"People deserve happiness"

This is a direct quote from a research project on the inner work lives of knowledge workers (Inner Work Life: Understanding the Subtext of Business Performance, Amabile and Kramer, Harvard Business Review, May 2007). The authors jumped into the debate about whether people perform better when they are happier and internally motivated by love of the work, or when working under pressure and externally motivated by deadlines. Guess what -- the research shows a strong link between the quality of inner work life (the constant stream of emotions, perceptions and motivations people experience as they react to and make sense of the events of the workday) and on-the-job performance. The authors found evidence that people are more creative when they are motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction and challenge of the work itself -- not by external pressures or rewards. So for employees it's about more than the paycheck they collect -- it's also about having a sense of doing meaningful work.

What can managers do to have a positive influence on their employees' inner work lives? According to this study, two fundamental things will make more of a difference than daily pats on the back or efforts to introduce fun into the worplace: enabling progress and managing with a human touch. So for managers it's about more than the paycheck they hand out -- it's also about treating people with respect, and at times getting out of their way in order to avoid the negative outcome that Peter Drucker described when he wrote "So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to do work."

What is happiness and what can you do to create more in your life? More on that in my next post...