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Santa Claus Meets Happiness: Finding Ways To Reduce Turnover That Aren't From The North Pole

Guest post by: Kevin Fleming

Article Overview: check out this article about a sometimes overlooked and misinformed construct---the happy employee--and how it relates to getting more out of your workforce

Santa Claus Meets Happiness: Finding Ways To Reduce Turnover That Aren't From The North Pole

Santa Claus Meets Happiness: Finding Secrets to Reduce Turnover That Arent From the North Pole

I read once that “Happiness is in the waiting room of happiness.” Such a brilliant phrase for our myth-loving brain to digest and really wonder about, especially when it comes to this idea that happier, engaged employees make for more productive tenures and should be front and center on all strategic stages. How have we overdone the search for the “Southwest Airlines” culture of people by ignoring truth and instead hail a sort of corporate Santa Claus as it fills our hopes and HR goodie bags with half-truths?

Perhaps the answer lies in a seminar I gave some time ago in which I posed the question to my corporate midlevels: “How important is the brain in leadership?” Remarkably over 60% of the participants stated, at least by implication, that “other things were more important” such as free will, strategic alignment, and communication styles. Hmmm. Makes you think how well we know our biology as we relegate this powerful organ of ours to some primal center of us all where its main duties our consciousness mediation (not leadership, for I guess you don’t need to be conscious for this) and breathing regulation. Not things of board rooms I guess.

So not to bring in another Santa Claus into this discussion, lets get the facts straight. Our prefrontal cortex is the CEO of our decision making, no matter who the actual CEO is in your company. It makes complex nuanced negotiations of trade offs at a nanosecond level, calculating emotional pay offs and manages chemical signals that decide whether you live in fear or creativity in any moment. If that isn’t the stuff of engagement I don’t know what is.

Similarly, when it comes to this issue of a happy employee makes for a more lasting one, some of the following neuroscience facts may make you think twice about attempting to build a culture full of “happier people”. For to do this would imply people truly know what it is that makes them happy. Instead, after reading some commonly accepted facts about metaphysics and neuroscience, you may want to build instead a culture of people more aligned to reality—more to seeking an appropriate hesitation and pause about ‘what they think they know”:

• That about 90 percent of reality is actually invincible…
• That we are conscious of about 5 percent of what we do….
• That our minds are actively recreating and repackaging initial memories that we stamped as “true”, making the conscious replication of a stimuli not at all accurate in fullness to the objective event as it occurred
• That due to a visual perception issue of “inattentional blindness” we have as humans a propensity to fall in love with the forest for the trees, and not really ever see/know a tree as it is
• That chemical feeling of joy/excitement is actually triggered in the moments before we attain what we think will make us happy and does not occur at time of getting the thing we think will make us happy.

All these facts, especially the latter one, make us wonder about our ability to seek things at work that may not be ultimately attainable there. Instead of building a culture of happier people, teach your people to understand reality, the brain, and the never so more important distinction of knowing what is important vs. what is essential in “knowing anything” about people, your boss, and ultimately your own perceptions about what you think you know is going on in you. Milk and cookies by a fireplace may have assured us of happiness to come as kids when December 24th rolled around. But now, we are left to dispel more myths then just a jolly fat man in red suit to get by in this life…and to do it well.

Pending review at Executive Decision magazine

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Article Tags: arent, chemical signals, communication styles, consciousness, goodie bags, happiness, implication, mediation, myth, negotiations, neuroscience, north pole, prefrontal cortex, primal center, santa claus, southwest airlines, strategic alignment, trade offs, turnover, waiting room



Related Forum Posts
You Canadians Are Tough !! - To Evan and GT, (also to any other canadian members) Just noticed a news flash that the poor folks who live in Hendricksons Creek are currently enduring temperatures of -41. The other day I watched a brilliant program by David Attenborough about the confusion being felt by various animals at the North Pole, particularly Penquins and Polar Bears because their feeding habits and survival are being affected because it's not cold enough where they are, what's going on !! rrrrrrrrrrrrrrregards, Mal.
What is your market? - Where are you selling your products / services? Is North America your market right now or are you planning on moving the business here and then trying to sell to North Americans?
Re: The secret to happiness - Happiness comes from within. We choose whether we want to be happy or not. Circumstances can influence our feelings, but in the end, it's up to us how we deal with our circumstances, positively or negatively. I admire anyone who can stay strong and be happy through adversity. There will always be challenges that we face, but I believe that if we face them with our heads held high, the odds of overcoming them are much greater. This reminds me of the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness." Happiness spelled wrong for a reason. One of Will Smith's greatest movies. I encourage you all to watch it as it's very inspiring.
Re: Are you really happy? - So true Yinka. Happiness comes from within. MichelleJ
Re: Did you buy into the iPhone 3G craze? - Kevin, Arent you the EBay guy?? oh well, we all make mistakes....like me buying new tires at Active Green & Ross after I blew out a tire on the 401. I let the guy scare me into the sale and then when I took my care into my mechanic he told me I got hosed....and to never let anyone scare you into buying stuff again.... anyway, I'm glad you got the new battery in any case. I think we will soon be able to go completely without contracts so we arent held hostage... J


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