A few steps from happiness …

Who would not like to have people in their work teams who enjoy their day-to-day, who are happy? We know that this would contribute to being more productive. But happiness has different meanings for everyone and what is certain is that it should be a choice and not the goal we want to achieve. And then, how can we make that choice, and above all, how can we guide our teams to choose the path of happiness?

A Harvard study reveals that, for example, relationships with people are what generate happiness. Also, there is a direct connection between relationships, happiness, and health. External factors such as having money or fame do not generate happiness.

I am a university professor and we started a course with a new group of students. After the first session where we generally perform an icebreaker dynamic and each one introduces himself, I noticed that many of the students mentioned not being happy in their current jobs, with their bosses, or in their environments due to various situations that they went through. It was a sentiment of the majority of the group. This could generate that there is no disposition to learn and that we have some problems with the objective of our course.

The students belonged to the MBA of a prestigious university. The class consisted of 24 students, from various professions where Business Administration predominated. The average age of the group was 35–40 and most were in leadership positions in their companies.

Given the situation described above, I saw the propitious opportunity to work with them some practice that could shed light on how to make happiness tangible and also how they could work to improve it. This is how I choose the Management 3.0 practice called “12 steps to happiness.” If you want to know more about this practice you can enter:

https://management30.com/practice/happiness-steps/

The practice is based on 12 steps that we must follow to improve our happiness. When putting it into practice, the idea is to assign a score to each of the 12 steps of happiness and after this, generate some actions that allow improving these scores or in any case maintaining them. The results are then periodically reviewed to see the improvements and continue with the actions if necessary.

During the second class session, we began with the practice of the “12 steps to happiness.” We did it virtually through the Zoom platform. I shared an “excel” file with spaces for each student. I divided them into teams and they worked on shared files with all of their members.

In developing the dynamics we follow the following steps:

Step 1: I gave them an explanation about the “12 steps to happiness”, we read each of the steps and their meaning to ensure understanding. I asked all the students if they had doubts to clear them.

Step 2: They were given a total of 20 minutes to do the entire practice. I divided the class into 05 groups of 4 or 5 people each and gave them the excel file for them to work.

Step 3: each student had to rate from 1 to 5 each of the steps, based on their experience in the last two weeks.

Step 4: they had to choose the 03 steps with the lowest scores and write down the actions they would take during the week to improve them.

Step 5: they had to share their results with the other team members.

Step 6: They were asked to find the common ground (coincidences) that they had with the other participants.

Step 7: They were given the option to get the% happiness of the team so that they could work together or help each other improve.

Step 8: At the end of practice, I asked a member of each team to share about the commonalities they had as a team and the options they were considering to improve them.

Step 9: At the end of the practice and after listening to all the teams, we made a great conclusion, and together with the whole class, we obtained what were the steps with the lowest scores in the class. We also put the best ideas to improve them.

It should be noted that I entered each of the groups to resolve any questions from the students and guide them in the development of the practice.

As a facilitator, I learned that choosing the path to happiness only depends on us. Many of the explanations why students had a low score were due to lack of time for work. The class concluded that this could be solved, having a little “organization”, that is, having a daily work schedule, which allows them to start and end their day as estimated so that they could respect the food spaces, rest, and sport.

The main learnings that we took together with the students of the class were:

1. The practice helped the students get to know each other better. They had known each other for a little over a year and despite that, during the dynamic, they were able to learn personal aspects of each one that they did not know.

2. Each student was able to make recommendations to the others on how to improve the score of each step and we were able to rescue very good ideas.

3. When we carried out with the class the great summary of the steps with the lowest scores, it turned out that “Eating well”, “Exercise” and “Rest well” were the main ones. All these steps are within the control of each one and a solution that we reached with the students was that having a good organization is key.

4. Most of the students agreed that doing the practice with their respective work teams would bring them good results.

The advantage that we have when applying this type of practice is that we can experiment, without jeopardizing the objective of the practice, so my next experiments with this practice will be:

• Make a great summary of the whole class and together with the students choose the best ideas to improve each of the steps.
• Do the practice as part of the first class session. This will help build a climate of trust with the students and will give us more time to see the improvements that can be made throughout our classes.
• Review the results of the proposed actions every two weeks and see the improvements.

For the next facilitation, I would spend more time having each group share with the others the actions they propose to improve each of the steps to happiness. Also, let them share what is working for them and what is not.

We had an additional review with the group of students, in the time that the course lasted and we could observe improvements in the percentages in general.

I can say that as a teacher, I felt that a climate of trust was quickly generated with the students that helped in the subsequent development of each class.

Applying this practice with your teams will help make the choice of the path to happiness visible and above all tangible. They will realize that the actions to improve each step are in the hands of each person and it only depends on each one.

I invite you to do this beautiful practice “12 steps of happiness”, which will help you not only as leaders but also as teammates, colleagues, teachers, or in whatever role we play. In the best of cases, we will be able to help one or more people on this path. Plus, I’m sure it will make us happy.