Episode 51 · 10 August 2023 · 1:05:24
Why Happiness at Work Matters: Unpacking the Psychology
Why Happiness at Work Matters: Unpacking the Psychology
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News Roundup: Illyism — third-person self-talk boosts wisdom and emotional intelligence
news roundup#news#illyism#self-talk#emotional-intelligence
News Story: Florida bans AP Psychology — the danger of avoiding difficult topics
Skillding — our new learning platform
What is happiness? State vs. wellbeing, and why contentment can be dangerous
The psychology of happiness: positive psychology, Seligman & the shift from deficit
The four chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin & endorphins
Happiness vs. wellbeing — why leaders should focus on wellbeing
Can we increase happiness? Research, money & the £20k vs £80k divide
Nature vs. nurture, hedonic treadmill & relative happiness
other#nature-vs-nurture#hedonic-treadmill#relative-happiness#psychology
What leaders can (and can't) do — environment over emotions
When an employee says 'I'm struggling' — empathy over fixing
The commuting conundrum — how travel time wrecks happiness
Random acts of kindness — and the ripple effect
VITALS — the positive psychology exercise you can try today
Closing thoughts — happiness is learnable
Show notes
Why Happiness at Work Matters: Unpacking the Psychology of Joy, Contentment & Everything In Between
Truth, Lies & Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) are back from Sicily for a summer special on the psychology of happiness. They break down the difference between happiness and wellbeing, the four brain chemicals behind your best (and worst) days, and why that £20k-to-£80k pay rise really does change how you feel. Plus: the commuting conundrum, the science of kindness, and why "I am happy" might be doing less for you than "Al is happy."
🧠 What We Covered
What is happiness, anyway? Happiness isn't one thing — it's a mix of joy, contentment, and meaning. Leanne explains why psychologists treat it as an emotion (which comes and goes) rather than a permanent state, and why confusing the two leads to what researchers call "rust out" — that weird sense of complacency that creeps in when things feel too comfortable.
The four chemicals Dopamine (pleasure), serotonin (satisfaction), oxytocin (love and connection), and endorphins (pain relief and euphoria) all work together to create the experience of happiness. Al gets them slightly wrong. Leanne corrects him. It's very on-brand.
Happiness vs. wellbeing Happiness is a state; wellbeing is a condition. Leanne argues we should be aiming for the latter — because chasing constant happiness is like trying to catch a wave that's already broken.
The money question There is a huge difference in happiness between someone on £20,000 and someone on £80,000 — but once basic needs are met, the returns diminish fast. And no, that promotion you've been chasing probably won't change your baseline happiness for long. That's the hedonic treadmill.
What leaders can actually do Leanne's blunt take: it is not the leader's job to make people happy. It is their job to remove barriers, have honest conversations, and create conditions where wellbeing can flourish. And when someone says "I'm struggling," the answer is empathy — not fixing.
The commuting conundrum Long commutes are a happiness killer, and the research backs it up. The solution isn't always "work from home" — it's having the conversation about what actually works for your team.
Kindness counts Random acts of kindness don't just help the recipient — they boost the giver too. And they don't even have to be anonymous. (Al has strong opinions on the reciprocation problem.)
VITALS Leanne shares the positive psychology exercise based on Seligman's work — six questions to help you reflect on what's actually going well.
💬 Key Takeaways
- Happiness is an emotion, wellbeing is a condition. Stop chasing the former and start building the latter.
- Money matters — up to a point. The gap between £20k and £80k is real. The gap between £80k and £200k? Not so much.
- Leaders remove barriers, they don't manufacture joy. Your job is to have the conversation, not to fix the feeling.
- Kindness is a happiness hack. For the giver, the receiver, and everyone watching.
- The commute is the silent killer. If you can fix one thing about your team's wellbeing, start there.
🎧 Listen Back
Enjoyed this one? Here are more episodes to keep you going:
- 4-Day Work Week 101
- Burnout: The Pandemic You Didn't See Coming
- The Truth About Britain's Healthiest Workplaces
📺 Watch the Video
Prefer to see our faces? Watch the full episode on YouTube.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottThere will be a huge difference in happiness between the person who's on £20,000 compared to the person who's on £50,000 and the person that's on £150,000. There will be some difference, between the person who is earning £50,000 a year and £150,000 a year, there will be basically zero difference between anybody earning £150,000 a year or somebody who's earning £2 million a year. Hello and welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a business psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al and I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of people and create amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottWelcome back. If you're on YouTube, drop us a comment. Let us know you're watching. We only started the channel a little while ago, like maybe 4 videos ago. So every, every view we get, we get really excited. Like, Leanne, we've had 2 more views. I'm not sure. I don't know why MrBeast must have started at zero.
Leanne ElliottSo, um, oh, he talks about it quite openly.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottHow his first few videos got nothing. It's, um, and actually his first viral, his first, not, I don't think it even went viral, but got a bit of traction was him counting from 1 to 100,000.
Al ElliottWell, and, and luckily, that's what today's podcast is. So—
Leanne Elliott1, 2, 3.
Al ElliottTalking of, talking of 3, this is now the 3rd house in Sicily we've been living in, um, and the 3rd time we've had to set up our podcast equipment. So bear with us, you know, we're doing the best we can. Lighting's not super in here, and, uh, also I'm standing on one leg, I think, to try and make sure I'm in frame. Uh, but anyway, so, Leah, what are we talking about this week?
Leanne ElliottWell, this week we are continuing our, our summer schedule and keeping things a little bit lighter. Uh, so this week we are talking about the psychology of happiness.
Al ElliottLovely. And what a lovely subject to talk about over summer when hopefully you've got a bit of time off, bit of downtime. You're, um, you're doing something to make you happy, whether that's going abroad, whether that's staying at home, whether that's playing with your kids, playing with your dog, playing with your cat.
Leanne ElliottIt does—
Al ElliottI suppose you play with cats, really. I think the cats are just quite indifferent to their owners, aren't they?
Leanne ElliottSays the dog owner.
Al ElliottNot a, not a cat person. Not a cat person. But don't let that put you off. So this is a little bit of a loosey-goosey episode as Leanne described it because we're not necessarily, we're not, normally we structure it, but today we've just got, Leanne's got some notes. She's a psychologist. I'm gonna be talking to you about happiness. We'll probably dot in some of our own anecdotes and etcetera as we go along. Leah, do you wanna start off with maybe defining happiness? I don't know.
Leanne ElliottWell, I thought I'd start off with the news roundup.
Al ElliottOh, let's do that. So it's our favourite time of the week. It's the News Roundup.
Leanne ElliottCue the jingle. Yes, we had some complaints last week that the News Roundup wasn't even mentioned, let alone completed. So yeah, after quite a testing week of responding to complaint emails, I thought it was best to just put the News Roundup back in.
Al ElliottThat's a good idea because, I mean, the poor complaints department team, like, you know, there's 8 of them who deal with— we deal with all the complaints and they were just overwhelmed, you know, and we don't like working them too hard. But yeah, they had to do it. They had to pull double Yeah, they did.
Leanne ElliottThey did. So it's back, and I have a new word.
Al ElliottNew word alert.
Leanne ElliottIllyism.
Al ElliottI'm sorry, what?
Leanne ElliottIllyism.
Al ElliottNow, I've seen The Handmaid's Tale, so I think I know what this is.
Leanne ElliottPlease.
Al ElliottNo, I don't. It just sounded like something from The Handmaid's Tale, like, oh, wait, they, they are—
Leanne ElliottFrom Gilead.
Al ElliottYeah, from Gilead. Illyism from Gilead.
Leanne ElliottSo illyism isn't necessarily a sign— a scientific, a psychology term. It's, it's a literary, literary term used to explain how somebody refers to themselves in the third person. But what recent research is showing is that by using this technique as part of our therapy and self-coaching can actually improve not only our wisdom, but also our emotional intelligence and regulation.
Al ElliottAm I right? So is this right that I would say Al is happy would make me happier than saying I am happy? Have I got it?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so there's, there's, it's kind of an extension of previous ideas in coaching to help generate objective thinking, different perspectives, and empathy. So there's a very popular exercise called Two Chairs, which is where you, you move, you literally move yourself and go, right, I'm now me, explain this problem. It might be a disagreement I'm having with a sibling, and I will explain how I'm feeling, what I think about it, and then I move to a different chair and pretend that I am said sibling and talk about how how perhaps they perceive the situation, what they might say and think and feel. So what this is saying is taking it a step further to do this similar thing, but when referring to yourself, referring to yourself in the third person. So what's really interesting in terms of the research is it's been shown that by doing this in kind of a diary format, so keeping a reflective journal, but compared to— so there's 2 groups. Control group wrote about themselves in the first person. Second group wrote about themselves in the third person. And what they found is that after 4 weeks, the group that refers themselves in the third person then performed better in things like reasoning, decision-making, and wisdom-based tests. Very interesting.
Al ElliottHmm. So if I'm sorry, just to, just wanna make sure I get this. So what I shouldn't be doing is going around and talking to people and saying, Al is very happy today. That's not what we're talking about.
Leanne ElliottJust be really freaking annoying. No, it's more of a case of as part of your, your reflective practice, perhaps referring to yourself in the third person can help you a little bit in terms of that distancing. And it makes sense as well because when we, I guess it kind of ties a few things together. So we know from neuroscience that, that whole transference of taking emotions from our brains and putting it on paper can actually distance ourselves from them and reduce the impact of them.
Al ElliottThose of you who maybe have us up loud would've heard some explosions in the background. We're in Sicily, it's midday, and for some unknown reason, they're letting off huge fireworks to celebrate San Sebastián or something.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I think it is San Sebastian. They do them in the morning as well, which is brilliant, but our dog is very scared, so if you, if you hear him knocking around, that'll be why. But what was I saying? Yeah, extension of neuroscience. We know that that transference actually helps to distance us from those emotions and process them more objectively and make better, uh, or objective decisions rather than emotionally fueled decisions. So this is a bit of an extension of it. Really interesting bit of research, new to me. I'm gonna find out more because I think it might be Some quite interesting applications for coaching. So, yeah, I will— I'll leave a link in the show notes. It is pretty interesting research.
Al ElliottInteresting. Also, any of you who are literary listening or are literary geniuses or genii, can you explain? Because I'm—
Leanne Elliottis that the plural? I like that. I don't know. I'm gonna use it though. Genii.
Al ElliottGenii. Explain to us, because I've heard something in my head. I've got something like Homer's Iliad or something like that. And I'm wondering if, obviously, clearly that's gonna be really wrong, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of Greek mythology or Greek writer, and that's where the Iliadism comes from.
Leanne ElliottI think it is, actually. I think it is based in Greek philosophy. Yeah.
Al ElliottBang on. So if you know what I'm talking about, and I clearly don't, then get on LinkedIn, jump on the email, get on Instagram, send a carrier pigeon. Let us know what we're going, what's going on and what, what that actually means. Anything else, lovely Lee?
Leanne ElliottYes, I do. So this story popped up in my newsfeed this week, and to say it was concerning was an understatement. So I'm going to read you a little extract from this article by Huffington Post. So what it said is that Florida, the state in the US, has effectively banned Advanced Placement psychology classes from being taught in the state. So the College Board said in a statement, we are sad to have learned that today The Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law. So what— where this has come from apparently is a guy, a government, uh, Governor Ron DeSantis, the 2024 Republican Um, presidential candidate or is running to be. Um, basically he is pushing through legislation called Stop Woke Act and Don't Say Gay law. So what it's basically done is it meant that content that, um, basically any kind of education on racism, sex, gender, sexual orientation has been banned with the thought that this is corrupting the minds of our young people. Um, I'm, I'm not quite sure I've processed this enough to respond to it yet. What, what are your thoughts?
Al ElliottMy initial thought is, what the actual fuck? But then having said that, we are just— I am just hearing one side of it. There might be another side of it we don't know. And we're not like super left woke-y people. At the same time, we kind of like— I think our worldview is leave well alone, you know, and just let everyone get on with their own stuff. And this sounds like— to me, it sounds like you're saying we can't even mention transgender racism, whatever, in AP Psychology because—
Leanne ElliottDo we not need to teach this in terms of some kind of like, I don't know, in the same way you would around mental illness? That's not my opinion. I think it's all complete bullshit and it's horrifying. But I guess what I'm not connecting the dots with is that even if you think this— there is this over-liberal syllabus in the education system, by just not talking about it at all doesn't necessarily seem to be shifting the education. It's just censorship, which I— that's concerning to me.
Al ElliottI can't add anything to that. You've put that perfectly, absolutely perfectly.
Leanne ElliottSo speaking of education, Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture is now part of Skillding, isn't it, Al?
Al ElliottIt is. Skillsding or Skillding?
Leanne ElliottSkillding, skillding.com. Basic premise is it's a brand new platform. It's very exciting. And Kevin, one of the co-founders, approached us a few months ago. They kind of saw an issue with podcasts. They love podcasts, huge fans of, of the, that kind of content medium, but kind of felt that there wasn't an opportunity or very accessible or an easy opportunity for people to consolidate the learning and lessons they've picked up from the podcast into practice. So they have developed a platform called Skilding to do exactly this.
Al ElliottYeah, really cool. And I think there's lots of actionable points in podcasts that you kind of forget because you just listen to a podcast when you're doing the hoovering or you're driving or something. This is a really good way to reinforce the ideas behind each episode and actually create yourself a little checklist So that you can go make sure that you are actually implementing all these ideas. I know I must have listened to thousands of podcasts, probably missed out on hundreds of thousands of great ideas just because I was out with the dog and I was like, oh, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll relisten to it later. Never do.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And that's what it is. So it's, it's quite cool. Have a little look. So you'll, you'll see kind of the audio of the episode is embedded. You have a different page that will talk about the, the competence sees that you're, um, that you're consolidating and you're learning. It has specific tasks that you can do. You can tick them off as they're done. It's pretty cool. Um, so yeah, go and check it out. And if you would like a free 3-month subscription, all you have to do is leave us a review— hopefully a good one, but it doesn't have to be— uh, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast, and we'll pick out 3 winners over the next month and refer you on to Kevin at Skilding for your free 3 months. That's hard to say. Free 3 months.
Al ElliottAnd if you do leave a review, which we hope you do, then just let us know. Drop us an email. You see our email at the bottom of all the show notes, just because otherwise we won't be able to find you because we only see your username. We don't see your contact details if you do leave a review. So just let us know and let us know how you get on with Skilding.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I hope, I hope you enjoy it. We'll, we'll see how it all goes.
Al ElliottOkay, Leah. So the meat and potatoes of the episode, I think it is— did we, did we say this was the definition of happiness?
Leanne ElliottI worry that we're excluding vegetarians and vegans by calling it the meat and potatoes of the episode. Is that being a bit too woke, or?
Al ElliottNo, I would say, I would say that by saying meat and potatoes means there's something for everyone there. There's something for a vegan, something for a fruitarian. There's something for a pescatarian. There's something for a carnivore.
Leanne ElliottIsn't it euphemism for something else as well, though? Meat and potatoes.
Al ElliottIt's like meat and 2 veg, I think, is what it is.
Leanne ElliottCompletely different. Not potatoes. It's about the vegetables.
Al ElliottDifferent idea for very different types of activities. Yes.
Leanne ElliottOkay.
Al ElliottSo back to the content, should we say, rather than meat potatoes. So we are talking today about what is happiness. We obviously, we've got a psychologist in front of us, although Leanne has said to me before we press record, say, look, you know what? business psychologist. So, you know, this, this isn't necessarily my— I'm not gonna say forte because it is, but it isn't necessarily my specialism. Um, so I know that you've done a little bit of research on this and that we'll be asking you lots and lots of questions. Um, can we— do we start off with a definition of happiness? Would that be the best way to start?
Leanne ElliottYeah. This isn't really my area of expertise per se, because happiness is an emotion and the study of emotions is its own, its own thing in psychology. I'm much more familiar with well-being, and you might be wondering why that's different. And I think that that is where the definition lies. Happiness is a state, it is emotion, it's something that we feel for certain periods of time and then it goes again. And I think there is this, um, maybe unhelpful pursuit of happiness in terms of that is the state that we should be in all the time, whereas actually, you know, from an evolutionary perspective perspective, our emotions are a very primitive signaling system. So being happy all the time wouldn't be very helpful for our survival if we're in, you know, situations where we should be feeling threatened and frightened. That, that, you know, increases our awareness and our reflexes and our fight and flight response, uh, and we need that to stay alive. So happiness is useful in the moment, but to be happy all the time would probably end up in a very early demise. And I think the misconception is that happiness And, or rather unhappiness and positive wellbeing can coexist at the same time.
Al ElliottSo I suppose if you are happy, then people often say, I'm happy, I'm contented. If you are content with something, it means that there's no real incentive to grow, learn, develop skills, et cetera. So I see what you're saying, that if you are happy in your job and you don't feel any stress, and when I say stress, I mean positive stress, but any kind of like need to grow, to develop, to be better. That's not a great situation to be in as an employee, is it?
Leanne ElliottNo. And that can actually— that's been called rust out before. So this feeling where we feel a sense of complacency in our, in our roles, in our work, because we're not being challenged and we're not being pushed. Um, that might be nice for, for a period of time, particularly after a period of disruption and change. But in terms of, of long term, Those feelings will very quickly turn into frustration. Okay.
Al ElliottSo when we talk about psychol— the psychology, is there, like, some kinda psychological theory around happiness? Have we got a formula or something? Is it like, is it like that film where he, where he, he solves the formula on the chalkboard?
Leanne ElliottWhat's interesting about happiness and other, other emotions like it, such as joy, and there has been found a difference between joy and happiness. It's all quite complicated, this psychology of emotions. But what is quite interesting about these positive emotions is that until very recently, psychology is very much focused on the human deficit and what's wrong with us, why are we so fucked up? And that's because that was the need. How do we support people with these mental health challenges? And that in itself was an evolution from it being some kind of paranormal or spiritual, I don't know, what's the word, being possessed in some way, to actually being a human condition.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd, and, and a condition of mental health. So in terms of, of the focus of psychology shift— shifting to more positive emotions, that really kind of gained a lot more traction in the late 1990s. And this was because a psychologist called Seligman became the president of the American Association of Psychology. Um, oh, sorry, the American Psychology Association. And when he became president, his, his mandate was to shift the focus of psychology from deficit Uh, and, and, and surviving to trying to find a way to use psychology to help humans to transition from surviving to thriving with the viewpoint, very much like we spoke about a few episodes ago with Business in Community and their research into, into wellbeing and Wellbeing 2.0, that actually the benefits society will be much, much greater if we think, uh, much more and spend much more time on this. Mm-hmm. Um, I guess this missing majority in the middle that has for, for a long time been neglected by, by psychologists and by mental health professionals. And that was the birth of the positive psychology movement. And since then, there has been a lot more funding, a lot more interest in researching emotions and positive emotions such as happiness. So is there an agreed theory? No, of course not, Al, but there's no agreed theory of anything in psychology. It all depends on your approach, what you believe, and also how these theories are standing up to more modern-day interrogation. That is a bit of an issue around replication in the psychology world at the moment. Very famous studies that have failed to be replicated, so those theories, long-accepted theories, are starting to be questioned. So it is a challenge. But there are some kind of Typically agreed observations when it comes to happiness. And the first is around brain chemistry.
Al ElliottSo this brain chemistry, I've heard of these phrases like dopamine, Serafenović.
Leanne ElliottI've heard of them.
Al ElliottI don't—
Leanne ElliottStefanie Serafenović.
Al ElliottI don't really—
Leanne ElliottSerbian tennis player.
Al ElliottAre they? So you got me there. So I don't really understand what they are and What they do and what you— do you want more of one or less of another? How does it work?
Leanne ElliottAgain, it, it depends on the circumstance, doesn't it? There's gonna be some circumstance where you want more of one and less than the other. But, but kind of to, to very simply, and, and again, I am not a neuroscientist by any way, but very simply, dopamine. We've heard of dopamine. So dopamine helps us feel pleasure. So we know that when we're in a state of happiness, our dopamine levels are typically Then we've got serotonin. So serotonin is produced when we're feeling a sense of satisfaction or importance. So when you think about those things in terms of then reflecting in, in what we might feel as happiness, maybe not necessarily, you know, you might have achieved a really, um, challenging goal at work. I think that feeling satisfied is different to maybe feeling happy. I don't know. What do you think?
Al ElliottWell, I was, I was gonna give you a couple of examples. So, for example, happiness. So dopamine helps you feel pleasure. So if you, let's say you've been craving a KFC, for example, and then you get it and you have that first bite, you'd get dopamine from that. But you wouldn't necessarily get— what was the other one? The satisfaction one?
Leanne ElliottSerotonin.
Al ElliottYou wouldn't necessarily get serotonin unless you felt, like, satisfied. So, so For example, if you've got a project at work, then it might be really hard work. It might be really stressful. But when it's finished, you have this serotonin because you feel satisfaction. You might not necessarily have got any dopamine during that project, but you still have this satisfaction. Is that right?
Leanne ElliottYeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So it, it's all these kind of chemicals working together to give us, I guess, what would be the overarching positive state or positive state of emotions. But would we necessarily call that happiness? And that again is, uh, is subjective as well, isn't it? So yeah. So yeah, serotonin may well play a role. And then next we have oxytocin. So oxytocin produces feelings of love, Al, love and connection.
Al ElliottAw. So you'd have oxytocin at Burning Man. You'd have oxytocin if you did MDMA. You'd have oxytocin. This is, do not do MDMA. That's not a good idea. Um, you'd have— you'd feel that when you're back with your family at Christmas, or you're out with your partner and having a beautiful meal. Is that the sort of thing?
Leanne ElliottYeah, absolutely. And typically as well, this is where a lot of the arguments happen in, in around, um, around sex as well. Oxytocin is one of the main chemicals that is released in, in women when we, when we engage with a sexual partner, which is why we feel this sense of, of connection, uh, whereas for males The male brain, it's actually much more endorphins, which is our, our next chemical that is released. And that basically triggers positive feelings when you do something that you enjoy. So not necessarily a sense of connection, but it's that kind of, it's that kind of rush, um, that you, that people may get, uh, when they're doing something that they enjoy.
Al ElliottOkay. So these 4, I'm looking down, looking down at the notes I've just made, but these 4 are dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. So shall we just go through a work example and see if we can apply those 4 to a work scenario?
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottSo if we're talking about someone who is, um, they're a coder, because that's, that's relatively easy to, to get your head around. So you're building a piece of software or an app or something like that. So your dopamine will give you pleasure when, guessing, when you're planning it out and you're envisaging what the actual app is gonna do and how cool it's gonna be.
Leanne ElliottI think that might be more serotonin, because I think dopamine is very much pleasure. It's that feeling of, of indulgence that's gonna, gonna raise dopamine perhaps a little bit more, um, whereas serotonin is that sense of satisfaction, maybe that feeling of importance because you're doing important work, or you feel that you're the only competent person to do said work, or the endorphins because you're actually engaging in a task that you really enjoy. Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
Al ElliottThat makes sense. And so in the work environment then, so this idea of oxytocin, which produces feelings of love and connection, is that inappropriate in a work environment? Or is that like part of a team? Do you, do you get that from part of a team?
Leanne ElliottAbsolutely. Yeah. When, you know, love and connection aren't always romantic or sexual, they can be, you know, those relationships that we have with friends, that we have with people that we respect, that we have this sense of, of belonging in our work, people who, who support us, believe in the same things that, that we do, that is very much gonna, gonna increase our levels of, of oxytocin.
Al ElliottSo we've got these 4 chemicals. I think I understand them. Um, what's the difference between happiness and wellbeing? You said at the beginning that, that one's a state, but you didn't really go into what wellbeing was.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So they, they can, they can coexist. So happiness is a positive emotion, and positive emotions are a construct of wellbeing. Typically, people who have high levels of wellbeing feel positive emotions more frequently. But for example, you could be experiencing positive wellbeing in every aspect of your life and a close family member dies. You're gonna feel unhappiness in that moment, in that state. Does that detriment— is that detrimental to your wellbeing? Not necessarily, if it is just a temporary state of emotions that you're feeling because of the context of the trauma that you're experiencing. So wellbeing is a bit more multifaceted Positive emotions are a part of well-being. We know relationships, positive relationships, are a big part of well-being. We know that engagement in what we're doing in terms of our social connections, our work connections, that sense of meaning and purpose and accomplishments, feeling that we are achieving the goals that we set out to do, are really positive for our well-being as well. So well-being is a bit more multifaceted, and we can be unhappy and experience experience positive wellbeing and probably have bad wellbeing overall and experience short periods of happiness. For example, when you go on holiday from a job that you really dislike, you are hugely happy on holiday. Is that reflected in your wellbeing? Maybe not.
Al ElliottReally good example. Really good example. So is the argument that we should be striving for wellbeing rather than happiness?
Leanne ElliottYeah, because happiness is a state. It is, it is, it is gonna come and it is gonna go, and it is gonna peak and it's gonna trough, and it is gonna very much depend on many different factors. It's not a destination. It is something that we experience in a moment, and it will come and go. Wellbeing is something that is part of our makeup, part of our fulfillment with all aspects of our life, and probably the biggest influence in terms of our our overall mental health in terms of nurturing our wellbeing, whether it be psychological, social, financial, etc. So, um, so yeah, happiness, the pursuit of happiness, I think is maybe oversimplified and I guess in the media overhyped. And I think my concern is when you hear people say, oh, when I achieve that, I'll be happy. Once I get that pay rise, I'll be happy. And yes, you might be for a period of time, But it is a state. Happiness is, is not a destination.
Al ElliottSo in terms of teams, so we're leading a team, you're leading a team, and you, you should be much more cognizant of your team's wellbeing than actually their happiness. That's what we're striving for as leaders. Is that right?
Leanne ElliottYeah. And I think this is also, I've had clients say to me, you know, well, of course I want my team to be happy, but it's just not realistic because we're going to have fluctuating workloads and periods of stress. And that's not the pursuit in terms of— that's why we don't talk about happiness at work, we talk about wellbeing at work, because there are many different elements to wellbeing that can maintain our sense of resilience during these periods where we may be unhappy. So, yeah, in terms of a work context, I wouldn't necessarily worry about your people being happy. But I would absolutely worry about them having positive wellbeing.
Al ElliottSo can we increase— so if we, if we assume that we've nailed the wellbeing and everyone's happy— sorry, that was a bad, bad choice of words. If we assume that we've nailed the wellbeing, then can we actually increase the happiness? Is there some kind of dial that we can, we can dial up to increase the happiness?
Leanne ElliottThis has been the main focus of the research, and there are a lot of psychologists who don't believe happiness can be increased.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottAnd there is a pocket of psychologists that believe that it can, and they quote various different data things, some of which are a little bit controversial. So some studies have shown that in general, these are generalisations from the data, that have shown that typically married people are happier. There is also some research that shows that having children can have a small effect on happiness, But it's actually negative. So people without children tend to be happier.
Al ElliottInteresting.
Leanne ElliottAnd in terms of finances as well, we see a huge difference in the happiness of people who are from low economic backgrounds compared to people who are on about £50,000 to £90,000 a year. It is exponential, the difference, you know, if you're earning £5,000 a year compared to £50,000 a year. What we've kind of found though is after £90,000 upwards, There is no impact on happiness.
Al ElliottDo you mean there's no impact on happiness as in if you've got 3 groups of 3 people standing in front of you, one who's on £20,000 a year, one who's on £60,000 a year, which is between that 50 and 90 range you talked about. Mhmm. And one on £120,000. Do you mean that there is no increase in happiness between the £60,000 and the £120,000, or the difference between the one on £20,000 and the £120,000?
Leanne ElliottSo there will be a huge difference in happiness between the person who's on £20,000 Compared to the person who's on 50 and the person that's on 150. There will be some difference between the person who is earning £50,000 a year and £150,000 a year. There will be basically zero difference between anybody earning £150,000 a year or somebody who's earning £2 million a year.
Al ElliottInteresting. Now, I've heard this anecdotally, particularly on Twitter, where I follow a lot of people who are, who are very successful, and yet a lot of people particularly Alex Hormozi, who is one of my heroes, um, not just for the beard, um, but he's, he's just amazing. And he says it's a game. In fact, his entire podcast is called The Game. He says money's a game because once you get over a certain period of time, it's a certain amount of money you're earning. You are playing a game to get more. And it's just like being in a casino. It's not that you need more money. He doesn't need to earn another $10, $20, $30 million this year. It's his game plan, and it's how he gets his dopamine, I'm guessing, and his serotonin is by playing the game for dopamine and serotonin by getting another 10 million, which he doesn't really know what to do with, but it doesn't matter because he's played the game and he's won. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think this is also where we can, we can see leaders or politicians, especially recently, given the cost of living crisis, falling into this trap of not, not really understanding or empathizing with the impact it's having on people who are on lower salaries. So I think it was Rishi Sunak, the UK Prime Minister, who was a right twat and said something like— I'm not particularly political, I've voted for all the different parties in the UK, but it was just a, it was just a bad— it was more of a PR bad move. He said something like, um, that people need to hold their nerve with the cost of living crisis, and basically this will pass, hold your nerve. And I saw a woman phone up a radio show that actually Rishi Sunak was on. I said, you say to hold my nerve, I find that incredibly patronizing for somebody who is actually a billionaire. Rishi Sunak, isn't it? Him and his wife.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBecause, you know, how do I hold my nerve if I can't afford to buy my kids shoes because they've grown out of their last ones? How can I hold my nerve when I'm not eating 2 meals a day so I can feed my child? How can I hold my nerve where I'm having to sit in the cold because I can't afford to put the heating on? I think the difference is because there is such a difference in terms of the experiences and the happiness and the positive emotions that we feel in compared to, as you said, that £5,000 a year to £50,000 a year. Somebody who is, is in that state of my happiness isn't increasing the more money I earn, therefore money doesn't equal happiness, is massively overgeneralizing that to people who are on that maybe £50,000 plus. At that level, money doesn't equal happiness. But if you're having to make sacrifices to your quality of life and the, the what you can provide your children, then yes, that is gonna make a massive difference to your sense of not only wellbeing, but your state of happiness.
Al ElliottCan I ask you then, because I have this, I know people who have got all the, have ticked the boxes of, of all the happiness, but they're still miserable bastards. And it seems that no matter how much money they earn, how many friends they've got, they're just always moaning. So is it a genetic thing? Is it conditioning from when you're a childhood? What— talk me through it.
Leanne ElliottNature-nurture, often a big debate. And the answer is always it's a little bit of both. But yeah, a lot of research has, has shown, and which is why psychologists, a lot of psychologists think that we can't really influence happiness is that it is genetic. They kind of almost believe that we have this baseline of happiness that we're born with, and regardless of what we experience in our lives, particularly positively— negatively might be a little bit different, as we've discussed already— but particularly positively, it won't necessarily increase, or if it will, it will increase for a short period of time and then it will go back to its normal.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne Elliottlevel. So for example, if I get a new job, I might be like, woohoo, and I feel really happy for a couple of weeks, and then I go back to my base level of happiness. Or I get a new car, or I buy a new pair of shoes. And that's often why these materialistic things are seen with more fleeting states of happiness, because we will see happiness levels go back to that normal range quite quickly. And this is actually called the— it's been coined the hedonic treadmill.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottWe are constantly in this, this pursuit of these highs, um, that never, never really last that long. So the, the argument is that yes, it is largely genetic and miserable people, it's just they were just born that way.
Al ElliottFair enough. And I think, I mean, a couple of things that I used to do as— when I say a kid, I was probably like 20, 21. Um, I went on a Tony Robbins seminar where you walk across the cold Um, and you chant, and then, and he, and then he makes sure that you, whilst you're in some kind of hypnotic state, tells you about the, uh, the next seminar you can sign up for, which I don't quite know how I felt about that. Um, but also, I've read lots and lots of books on success, happiness, all that kind of thing. Some of the key things I learned were things like when someone says, how are you? Our typical British way of responding is saying, not bad. Which suggests that— or not too bad, which suggests that, oh, it's really bad, but it's not as bad as it, you know, as it could be. And so I made a conscious effort for about a year of saying, yeah, good. And I know I came across as a bit of a tit when I first started doing this because I was probably a little bit too emphatic about good. But now when someone asks me, I'm like, how are you? It never occurs to me to say not too bad. I always say, yeah, yeah, good. Other things like, I never— I used to think I want this. I used to do my mood boards and say, I'm gonna have a helicopter. And a house and all that. And then when I turned sort of 28, 29, I was like, I don't want any of this shit. I don't— I, I just want to be able to go to the cash point and make sure there's €50 that I can take out and go and buy whatever I want. Um, I don't need like all this millionaire stuff. So I kind of like felt like I trained myself. Now, is that because— do you think as a psychologist that I was naturally probably pretty happy And this has helped, or do you think that naturally I could have been pessimistic, but this has actually brought me up to a happiness level? Psychologize me, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottYeah. So what the thing about happiness is that it's not only subjective to us as individuals, but it's relative.
Al ElliottRight.
Leanne ElliottSo there's actually some research that was, that was done, and it's basically framing. And that's why reframing is a really popular technique in, in therapy and in coaching. So research found that if you asked a person to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 5, just, just, that's the first question you ask them. Then you ask them to rate their love life on a scale of 1 to 5. You ask them to rate how well their career is going on a scale of 1 to 5. You ask them to rate how happy they are with their children. Basically, another aspect of life. What the researchers found was that the higher you rated that other thing, whether it be work, family, friends, health, dating— if you rated that highly and were then asked to rate your level of happiness, you would rate that level of happiness higher because you'd given yourself an anchor point for how your life was currently, currently feeling, um, how you're experiencing your current life. So by saying I'm good, you're reframing that you are good. By things like, you know, gratitude journals So 3 things that I'm grateful for, it's exactly the same thing. 3 things that I'm grateful for, therefore, how happy am I? What you're basically doing is you're training your brain to be appreciative. And in, in terms of the, the, the relativeness of happiness, give yourself a little boost that, you know, compared to perhaps other days, I am feeling more happy today.
Al ElliottSo the little sneaky entrepreneur in me is thinking that if I was to do some kind— if I've made up a survey for my employees, which please don't do that because use something, use something out there that's good. Leanne and I have got one which you can email us and we'll tell you all about the RX-7, but this isn't an advert for that. So if I was making up a survey and I wanted to get good results, then I might start that survey, personalize it for each one of the 20 people, and start the question based on something I know they're pretty happy about. So I might say, 5 of them, I know they're happily married. So go, how would you rate your marriage, 1 to 5, and then ask them about their job, and that's going to skew the results upwards.
Leanne ElliottPotentially, yeah. I mean, it might be weird to ask your employees about how happy they are in their marriage, but you could, for example, say if you've just given everybody a round of bonuses, you could say, you know, how happy with your financial, financial payback right now? Or for example, if you've just had a team that has won a new contract in, um, so yeah, reframing the, the entire survey by starting with questions you know are going to have positive sentiment could may well increase your overall employee engagement and happiness ratings.
Al ElliottWhich we don't want because that'll be artificially inflated. Is that right or not?
Leanne ElliottYeah, it would be. It's not necessarily a reflective picture. It's kind of like, you know, I've, I've had, I've had clients say to me, oh, we won't— well, we'll, we'll leave the engagement survey until next month because we had a really bad month. We don't want that to kind of taint it. It's like, yeah, I get it, because the same could be true. You know, the same, the same, the same effect will happen in reverse. If you, you know, the better people's dating lives were, the happier they were. The worse it was, the unhappier they were. Um, so it would work the other way. But I guess it's kind of my point of view is like, if you can, if you know the worst case scenario, like this as bad as it could possibly be, then you've kind of got the information you need to make the changes that are gonna make a positive impact, isn't it? Whereas if you have this kind of false sense of everything looking better than it is, you might not be as motivated to, to change it. And like you say, have a false, false impression of, of what is actually going on.
Al ElliottSo we talked about wellbeing as something in your teams, in your company's wellbeing is really, really important. Is it down to the leader? Is it the leader's responsibility to increase happiness?
Leanne ElliottI don't think it's the responsibility of the leader to increase happiness, because I think that's almost impossible to, to do in terms of an emotion necessarily. But I think it is the leader's responsibility to create an environment that will promote positive wellbeing. So what I mean by that is there is always gonna be an individual element to wellbeing and happiness. We know that internalising and externalising emotions is a really important part of wellbeing. Yeah. Internalising achievements helps us overcome feelings of imposter syndrome. Internalising positive emotions or reframing experiences, for example, like bankruptcy. You reframed that experience entirely, and now you describe it as one of the best things that ever happened to you. That in itself builds optimism and hope for the future because you've experienced things change. That in itself is those feelings, hope, optimism, self-efficacy, which is like confidence and resilience, that makes up psychological capital. It's almost like our individual psychological armor against the shit that is thrown at us in this life. If we can work to reframe negative into positive, if we can work to internalize our achievements, and if we can work to internalize the positive things that happen to us and understand that relative happiness, Then that will boost our psychological capital and that will boost our individual feelings of psychological wellbeing. What that will be absolutely pointless for is if I work in a toxic environment with very high workloads, with a boss who doesn't support me, with no career prospects, with terrible pay, with inequity, bullying, discrimination. It's kind of like, do you remember when Sally said, you know, if all the fish in the lake are dying, you're not gonna blame the fish?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd it's kind of the same thing. Like, it's— there is no point investing. This is why we get this backlash in terms of wellness washing or resilience training. There's no point in building the psychological capital of the individual if the organization is toxic, because it's not gonna— you know, it's like, it's like, like we said before, it's like using a plaster for a broken arm. Like, it's just not an effective solution. So I don't think you can have one without the other. But in terms of, of control and influence, in terms of leaders, there are always going to be elements beyond your control within the personal life or, or the psychological makeup of the people you employ where their state of emotions is going to change over time regardless of how good or bad their work situation is. So I think for leaders, it's what can I control? I can't control how happy my employees are necessarily, necessarily, but I can control the environment that is likely to result in positive wellbeing and therefore positive emotions, including happiness.
Al ElliottLovely. I love, I love it when you explain things like this. I just, I just get it. And I, I hope, I hope the listeners do too, because I, I think from a psychological point of view, you could make this quite complicated by saying, well, Ultman et al. in 1956 said so and so, and you don't. You go, this is how it is, and I love that. I have a situation that I read, a scenario I read on Reddit, and I don't know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing that this boss did. So essentially, let's just call this person Kevin. So Kevin had a really bad day. I don't know why. I didn't go into why he had a bad day, but I'm guessing it was a work-related problem. So he was, boss sent him home a bit early. While this Kevin is commuting home, boss lifts the phone, speaks to Kevin's wife and says, okay, look, you know, Kevin, Kevin's coming home a bit early. Didn't seem like he had a great day. Again, I'm not sure how you feel about that. But, but what I'd like to do is I've booked you a table at your favorite restaurant. I've paid for your meal, and I've also paid for your favorite bottle of wine. I've also found my babysitter can come around, look after your kids. She'll be there at half past 6. Your table's booked for half past 7. So when he gets home, will you just rush him off to this restaurant and go and get And everything's paid for. Now, part of me went, oh, that's really nice. The part of me went, oh, I wonder what Leanne would think of that. Is that a sticky plaster? Is that just throwing money at the problem? Thoughts?
Leanne ElliottI'm gonna throw that back to you as an experienced manager and coach. If you have an employee who is ex— who is either, you know, either you're observing unhappy feelings or more negative behaviors or has said to you, I'm really struggling. What would you do?
Al ElliottThe, the typical reply to I'm struggling is probably, probably to try and fix the struggle. When you've been a Samaritan or anyone who's learned the art of listening like we have, then you tend to go, in what way are you struggling? What are the key problems here? What are the opportunities? That sounded a bit corporate. I didn't mean, like, SWOT analysis of your problems. But you tend to look at it as if, tell me more about how you're feeling about this, as opposed to let's approach and fix this problem. So you make— I think you're alluding to the point that I sh— that as a leader, I should be talking to him about why his day was bad and why he reacted a certain way rather than just trying to solve the problem with a steak and a bottle of Chianti.
Leanne ElliottYeah, it's getting the whole, isn't it? That empathy is, you know, it's having a conversation with somebody and going, yeah, that sounds a bit shit actually. Tell me a bit more about that. I think without diving into that, how do you know that your solution is even gonna be effective? Maybe this person is really unhappy because he's going through a divorce with his wife. So phoning his wife and taking him out for dinner ain't gonna be great. Maybe they're having health problems or they have IBS, so going out for a rich meal is the last thing in the world that they need. Yeah. Maybe they're experiencing high levels of anxiety, so being in social situations in public is— they're really struggling with. Therefore, sending them to a busy restaurant isn't going to be helpful. I think there is this misconception that by giving somebody an experience of pleasure is going to necessarily result in happiness. Happiness and pleasure are not the same things at all, as we know even just from our brain chemistry. They are not the same thing. Things. So I think throwing things like that at people, I'm not sure being very effective. I'm not sure it'll be greatly appreciated by the person going through that. And I think you're probably gonna be wasting your money and potentially losing a bit of trust. I think if you have that scenario, then focus more on what is going on with that person. It's a bit like when we're talking to Jason from Head Space on Wellbeing 2.0. He said, you know, as a manager, you don't you don't take accountability for the problem or the solution, and I think it's the same scenario there. And of course, you want to try and make it better. And you know, you hear stories of people sending employees on holiday because they've had a particularly stressful period of time. And I think it's really saying, you know, what does that somebody actually need in that moment? And I think if somebody is struggling. that might not be the best thing. I don't know, maybe, maybe there are people listening out there who are experiencing burnout at the moment who are on holiday and then maybe starting to come to this realization that actually this isn't, this isn't going to be the fix. This is gonna, it's gonna give a bit of pleasure and a bit of happiness, and that, that emotional state will be more positive for a finite period of time, but it's probably not going to solve the problem.
Al ElliottYeah, and I suppose the other aspect you just made me think of while he was explaining all that was that there is also then potentially a reciprocation. Like, the person who's Kevin, who's had been bought this meal, he can't go in then the next day and go, I'm still depressed, I'm still having a, you know, a shit day. He has to go in the next day going, oh, thank you so much, that was so amazing, oh, I feel so much better, even if he doesn't, because otherwise he's going to look ungrateful. Um, and so I, I can see that. Yeah, I can see all the bad parts of that as well as the nice idea behind it. But yeah. Okay. Interesting.
Leanne ElliottEven if you really simplified it to the point where, where, you know, a boss did that and, and this person went out with his wife and they had an amazing night, an amazing meal. Everything was great. Actually, it's because work was a bit rubbish that this person's unhappy. They had a brilliant night, loved it. Huge, you know, huge doses of happiness and pleasure in that state was, was brilliant, and they wake up the next day and they go to work and everything's still the same. They've come back to that, that base level again. So it's not gonna, you know, do you appreciate that one day of, of, or one evening of indulgence and pleasure? Of course you do. Has it fundamentally changed how happy I am in my job?
Al ElliottNo. Interesting.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast That's us, by the way. Yeah.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network.
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Lunch wherever you get your podcasts. But come back.
Leanne ElliottYeah, come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in. So we've already identified that happiness isn't something that leaders necessarily should be trying to bring to their, their teams. It should be more about the level of wellbeing. But so in that case, then, should leaders even care about happiness? Is that important?
Leanne ElliottI think leaders should care about happiness and positive wellbeing But that is kind of the outcome, isn't it? It's like saying, you know, should leaders care about being profitable? Of course. But caring about being profitable is not going to make a profitable business. You need to take action to deliver that profitability. So I think it's a similar thing with employees. If you want to improve well-being or happiness, you need to take action to improve those levels. And it is those things that you can control. And that is, as we've talked about before, you know, our RX7— you have reason. What is the, the mission of your company? How does that translate into individual roles within your business, what the relationship's like, how are you training your managers to be able to support people during periods of, of high stress. In terms of professional development, what support are you giving people there? In terms of resilience, how are you helping people build their psychological capital? And often that is about rest and recovery. How are we making sure that people are taking appropriate breaks, they are able to disconnect from their work? These are all things within the work environment that we can control. And we can change and we can make better. And these are the things that we know through research and through lots and lots of data translates to more positive feelings of well-being, fulfillment, employee engagement. And from a business perspective, more revenue, more profit, happier customers, lower attrition, lower retention, lower absenteeism. It is just good for business. So I think, should I care if my people are happy? Yes. But in terms of your world of control, um, happiness is, it's, it's worth remembering that happiness and wellbeing is the outcome.
Al ElliottInteresting. Okay. So any sort of closing thoughts on this? Tools, techniques, reser— resources?
Leanne ElliottYeah. So I, I, so I guess that I know it's a typical kind of psychology thing, isn't it? Can we increase happiness? Yeah, maybe, kind of, it depends. We can. And there are things that have been shown. to improve our happiness, our state of happiness throughout the day. So I've got a few that maybe you might wanna think about in terms of your organisational structure, in terms of your individual practice. And here's the first one for you, Al, commuting. Does commuting make us happy?
Al ElliottI doubt it.
Leanne ElliottNo, it does not. Although, actually, that's not true. The answer is, as always, it depends. What makes us really unhappy is long commutes. So we know that long commutes are associated with lower job satisfaction, lower levels of wellbeing, increased strain, and poor mental health. We know that long commutes are really not very good for our sense of happiness. But what we have found through the research is that shorter commute times, particularly if we are able to walk to our— to wherever it is we're going, to our place of work, Then that is, um, associated with improved psychological wellbeing and happiness.
Al ElliottInteresting. And that does make sense because yes, if you're commuting for an hour and a half each day into central London, that can't be much fun. Never done it, but can't be much fun. But at the same time, we work from home and there's no real commute for us. So there's no opportunity to listen to a podcast or listen to some music or just get outta the house a little bit. I've heard of people who work from home, um, who have an office, Um, and they actually have like a front door key for the office and they walk out their front door, back in through the back door, and then go to their key and open up their office just because they have that little commute. So that makes perfect sense to me.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And that's actually what the research found, that it's having this, this, um, allocated leisure time or learning time, whether it be to listen to a podcast or listen to your favourite radio show or, or music. Um, yeah. So I think there's 2, 2 things to, to bear in mind if you are thinking, hmm, How could I help my employees have a more positive commute as I'm asking them to be in the office for a certain period of time? I think there are 2 things. One, bear in mind that, again, if you have a toxic workplace culture and everything's going to shit, helping your people with their commute ain't really gonna do much. And what the research shows is that everything needs to be controlled. So if everything is good at home, everything is good at work, financially we're stable, then our commute time will have an impact on our happiness. Otherwise, It's fairly minimal. And I think the second thing really is just to talk to people about it. You know, what causes the stress around commuting is the length of time, the busyness, the cost. As we know from our neurodiversity episode, for certain people, travelling at certain times of day can be very, very stressful. So it's things like, will it make a difference to my team member if they start work at 10? They would do 10 to 6 instead of 9 to 5, because that gives them periods of time where they can commute.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottWill it be better for them to work at home on certain days? When it's not as— when they're the kind of busy times for commute, or in terms of cost. So, for example, if you've got somebody you've just recalled back into the office, they're getting the bus into work because the tram is £2 more a day and it adds an hour to their journey. I mean, is that a big investment? Maybe, you know, £10 a week on a member of staff to halve their commute time and potentially increase their happiness? I think it's worth a conversation. What do you think?
Al ElliottYeah, totally agree. That makes perfect sense. And it all comes down to this idea of having conversations with people. And it's such an arrogant point of view if you as a leader think, oh, I know what the problem is, it's commuting, so let me fix it by giving everyone extra £10 a month or £10 a week or something. The commute, the commute could be the favorite point of someone's day because they get away from their family or they get away from from their wife or husband or partner. It's just individualisation. And just don't assume you know the answer to the problem. Learn more about the problem. What else you got, Lee?
Leanne ElliottRandom acts of kindness. This is a very viral thing, I think, isn't it, at the moment? And, and has been for a long time and certainly something that a lot of organisations, I think, are adopting. Random acts of kindness. It is, it is a really powerful way of improving our happiness. Our brain chemistry changes. When we engage in random acts of kindness. And what's interesting is that actually it seems to have a bigger effect on the giver of the kindness rather than the person that receives the kindness. It increases our serotonin, our oxytocin, our dopamine changes. So yeah, these things have scientifically been shown to increase our state of happiness, to give us a little spike, which is really nice. Again, of course, This is all— this all comes from positive psychology. And what positive psychology means is we're starting at a really nice, comfortable level of mental health and wellbeing, and we're talking about how we could go from surviving to thriving, how we can kind of put that cherry on top of the wellbeing cake. And a lovely cherry is random acts of kindness. Again, if you're coming from a place of deficit, random acts of kindness are not going to have the same The same impact and the same effect. So again, and I think this isn't— there isn't a silver bullet. It's not a case of, oh, I will really improve my workplace culture by introducing random acts of kindness, um, but my staff can't get a GP appointment for 4 months and they're really struggling. Do you know what I mean? It's relative. Am I over-labouring this point now?
Al ElliottNot at all. I'm a huge fan of that. And, um, we've done this before. We used to— remember we were sitting in Belgrade in Serbia And we saw a couple who reminded us a little bit, I think, of us when we were first dating. Although they're a bit younger, I think maybe in very early 20s. And you could see that they'd ordered a bottle of wine, and you could see that the way that they were handling it showed they've got so much respect for this wine. And so he was like, you know, pouring a little bit for her. She was tasting it. They were talking about it. It wasn't just that, oh, plonk, there we go, bosh. And, and so when we paid, we asked if we could pay for this couple's wine.
Leanne ElliottYeah. As well.
Al ElliottAnd then we left because we didn't want the reciprocation. We didn't want someone to come up and go, thank you so much. We just left. And I like to think, and maybe they were really angry, I don't know, but I like to think that someone's gone, huh, that was really nice. And they're not around and, oh, and maybe they've done a random act of kindness. And I know for a fact that improved, not improve our day. Our day was really great, but that made us happy all day. And I've thought about that quite a lot since then, and I hope it brought them a bit of happiness.
Leanne ElliottThat's the other interesting thing about happiness is that it can be retrospective. So recalling a memory like that will give you a boost of serotonin and will increase your levels of happiness.
Al ElliottWhat else you got, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottSo finally, a little exercise I've mentioned before, VITALS. This again is based on Seligman and positive psychology. So these are VITALS. The first one is values. So basically, if your values are in alignment with the organisation you work with, then that's going to have a positive impact on your happiness and your wellbeing. The opposite of that is it can lead to what is called moral burnout. So, if your values are misaligned with the organisation you work for, it will have a detrimental impact. So, understanding your values is a really important way of assessing, I guess, how a job might be suited to you, how an environment might be suited for you, and leaders making sure that those values are really clearly stated, and as we know from last week, enacted. The second vital E is interests. So this is making sure that our interests are being fuelled. So this might be something that leaders can't necessarily control, but for example, there are lots of people who might have certain interests in charitable organisations or in volunteering, or interests in terms of sports. You might have a sports club at work, and basically making sure that our interests are being fulfilled is really part of, an important part of our wellbeing. Then we have temperament. So this is really kind of about how typically our emotions are. So if typically I'm a pessimistic person, then you might not wanna put me in a role where I'm very customer-facing and need to be happy and jolly all the time. Um, similarly, if I am very quick to anger, you might not wanna put me in the complaints department. There's lots of different things like that, so really understanding kind of our typical emotions and how our temperaments are can help us understand the types of environments we're likely to thrive in. A is around the clock, and this is kind of just what does our perfect day look like? So, if you are a morning person, getting to work at 7 o'clock and leaving at 3 might be your absolute dream, because that's when you're at your best and you perform at your best. On the other hand, it might be that you suffer with insomnia, which is a very common affliction for people who are neurodiverse. Therefore, being more of a later afternoon, evening person, you're going to be much more productive and effective in your work. So understanding kind of how you like to operate the time within your day can be really helpful. Then we have life goals. It's about making sure that our current environment, our current context, current role is actually aligned with what we want to achieve. More more generally in our life. What this is really kind of thinking about this broadly as well. So I've talked to some current chiefs who are looking for new roles about this, and if one of their life goals is to have a family, then it is case of we'll look at the maternity and paternity policies of the organisations you're going to because that's going to reflect how much they value family and is that life goal aligned to the environment that you're going to be working in. So you can think about that kind of a bit of outside the box as well. And then finally strengths. What am I good at? What do I enjoy? What do I, I want to be doing with my time? How do I want to leverage the things that I'm good at? And the, the idea is, from a positive psychology perspective, if our vitals are in alignment, if they are being served— and of course they can't all be, be met 100% all the time— but if the majority of them are, we are much more likely to experience happiness. If our vitals are completely misaligned, um, and not being served by the environments we're in, we're very likely to experience high levels of stress and potentially burnout. Yeah, so it's based on a model by Seligman, but it was Dr. Audrey Tang who used this exercise in her book, uh, The Leader's Guide to Resilience.
Al ElliottFabulous. So I hope we've comprehensively covered happiness. Is there anything we've left out, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottI think the last thing I would say is that happiness is definitely something that can be— I believe it can be increased, but I think it's more a case of a mindset, and a mindset that can be trained, like you were saying before. And I think a really useful thing to do as a leader is to think about reframing. And I know we've used that, that term a lot. And reframing is really kind of taking something that, that initially you perceived as negative and trying to reframe that as the opportunity. And that even might be somebody leaving your organization. How can you reframe that as an opportunity? Could it be to, to shake up a team, to bring in new talent, to potentially outsource that that part of that role in your business to save money or improve efficiency. And I think this, and you could approach it as a SWOT analysis, actually. That might not be a bad thing to do and quite an accessible thing for business leaders to do, to do that on maybe a change that has been out of your control. As we talked about before, change is external. The psychological transition we need to go through to accept the change is a much slower and more laboured process. So that would, what I would be my, my advice as well. If you're sat on your, your lounge and maybe start to, start to see if you can reframe some things that, that perhaps you perceived as negative and how they may actually be a point of opportunity.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. And from a personal note, um, I think regular listeners will know, and if you've listened to other, our other podcast, A Sideways Life, you'll know that, uh, that we lived that life a little bit differently over the last 10 years, traveled to 46 different countries. 200 Airbnbs and hotels. What's interesting is we've been to places like Myanmar, or Myanmar, I'm not sure how exactly how people say it, but we've been there and some of the— there was a fair amount of poverty, but people were generally just so happy. Same with India. Whereas you go to places that are prosperous, Germany, Luxembourg, perhaps not quite the same levels of happiness. So You know, money isn't everything. People learn to be happy almost regardless of what their situation is if they decide to be happy.
Leanne ElliottAnd my parting words would be, when it comes to your happiness or the happiness of your team, focus on the things that you can control. These are the things that are gonna empower you to really take ownership of your own wellbeing and mental health and, and ultimately Happiness. Focus on the things that you can control. The rest is just noise.
Al ElliottI love it. We came up with an idea called the, the ellipse of give a shittery, and you get these 2 Venn diagrams, and one of them is things you can, you can control. One of them is things that you care about. And then that little bit in the middle, the ellipse in the middle, that is the only thing you should be thinking about on a daily basis, because you might care about the environment, but if you can't control it directly, Don't worry about it. Just be happy. Okay. So next week is an exciting week because if you look at our episode number, you're gonna see next week is episode 52. Means we've been doing it for 12 months.
Leanne ElliottYay. It's our birthday.
Al ElliottIt's our birthday. And I think Leanne has arranged some, um, some treats and stuff for us. Not for you.
Leanne ElliottNo, no, no. Just a few things to, to give us a hit of dopamine, Al, to give us a sense of pleasure, maybe some, uh, some endorphins. Muffins, some things that we find, find joy in, that we, that we enjoy to engage in, which, um, which will be suitable for YouTube.
Al ElliottYes. So we're talking about chocolate and Wotsits, aren't we? Which, it sounds a little bit weird anyway. So let's leave it there, and we will see you next week for our 52nd episode, our birthday. Very excited. And, um, stay happy, be happy. Bye for now. Bye.