All too often work can become a place of stress rather than positivity and meaning. In this guest post, consultant David Green shares his top tips for improving positivity and wellbeing in the workplace.
According to Gallup’s 142-country study on the State of the Global Workplace only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. In fact 24% are “actively disengaged,” indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers. If this is the case, then shouldn’t we invest a little more time and energy into cultivating positive emotions at work?
Some of the benefits of improving positive emotions for individuals can include: better health, longer life, increased creativity, improved resilience and stress management. There are also benefits of improving positive emotions for teams and businesses, including: attracting better employees, less absenteeism, improved motivation and performance, increased customer satisfaction. Ultimately better results all around!
Below are 6 top tips for engaging positive emotions within you, your team and your business:
1. Be more grateful and kind
From simple words of thanks to writing a more formal letter, taking time to demonstrate your appreciation is a simple yet powerful way to create a more positive atmosphere. How can you demonstrate thanks to colleagues, bosses, customers, suppliers, partners and anyone else involved with your business? Get more ideas here.
2. Be more forgiving and supportive of yourself and others
Forgiving helps us move on from the past and focus on the now. Here’s a useful model to help you reach out. Build excellent support around you and be supportive. Spend time with and help others. Be inspired by and inspire others – watch inspiring videos, read inspiring stories. Get a coach or mentor. At a team and business level developing a culture where employees are encouraged to make mistakes and learn from them creates greater innovation.
3. Savour the moment
Regularly take time to share and celebrate individual, team and business achievements. Take mental pictures of success, use pictures, collect souvenirs, trophies, awards. Maintain a ‘victory log’ of individual, team or business successes. Smile more.
4. Be more mindful
Mindfulness is about ‘living in the moment’. This can be as simple as taking time out to enjoy and appreciate your lunch, slowing down from time to time to focus on your breathing, through to regular more focused meditation. As an individual, team or business where are you spending most of your energy – The past, the future or ‘living in the moment’?
5. Invest more in personal growth and development
Whether at individual, team or business level, taking on new and interesting challenges that make use of virtues, skills and character strengths creates greater positivity. We all like to accomplish new things. It makes us feel good and builds our confidence. Why not run an Engaging Positive Emotions workshop at your workplace to increase positivity?
6. Build greater confidence and optimism
Focus on skills, strengths and successes. Learn from failures – How can they help you move forward in life? Take action and concentrate your efforts on small manageable goals that you’ve broken down into ‘bite size chunks’.
Engaging positive emotions in the workplace is a winning investment. Individuals win as they develop greater creativity, motivation and resilience. Teams win as individuals inspire each other to greater heights. Organisations win as absenteeism reduces, productivity, performance and staff retention improves.