Happy employees make a happy world and bottom line

                                            Jenny Craig, LCSW, BCD

                                                                                   (published in SWFL Business Times)

Did you know that another person’s mood can affect yours?  Researchers recently demonstrated something most people inherently know... that hanging out with happy people can bring up your mood and hanging out with Negative Nancy’s can bring your mood down.  Something you may not know is that the closer happy people live to you can also affect your mood.  The British Medical Journal revealed that the energy a happy person emits is able to affect others by just being near them.  This means that to that the closer in proximity happy people are to you, the more you feel happy.   Imagine how this makes a difference for where you work and where you choose to live.

Here is the study summarized....

How people at work affect your success:

The authors say "Changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals."  Their research shows that people's happiness can extend up to three degrees of separation.  We all know how negativity can easily be passed.   John is mad at his mom.  He becomes inpatient in the store and yells at the clerk.  The clerk is so upset that she is mean to the next customer.  The customer  is so distraught by the attitude of the clerk, so tweets all her friends and tells them to never shop at that store again.  Immediately her network of 2,000 people are affected by the negativity.  The good news is the same applies to positivity.  As we are happier at work, the more our customers want to be around. Imagine if John had a great morning with his mom and the energy exchange was positive.  The tweet would have then lead to 2,000 people hearing about great customer service.

Insight Thought:  The five people that you work with the most have the most influence over your success.  Are they positive or negative people?  How does their energy affect your productivity, success and happiness?

The closer you are to happy people... the more you feel it...

Professor Nicholas Christakis from Harvard Medical School and Professor James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego showed in their research, you also feel the energy of happiness by how close happiness live to you.

~If you have a friend who lives less than half a mile away and they become happy, their energy increases your chances of being happy by 42%.

~If they live less than two miles away, the chances of increasing your happiness is 22%.

The farther away your friend is, the less likely it is to have a direct effect on you.

Applying this same research to your business, it means the happier customers you attract, the more people will want to do business with you.  We all have a little coffee shop or restaurant with just the “right vibe” that we love to go to. 

Insight Thought: Considering that happiness is one of top indicators of creativity, productivity and keeping customers coming through your door, what is your company doing to ensure your employees know how to be happy? 

Jenny is a top executive coach and team builder and created the Live your Power program helping increase emotional intelligence and happiness in people across the nation.