and download the poster from the Management 3.0 page https://management30.com/practice/happiness-steps/.
Jurgen Appelo discovered a common thread:
Happiness is something we create. It is not something to achieve. It is a path you choose, not a destination to reach.
The 12 Steps to Happiness
We can implement each step by improving the teams' environment and promoting positive behaviors for people's better quality of life.
1. Thank someone and be appreciative of your colleagues, every single day.
2. Give something to another person or make it possible for others to offer gifts.
3. Help someone who needs assistance, or enable colleagues to help each other.
4. Eat well, and make good, healthy foods easily available to everyone.
5. Exercise and work out regularly and make it easy for people to take care of their bodies.
6. Rest well, sleep sufficiently, and enable colleagues to refresh their minds.
7. Experience new things try stuff out, and let people run all kinds of experiments.
8. Hike outdoors, enjoy nature, and allow people an escape from the office and the city.
9. Meditate and get people to learn and adapt mindfulness practices.
10. Socialize, relate to other people and make it easy for colleagues to develop connections.
11. Aim for a goal and get people to understand and realize their own purpose.
12. Smile whenever you can, appreciate humor, and get colleagues to engage in fun activities. A few months ago, I did this practice; first, I applied the dynamics at home with my family and then with each work team.
A few months ago, I did this practice with my work team to improve our work environment.
We set up several groups of 5 to 10 members; first, I configured the boards digitally in Miro, and we had to connect via video call to carry it out.
In Miro’s board, I placed the matrix of the 12 steps. I added the photos of each member and two columns, the first to rate how they felt in each of the steps, and in the second column, I left an empty post-it so that each member had space to put the actions that could help them increase their satisfaction.
At the beginning of the session, I explained to them that the practice was to reflect on the different aspects that are related to happiness, to know how much we incorporate them into our day to day life, and the objective of the session was to come out with some actions to improve.
Each member placed a number according to how satisfied they were with each step, where five were very satisfied, and one was not happy. When we finished, each presented three steps where they had little satisfaction, and they told us the reasons. In the end, each one put in each post-it what they were going to do that week in each of the steps.
In the first step of thank, several members thanked their teams and colleagues for their support and patience.
In the given step, it was gratifying to know that the actions they were going to implement were sharing more with their peers and being more empathic with each other. And it was closely related to the step of help. They immediately realized that both actions had a direct relationship.
Other steps related to each other, or at least what we discovered, are eating well, resting, meditating, and exercising / hiking. Many of us suffer from these points, and we understood that we neglect our health a lot and must prioritize these aspects to be well.
Aim for a goal, we all turn it towards giving results. We understand that we must continue training to achieve the various objectives that we set for ourselves both personally and those set by the organization.
Socializing and smiling, we also saw a very close relationship. We concluded that having a good disposition is reflected in a great smile and that socialization helps strengthen ties between us, strengthening us as a team because we can react positively to strong eventualities.
As a facilitator, I learned to pay attention to those little details that make a big difference, such as smiling, thanking, giving, and satisfying without expecting anything in return within our team. As well as the importance of eating well, sleeping and exercising, we managed to turn these last three steps into three agreements to improve and support each other to carry them out as a team. I have noticed greater empathy within the team and much more collaboration between them.
My next experiment will be to do the exercise again the following month to see how much their satisfaction level has changed in the three steps we focus on and how they implemented it personally. I would use the same order again, first the level of satisfaction and then the actions to change where we feel less satisfied.
The actions that came out were entertaining: from eating junk food, exercising, or proposing a challenge to leaving the cell phone before sleeping better and establishing better sleep schedules.
In the results as a team, I continue to reconnect with them, discovering more of them, learning that there are more ways to lead a life pleasantly and pleasantly. Communication has improved, and I have the feeling that we move forward with less friction when it comes to delivering results.
When doing the 12 steps to team happiness, my advice is to work more with the talent team to create strategies that allow us to promote good habits and generate well-being within our workplaces based on our teams’ ailments. To mention one case, if it is difficult for everyone to eat a healthy diet, we could have support for them to give us nutrition talks, have a service that advises us, or, better still. We could promote healthy eating in the office.
I invite you to do this practice with your work teams and family as you begin to forge a solid base of good habits and to have that north that guides you on the path to happiness.
