Happiness

Cheerful Ones:

Last week I wrote about Twitter and the idea that keeping in touch with the work team is a fundamentally important task for the group leader. I don't really think that simple communication tools like Twitter really promote much in the way of communication, it is merely a fun toy at the moment.

But I do continue to believe that regular informal check-ins are critically important. For workers who are fundamentally competent at their work, personal problems are usually the source of performance problems. And I have yet to find a means for keeping an open line of communication relating to those problems that works better than one-on-one informal conversations. I do this with "Happiness Lunches;" the conversation revolves around two questions: "Are you happy?" and "Do you have any advice for me?" Asking open-ended questions like these often leads to a good discussion of whatever is working well (or not) at work, and sometimes at home, depending on how comfortable our relationship is.

I learned today, though, that happiness at work doesn't seem all that important to overall personal happiness. BBC reports that happiness is spread quite effectively among personal social networks, and it is not only the people who live closest that affect a person's level of happiness. The British Medical Journal reported on a Harvard Medical School-led study where the researchers used data on adults who took part in the US Framingham Heart Study - set up to look at the risks leading to future heart disease - between 1971 and 2003.

Apparently live-in partners who become happy increase the likelihood of their partner being happy by 8%, and similar effects were found for siblings living close by and neighbors. The relationship between people's happiness levels seemed to extend up to three degrees of separation - to the friend of a friend of a friend. The analysis also showed that close physical proximity was important for the spread of happiness. A person was 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less than half a mile away becomes happy.

Even though the Harvard researchers didn't seem to think that work relationships matter all that much, I still think it is worthwhile to check in on happiness both within work-based relationships, and with significant others. Since a lot of lawyers don't have much of a personal life anyway, perhaps that explains my impression that happiness at work is contagious.

So, don't worry, be happy.

Cynthia