Happiness in the workplace isn’t an oxymoron.  It’s a highly competitive strategy.  Just ask Zappos, Coca-Cola, AECOM, Super Media, Google, and others.  Some companies even have chief happiness officers.  It’s that strategically important.

What is happiness?  Happiness at work?

Happiness is a surplus of positive over negative emotions plus a sense of satisfaction with life overall.  And, it includes:

• Authenticity – being yourself, acting on your values, using your unique strengths
• Relationships – personal and work relationships which are positive and supportive
• Meaning and purpose – having a clear and meaningful why for the work you do
• Growth and mastery – having an opportunity to learn, grow and become your best self

How do you get happiness at work?

Happiness at work isn’t solely the result of building great technical skills or doing work you find challenging.  Rather, happiness at work depends first on building personal self-awareness, the foundation for personal change and becoming a great leader.  Happiness at work also depends on learning the science behind happiness and happiness at work and learning the tools & techniques to put it into action.  And, happiness at work is supported by highly developed personal, interpersonal and group skills that can be assessed, developed, and which are linked to better work performance outcomes.

Why does happiness at work matter?

Great leaders create great culture, which yields great work. There is a strong correlation between employees who say they feel happy and valued at work and those who say they have a positive company culture. Happier organizations outperform less happy organizations – more profit, higher productivity, more innovation and creativity, greater customer loyalty, higher employee retention.

(5) Ways Good Managers Influence Workplace Happiness:

1. Great Managers: People don’t leave companies, they leave managers. That’s often because those managers lack the personal, interpersonal, and group skills that inspire employees to consistently deliver their best work and to remain with the company. Understanding how to use happiness at work as an approach to creating great workplace culture is fundamental to team and organizational performance.  The skills needed between now and 2030 are moving dramatically toward this set of skills, nontechnical skills, because artificial intelligence will be automating routine, repetitive tasks.
2. Power Skills (The Skills Formerly Known as Soft Skills): Great leaders and managers at all levels possess high levels of personal, interpersonal, and group skills, and work continuously to improve these skills throughout their careers.  Hiring organizations have begun to prioritize these Power Skills over technical skills at time of recruitment and hiring.  Power Skills are essential to be considered a strong candidate for promotion to managerial and leadership positions. Because Power Skills are more difficult to develop in the workplace, having these skills and being able to demonstrate mastery of these skills is a competitive advantage when looking for a new position or a promotion.
3. Protection from Becoming Obsolete: McKinsey in its 2017 report: “Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained,” reported that up to 30% of current jobs will be automated through AI applications by 2030.  Jobs with high levels of routine, repetitive tasks are most at risk, and jobs with elements of routine, repetitive tasks will be partially automated.  Power skills, at least at current levels of AI technology, aren’t at risk of automation.  AI will relieve everyone in the workplace of the routine and repetitive tasks.  We won’t be working less, rather our jobs will require higher level skills.  McKinsey has identified three significant areas of needed skill growth between now and 2030, all of which require high levels of Power Skills:   applying expertise (technical skill delivery is supported by high levels of power skills), interacting with stakeholders, and managing and developing people.
4. Greater Support from Colleagues: Being a Power Skills Ninja makes it easier to build your professional network and get social and work support from colleagues.
5. Enhance Your Opportunities for Advancement:  Building Power Skills and knowing the science, tools and techniques of happiness at work increases your opportunities for advancement.  People with higher power skills are seen as more promotable. Low levels of power skills and happiness at work tools and techniques are often derailers of mid-managers’ careers.

Happiness at work doesn’t “just happen.”  There is a science behind creating great workplaces.  Great workplaces depend on the efforts of individuals, teams, management, and leadership.  Great workplaces start with individuals at all levels who know and use the science of happiness, personally and at work.

The University of Maryland’s Project Management Center for Excellence has developed an online professional certificate, “Re-Imagining Leadership,” that is preparing people at all levels to develop or refine their Power Skills portfolio so they are ready to manage and lead whenever the opportunity presents.

The certificate consists of the following six (6) courses:

• Course 1 – Let’s Get Happy: Happiness Drives Performance
• Course 2 – Let’s Get Started: Building Self Awareness
• Course 3 – Let’s Get Personal: Working with Personality Type
• Course 4 – Let’s Get Emotional: Emotions and Emotional Intelligence!
• Course 5 – Let’s Get Strong: Strengths at Work
• Course 6 – Let’s Get Principled: Values, Culture & Intelligent Disobedience!

Jocelyn S. Davis, lecturer of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland Project Management Center for Excellence, is teaching these courses.  Course 1 of the professional certificate, Let’s Get Happy: Happiness Drives Performance , focuses on the science of happiness for people personally, professionally, and for organizations who seek to use it as competitive strategy. Davis stated, “Learners will receive actionable information, tools and additional references to develop or refine their Power Skills and to be fully able to use happiness and happiness at work as a competitive approach to life, personally and professionally.”

The Let’s Get Happy course includes:

• A business case for personal and organizational happiness.
• Models and research distilled for effective use by practitioners.
• Self-assessment opportunities to find out just how happy you are personally and at work.
• Primers on how to build personal and workplace happiness.
• Linkage between happiness at work and Power Skills for competitive advantage.

All six courses in the Re-Imagining Leadership Professional Certificate provide an extraordinary opportunity to begin your preparation for a leadership role, to refresh or refine your leadership skills, and support you to become your best self, using happiness as a life strategy.

Beginning in the second course Let’s Get Started: Building Self Awareness, this certificate series provides a unique opportunity for verified learners to join the Power Lab and have access to more than 20 carefully selected self-assessments.  This certificate provides learners with an opportunity to spend some quality time with themselves.  Leadership development courses offered in person use many of these self-assessments, but at a significantly higher cost.

Learners will complete validated self-assessments which provide invaluable, benchmarked results.  Comparison to benchmarks and considering the impact of specific Power Skills on the learner’s performance at work now and in the future supports informed goal setting and action planning.  Learners are supported throughout the courses in the certificate series to take action, to spend some quality time with themselves to help them develop into their best selves individually and professionally.  These courses offer a rigorous, confidential, safe platform online for exceptional professional development of Power Skills.

Learn how to :

• Use happiness and happiness at work as a life strategy for better personal, professional and organizational results
• Become your Best Self by building self-awareness
• Enable your ongoing development as a great leader through self-awareness, goal setting and action planning
• Describe your personality and understand how to better
  1. Manage yourself for best results
  2. Deploy yourself when working with others
  3. Understand others
• Define and capitalize on your unique strengths’ portfolio
  1. Understand how you can work better, with more energy
  2. Understand others and how to improve collaboration
  3. Put your weaknesses in their proper place
• Utilize emotional intelligence for better personal and work relationships
• Define your values and purpose, the Big Why
  1. Better decision-making
  2. Improved alignment on professional roles
  3. Higher motivation
  4. Insights into providing more motivating environments for team members

Learn more about the Re-Imagining Leadership Professional Certificate and enroll today.