Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

Unleashing the superpower of happiness can transform ordinary performers into extraordinary achievers. Discover how top performers harness the power of positivity to excel in their fields, and how you too can tap into this potent force.

The research:

The researchers followed nearly 1 million U.S. Army soldiers for five years, measuring their relative happiness and optimism using 25 questions drawn from PANAS and the Life Orientation Test

• Soldiers who were the happiest and most optimistic went on to earn significantly more job performance awards across the next five years compared to those who were initially unhappy and pessimistic
• Two nagging questions remain: Which comes first, succeeding and then being happy, or being happy and then succeeding?

What Can Business Leaders Do About Employee Happiness?

Measure happiness in both employees and job candidates

• Use measures of happiness and optimism as discriminators, or tiebreakers, because the risks are low and the benefits could be important
• Beyond hiring, employee happiness should also be a consideration when measuring organizational performance
• Training initiatives targeting employee well-being carry a significant ROI and carry a high ROI

Lead by Example

Employee well-being initiatives work best when confident leaders present the material and when senior leaders place significant emphasis on the overall effort

• Leaders must be willing to invest their efforts into making the initiatives successful by not only advocating for them but also by participating in the training and incorporating it into their own behaviors

What is Happiness?

Four times as many awards earned by the initially happiest soldiers (upper quartile) compared with those who were unhappiest initially (lower quartile).

• The gap held even when we accounted for status, gender, race, education, and other demographic characteristics.
• Not only do happiness and optimism matter to employee performance, but they matter a lot, and both predict how well employees will do

Authors

Paul B. Lester

• Associate professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School
• Martin Seligman
• Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania
• Former president of the American Psychological Association
• Named by Academic Influence as the world’s most influential psychologist during the last decade

What Do We Know About Happiness?

Since the advent of positive psychology in 2000, there has been a tremendous amount of research in the field, with well-being mentioned in over 170,000 academic articles

• Some of that work has found that there is truth to the perception that some people just seem happier
• Researchers have looked closely at heritability (factors we’re born with) and how our environment shapes our happiness.
• Within the workplace, we know that happier employees are more likely to emerge as leaders, earn higher scores on performance evaluations, and tend to be better teammates
• Happier employees are healthier, have lower rates of absenteeism, are highly motivated to succeed, are more creative, have better relationships with peers, and are less likely to leave a company

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