Podcasts about Nic Marks

In this HRchat episode, we consider what it takes to achieve happiness at work. Tune in as we also share ways to better measure employee engagement. Our guest this time is Nic Marks, CEO and Founder of Friday Pulse. Nic was once described as a “Statistician with a Soul” because of his unusual combination of ‘hard' statistical skills and ‘soft' people skills, he draws on scientific evidence to show that everyone benefits when businesses take happiness seriously.In 2018, Nic founded Friday Pulse an innovative tech business based in London to be the catalyst in changing the world of work for the better.Nic was recently a speaker at Disrupt London 19.0. Check out the latest London chapter 5-minute lightning talks here. Questions for Nic include:What does happiness at work mean to you?How did you get into measuring happiness? Can one measure happiness?Can employees 'game' a happiness test? After all, many employees wouldn't want low engagement scores.What incentivizes employees and does that differ between generations/industries? Why does happiness at work matter?What are the big drivers of team happiness?If teams are happy, will they get complacent? Won't they just slack off?You have a free happiness at work test at fridayone.com. Tell me moreMore About NicNic has been an advisor to the UK Government Office for Science on the Wellbeing Foresight Programme and has written over 20 publications. In 2010 Nic was invited to speak at the prestigious TED global conference. His TED talk has now been watched well over two million times, and he authored one of the original three TEDbooks, entitled ‘A Happiness Manifesto'. Nic was named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the UK's Institute of Directors magazine and his work was listed as one of Forbes Magazine's Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011.Nic founded Friday Pulse in 2018 - a weekly science-led pulse that provides leaders with actionable data on their teams' happiness, and is currently writing a book on why happiness is a serious business.Feature Your Brand on the HRchat PodcastThe HRchat show has had 100,000s of downloads and is frequently listed as one of the most popular global podcasts for HR pros, Talent execs and leaders. It is ranked in the top ten in the world based on traffic, social media followers, domain authority & freshness. The podcast is also ranked as the Best Canadian HR Podcast by FeedSpot and one of the top 10% most popular shows by Listen Score. Want to share the story of how your business is helping to shape the world of work? We offer sponsored episodes, audio adverts, email campaigns, and a host of other options. Check out packages here. Follow us on LinkedIn Subscribe to our newsletter Check out our in-person events

 In this episode, I'm honored to have Nic Marks, a renowned statistician, happiness expert, and the founder of Friday Pulse, as my guest. Nic Marks is celebrated for his innovative approach to measuring happiness and well-being, particularly in the workplace. His work has revolutionized how organizations think about employee satisfaction and productivity. In our conversation, we delve into Nic's journey and explore his groundbreaking methods for assessing happiness. We discuss how organizations can foster a positive work environment and the impact this has on overall business success. Nic shares his insights on the five ways to well-being and how individuals can apply these principles in their daily lives. We also touch upon the challenges of maintaining personal happiness in today's fast-paced world and how to find balance amidst the chaos. Join us for an enlightening discussion with Nic Marks, where you will learn: - The importance of happiness and well-being in the workplace. - Innovative methods for measuring and improving employee satisfaction. - Practical advice on applying the five ways to well-being in your daily life. - Strategies for maintaining personal happiness in a demanding world. - Insights into creating a positive and productive work environment. Discover more about Nic Marks' work and his contributions to the field of happiness research: https://nicmarks.org/

On this episode of “Better Than Fine,” host Darlene Marshall is joined by featured guest, Nic Marks, Marks is a statistician, policy advisor, speaker, and author known for his work on the Happy Planet Index - the first global measure of sustainable well-being which envisions a future where good lives don't have to cost the earth. He's also the founder and CEO of Happiness Works, an organization focusing on changing the world of work.  In this encore presentation we explore meaningful work, happiness in the pandemic, working for a better world at multiple levels of influence and intervention, why measuring happiness helps us make meaningful interventions, and Nic shares much of his own journey through a career working in the economy, government, planet level happiness, climate impact, and now affecting happiness at work.  The most trusted name in fitness is now expanding into the wellness world. Become an NASM Certified Wellness Coach and you'll be able to guide and motivate clients to make lasting changes through mental and emotional well-being, recovery, and more. https://bit.ly/46p8tCa

Ever wondered how to create a culture of happiness within your organization? Nic Marks, reveals his unique approach to fostering employee well-being leveraging the science of emotions.Nic is the founder and CEO of Friday Pulse, an organization focusing on changing the world of work. He has been featured in publications including the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Wired UK, and The Huffington Post.In our conversation, we talk about:

Nic Marks is an independent policy adviser, speaker, statistician, and author. He is best known for his work on the Happy Planet Index which is the first global measure of sustainable well-being. It envisions a future where good lives don't have to cost the earth.I think you will be blown away by this conversation about what happiness really is and how it applies at home and work.Learn More About Greg Witz and betterHUMAN:Greg's sole mission in life is to challenge all of us to be better. MAKING HUMANS BETTER HUMANS has been at the foundation of Witz Education for over 30 years. As an entrepreneur, thought leader, author, mentor, and father, Greg creatively blends psychology and communication skills with street smarts and a no-BS approach. From startups to the White House, bringing entrepreneurs and business leaders to the top of their game is Greg's passion. His rich understanding of organizational and human development coupled with his own corporate experience allows Greg to effectively and energetically design and deliver tailor-made programs that have transformed thousands of Witz clients' careers and personal lives.Learn more about what Witz Education can do for you at witzeducation.com

This podcast is a commentary and does not contain any copyrighted material of the reference source. We strongly recommend accessing/buying the reference source at the same time. ■Reference Source https://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index ■Post on this topic (You can get FREE learning materials!) https://englist.me/173-academic-words-reference-from-nic-marks-the-happy-planet-index-ted-talk/ ■Youtube Video https://youtu.be/XJBKzVvd6bs (All Words) https://youtu.be/GgHrASoXUrA (Advanced Words) https://youtu.be/Nm_vVzuqNLk (Quick Look) ■Top Page for Further Materials https://englist.me/ ■SNS (Please follow!)

The happiness and wellbeing of team members is critical to the success of any organization. But many leaders struggle to know how to measure wellbeing in ways that provide insights and inspire change. In the third episode of the Better Being Series, host and Aon's Chief Wellbeing Officer, Rachel Fellowes, is joined by Nic Marks, The Happiness Expert, CEO and founder of Friday Pulse, for a conversation about happiness data and why measuring wellbeing in organizations is a critical first step to improving it. [2:20] The genesis of Nic's interest in happiness and wellbeing. [5:00] The desire to achieve happiness is a global one. [7:17] Key distinctions between individual and collective happiness. [9:28] Metrics that provide insights into individual and group happiness and wellbeing. [13:01] The expected ROI on team happiness and success. [14:53] Advice for leaders who want to increase their team's happiness. [20:40] Nic reveals his vision for a future filled with happiness. [23:26] Advice for leaders who are seeking increased wellbeing for their team.Additional Resources:Aon's websiteAon's Human Sustainability Index (HSI)Rachel Fellowes on LinkedInOn Aon's Better Being Series – Part 1: Human Sustainability with Rachel Fellowes and Lisa StevensOn Aon's Better Being Series - Part 2: Physical Wellbeing and Resilience with Rachel Fellowes and Daniel ScottAdditional resources from Nic Marks:LinkedInFriday PulseFriday OneNic Marks' WebsiteThe Happy Planet IndexThe Happy Planet Ted TalkTweetables:“We are born into this world designed for relationships.” — Nic Marks“Great teams are both happy and successful.” — Nic Marks“Bringing together a team to work on a common goal and project is really important. The human side of it is really important.” — Nic Marks“If you measure weekly team happiness, you've got a metric you can talk about every week.” — Nic Marks“Ironically, happiness is more engaging than engagement because it's more appealing to people.” — Nic Marks“Value is not only financial, it's about the wellbeing of the population of the people and the planet and future generations.” — Nic Marks

Are you ready to unlock the secret to building a thriving business?   In this episode of the Happy Hustle Podcast, I chat with Nic Marks, a Happiness Expert, CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse. Nic talk about why happiness matters and reveals the key drivers of happiness at work. Nic has captured the hearts and minds of millions with his inspiring TED talk, watched by well over a million people worldwide. He has been hailed as a "Statistician with a Soul," combining his expertise in hard statistics with his deep understanding of people. Nic draws upon scientific evidence to showcase the incredible benefits that arise when businesses prioritize happiness. He founded Friday Pulse an innovative tech business based in London to be the catalyst in changing the world of work for the better.   During our conversation, Nic and I explore the seven successes of happy teams and provide actionable insights on how to build a happy team. From staff retention and talent attraction to increased productivity, resilience, creativity, collaboration, and overall business value, Nic's expertise sheds light on the incredible impact that happiness can have on your organization.   If you're curious to assess your own happiness at work, I encourage you to visit https://fridayone.com and gauge your happiness levels. O Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain valuable insights from a true happiness pioneer.   Connect with Cary!https://www.instagram.com/cary__jack/https://www.facebook.com/SirCaryJackhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cary-jack-kendzior/https://twitter.com/thehappyhustlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDNsD59tLxv2JfEuSsNMOQ/featured  Get a free copy of his new book,  The Happy Hustle, 10 Alignments to Avoid Burnout & Achieve Blissful Balance https://www.thehappyhustlebook.com/  Sign up for The Journey: 10 Days To Become a Happy Hustler Online Course http://www.thehappyhustle.com/JourneyApply to the Montana Mastermind Epic Camping Adventure https://caryjack.com/montana “It's time to Happy Hustle, a blissfully balanced life you love, full of passion, purpose, and positive impact!” Episode Sponsor Did you know that 4 out of 5 Americans are magnesium deficient?  And almost everyone is at suboptimal levels. And that's a big problem because magnesium is involved in more than 600 biochemical reactions in our body. Now here's what most people DON'T know: taking just any magnesium supplement won't solve your problem because most supplements use the cheapest kinds that your body can't use or absorb. That's why I exclusively recommend Magnesium Breakthrough. It's the only full-spectrum magnesium supplement with 7 unique forms of magnesium that your body can actually use and absorb. When you get all 7 critical forms of magnesium, pretty much every function in your body gets upgraded... from your brain... to your sleep... pain, and inflammation...and less stress. BiOptimizers only offers this discount once a year, so don't miss out. Just go to www.bioptimizers.com/happy and enter code happy10 to get 10% off any order.   I assure you that all BiOptimizers supplements are best in class. If for some reason you feel differently, you can get a full refund, no questions asked. They are so confident that they offer a 365-day money-back guarantee! 

In this episode of the Ideas on Stage podcast we spoke with Nic Marks. Nic was once described as a "statistician with a soul” due to his unusual combination of 'hard' statistical skills and 'soft' people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life for over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. In 2010 Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2.5 million times. In this episode we talked about his experience speaking at TED. We hope you enjoy it! Links: - Friday Pulse: https://fridaypulse.com/ - Nic Mark's website: https://nicmarks.org/ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/ Books mentioned: - Happy Ever After by Paul Dolan - The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter - Friends by Robin Dunbar +++ Take the Confident Presenter Scorecard to benchmark your ability to deliver powerful presentations and identify opportunities for improvement: https://ideasonstage.com/score Want to learn more about how you can grow your business and increase your influence through great presenting? Register today for our free, live web class on all things presentation skills: https://www.ideasonstage.com/uk/masterclass

Nic Marks's TED talk on the Happy Planet Index has been viewed millions of times. He studied maths at Cambridge, is a trained therapist and statistician and was a member of the Think Tank (New Economics Foundation) working on wellbeing that became hugely successful and influential at Governmental level. A happy team is a successful team. Happiness is ill defined and therefore can be thought of at three different levels. ‘I feel happy' which is an emotion, ‘I am happy with…' which is a cognitive judgement and ‘I am a happy person' which is a personal trait. Happiness is not a state to reach and maintain, it is a wave function where we go up and down; in and out of happiness. When we are happy, we should carry on, when not happy we need to make a change. Happiness all the time would actually be dysfunctional. Happiness is a very social emotion. We are 30% more likely to laugh in the presence of another person. This is all about generosity and giving, our ability to have multiple relationships which require the investment of time. “Are you happy at work?' is a simple question relevant and east to answer from the CEO to the newest intern (from shop floor to the top floor)KPI's are usually a lagging indicator, so leaders need to consider focusing on leading indicators such as a weekly ‘happiness' check in for teams. Happy individuals deliver better quality and quantity of work and creativity is heavily linked to positivity.We can't separate our home and work life as regards happiness, organisations are full of human beings who need care, empathy and understanding to allow all to feel valued and deliver value. This episode is packed full of top tips and strategies for any leader to start to make happiness a KPI in their organisations. To check out your own happiness at work see: www.fridayone.comTo learn more about Friday Pulse: www.fridaypulse.comRead more about Nic and his work: www.nicmarks.org and www.happyplanetindex.org 

With International Happiness Day taking place on 20 March 2022, what better time to discuss the pursuit of happiness through running? To this end, we're joined by Nic Marks, a happiness expert and statistician, who believes there are five pillars to happiness – regular movement being one.Find out more about Nic Marks' work here: nicmarks.org or fridaypulse.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Looking for more than audio? View this TalentTalk Radio video recording on TalentTalk Radio host, Chris Dyer's, channel. >> CLICK HERE Want to connect with our guests? Nic Marks Happiness Expert, Statistician and CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse Website LinkedIn Brandon Miller CEO of 34 Strong, StrengthsFinder Workplace Expert Website LinkedIn

Why you've got to check out today's episode: My guest this week is Nic Marks who claims that, “Happiness is a serious business and businesses who take it seriously do better. Happier teams are more productive, more innovative, and have less churn.” Find out what it takes. Resources/Links: Take the FREE personal happiness at work test: https://fridayone.com Watch the video of this episode: https://bit.ly/extrapod   Summary Being a good leader means having a happy team which means creating the right environment for people to flourish. Nic Marks has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life for over 25 years, with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change.  In 2001 he founded the award-winning Centre for Wellbeing at the London-based think tank the New Economics Foundation. Over the next decade Nic and his team were highly influential in the UK and global policy arena. This included the world's first global measure of sustainable wellbeing – the Happy Planet Index - and the very popular Five Ways to Wellbeing. The latter were designed to be the mental health equivalent of five fruit and vegetables a day. They have since been used very widely in the UK and globally as a framework for promoting positive mental health.

Nic Marks was once described as a "statistician with a soul" due to his unusual combination of 'hard' statistical skills and 'soft' people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life for over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. He is the founder of Friday Pulse and has worked with over 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work. In 2008, Nic and his colleagues created the Five Ways to Wellbeing for the UK Government Office of Science. They were designed to be the mental health equivalent of five fruit and vegetables a day. They have since been used very widely in the UK and globally as a framework for promoting positive mental health. In 2010, he gave a TED talk on his work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2 million times. Nic has been applying his creative thinking to the world of work since 2012. He is the founder of Friday Pulse and has worked with over 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work. Social Media Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/fridaymatters/ https://www.facebook.com/fridaypulse/ https://fridaypulse.com/ https://nicmarks.org/

In der neunten Folge von “Coffee, Tea, Technology“ widmen sich Moderatorin Sandra Baierl und ihre Gäste, „Glücksforscher“ Nic Marks und Kapsch BusinessCom (KBC)-Vorstand Jochen Borenich, dem großen Thema „Glück“. Marks, der als „Statistician with a soul“ beschrieben wird, beschäftigt sich seit vielen Jahren mit der Kombination aus harten statistischen Daten und persönlichen Gefühlslagen. Sein TED-Talk „The Happy Planet Index“ wurde bereits über 2,5 Millionen Mal aufgerufen. Marks erläutert in dieser Podcast-Episode, welche Auswirkungen die Corona-Krise auf das Glücksgefühl der Menschen hatte und welche Unterschiede es dabei in den verschiedenen Generationen gibt. „In dieser Situation die Unternehmenskultur aufrecht zu erhalten ist eine neue Verantwortung im Leadership“, beschreibt Kapsch-Vorstand Jochen Borenich, welche speziellen Anforderungen an die Führungskräfte inbesondere bei der Integration von neuen Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern in Pandemiezeiten entstanden sind. Marks analyisert die drei Ebenen des „Glücks“ und liefert einen „5-Punkte-Plan“, der bei der Erreichung des für die Arbeit so wichtigen „täglichen Glücksgefühls“ helfen kann. Sowohl Borenich als auch Marks konstatieren einen Wandel im Führungsstil: Während es früher mehr die „Command and Control“-Strategie war, in der den Menschen Dinge angeschafft wurden und die sehr „Input-orientiert“ war, sei es jetzt mehr eine Kommunikation „zwischen Erwachsenen“, „Output-orientiert“ und empathischer. Abschließend empfiehlt Experte Marks, den Glücksstatus der Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter einmal wöchentlich abzufragen, um basierend auf validen Daten früh genug auf Veränderungen im Unternehmen reagieren zu können, weil: „Glückliche Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter arbeiten effizienter, innovativer und produktiver.“Weiterführende Links zur Folge:Persönliche Homepage von Nic MarksFriday PulseWhitepaper Happiness KPI5-Minutes-Happiness-TestKapsch BusinessCom (KBC)

My guest today is Nic Marks. Nic is one of the world's leading experts on happiness and the founder of Friday Pulse, a tool to help organizations find out how happy their people are at work. Nic also created the Happy Planet Index to show which countries have the happiest people, and he spent years thinking about how to be happy and the relationship between happiness and success.So in this episode, we talk about how to be happy. Nic talks about his mentor, a Chilean economist who changed his life, his five ways to wellbeing and much more. Nic starts off by explaining what Friday Pulse is for:And so I'm a statistician by trade. So I'm looking to create a measure that is useful for organisations and basically, our measure is happy weeks, which is “have people had a good week?”. That builds up into a metric for an organisation that allows them to track how every team, how the whole organisation is and it's very, very responsive. I mean, most organizations don't have a responsive people metric. Most of their people metrics are quite lagging. So they would obviously look at things like retention and things like that, they might look at engagement and tend to do that in a once a year survey, maybe once a quarter. I want to create something very at the moment......So by measuring it weekly, you start to get into that it's very fluid and that's what I really like about it. And, we create useful data for team leaders and organizations to understand their happiness and their organization.✔ Links: Nic Marks:https://nicmarks.org/Nic Marks on Twitter:https://twitter.com/iamnicmarksNic Marks on TED Talk:https://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_indexFriday Pulse:https://fridaypulse.com/?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=pmd_dtjkDJiY_9ZitGC0Z7d4mEl0paXU.DmSXB.ozjsQWD4-1634373516-0-gqNtZGzNAyWjcnBszQpRHappy Planet Index:http://happyplanetindex.org/Subscribe to Graham's Newsletter: https://www.grahamallcott.com/sign-upOur Show Sponsors: Think Productive - Time Management Training:http://www.thinkproductive.com​​Useful links:https://www.grahamallcott.com/links See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today I connected with Nic Marks, statistician/founder of "Friday Pulse"/author, about measuring quality of life as it relates to our teams and company culture. We touch on key points such as: ·       Types of unhappiness ·       What we measure tends to improve-What we measure matters ·       Balancing the negativity/positivity balance ·       Sitting with discomfort to help employees feel heard ·       How to hit the sweet spot of surveys (creating surveys that work) ·      Creating a team meeting "meal box" for your company ·       Some of the challenges within neuroscience of categorizing emotions ·     The importance of embracing all emotions as valuable data ·       How our hunger to create meaning out of life relates to happiness

Join us in this BREWtiful day as Jon and Nic Marks, CEO, and Founder of Friday Pulse talks about why do we need to measure happiness at work weekly. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/  Website: https://jondwoskin.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/  Email: jon@jondwoskin.com  Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!

Join us in this BREWtiful day as Jon and Nic Marks, CEO, and Founder of Friday Pulse talks about stats and how he measures happiness. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/  Website: https://jondwoskin.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/  Email: jon@jondwoskin.com  Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!

Join us in this BREWtiful day as Jon and Nic Marks, CEO, and Founder of Friday Pulse talks about how he measures happiness through adjustment periods. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/  Website: https://jondwoskin.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/  Email: jon@jondwoskin.com  Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!

Join us in this BREWtiful day as Jon and Nic Marks, CEO of Friday Pulse, talks about how to measure happiness in the workplace. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/  Website: https://jondwoskin.com/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/  Email: jon@jondwoskin.com  Get Jon's Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!

On this episode of the Inspiring Great Leaders Podcast, Craig Johns speaks with Nic Marks feeling fast and thinking slow, 5 ways of wellbeing, the unintended consequences of our lifestyles, and the tension between good lives now and good lives in the future. We also delve into his The Happy Planet Index TED talk with over 2.5million views, happiness is a social emotion, the power of the Friday Pulse, how COVID has landed very unevenly for people, the quarterly cadence and how do we live happily and sustainably as a species?

With a return to work very much on the agenda for businesses and employees alike in recent weeks, should there be a shift towards businesses providing a more well-being-focused space post-pandemic? Nic Marks is a science-of-wellbeing specialist and he joined Bobby to discuss. Listen and subscribe to Down to Business with Bobby Kerr on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.    Download, listen and subscribe on the Newstalk App.     You can also listen to Newstalk live on newstalk.com or on Alexa, by adding the Newstalk skill and asking: 'Alexa, play Newstalk'.

Dr Alise Cortez is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto, Now! A management consultant who ignites passion and purpose. She's the author of the book Purpose Ignited and the host of her weekly radio show; Working on Purpose Radio. In this show you can learn about: How Alise found her purpose and how she ignites others Why in finding our true passion, it will help us contribute to the world How conscious capitalism is full of purpose The steps and stages to ignite our passion Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Alise below: Alise on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisecortez/ Gusto Now Website: https://www.gusto-now.com Alise Website: https://alisecortez.com Alise on Twitter: https://twitter.com/alisecortez Alise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisecortez/   Full Transcript Below: ----more----   Dr. Alise Cortez is a special guest on today's show. She's a management consultant, radio show host and Organizational Logotherapist. But before we get a chance to speak with Alise, it's The Leadership Hacker News. The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: We've recently had International Friendship Day. So, in the show today, we explored the notion around should leaders be friends with their coworkers and teammates. So can you be properly friends with somebody you work with? While some will say yes and others will say no, yet there's plenty of research to suggest that generally speaking, we highly value workplace friendships and having these friendships positively impacts on the work that we do and our approach to our jobs. A study of thousands of employees by UK based team building company, Wildgoose found that more than half. In fact, it's 57% of workers said that having a work best friend made their work more enjoyable while 22% argue, it makes them as or more productive. What's more, it seems that many workers who don't have strong relationships in the workplace may be struggling with things like loneliness, since 15% of those who were surveyed don't have a work best friend, but would ideally like one. All of us appreciate having good friends in our lives says Nic Marks, happiness expert, statistician and CEO of the Friday Pulse. Nick's also a good friend and was the guest on show 18, hacking happiness. Nic said, it's good to have people whom care about us and who care for us. Why should work be any different? Especially when we consider how rational the world of work is. Nic explains, we have a thick core relationship within our team, as well as a thinner, more peripheral relationship with other colleagues and customers and suppliers. The quality of these relationships is not only affects our own experience at work, but work is indisputably better when we get along with people, it's also business critical, but workplace friendships remain a controversial topic for a number of reasons, not least because they're associated with the formation of cliques and friendships can also be potentially undermining effectiveness of teams. Some of the worst performing teams, I know are great friends, but they can't get anything done said Pam Hilton, a collaboration expert and author of Supercharged Teams - 30 Tools of Great Teamwork. Collective intelligence research tells us that teams who avoid constructive conflict in favor of consensus make fewer successful decisions because they don't challenge each other enough. Hamilton believes that while it's easy to assume that friendship is the first step towards team ship, it's really the other way around. We need to come to work to achieve something, whether it's to launch a new product or to serve our customers and putting friendship before team ship means that we might launch an inferior product because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings or to forget to serve our customers because we're too busy having a good time. So regardless of whether leaders promote or frown upon workplace friendships, they'll continue to exist. Humans are hardwired to form connections with others, and we're likely to form especially strong bonds with those that we have something in common with. Inevitably, we're likely to find more of those people at work. So, the leadership lesson here is awareness. If we're aware of friendships that are productive and helping us as a business move forward, we should encourage and promote it. But where we recognize their clique and holding back performance of productivity, we should challenge it. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. We're looking forward to hearing from you, interesting stories and any insights that you might have. So please get in touch. Start of Podcast Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Dr. Alise Cortez. She is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto Now. A management consultant who ignites the passion and purpose in her clients. She's the author of the book, Purpose Ignited and the host of a weekly radio show Working on Purpose. Alise, welcome to the show, my friend. Alise Cortez: Thank you so much for having me, Steve. It's so great to be on your show. Steve Rush: It's great to have you on our show too. And we've had the opportunity to have met a few times over the last year or so. Really looking forward to getting into the whole principle of purpose and passion. But before we do that, maybe just for the folks that are listening for the first time and haven't met yet, be great to give us a little bit of a backstory as to your early life and passions. Alise Cortez: Well, I grew up in a small town in Oregon and literally it was a great place to grow up Steve, but honestly, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. And in my late teens, I found myself in Portland and then finally found my way into college at about age 24 after bottling around for a bit and made myself a promise when I got into college, Steve, and that was, I needed to learn French and play the piano. So, I did those things going through my first two years of college. And then I found myself with my boyfriend. And when I was 26 years old, he got moved to Madrid, Spain for his company. And I came with him. I was just a college student. I didn't have a career. And so now here I am, mind you, small town girl from Oregon. I've landed in Madrid, Spain. I can speak French. And I learned some Spanish in the restaurant I worked at when I was waiting tables to get through college so I could speak the Spanish. And so, I'm going to Madrid and I'm like, oh my gosh, this place is amazing. Everybody is kissing, there's amazing communication. So, I went all over Western Europe on my French and my Spanish for about six months. And then they moved us to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where then learned Portuguese and went all over South America for two years. And so, Steve, I just couldn't get that out of my system, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: Once that had been imprinted for like almost three years, there was no going back. So that's where the passion for language and travel started. Steve Rush: And you still have that passion for language and travel now. Alise Cortez: Absolutely, I do in fact, I still use Spanish. I do Spanish programs and I do some Portuguese programs and yes, I keep traveling, absolutely. Steve Rush: What do you think it is that creates that Alise in you? Where does that come from? Alise Cortez: Yeah, good question. So, you know, I remember distinctly when I was growing up in school, my parents had a big restaurant. Breakfast, lunch and dinner place. And I worked there when I was in high school and waited tables. I was the oldest of four siblings and my parents expected, being the oldest that I would take over the restaurant, but what they didn't know, Steve was that all those years that I was waiting tables in the small little town with 4,800 people. And it was that people from really exotic places like Portland, Oregon would pass through and I would learn from them and hear about these outside world experiences. And I just was drawn to what what's out there. What could there be? Steve Rush: You got a really curious mindset as well, haven't you? Which I suspect is why you've ended up doing what you're doing now. Tell us a little bit about how that epiphany came about? Alise Cortez: I do have a curious mindset. I'm learning that more and more as I go through life. You know, I have to say, one of the paths to purpose I should say, Steve is paying attention to and learning from what's ailed us in life. And so, you would think that amazing experiences that I had living in Spain and Brazil, where incredibly phenomenally positive, and they were, but at the same time here I was 26 years old living in Brazil. I had a maid, chauffeur and a gardener. I had the world by the tail, you would think, but there was just one problem. And I problem was that I was miserable in many ways, because what I really wanted to do was to matter. I wanted to make a difference in the world somehow. And all I was doing was consuming a beautiful life. And what we know about meaning and purposes is, when you're serving other people, that's when you're most fulfilled. So actually, had a meaning crisis back in my mid-twenties. And then later on in my early thirties, when I came back to the states, it manifested into what I would call a sort of an early midlife crisis. And so that my friend is when I found my way into getting a PhD. I didn't have an affair, buy a sports car, no. My answer to a midlife crisis was to get my PhD. So that defining rod that I like to say was working its magic. And then just literally over time, I just kept paying attention to, trying to literally, you know, feel my way to what that dividing rod was trying to tell me to do. And that's when I found my way into the human capital industry, some 20 years ago. I began studying meaning and work and identity for my research and PhD, consultant along, engagement performance, leadership, et cetera. And then I have to say, I found myself just this incredible internal force of, you know, replicate that research, at least make it bigger and make it deeper. And I did that in 2014 and I got published by going to a business conference there. And of course, I was in India. So, I have three weeks in India. And I had that experience, right? The experience people talk about going to India, totally stepped into my soul and really realized this is where I need to be. I need to be doing this meaningful purpose stuff really more on a full-time basis. And lo and behold, Steve, right around in there is when VoiceAmerica called me and said, hey, do you want to host your own radio show? Oh my God, this is all connected, right? So that's were working with purpose radio was born. And that's really how it all started for me Steve. It was this ongoing, unfolding, unveiling of like literally my soul emerging from myself, I would say Steve Rush: The one thing I noticed about you Alise is, I still don't think you found the end game for you. I know from our conversations that we've had together, that, you know, every day is a school day for you and you're continually learning and continually evolving your thinking and continue looking for new ways to ignite not only other's purpose, but also finding new elements of purpose for you. Alise Cortez: Oh my gosh, thank you for seeing that. I agree with you. And it's so amazing to be seen like that Steve, thank you for that beautiful gift. Yeah, every day is a learning day for me. And I can't wait to see what's around the corner. I have no idea what I'm doing next in terms of how I use this meaning and purpose work in my life and for my clients, but I love it. Steve Rush: Yeah, and we'll come back to mindset, which I think determines whether you see things as really exciting and alluring versus scary and doubtful. We'll come back to that in a moment because I want to kind of get into the premise of when you started to do your studies, you bumped into the notion of logotherapy, and that really was quite an inspirational guide for you, wasn't it? In terms of how you evolved and developed your own thinking? Alise Cortez: Yeah, you know, I really ran into when I started my PhD studies in my early thirties. And of course, you know, here I was doing a PhD in Human Development. So, I was studying Lifespan Human Development Psychology. Of course, I ran into Viktor Frankl work, he's written like 22 books or something, but logotherapy became really sort of a way of life if you will, for me. And what I was drawn to is that it's really a therapeutic approach that helps people find meaning in life. And the whole premise is that our primary motivational force in life is to find meaning. And so that just made a lot of sense to me. And of course, what did I do? I went off and studied me needing work and identity, but today, why is that one of my two main anchors? It's because that local therapy is really an optimistic approach that teaches that there are no negative or traumatic aspects of life that via the stand we take to them, which is also about mindset. They can't be transmuted into positive achievements. And I find that so empowering. Steve Rush: Yes, yes. Alise Cortez: Why wouldn't I want to stand in that space. Steve Rush: Yeah, so thinking about its linked then to mindset, so you call it your governing star. So, what do you mean by that? Alise Cortez: Well, you know, I love that question. Thank you for that. And so, when we think about mindset, it's really our internal operating system, right. It orients where we put our attention and how we interpret the world. And really frankly, it dictates our success and failure. If we think we can? We can. If we think we can't? We can't. It's just so deciding, right? It's so definitive. So that's why I call it your governing star. Steve Rush: That's quite neat, isn't it? And I suspect that's the reason why when you frame it, as it's exciting, I'm really excited about what's coming around the corner. However, perhaps with a different mindset could feel in fear of that? Alise Cortez: No doubt about that, absolutely right. And thank you for that. That is such a really important point to make for our listeners because how we orient ourselves to the world. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast this morning when I was getting ready. When we say things like, well, I have a terrible memory. Guess what? You're going to forget things. If you say things like, I remember people's names like nobody's business, guess what? You do. It's just so definitive. So, when you think, what's this great beautiful life that I'm going to go live today versus, oh, what am I dragging myself through today? You can see the difference in the energy right there. Steve Rush: And people often say to me, you know, Steve, this is a little bit kind of pink and fluffy, but actually it's based in science. It's neuro-plasticity, it's creating new layers of memory that are either going to help us or hold us back. And I wonder what your experience of that was with perhaps your clients? Alise Cortez: Oh gosh, no question about it. You know, one of the greatest things speaking, neuroplasticity. One of the greatest things that I get to do my work, and I think we talked about this when you were on my show is, I have never replicated the positive feeling of witnessing someone, literally their molecules change in front of my very eyes as they transform themselves, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: I don't know of a better feeling than that. And the work that you and I get to do allows us to do that. So, we literally are witnessing that neuroplasticity in the works as we watch them grow. So yeah, and teaching them away. And that's why like therapy so much Steve is because logotherapy teaches them a way to be able to achieve this for themselves every day of their lives. And therefore, I'm empowering them. They don't need me after we work together. If I do my job right, I've empowered them. Steve Rush: Yeah, and the empowerment creates habits and positive rituals, and eventually it becomes the way we do things, right? Alise Cortez: Yeah, and then it's got infinity to it, right. And magnitude to it, and who knows where that goes. Steve Rush: Yeah, exactly. In your book, one of the things that I read that I really loved, and I want us to explore and share with our listeners is the fact that you encourage people to be moment hunters. So, if I'm listening into this today, how do I become a moment hunter? Alise Cortez: That's such a delicious question. And thank you again for such a lovely read of my book. So, you're the one who read my book. It's so good to know. So, where I got the whole moment hunter idea Steve, as you know, I've been hosting my radio show, Working on Purpose for six years, and generally speaking, the last two or three years of that has really been interviewing subject matter experts and authors and business leaders. And so, I happened to come across a book called Ichigo Ichie and it's by two authors name, Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. And essentially what they are talking about is this Japanese concept Ichigo Ichie, which means something like what we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And so therefore we have to evaluate each moment like a beautiful treasure, and that takes being present and mindful and grateful for the moments and cherishing them as part of our one precious life. And so, when you realized that you literally can be, at least if you allow yourself. A child skipping through life, really enjoying and savoring the moment, what a difference that is again, then dragging yourself through a day, right? So, if I teach you to become a moment hunter and I I empower you and you learn a lifelong habit of doing that, that is a night and day difference to the way that most people tend to go about living. And that's where I want to be. I want to be at moment hunter. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. It's one of those things it's academically very easy to say, but it's quite difficult to practice to into a habit of doing so. So where would I start with that? Alise Cortez: Well, it's first it's mindset and I will tell you the first thing, this is a great story actually, the very first thing you can do is literally I kid you not just at the end of your day, just write down, maybe in a journal, three things you're grateful for. And what that starts to do, is it starts having you look for what's good and right in your life. And the story that I want to tell is one of my clients actually started reading my book and he got to the bit that we're talking about here, a gratitude and writing it down. He said, I got through that in my day. And I realized, I couldn't find three things to say that I was grateful for. This is a very successful man, runs an engineering practice. And he said, that's when I realized I need to fire one of my clients, they are just making me miserable. Right? And so, he said, as soon as I got present to that reality, and I then realized what I needed to do, I began to see that there were things to be grateful for. And then I could actually enjoy more moments, but it took him getting present to being miserable with this one particular client and then firing them literally. And what a difference in the lift he got. So again, if you start with what you're grateful for, you'll start to be able to step into the place where you can experience being a moment hunter, and more of that Ichigo Ichie. Steve Rush: And in your experience, the more you do that, does that present itself to be more natural in the future? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, it's a habit so many things in life, right? It becomes a habit, a way of being, right. I bet you I've gone through this, just like any one of us have, if we really think about it. Moments in time where we are more high on life, right? Then other times when we're a bit more low, but there is a way to cultivate that high. And it centered on mindfulness and centered and that's why mindset is so important, right. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: And you know that in your work that you do, right? If we're in charge of our mindset, we don't let it govern us. We have a much better chance of being able to be an ongoing moment hunter versus someone who's literally either auditing life or worse yet, walking through life dead. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so, and much of your work is focused on igniting purpose in others now, and you call out that relationships are a massive part of that. Just tell us about your experience? And also, maybe we can get into some of the techniques that you call out in your book. Alise Cortez: Yeah. Yeah, so in my book, I talk about this notion of in terms of wellbeing informed by what Dr. Martin Seligman refers to as the PERMA Model, which of course is an acronym and the R is for relationships. So, what we know about relationships is, we as human beings, we really are, you know, created as a social being, I don't care how introverted you might be or extrovert you might be. We still really do need meaningful relationships in our life to be mentally well and healthy. And so, what we find is that it's the lack of meaningful connection with other people that often contributes to mental and physical demise and where we get into depression and isolation, et cetera. So, finding a way to stoke relationships in a way, the ones that are important to you, not everywhere all the time, but the ones that you choose so that they're healthy and mature and reciprocal is really, really important. And let's take it one step further, right? So, when we're working from the place of purpose, the reason that purpose works so well is that it requires us to be serving other people. So therefore, it got a self-transcendent quality to it. And the moment we step out of being absorbed in our own life and our world, and we focus on serving and helping others, we're already in a better place. We're already in a much more healthy place. Steve Rush: Right. Alise Cortez: So that's two reasons why relationships are so important. Steve Rush: And you've got a technique called lifeline that you call out in your work, tell us how you would use it? Alise Cortez: Yes. So, lifeline refers absolutely to those meaningful connections that you have in your life, whoever they might be. Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's a child, but the lifeline is really about being, again, mindful and present to that relationship. What are you doing to nurture that relationship? What are you doing to really go looking for and see that other person? And I know that you know this too, because of the work that you do, developing leaders, right, Steve, right. So, to me, what's a great leader? It's the same sort of technique that you would use in the lifeline approach. And that is a great leader of goes looking for what's great and fantastic about the person on their team. And then they look to see how can I lead them to a greater sense of themselves? How can I bring them to see and realize, and go after what I know is even a greater aspect of who they could become? So, to me, a lifeline as you're practicing that sort of set of behaviors in those close relationships in your life. Steve Rush: Yeah, the one thing that struck me in reading that as well was we all have choices about our relationships, but we often don't bring that to our conscience enough and that helps us do that, right? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, exactly right. And again, that's why, you know, it's so important to have silence in our life too. We are the ones in charge here, not the rest of the world. So as fast as the world moves today, right. If we can come back to hold on just a second, I always have one thing under my domain, and that is my mindset. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely. And it starts there, doesn't it? It literally starts there. Alise Cortez: Literally, yes. And ends there. I would say. Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so, yeah, I agree with that. Now, true passion. You've called out in your radio show and the work that you do and it's in your book, you call it out as it being a real contributor to the world. Where have you may be seen that play out the most, or maybe some experiences where you've really seen that work? Alise Cortez: This is just where it gets really yummy. How much time did we get to talk about this Steve? That's so awesome, right. Okay, so I want to distinguish two things. So, passion is absolutely a mechanism to be able to contribute to the world meaningfully. So, what I say about passion, and this is absolutely explicated in the book is, passion is really one of our three sources of meaning through energy. I do this through for my local therapy sort of work. So, what passion really is, it's the creative value of what we give of ourselves to the world. It's something only we can uniquely give through our being, right? And so, the more we give of ourselves our passions, the more energy we have, right. And everybody understands the importance of energy, right? So, when we show up and we really channel our passions, what happens there is that can then lead us to our purpose. Not always, but it can, it's one path to our purpose. And when we serve from our purpose, of course, now that's where the real magic happens. And this is where it gets really interesting from my perspective, Steve. So, purpose acts as a unique filter through which each of us sees the world. And then when we look through that lens, we see possibilities, or we do something that no one else we've seen or done. And that is the source of innovation impact that we all aspire for. So, you know, that notion of people confuse passionate and purpose. They're not the same thing, right? Passion is really a way of being in the world. It's really sort of anchored in meaning and the expression of what it is that you find meaningful of yourself and purpose of course, is your north star, why? Which orients all of your activities and why you're doing something and the difference that you hope to leave in the world. So that's how I like to see those two together. It's profoundly important to be able to go after passion and purpose. Steve Rush: And they're not mutually exclusive, are they? Alise Cortez: No, not at all. Steve Rush: And people often get them confused. What causes that? Alise Cortez: That's a great question, you know, one is, we can't go through a day to day, I don't think Steve, without encountering, at least the words, meaning and purpose. People confuse those two words as well. And so, I think the reason people confuse them is because that word, passion, purpose, and even meaning has become so overly utilized and therefore it diminishes its utility. And it just becomes part of the parlance almost like saying things like yeah and huh. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. Alise Cortez: It delude it. Steve Rush: Yeah, I can see that. And unconsciously then by just merely saying, I have purpose, doesn't actually mean that you have purpose. It needs to be backed up by lots of other evidence and actions. Alise Cortez: Boy, now you're getting at one of my major pet peeves, Steve. So, when people say things like, you know, if I see another sign that says muffin on purpose, tires on purpose, I'm going to go ballistic, right? So, people say things like, well, you know, I do this on purpose or such is my purpose. Well, just because you declare something which becomes like a goal for you, does not make it purpose. The only thing that makes something purpose is that one, it literally is that which is called from within you and the service through that you're channeling for, makes a difference to the world and is in service of other people. Very often when people say things like, well, such and such is my purpose, engineering is my business or my purpose or whatever. Developing people, even as my purpose, if you just declaring it as something that you do or a goal, it's not your purpose, it's not the same thing at all. Steve Rush: Totally agree with that, totally. Alise Cortez: Right. Steve Rush: So, one of the things that struck me and I've never come across this notion before of conscious capitalism, but underpinning that is all of those things around passion and purpose. But I wondered if you could share with the listeners, what your view of conscious capitalism is and how we might want to use them in our roles as leaders? Alise Cortez: Another yummy topic for me, I actually devoted the last chapter of my book, as you probably know, because you read it, too the idea of conscious capitalism, that's chapter nine. And I have recently joined the board of Conscious Capitalism here in Dallas as well. To me, it makes so much sense. So let me share, there's four tenets actually of a conscious capitalism that will help our listeners really understand how it works and why they might want to be involved. So, the first tenets is just higher purpose. And so, this really gets to knowing your company's why and doing business beyond profit. If you're just in business to make money, that's one is going to get empty pretty fast. And two, you're not going to distinguish yourself in the marketplace among others that have elevated their gaze above just profit. So hard purposes is the first tenant, the second tenant is stakeholder orientation. And what that is, Steve is that's really a recognition that a business has an interdependence on the ecosystem in which it operates. And so, it's important that a business is focused on serving its employees, its customers, its suppliers, investors, the community, and the planet. Those are all part of the ecosystem in which it operates. And too often, what happens is we're focused on investors at the expense of everything else. And that's where the train falls off the tracks. So, the third tenet is conscious leadership. And so, this is the notion really that, you know, the human social organization, right? And so, it's guided by leaders who understand that they need to inspire others to travel along the same path of consciousness and purpose with them. To raise them along the way like I've been saying, and then the fourth tenet is conscious culture, right? So that's the FOS, the values, the principles, the practical's that underlie that social fabric of the business and connects the stakeholders to each other, united in their purpose and their processes. And of course, there people, so those are the four tenets. And if you listen to those, I can't imagine that you go, heck, I don't want to do that, right. Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. Alise Cortez: What about any of that would make you say that you don't want to play with that? I don't understand. So, to me it's such a natural obvious path that unites the best of what we've been doing together as humanity to bring us forward. So, I think for me, it's a no brainer and it's important that listeners also know that conscious capitalism is only one of like 20 different organizations that are stewarding a similar mindset like this in business. So, this is becoming much more ubiquitous. Steve Rush: And its okay, to make money and be a capitalist underpinning all of the service to other people, if it's purposeful, right? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, in fact, you know, that's the thing about it is, what I appreciate about conscious capitalism is it celebrates capitalism as the best system that we found so far in the world. And frankly extends and expands it so that it actually serves even more interest to lift more boats. So yes, absolutely, profit is fantastic. Steve Rush: There's almost a mystique around the word capitalism because it has a different connotation in people's minds, but actually as you've described it with those principles, it becomes a really honorable and emotive thing to be thinking about as a leader, right. Alise Cortez: Oh, I liked the way you said that, Steve. Yeah, so to me what that is, is why would you get out of bed in the morning and go, you know, I think I just kind of want to fly under the radar and just do the minimum that it takes to get by. Why would you do that? When you could lift your gaze just a little and say, hmm, who could I help today? Who else could I help today? What else could I do to make the world slightly better today? Steve Rush: Yeah, and suppose if there were people listening in today who maybe don't naturally have that passion or still haven't yet found their purpose, maybe having a mindset that says, you know, it's too late for me to change. What would you say to ignite that passion today? Alise Cortez: Oh, well you're not going to like the first thing that I would probably say to them, let me say it anyway. So, if somebody said to me, you know what, it's too late for me to change. I can't find my passion. What I would say to them Steve is, get your shovel. Let's go ahead, you and I both start digging your grave because you're practicing death right now. And that's what I would say. So, it's never too late to work on passion. I don't care if you're in your nineties or a hundred, you know, I will tell you, Steve definitively, both of my parents died 28 days apart in January of 2019 and I'm firmly and all the more affirm in my logotherapy work. My mother was 73 years old. Yes, she had suffered a long time from COPD and she was tired of the suffering. She was ready to leave, but I am absolutely 185% convinced that if she had done something, than sit and watch the TV all day, she got out and even volunteer one hour, a week of her beautiful mind and given to the community. Gave her humor, which is part of her passion. She would still be with us today. That's how important passion and meaning are today. They actually literally can save your life, do save your life. Steve Rush: Yeah, I agree. And it, again comes back down to mindset because if you think you can't, when you think you can, you probably, right, Alise Cortez: You are right, yeah. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show we get to do is spin around a little and I'm getting now tap into your awesome leadership brain. And the first thing I'm going to do is try and distill your experiences and ideas into your top three. So, if you had to do that, what would they be? Alise Cortez: My top three are, just coming off the last question that you asked. The first and foremost, find and plug into your passion. And the reason why is, just I've shared, when you live and work from it, you're irresistible, you're magnetic. People want to follow people on fire in their own life, right? So that's the first thing. Find and plug in your passion. The second thing which I've already alluded to is become an inspirational leader. And the way you do that is first you're on fire for your own life. And then you go looking for what's amazing and different about each team member that you have and you help them lead them into their greater self. That's how you become an inspirational leader. And then third go looking for and articulate to each of your team members, how their work threads up into the company's overall purpose. So, it's really important. What this does is it helps that individual person recognize just how important the work that they're doing is, and therefore it gives them meaning. And so, when we feel like we're connected to something bigger than ourselves, it's incredibly motivating. So go help them understand how the work they're doing, connects to the company's larger whole and purpose. Steve Rush: I love that, and also connecting those dots will create that higher purpose, which will lead to yes conscious. Alise Cortez: Yes, if we do it right, exactly. Steve Rush: So, the next part of the show, we call it Hack to Attack. So, this is typically where something in your life or work hasn't worked out. Could have been catastrophic or you screwed up. But as a result of the experience, you've learned from it and is now a positive in your life or work. So, what would your Hack to Attack be Alise? Alise Cortez: Well, I'm not recommending this for everyone or anyone for that matter, but this really worked well for me. And it's this little called divorce. Steve Rush: Yeah, little thing, right. Alise Cortez: It was not my idea to get a divorce. I'd been together with my ex-husband for 18 years, but it was a very good idea as it turns out and what it did was it forced me out of a certain apathy that I had fallen into in life. And it forced me to catalyze into a higher being and to grow and to learn from the pain and, you know, starting off in a different place in life. And I needed that. In fact, I will tell you that in my view, we all need this agitation catalyst in our life to grow and change. And I'm not saying it needs to be divorced, but usually it needs to be something pretty hard. Steve Rush: A disruptor. Alise Cortez: A disruptor, yes. Thank you. Steve Rush: Yeah. Alise Cortez: And so that was a huge disruptor for me. And what it did Steve, was it gave me this fantastic clearing that I could pursue, whatever I saw in front of my path that I wanted for myself. There were no more excuses for myself. And that was one of the best Hack to Attacks for me in my life to date so far. Steve Rush: Yeah, do you think you would have found your purpose had that not happened? Alise Cortez: I already had found my purpose. Here's the amazing thing. I was not living not living Steve and you know what? I hated myself for it. I hated myself for it. Steve Rush: Interesting, Isn't it? Yeah, it was always there, but you were probably suppressing a lot of it? Alise Cortez: Yeah, the worst thing is, is that when you're aware of it and you're not doing something about it, I will tell you that it's hell on earth. It really is. Steve Rush: I can see that. The last part of the show, we give you the opportunity to go back and meet Alise and do some time travel and you get to bump into her at 21. And give her some of your words of wisdom. What would your advice to her be? Alise Cortez: Oh gosh, you know, I would tell her to listen to the wisdom emanating from within. So, Steve, when I was about 21 years old, I did know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was one of those people that felt like to your point, I'd always been very curious. I'd done a lot of reading. I found all of this self-help literature in Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled. And you know, I was reading all those kinds of books and I came running to my mother one day and I said, mom, I know exactly what I want to do when I grow up. And I said, I want to lead success seminars. And she burst out laughing. She said, you can't do that. You are not successful. And then of course the little dream in me shriveled up and died. Steve Rush: Yeah. Alise Cortez: Well, what am I doing today essentially is, I'm helping people to really discover that which ignites them and helping them steward their field of human growth and transformation. And I didn't know how to call it anything else back then, except for success, which she was right. I wasn't successful back then. But what I would tell my 21-year-old self is listen to that just because you didn't quite get the words, right. There is a wisdom in there that when you listen to that, which is emanating from within you, it's trying to tell you something. Now the divining rod ultimately came around and took me there, but it took me 20 some years later to get back on that track. Steve Rush: Yeah, indeed. Good words of wisdom to have had at the time, maybe. Alise Cortez: Exactly. Steve Rush: And of course, everything happens for a reason, doesn't it? So, the other kind of, part of your evaluation that you take us on through your book is that it's kind of, everything is a learn. Everything is a lesson. If you choose to have that thought process around it, right? Alise Cortez: Yeah, absolutely, I love that. Everything is a lesson, there's so much to learn and enjoy and appreciate in this wonderful thing called life. Steve Rush: So, what's next for Alise, what are you working on? Alise Cortez: Yeah, gosh, what am I not working on? So, I've got my next a women's anthology book is coming out as being published next month, where I found 25 women from across the world to tell their stories, it's coming out in a book called Passionately Striving and Why. So that's one thing, I'm also working on the men's anthology as well. Looking for stories of men who are working from purpose from around the world, would love to hear from someone if they are. And then the other thing that I'm working on, that's really got my attention. You know, when we were going through the pandemic, I was trying to figure out how can I help? What can I do, right? How can I help more people, especially get out of any kind of a mental or wellbeing, demise or malaise? And I discovered that I could actually take the first part of my book which is really about how to develop passion and purpose within yourself and create that as a wellbeing, subscription, mini model for employees inside companies. So, they get literally a wellbeing, drip of content, of exercises and listening to something for a podcast every week. So, what I'm doing now is bringing that into companies as a subscription model. So that's what it's really got my gaze and my focus right now. Steve Rush: Excellent stuff. Good luck with that. Both projects or good luck with all three projects. Alise Cortez: Thank you. Yes, I told you, I'm having more fun than I'm supposed to have, so don't tell anybody. Steve Rush: I know, it's too late now. It's all out there. Alise Cortez: The cat's out of the bag, is it okay? Steve Rush: Exactly, yeah. So, if folks wanted to find out a little bit more about your work, where's the best place for us to send them? Alise Cortez: Easy to go to my website, alisecortez.com, that's the easiest place to go. Steve Rush: And there's a bunch of resources on there. There's links to your other social media that you're active on as well. And of course, you can get hold of a copy of Purpose Ignited, can't they? Alise Cortez: Absolutely, and please do. Steve Rush: So, I always love chatting to you. There's never a time where we've spoken, where I haven't felt juiced up as a result of it. And that's no exception today. So, I just want to say thank you for unlocking purpose in our lives. Alise Cortez: oh, thank you so much for having me Steve, it's been a delight. Steve Rush: Love chatting to you. Alise Cortez: Likewise.  Steve Rush: Thanks, Alise. Alise Cortez: Likewise, thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Nic Marks was once described as a statistician with a soul, due to his unusual combination of hard statistical skills and softer people skills. Nic's been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life for over 25 years, with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. Nic and his colleagues created the Five Ways to Wellbeing for the UK government office of science, and he's the founder of Friday Pulse, who has worked with over one thousand organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work. In this week's episode, we discover the five evidence-based approaches teams can playfully experiment with as they head back to the office to improve their resilience and wellbeing. Connect with Nic Marks: https://fridaypulse.com/ You'll Learn: [02:45] - Nic explains how we can differentiate happiness and wellbeing in our workplaces [06:08] - Nic outlines the business case for investing in employee wellbeing. [07:23] - Nic outlines the five evidence-based ways we can improve the wellbeing and resilience of teams at work. [09:56] - Nic provides an example of how we can make hybrid working arrangements fairer for teams. [11:42] - Nic shares how leaders can help their teams strike the right balance of learning and challenge without burning people out. [12:56] - Nic explains why encouraging teams to playfully experiment as they work can boost psychological safety, creativity, and innovation. [17:19] - Nic shares how we can optimize meaning and purpose in our teams without creating passion fatigue for workers. [19:27] - Nic shares some suggestions on how teams can set healthy boundaries as they work together. [22:16] - Nic shares insights from the new World Happiness reports on the impact that COVID has had on worker wellbeing. [24:52] - Nic enters the lightning round... Thanks for listening! MPPW Podcast on Facebook Thanks so much for joining me again this week.  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of this post. Please leave an honest review for the Making Positive Psychology Work Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated. They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them.  And don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic updates. It's free! You can also listen to all the episodes of Making Positive Psychology Work streamed directly to your smartphone or iPad through stitcher. No need for downloading or syncing. Until next time, take care!  Thank you, Nic!

Sue Stockdale talks to Nic Marks, statistician and founder & CEO, Friday Pulse about the work he has done on measuring happiness, why it's important to businesses, governments and countries, as well as individuals and how COVID impacted happiness. Described by one client as a “statistician with a soul”, Nic has been working in the field of happiness and wellbeing for over 25 years. In 2010 Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2.3million times. Named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the Institute of Director's Director Magazine, Nic's work was hailed as one of Forbes Magazine's Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011. * Free tool to reflect on individual happiness https://fridayone.com * The weekly people check-up for companies https://fridaypulse.com  * Find out more about Nic Marks at https://nicmarks.org* Connect with Nic on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/Key quotes in this podcast:[01.40] Our happiness is very driven by all sorts of social connectedness and relationships and the quality of them.[02.33] We tend to measure what's easy to count, not whats most important.[07.00] If we want to create a future which is good for citizens in the future, then we have to look at how we create that.[10.52] When we feel good, we do good work, but it's very close to our mood.[11.55] I think of happiness like having different wavelengths. There's very long ones, over years and decades and we have good periods of our life, and then there's very, very rapid ones, five moods in the morning.[12.23] We talk about five big drivers to happiness at work. They are Connect, Be Fair, Empower, Challenge, Inspire.[16.20] We definitely find that some organizations worry about opening a Pandora's box of emotions. And the thing is they're there already, if they're not in the light, they're festering and are causing problems.[16.47] We're not trying to shame team leaders. We're basically trying to help them have better conversations with their teams.Read the transcription for this podcast at www.accesstoinspiration.org and connect with us on social media: Twitter www.twitter.com/accessinpirat1Facebook www.facebook.com/accesstoinspirationInstagram www.instagram.com/accesstoinspirationLinkedin www.linkedin.com/company/access-to-inspiration/

Jon, Randall and Nic Marks, CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse, Statistician, Happiness expert and TED speaker, talk about how to find happiness in a chaotic world! Nic was once described as a "statistician with a soul" due to his unusual combination of 'hard' statistical skills and 'soft' people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life for over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. In 2008, Nic and his colleagues created the Five Ways to Wellbeing for the UK Government Office of Science. They were designed to be the mental health equivalent of five fruit and vegetables a day. They have since been used very widely in the UK and globally as a framework for promoting positive mental health. In 2010, he gave a TED talk on his work in public policy, which has not been watched over 2 million times. Nic has been applying his creative thinking to the world of work since 2012. He is the founder of Friday Pulse(TM) Ltd and has worked with over 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work.   Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon’s Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!   Connect with Nic Marks: Website: https://nicmarks.org/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamnicmarks 

Nic Marks is, as one of his clients described him, a “statistician with a soul” due to his love of hard statistical skills and his soft people skills and focus on quantifying variables such as happiness. Well known for his 2010 TED talk, “The Happy Planet Index”, which has been viewed over 2.5 million times, Nic is the founder and CEO of Friday, a company that measures and improves employee happiness in order to help businesses build a positive productive work culture - the result of working with over 1,000 clients creating measures of their employees’ experience of work.He’s been in the field for over 25 years, tracking people’s quality of life with an emphasis on their emotional experience. In 2011 he was named one of the top ten original thinkers by Director’s magazine and by Forbes Magazine as having one of the Seven Most Powerful Ideas of the year.Listen as we discuss:How Nic became interested in measuring quality of lifeThe unexpected, massive success of his TED TalkAre we doing better on the Happy Planet Index since his talk in 2010?Tracking the dips in UK national mood across the various lockdownsWhy his company, Friday, takes weekly happiness surveys for their clientsThe importance of assessing happiness at work in group settingsThe Five Ways to Happy WorkplacesNic's own weaknesses when it comes to happiness upkeepWhy does happiness at work matter?Instagram: @mo_gawdatFacebook: @mo.gawdat.officialTwitter: @mgawdatLinkedIn: /in/mogawdatWebsite: mogawdat.com/podcastConnect with Nic Marks on Twitter @iamnicmarks, and his website, nicmarks.org. Check out Friday Pulse and take the survey at Friday One. Don't forget to subscribe to Slo Mo for new episodes every Sunday and Thursday. Only with your help can we reach One Billion Happy #onebillionhappy.

#110: Nic Marks is the Ceo and Founder of Friday Pulse, Ted Talk speaker and happiness expert. Today Nic explains why happiness directly impacts you and your team's productivity.Nic's TedTalk, The Happy Planet Index really caught my attention, as did his book The Happiness Manifesto.Implement these systems for a happier company culture that thrives.https://fridayone.comhttps://fridaypulse.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/https://nicmarks.orgDM me the code on Instagram @marksavantmedia

Nic Marks is a statistician, policy advisor, speaker, and author known for his work on the Happy Planet Index - the first global measure of sustainable well-being which envisions a future where good lives don't have to cost the earth. He's also the founder and CEO of Happiness Works, an organization focusing on changing the world of work. In this episode we explore meaningful work, happiness in the pandemic, working for a better world at multiple levels of influence and intervention, why measuring happiness helps us make meaningful interventions, and Nic shares much of his own journey through a career working in the economy, government, planet level happiness, climate impact, and now affecting happiness at work. Friday One: https://fridaypulse.com/the-happiness-test/ Friday Pulse: https://fridaypulse.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/betterthanfine/support

Nic Marks, CEO of Friday Pulse understands that Happiness is your ultimate people KPI. Building on the last 20 years, he realised that happiness is a metric you can also apply to the workplace. He has appeared on Ted Talks, worked with Blair and Cameron Governments and has appeared in Forbes, The Guardian, Wired to name a few. Nic's ethos; When we feel supported, we cope better with change. The science of wellbeing can help individuals, teams and organisations get through this difficult time. As a statistician and a trained therapist it's always been his mission to improve people's experience of life.www.fridaypulse.com / www.nicmarks,org Get bonus content on Patreon Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2011, Nic Marks did a TED Talk on "The Happy Planet Index" and it has almost 2.5 Million views. This incredible talk, and his work, have and continue to dramatically change the way we look at happiness at work and in life Since then, Nic has started Friday Pulse, a company designed to score happiness using research and insights from behavioral psychology and systems thinking - then they help consult companies and now individuals on how to be happier at work Nic and I talk about hot topics ranging from 5 ways to be happier at work, the Covid crisis, working from home, and how to be a leader that promotes increasing measurable levels of happiness in your life and in your workplace I highly recommend taking the time to check this episode out! If you enjoy it, make sure to: - review the show - share it with a friend - click one of the links below to learn more! Nic's TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index#t-263509 Friday Pulse: fridaypulse.com Happiness Test: fridayone.com

Described by one client as a “statistician with a soul”, Nic has been working in the field of happiness and wellbeing for over 25 years.In 2010 Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2.3 million times.Named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the IoD’s Director Magazine, Nic’s work was hailed as one of Forbes Magazine’s Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011.As Founder and CEO of Friday Pulse, Nic shares his creative thinking with leading organisations on how positive emotions drive productivity and profit.Learn More: https://fridaypulse.comInfluential Influencers with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-nic-marks-founder-ceo-of-friday-pulse

Described by one client as a “statistician with a soul”, Nic has been working in the field of happiness and wellbeing for over 25 years.In 2010 Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2.3 million times.Named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the IoD’s Director Magazine, Nic’s work was hailed as one of Forbes Magazine’s Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011.As Founder and CEO of Friday Pulse, Nic shares his creative thinking with leading organisations on how positive emotions drive productivity and profit.Learn More: https://fridaypulse.comInfluential Influencers with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-nic-marks-founder-ceo-of-friday-pulse

Happiness vs workNic Marks grew Friday Pulse from a career-long passion for work-life happiness. He draws from Daniel Kahneman's 2004 Day Reconstruction Methodology, in which people were asked to divide their day up into activities they did and then rate each in terms of how happy they felt. The data shows that the time spent on the activity is almost exactly opposed to the amount of happiness gained from it. Nic says, "I found this kind of desperately sad for the human condition. You know, we spend a lot of time at work, and we find it the least enjoyable activity."Feelings are dataTherapists often look at feelings as data and information we can use in decision making. Nic discusses Antonio Damasio's understanding of feelings as a way of receiving signals from our environment. And how feelings help motivate us and adjust to our environments. These elements can help measure happiness "in every data set there is. It's called an Eigenvalue, but basically it's the structure of the data. So in the middle there's a big Good/Bad signal". Friday Pulse Friday Pulse grew from Nic's passion for finding the Good/Bad signal for happiness and translating it into something usable. "We can look at happiness as our Good/Bad signal, and we can put numbers on that... we can say give me a 1 for this, give me a 5 for this, and suddenly we've translated a feeling into data". Friday Pulse collected data on happiness across all client teams in the run-up to 2020, and through the first lockdown. This allowed clients to monitor their happiness each week. Positive and negative emotions It is important to point out the different forms of happiness. Emotions have multiple meanings and evolutionary formations - anger to deal with threats and sadness to deal with loss. So in assessing happiness at work, you also have to understand what type of happiness, and what forms of happiness you want to promote. For example, you want your team to feel curiosity as a form of happiness that is really intellectually engaged. These types of emotion are often harder to measure quantitatively and, as a result, require qualitative data and looking for trends against more obvious measures like staff retention and success. Success = happiness We all want to build happier, more successful teams to scale our companies faster, and Nic's data shows that you can't really maintain one without the other. "If you're building an organisation, don't think that team building and happiness is a nice to have, it's essential". Of course, happy unproductive teams may exist - but as you would expect they will quickly collapse and some teams may be successful even though they are unhappy, and members are likely to leave. "There is a correlation coefficient.  It's true that success does lead to more positive feelings...but the other way round it was twice as strong." To grow though the pandemic at a continued speed, teams will need positive energy for a creative, successful environment. As "in a world that demands more and more innovation from us all the time, mood is massively important." Recommended ReadingThinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel KahnemanThe Strange Order of Things- Antonio Damasio Drive- Daniel Pink You can also find the video of this talk here on our youtube 

Statistician Nic Marks, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation in London, asks why we measure success by productivity instead of by happiness & well-being. He developed The Happy Planet Index, a statistical method to measure, analyse and interpret happiness and then apply evidence to business, education, sustainability, healthcare and economics. He believes that our quality of life is measurable, and that true contentment comes not from the accumulation of material wealth but from our connection to others. How do we know what we are measuring in happiness is actually true? What is the best question to ask someone to get beyond the barriers to really know if they are happy? Is happiness the right metric? Is happiness the right measure or is there an argument that fulfilment is a better gauge?  Some of your research I heard has a 22% improvement in happiness why 22% not 23% or 21%? What is the association between productivity and happiness at work? Is the measure of productivity getting in the way of our genuine happiness at work? Where do happiness and wellness intersect? In Nic's first marriage he was very unhappy at home but happy at work. In hindsight what would he do differently? Nic overlooked red signals. What were the red signals and what should he have done in hindsight? Is Nic now happy? How does he know? Statistics keep Nic grounded. What personal statistics does he keep that allows him to stay grounded? As a kid Nic had a fascination with the power of two. Was that something that his Dad influenced? Nic was a self described very serious young man. How does he see himself today? As a statistician what has Nic discovered about being a man? How Manfred Max-Neef thrilled Nic with the idea that most people don't ask big enough questions. Does Nic see people setting rituals and routines to enable them to stay the course of this feeling of happiness?   LINKS   Nic Marks website https://nicmarks.org   Nic Marks TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index   Friday Pulse https://fridaypulse.com   The Mojo Sessions website https://www.themojosessions.com   The Mojo Sessions on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/TheMojoSessions?fan_landing=true   The Mojo Sessions on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheMojoSessions/   Gary on Linked in https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-bertwistle-helping-unlock-great-ideas-b5182011/   Gary on Twitter https://twitter.com/GaryBertwistle   The Mojo Sessions on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/themojosessions/   If you like what you hear, we'd be grateful for a review on iTunes -  click here. Happy listening!   © 2021 Gary Bertwistle.  All Rights Reserved.   Any products or companies discussed in the show are not paid endorsements. I am not sponsored by, nor do I have any professional or affiliate relationships of any kind with any of the companies or products highlighted in the show. It's just stuff I like, that I think is cool, that I want to share, and that I believe may be of interest to you as part of the Mojo crew.

Nic Marks was once described as a "statistician with a soul" due to his unusual combination of 'hard' statistical skills and 'soft' people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life forever 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change.

Nic Marks, has been coined the "statistician with a soul", and believes that happiness can and should be measured, for people to take it seriously. Founder of Friday Pulse, an organization that focuses on improving happiness at work, Nic helps companies become more engaged and connected by making them measure their happiness and start conversations about what needs to be done to improve it. For more happiness, visit www.management30.com 

Nic Marks shares the research and best practices for more happiness at work. — YOU'LL LEARN — 1) The five elements of a happy work life 2) How to draw the boundary between work and life 3) How to boost motivation and engagement in 5 minutes Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep637 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT NIC — Nic Marks was once described as a "statistician with a soul" due to his unusual combination of 'hard' statistical skills and 'soft' people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. He is the founder of Friday Pulse and has worked with over a 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work. • Nic's website: NicMarks.org • Nic's LinkedIn: Nic Marks • Nic's company: Friday Pulse • Personality Test: FridayOne.com — RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Company: HelloFresh • Software: HubSpot • Term: Dunbar numbers • Term: PERMA by Seligman • Study: The Day Reconstruction Method • Book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink • Book: The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli — THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • Canva. Design like a pro–for less time and money at canva.me/awesome • Blinkist: Read or listen to summarized wisdom from thousands of nonfiction books! Free trial available at blinkist.com/awesome See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you're wondering how your team's happiness is, or how you can support employee wellbeing and sustain team morale, then you don't want to miss Nic Marks, CEO and Founder of Friday Pulse, Dom's employee engagement, employee happiness, employee measurement tool of choice. “When I ask how engaged you are, people don't know. You know, it's like, if you ask people, how meaningful is your work? It sounds great. But people don't know what the top of that scale is. Do they have to be Mother Teresa? Do they have to be Nelson Mandela?”Nic's been on the show before (link below), and in that episode, he talked about the work he did previously, and the TED Talk he's done. But today, we're digging into, (again, link below) a chart that Nic and his team have put together, which looks at the weekly employee experience for 2019-2020. It's as clear as day to see how it fell off a cliff in March. So we talk about that and we also talk about why it's come back up. Where are we now? What are the thoughts and hopes for 2021? “The evidence suggests that Homo Sapiens defeated Neanderthals because they out-teamed them. And I think if you bring human beings together, physically together, you get a team that you just don't get, when you're on Zoom.”As usual we discuss book recommendations, and Nic shares fond memories that he has for Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, who passed away recently. This is another great chat with Nic, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.On today's podcast:Measuring employee experience and happiness at workWhy Gallup can't measure engagement (but Friday Pulse can)Unhappiness at work is a signal to moveWhich jobs are suffering more than othersTony Hsieh CEO ZapposLinks:Nic's first podcast episode on The Melting PotNicmarks.org

Jon, Randall, and Nic talk about how to find happiness in a chaotic world! Nic Marks, CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse. Statistician, Happiness expert, and TED speaker Nic was once described as a “statistician with a soul” due to his unusual combination of ‘hard’ statistical skills and ‘soft’ people skills. He has been working in the field of happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life for over 25 years with a particular emphasis on measurement and how to create positive change. In 2008, Nic and his colleagues created the Five Ways to Wellbeing for the UK Government Office of Science. They were designed to be the mental health equivalent of five fruit and vegetables a day. They have since been used very widely in the UK and globally as a framework for promoting positive mental health. In 2010, he gave a TED talk on his work in public policy, which has not been watched over 2 million times. Nic has been applying his creative thinking to the world of work since 2012. He is the founder of Friday Pulse(TM) Ltd and has worked with over 1,000 organizations and teams measuring and improving their happiness at work. Connect with Jon Dwoskin: Twitter: @jdwoskin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/ Website: https://jondwoskin.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/ Email: jon@jondwoskin.com Get Jon’s Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!   Connect with Nic Marks: Website: https://nicmarks.org/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamnicmarks

Happiness in the workplace matters for sustainable wellbeing, safety, productivity and business outcomes. It predicts if teams and organizations are building a better future. Today, our special guest Nick Marks shares his insights on psychological safety and mental-wellbeing, two critical drivers of safety outcomes. He also addresses skeptics by demonstrating how feelings connect to data. Nic Marks, Founder & CEO, Friday Pulse Described by one client as a “statistician with a soul”, Nic has been working in the field of happiness and wellbeing for over 25 years. In 2010 Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy, which has now been watched over 2.3million times. Named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the IoD's Director Magazine, Nic's work was hailed as one of Forbes Magazine's Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011. As Founder and CEO of Friday Pulse, Nic shares his creative thinking with leading organisations on how positive emotions drive productivity and profit. For More Information: https://fridaypulse.com/ More Episodes: https://thesafetyculture.guru/ Powered By Propulo Consulting: https://propulo.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shawn Johal is a scale up expert, entrepreneur, business growth coach, author, and leadership speaker. Hack into the key leadership and personal success habits with Shawn on this show including: Scaling up mentality is a mindset The four laws for “The Happy Leader” Habits at the start and the end of the day Unlocking the value of “community” Plus load more habits to hack! Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Shawn Johal below: Shawn Johal Website – https://www.shawnjohal.com Elevation Website - https://elevationcoach.ca Shawn on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnjohal/ Shawn on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Shawnjohal Shawn on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/shawnjohalcoach/   Full Transcript Below ----more---- Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker. Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you. Shawn Johal is a special guest on today's show. He's an entrepreneur, business growth coach, author, and leadership speaker on a mission to help you find the keys to a happy and successful life. But before we get a chance to speak with Sean, it's The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News Steve Rush: In the news today, we explore the theory of gratitude. Now the pandemic has made us wary, and while it might be cathartic to make a list of all that we've lost, all that we've tried and all that we want to leave behind. Expressing gratitude is actually a better idea. And it's a powerful, positive force. Far from a fluffy or frivolous concept. It has real impact on physical health, emotional wellbeing, motivation, engagement, and performance. So, here's why gratitude is good and how to bring more of it into your day.   Most of us are impatient with the pandemic and 2021 has arrived and the pandemic is still here. We're thrilled to usher in a new year, but we're going to need to wait a little bit longer to get life back to something closer to what it was before. The good news is that gratitude itself can actually reduce impatience and a study published in the Psychological Science found that when people focused on being thankful, they were more likely to able to demonstrate patients. In addition, the study published in The Review of Communication found that gratitude has a positive impact on our mental health and emotional state. Optimism, as an example, as well as physical health, it also predicts behaviours such as helping others and exercising. All of this means that gratitude may just be what we need at the moment while we're either hanging on to what comes next or we're attracting towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Regular listeners who have listened to episode 18 with Nic Marks, Hacking Happiness. We've also found that gratitude is the root of all happiness. It tends to focus on what you have and replace a sense of what you might be lacking. According to some philosophers, you can't feel both grateful and unhappy. So, when your mind focuses on all, you're thankful for, you're more likely to feel joy. In addition, when you're more grateful, you tend to focus on being more present, appreciating them now, and this of course can reduce to a sense of yearning and anxiety about the future.   Philosophers have also suggested that it's a gateway emotion and it's suggested as the greatest virtue because it tends to lead to so many others. For example, an appreciation of someone can grow into love, gratitude for what you have can lead to greater satisfaction over you, loving your work and can lead to improve performance. So, here's my five top tips and how you can build and cultivate gratitude.   Number one, begin and end with intention. Start each day by thinking about all you appreciate and expect from the day. And as you go to bed at night, think and consider all you're grateful for.   Number two, give continuous attention. Throughout each day, find those small things that you can be thankful and grateful for. Perhaps you've made yourself a great cup of coffee, or you've had a really nice conversation and avoid taking those things for granted, make everything count.   Number three, be expensive. Ensure you're focusing on being grateful and not just grateful for things, but for people and the environment and conditions around you. Perhaps you particularly appreciate the headphones that you might be wearing to listen to this or the ability to walk, see, the senses that we take for granted around you.   Number 4, write it down. Research at Kent State University found that when you write down the elements that you're grateful for, that simple act can foster the happiness and wellbeing in itself. And this is probably true, because it causes us to pause, focus, reflect, and reinforce our positive experiences.   And number five, express yourself. Gratitude is both an individual and a team sport. So, when you share what you're grateful for in a team environment, it holds even more power. Thanking a co-worker in a team meeting or providing positive feedback to colleagues during the project as an example. So, when gratitude is expressed and shared, it helps both you and the group.   And let's just remember gratitude is good, it has plenty of positive effects. It could be what you, your family and your team need just to stay present, be attentive through the next stretch of this pandemic marathon that we're all experiencing, so here's a challenge. Head over to our social media and let us know what you're grateful for today. So that has been The Leadership Hacker News. If you have any insights, stories, or information, please get in touch.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: Our special guest on today's show is Shawn Johal. Shawn an entrepreneur, a business growth coach, a leadership speaker and author of The Happy Leader Guide. Shawn, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Shawn Johal: Thank you so much Steve. Very excited to be here today.   Steve Rush: Me too. We've had an opportunity to get to know each other over a couple of conversations, and I'm incredibly excited about sharing some of those conversations with our wider listeners, but before we do that, perhaps you'd give them a little bit of a backstory as to how you arrived to doing what you are doing?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Excited to talk about it. Basically, on my end, I immigrated from England over to Canada when I was a much, much younger. I bring it up because I think it's important to put it into context. And I grew up with a family who was very much believing in loyalty, staying at the same company for many, many years. My father worked for Rolls-Royce, England, and he transferred to Rolls-Royce Canada. My mother worked for Nortel before the big crash. And I remember my parents always telling me when I was growing up, that it would be very important for me to find the very stable job, something that I can stay at for, you know, 25, 30, 35 years. And I even remember my dad showing me his gold watch when he had done 30 years of service at Rolls-Royce. Saying that, you know, one day son, you may have the opportunity to have, you know, get the same type of watch as I have if you stay at the same company forever. And so, I kind of grew up with the mentality that I needed to find a stable job and work in the corporate world and not necessarily adventure in through entrepreneurship. So that was my mentality growing up, you know, trying to find something a little more stable. And then I met my wife, my future wife, we're married to now and her family were very, very entrepreneurial. And they started teaching me a lot about business. You know, being a business owner, understanding how to launch a business, how to own a business. And that was really where things took off for me. And I started realizing there was this whole other world out there. And so basically, after leaving the corporate world, I was working at Rubbermaid. I'm sure that a lot of listeners know about Rubbermaid, pretty large global company, $8 billion dollars. I was a district manager there.   I was invited to join the family business and it was and led lighting business. My father-in-law had taken it public and it was fast growing, very fast growing, mergers and acquisitions. And so, I came in there as a sales manager and not part of ownership, but really having more of an entrepreneurial feel to it. Unfortunately, what happened was that during the 2006, 2007 recession, my father-in-law bought a company that probably wasn't the perfect fit for the business. The recession hit, which was terrible for the business and for the family. Within a year, our business that I've grown to 50 million in revenue, came from a crashing down. It was a very, very tough time for the family.   Steve Rush: Wow.   Shawn Johal: But the good thing was that during, you know, in every big challenge there's opportunities and my brother-in-law and I, at that point had a chance to buy back three of the different divisions. We were able to relaunch this led lighting business in our own way, and we've been growing ever since. So that was in 2009 and the businesses are continuing to go strong today in 2020.   Steve Rush: It's through that kind of scaling up mentality that you've really started to deploy all of your learning. But now also share that as an entrepreneurial and business growth coach with other people, right?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. In 2013, we hit a really bad wall as a business, so many things were going wrong Steve, I can't even tell you. We had no processes. We had the wrong people in the wrong seats. We had absolutely no strategy, no product development. And it really became ethically clear to me one day when we were sitting in our office and we had two customer service people who were working at a desk, but we didn't have enough money to afford a receptionist. And basically, they would look at each other when the phone would ring and neither one wanted to answer it because they were both really disgruntled employees and not, you know, at the right seats. And so, phones would ring. I knew they were customers and the phone would ring 10, 12 times, and neither person was willing to answer it. And that's when my business partner and I looked at each other and said, you know what? We have a really big culture problem in this business. At the same time, our biggest competitor launched a product line. They basically took our catalogue, stole all 150 products that we had in the catalogue and priced them at a dollar less in the market using the same suppliers as we use. And these were people that were part of the previous business. So, it was probably the worst backstabbing feeling I could ever have imagined in my life. These people are like brothers to me.   Steve Rush: I bet.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, and that was when we decided to take on scaling up. And we had an opportunity to read the Rockefeller Habits. In those days the scaling of book hadn't come out yet. And we found a coach and then we implemented the methodology successfully in our own business.   Steve Rush: And it continues to grow to this day, and as part of that Shawn. One of the things I've known about you for a while and come to really respect is the discipline, rigor and habits that you apply in order to make your life successful. And I wanted to get into a couple of those. So, in terms of scaling up. There are kind of four pillars to that, aren't there? That's strategy people, execution and cash. Maybe just tell us a little bit about how that plays out in your business today and how you coach others?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. What we noticed is that those four pillars really represent every business. The four key things every business owner should be really paying attention to. When we go into businesses, as much as my business, as any other business, we'd like to do a diagnostic where we go in there and really understand, okay, what's going well and what's not going well, you know, do you have a long-term goal that's nonfinancial? Do you have the right execution in class with being methodologies and processes? You know, how's your cash flow? Do you have good liquidity and everything that you're doing? Really those are the types of things that we go in and we analyse right from the beginning. And most importantly, do you have the right people in the right seats? And that's something that becomes incredibly clear very easily. So, once we get in there, we do that diagnostic. It's really easy for us to understand where the business is strong and where the business has certain weaknesses. And usually, we'll start off with a couple of strategic days to really build the vision of the business. You know, we'll go with that BHAG from Jim Collins, the big, hairy, audacious goal. We'll build that really cool vision long-term then get into three-year capacities, one-year priorities and the 90-day plan, really helping the business focus on execution the right way. And we'll start fixing things little by little, you know, we can't take it all in one big bite. We've been doing scaling up for seven years in our business, and we're still going strong. I've never seen a business not succeed by doing scaling up. The only times it doesn't work is when a business owner is either too stubborn to let other people share and have their own ideas or the business owner doesn't have the discipline required to implement the methodology. So those are the only two times where it doesn't really work.   Steve Rush: And of course, scaling up will never stop if you have the right mentality and the right disciplines and right approach.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, you can just keep going and going. Now, obviously it really depends on what you're looking for. I think some entrepreneurs get a little afraid when they see scaling up. Everybody wants to grow, but I don't believe in growth for the sake of growth. I think you need to have what I like to call profitable growth. I really believe in profitable growth since we've been doing scaling up in 2013, we've never had a month in the red. We've never once in those seven years.   Steve Rush: Wow, that's great.   Shawn Johal: For us, that's what's most important. But even though we're growing at a really great pace, you know, anywhere between 10, 15, 20% a year, depending on the year. We're very careful to make sure that bottom line is always staying where it needs to be.   Steve Rush: That's consistently 15, 20% growth every year, which for many businesses, they can only dream of that. If you have to kind of peel that layer back and peel all the layers back, is there maybe one thing that is the standout action activity that you would maybe apply to that success? Shawn Johal: 100% and it's going to sound familiar. I'm sure your listeners have heard this, but I cannot emphasize it enough. You absolutely have to have the right people in your business. I've noticed that systematically, I go into companies and I see right away from the strategic team all the way down, I can pinpoint right off the bat, how many people are not the right people in those businesses. And you and I spoke about this in an earlier conversation. I always ask this one key question. Would you enthusiastically rehire every single one of your team members? And it's shocking that the percentages I get, you know, you would think the percentages would be fairly respectable because these are business owners who have built their own business, right?   Steve Rush: Right.   Shawn Johal: But the percentages are always closer to between 20 and 50%, which means that there's more than half the company that the business owner would not rehire enthusiastically. So that means you have about 50% of the people that are not the right people in your business. It's just kind of shocking when you think about it, right?   Steve Rush: Stark, isn't it? Really stark.   Shawn Johal: So that to me would be the number one thing. I have a very specific methodology when I go into businesses and it's been based a little bit on the whole top rating and Who methodologies for anybody who wants to read those books, the two great books, both the top rating and Who, their based a lot around talent and how to hire. But a lot of the people spend time on how to hire the right people, but they don't spend enough time on development and retention and development and retention are the two, what I would say most overlooked superpowers is that every business owner has, are you developing your people internally? And what are you doing to appreciate them? Show them recognition, make sure they feel really, really welcomed and you know, recognized every single day of the week. And what are we doing to make sure that they 10X their development and leadership and get to the next level, because if your team is not taking that next step, your business never will. That's for sure.   Steve Rush: It's one of those things that sounds pretty obvious when you say out loud, but still many businesses. And in fact, many of the clients that I speak to still fall into the trap of not developing their team and retaining and growing their talent. What'd you put that down to?   Shawn Johal: Business owners, you know, this cash with liquidity, there's so many different things that could happen in a business that are problematic. And I think that what happens is we end up taking our people for granted because our people are coming in, you know, our amazing employees or team members are showing up every single day. And we just assume that they're happy. When I go into businesses, I always ask the business owners, are your people happy? Do they feel recognized and appreciated? I always get the same answer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're good. You know, we do a few little things here and there and I'm sure they understand what we're trying to accomplish and I'm sure they're happy. When I asked the employees and the team members, the same question, I get a very different answer. The majority they tell, well, no, I don't know what the vision is of the business. No, one's really communicating that to me. I'm not sure what we're trying to accomplish. I'm not sure exactly where we're going. So, I get very, very different answers from the employees than I get from the business owners. And so that's why it's so important for every business owner to understand, who are my A-players and how am I going to recognize them systematically?   Steve Rush: Yeah, definitely so. And you've taken your learnings and you've pulled that together and you've written The Happy Leader. Tell us a little bit about what The Happy Leader is?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, and thanks for asking Steve. The book is a book that's written over eight years, believe it or not. I started writing this book a long time ago. I think it's really the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life, not being a natural writer or author. I really put a lot of time and heart and soul into this book. I wanted to write something that was written a fable format, you know, because I feel like some of the amazing authors out there like Patrick Lencioni and Robin Sharma, you know, some really, really great leadership speakers and authors. I was always very much impressed with the way they wrote their books. And Bob Burg comes to mind as well, The Go-Giver. And so, I decided to write a book that's written in a fable format. And what I realized Steve, being surrounded by entrepreneurs over the last decade is that entrepreneurs in general seem to be a pretty unhappy bunch. It's shocking, right?   Steve Rush: Yeah.   Shawn Johal: Because we all have businesses. And you think that the dream is to be a business owner, but I speak to business owners and the most of the time they're unhappy. And I'm part of the entrepreneur's organization. We have something called, you know, Forum. A Forum is a time where we get together between 8 and 10 entrepreneurs every month. And we share business ideas, opportunities, challenges. We always start with a thing called the one word open and that one word open is always the one word of where you are today, just in your mind. And the words that we hear are stressed you know, stretched too thin, overwhelmed, can't keep up, unbalanced. It's almost never positive words. And I really realized over time that entrepreneurs are really, really stressed out. So, my goal was to write a book about someone who is also, you know, a business leader who was very stressed out and whose life was kind of falling apart. And, you know, who meets a really incredible person. Who's going to teach him how to become a happy leader, really changed his life around so that he really could find happiness, joy, and success in everything that he does. Understanding that it's the journey and not just the destination.   Steve Rush: Yeah, and you've created 12 steps to help people on that journey. And within those 12 steps or surrounding those 12 steps, you have four laws. Maybe we can spend a little bit of time around each of those four laws.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, I always believe that the first thing that we need to do as human beings is take care of ourselves first, you know, a great friend and colleague Kevin Lawrence calls it, Put Your Oxygen Mask First, which is a great book that I would recommend everybody to read as well. Are we taking care of ourselves before we take care of others? Because if you're not at the right place in your mind and your heart and your soul, it's going to be very, very challenging to have the type of success and be able to lead others as well. And so, the first law of happiness is what I call the law of self-awareness. And what that means is you have to be self-aware of where you're at yourself in your life. And so, the first part of that law is really comes down to what I consider the greatest superpower that we're not using right now, which is meditation.   You know, meditation has taken a lot more space over the last couple of years. We're hearing more about it. We're hearing a lot of incredible business leaders and incredible artists and athletes and people doing meditation. But the reality is that it's still associated with being something very spiritual. And although I have nothing wrong with spirituality, I'm a very spiritual person myself. I like to bring it back to science. And science has proven that meditation has incredible benefits on focus, on creativity, on energy levels. It literally changes our genes and the inside of our brains. And it's shocking to me how little people, even in this day and age, when it's becoming more popular, actually do it.   Steve Rush: It's very true.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, that'd be something I'd really encourage people to do. Something else that I think is really important that we don't do enough of is actually what I call, you know, circular reciprocation. And what that term means for me is what are you doing to practice gratitude, appreciation, and kindness every single day and everything that you do? Again, scientifically, they've done lots of studies and both writing down the things that make you happy and that you appreciate in your life immediately released the right type of chemicals in our bodies to bring that next level of happiness. And so, you know, doing things like that. Meditation, gratitude appreciation are really part of the first law, which is a law of self-awareness.   Steve Rush: Got it. What's law number two?   Shawn Johal: So, law number two, now you've really taking time to be more aware and you're taking care of yourself. Law numbers two is the law of self-improvement. So now you're aware, you know, where you're at and you know, where your kind of the foundation of your mind, body and soul, and now you need to take things to the next level. And so, the law of self-improvement for me has a lot to do with barrier breaking, which is for me, meaning to commit to a stretch goal in your life, something that's way beyond what you've ever accomplished. This could be anything, it could be, you know, it doesn't have to be necessarily a physical goal. It could be, you know, some type of goal where you want to maybe write a book or you want to run a marathon, but you want to do something that stretches you beyond the obvious. And the reason that's important is that, is only when we push ourselves to that next level, that we really get to see our true potential. And I think there's a lot of people that are not meeting their true potential. And there's a tremendous amount of self-limiting beliefs out there that we seem to put on ourselves. Everybody does it, you know, the old imposter syndrome and that, oh, you know, it's not, I can't do that. That person can do it. It's just not true. You know, the reality is that human beings are incredible race and we have so much energy and so much potential. And, you know, we shouldn't be limiting ourselves. And so, by putting a stretch goal of some type that really forces us to go further than we believe possible when you achieve that goal happens is you open up a new world of possibilities, right? Where now you start thinking, well, if I could do this, I could do a whole lot of other things, right?   Steve Rush: Right. Shawn Johal: So, yeah. So that's really comes down to the law of self-improvement, within that law I also have, I like to call habit hacking. So, habit hacking, that's an important concept that you and I have spoken quite a bit about together in the past.   Steve Rush: Sure, yeah.   Shawn Johal: Whereas you're going in there and you're completely revamping all of your habits from morning routines to evening routines to all the way you eat to the way you sleep to the people you speak with, you know, really changing pretty much the you know, the dynamic of your everyday routine.   Steve Rush: Some of it is about unlearning what you've already learned. That's not serving you well and relearning and creating new hacks and habits to create the right foundations, right?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely, Steve. It's so important. you know, I speak to so many people and you know, business leaders are all different scopes of life on that. I noticed that the majority of them don't have a very good morning routine, you know, I asked them, okay, you know, what's happening when you start your day? You know, I wake up and right away, started looking into my phone and I started trying to see what's happening with emails to get caught up. And, you know, it's literally the absolute worst way you can possibly start a day. Like you want to start your day where you're giving yourself the intention of what you want to accomplish in the few hours that you have ahead of you. And once you've figured out that intention, you need to take on a few key activities when you wake up that are going to set you up for success and give you a lot of energy.   Steve Rush: Right.   Shawn Johal: So, you should either again, be doing some type of meditation, very quickly reading some positive literature, maybe writing in a journal, really setting yourself up for success before you become a slave to technology, which unfortunately seems to be what a lot of us do.   Steve Rush: You have this approach called 10, 10, 10, don't you?   Shawn Johal: Yes, this was taught to me by my mentor, Warren Ruston, the incredible, incredible human being. Warren has this concept of 10, 10, 10, where he, you know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes. That's what it represents. You would do three different activities for 10 minutes each. It would be 10 minutes of meditation, 10 minutes of journaling, and 10 minutes of reading, positive literature. When I teach this to people, I get a lot of pushback because a lot of people tell me the same thing. You expect me to take on 30 minutes to start my day. I don't even have, you know, three minutes. And so, it's a little bit of a challenge at first. So, what I explained to people to do is say, listen, you can take the 10, 10, 10, which is super impactful. If it's too much for you, what I want you to do instead is do a five, five, five. So, you could just cut it in half and do five minutes of each. And then when I get pushed back on the five, five, five, I tell people, okay, listen, if you can't even do the five, five, five, just do one time five, pick one of the three activities, do one of them for five minutes. Even that starts your day, so substituting, checking email, and you running right away into fires, you know, fire extinguishing, as I like to call it. And instead doing something much, much more intentional, such as a meditation or journal is completely going to change the way your day is approached and the way you're going to take on you know, the activities that you have that day, it really makes a huge difference.   Steve Rush: It switches on the prefrontal cortex. It creates you your strong foundations for the day, rather than being emotionally triggered by other stuff that could impact on you, right?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. It really switches the script where now you're in control of your day. Whereas when you're just becoming a slave to technology, you no longer control it. And you're no longer in that circle of influence that you know, was so well taught to us by Stephen Covey, you have to make sure that you can control your own destiny. And if you're not taking those steps in the morning, you're always going to be chasing your day and chasing your day is obviously not the type of place you want to be mentally. You want to be in a place where you're deciding what's going to happen next, and you're not really having someone else decide for you   Steve Rush: Exactly, right. And of course, if you're not in control, that's when stress starts to creep into the workplace and into our world, which is so counterproductive.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, and I think, you know, as you know, very well, Steve. Stress right now is probably, you know, especially in the virus here, it's the biggest culprit of most businesses.   Steve Rush: Definitely.   Shawn Johal: Right now, recent surveys have said that, you know, over 40% of employees are currently stressed out and they're not telling their employer. Stress levels are rampant around the world. They've been going up every single year, over the past 25 years. People are really stressed. People are really, really stressed, and we have to find ways to reduce that stress for them.   Steve Rush: So, what's law number three?   Shawn Johal: Law number three is what I love to call the law of self-giving. So, what that means is, now you've made yourself fully aware of where you're at in your life. You've taken on new stretch goals. You've changed your habits, you're visualizing your success, and now you need to help others, you know, to do the same. There's a concept that I read a really long time ago from an amazing author, and the book was called The Dream Manager, Matthew Kelly. And basically, that book is incredibly powerful because it really explains, it's more in a business concept, but it really explains how you can go into a business and do, you know, dream facilitation and help people really achieve their goals and their dreams, because each one of us, you and I included Steve, we all have certain skill sets and we have certain connections. And if we use those and help others, we would definitely be able to help them take that next step in their journeys and their success. And so, for the law of self-giving, I like to have people do that, that dream facilitation concept for people around them, you know, it could be for family, it could be for friends, it could be for peers.   What you want to do is you want to find someone and you want to sit with them and figure out, okay, what is it that they are trying to accomplish in their lives? Is it something professional? It could be something personal? Now what is a dream that they wish they could really pursue and they're struggling with, and then you make it a point to actually go and help them accomplish that dream, you use it. I'm not saying it's financial. You know, I'm not telling people to go out there and, you know, give ten thousand dollars to this person, but you have unique skills and contacts that could probably help this person some way somehow. And so, you want to use those so that you can go and help that person accomplish their dreams, and then you become a dream facilitator for them. And so that would be, you know, one part of the law of self-giving, you know, another part of it for me, which is really important is gifting people every single day in a specific way. That's something that we just don't do enough of this. This is one idea that I think people could use really easily. One of my really good friends, Rob Murray, and he's an entrepreneur in Canada. He sent me an email last week and his email was just entitled. Thank you for being you. And the email was just three lines, very quick and short, telling me why he appreciated me as a human being for no reason, just absolutely out of the blue. And that's something that I've been encouraging people to do a lot, you know, pick people in your network and send them a quick email, just telling them why you appreciate them so much. It does not to be crazy long, does not have to be this whole love letter. Just very simply, you know, telling the person why they mean a lot to you and why they're important in your life. And just realize that the impact that will have on that person on the other end is unbelievable. It really, really is, and we don't take enough time to realize the impact our words have. And the intention has when you do something like that.   Steve Rush: It's very true. One of my previous guests on the show actually, who will remain nameless so they don't feel overly embarrassed while I share this story. Sent me a note just a few weeks back saying, Steve, you are amazing. I just felt the whole world lift around me in that moment because nobody does that or rarely people do that. And it felt so special to get that message.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. I mean, it's just so important. It has to be authentic, obviously, that's the key, but the reality is that people are amazing and there's so many people around us that are always doing so many great things and they have so many friends and colleagues. And do we take the time to appreciate them? We, don't and why?   Steve Rush: Exactly. It's one of those things. If you think about how we've become matured in our ways and our thinking, we've unlearned some of the things that weren't natural and organic as we were growing up, such as saying, thank you, or showing gratitude to people. Dreaming big, as you just talked about it and that facilitation of dreams. As children, we would have naturally done that. But as we become older, we've unlearned how to do that effectively. And I think that's a quite neat reframe that you put there around that whole giving law.   Shawn Johal: Yeah, I think you're right, Steve, it's very unfortunate. I don't know why that happens. It's a very bizarre thing that society and the world seems to always be pushing us down. And it's like, dreaming is only now reserved for those very, very select few like 0.001% of people in the world that are, you know, these successful athletes or entrepreneurs or artists, but every single one of us has that creativity within us, we really do. Why are we not using it? I think sometimes beats us down a little bit, trying to get yourself out of that, you know, that little bit of a prison of our minds that we're thrown into and trying to find that creativity again and everything that we do.   Steve Rush: I agree Shawn, and what's law number four?   Shawn Johal: So, ending on number four, you know, now you've gone through self-awareness, you're starting to do go through self-improvement and now you're into self-giving and you're giving back. Finally, its self-belief. Now is really where you're taking the time to say, okay, you know I'm going to take things to the next level. I'm really no longer going to have the imposter syndrome. I'm an amazing human being and I can do anything that I want. And so, the law of self-belief as, you know, a few different elements to it, for me, one of the most important things is what I call spinning positivity. We owe it to ourselves to eliminate those things that are energy drains in our lives. Those things that are really negative, those could be people, it could be situations. It could be the environment, whatever things in your life. Should make a list of all the things that drain your energy.   You know, I like to call them energy vampires and really make sure that you're just getting those out of your way as quickly as possible. And then what I like to call the next step is really the belief building. So, where you're really building your belief system around the new you, because now you've really developed a new personality really, and everything that you've done in the first three steps. And now you can take your own personal success, whatever that means for you. It doesn't mean financial. It means whatever you think, however, you define success for yourself and you can take that to the next level. And then that final step of that last law is really what I like to call, just go big, which again, comes back to the point that we talked about earlier about creativity a few minutes ago. It's just, why are we thinking so small? Like I just don't understand it. We have so much potential, any one of us. This is for all of us you know, and again, it's relative to your own life into what you're trying to do, but I really encourage people now to really think as big and as bold as possible. You know, it's funny yesterday, Steve, I was working with my digital marketing coordinator. We were rebuilding our vision and our business on a few different levels. And we were just looking at the why our company exists and we kind of changed it yesterday. And we really put it as empowering business leaders to create and to accomplish their most audacious goals. And we really spent a lot of time on that because for us, the audacious part, we debated it quite a bit. And we said, you know what? Why not? Like, you know, people need to be a little more audacious. Like you got to, you got to think bigger. When you think about something, I think what you're going to accomplish you should immediately like double two X that and say, okay, now what I'm going to try to do double what I just thought.   Steve Rush: It's often our worldview that holds us back though, right? Those biases, those limiting beliefs that we give ourselves that stop us really thinking big?   Shawn Johal: Exactly. I see it all the time going into businesses and with companies, when I work with them, they've already given them the cells like a ceiling. They've already, most of the time told themselves, okay, we can only accomplish this much as a business. Or I meet individual people who say, this is as far as I can strive for. And it's just disappointing because I know that they can do more, I can see it. They have so much more potential. So yeah, it is almost getting out of our own mind.   Steve Rush: Which in itself is another habit that takes practice and repetition, right?   Shawn Johal: Absolutely. You just have to be working on yourself constantly. And that's why things like meditation and journaling and visualization are so important. And again, they're scientifically proven to work. It's not spiritual. It's really science-based.   Steve Rush: Yeah, love it. So, Sean, this part of the show now, we get the opportunity to hack into your mind as a leader, and to really start to think about some of the great things that you can share in addition to what you've already shared. So, the first place I'd like to go with you is to find out what you think your top three leadership hacks might be?   Shawn Johal: I would say to you, the first one is the community. When I say the community, we all have access to some type of community around us. I'm an entrepreneur. I have, you know, the entrepreneur's organization. I have, you know, a lot of friends that are entrepreneurs as well. And so, I'm always, you know, hacking into this amazing network and community of peers that I have, but that applies to everyone. You know, you could be, you know, a business leader, you could be a manager, you could be a frontline employee, you have a community available to you out there some way, somehow. You just have to look, there are like-minded peers that you can share ideas with and surround yourself with to help you take that next step. So, I'm always encouraging people to really get out there and make sure that they're networking and they're finding a community for themselves that could really help them take things to the next level. So, for me, that's definitely number one, number two would be mentorship. And so, there's a community of peers that can help you a lot. We all should have some type of mentor in our lives. And you know, we'd probably take a whole other podcast to talk about how to go find the perfect mentor, but I know a lot of people are intimidated by it. At the same time, it's not as hard as you think. You know, there are a lot of different ways to find a mentor out there. A mentor could be, again, it could be professional, it could be personal. There are probably some people out there that have a lot of wisdom and knowledge to give to you. And it's not just a take, take, take situation. A mentorship relationship is very much give and take. And so, the right type of mentor will also be getting a lot from that relationship.   And so, you know, when you can find the right type of person to help you out there, it will make a world of difference. I've had several different mentors and most recently I've been working over the last few years with Warren Ruston, as I mentioned just the amount of learning that I've gotten from Warren and the guidance and being challenged on my different ideas has been absolutely inspiring. So that would be an absolutely massive element to look into. And finally, hack number three would be habit hacking. We spoke a little bit before we didn't spend a lot of time on it. You absolutely need to change how you wake up and what you do before going to sleep. Those are the two most important times of the day when you absolutely need to master your habits. You need to wake up, have a very, very specific way, whether it's working out with doing the things I mentioned earlier with meditation, visualization and the same thing before going to sleep, you know, I see people are falling asleep to writing emails or to watching Netflix. This is not how you want to go to sleep. You want to go to sleep, you're preparing your brainwaves because you're getting into that Theta brainwave. And then you're going into the deep Delta brainwave. It's a time of day where we have the most impact on our subconscious mind. And so, do you want to be going to sleep or you're stressed out and you're thinking about what you have to do the next morning. Now you're marinating in those thoughts for about eight hours, you know, maybe five, maybe six, maybe seven, and you're not putting your brain at the right place because most of the day, 95% of the time we're living in our subconscious mind. And so, what you put into your subconscious is incredibly important. And so, I always encourage all of my business leaders that I work with, make sure that you have an incredible morning routine, but just as important, make sure you have an incredible evening routine before going to sleep as well.   Steve Rush: Yeah, I love that. It's really, really powerful, and if you do it every day, then before, you know, it's just the way it happens for you. It becomes part of what you do, rather than a routine.   Shawn Johal: Absolutely.   Steve Rush: Brilliant. The next part of the show we call Hack to Attack. So, this is where something hasn't worked out as planned, or indeed hasn't worked out at all in some cases, but as a result of the experience, we now use it as a positive in our life. What will be your Hack to Attack?   Shawn Johal: It's funny, this is something that's happened to me very recently. I've been following, you know, I've been coaching a lot of businesses and when COVID hit a lot of the businesses that I was coaching, you know, had to take a back seat and I basically had to work for free for about three months. Now things have come back to normal, but during that time, I learned a lot about online marketing, online courses, you know, launching virtual summits. And I jumped deep. I deep dove into a lot of these, and I followed a lot of influencers. And what happened is that I realized that a lot of these digital influencers make it sound so easy, right? Because apparently the whole world is going digital. And so therefore it's just so easy to have success in the digital world, which is just not the case.   Then recently I launched an online course. And my first online course, you know, it did not have the success that I was really hoping for and really expected. And it really hit me hard because you know, that kind of lived through that failure and to have to deal with it, was tough for me. You know, it's not something that I'm used to. I encourage my kids to fail all day, but when it happens to you, it's actually really hard to deal with. And so, you know, I looked at it and what I realized is that I had completely built it the wrong way. I'd also launched it the wrong way. And it's giving me a tremendous amount of learning. I'm going to continue pursuing that route and launching an online course over the next year, for sure. And I now have the tools necessary to do it the right way. So, I think I needed that first failure to know how to do it properly in the future.   Steve Rush: And it's how you frame it, that's the most important thing, right? To have this principle that there's only a win and learn, there is no fail, and it's that framing of the experience that's going to make you successful in the future.   Shawn Johal: Exactly, and I think most people get caught up in the emotions of a failure.   Steve Rush: Definitely.   Shawn Johal: I do that myself, you know, it's really tough. I'm not someone who's had a tremendous amount of failures in my life without a few here and there, and they've been tough to deal with. And this one recently hit home pretty hard too, and it stopped, while there is an emotional aspect to it, and you have to be able to get over that emotional aspect as quickly as possible.   Steve Rush: The last part of the show, we get to give you a chance to do some time travel, bump into Shawn at 21, and give him some advice or some words of wisdom. What's it going to be?   Shawn Johal: It would be so many Steve, so many, but I'll pick one. I would've said master the arts of meditation and visualization at an earlier age. And for some reason it seems to come later in life where we start having more introspection. I think those are incredible tools that allow us to have so much better control of our emotions and of our own vision. And by doing both meditation and visualization for me, it's been in the last year only where I've started doing it. It's changed my life completely. And I'm trying to teach my kids now how to do it at a very early age, because to me, those are two super powers that are free and that we're just not utilizing much.   Steve Rush: 100%! Great advice. Great advice. So, if folks want to get in touch with you and learn a little bit more about the work that you do with Elevation and indeed how to get hold of some of your insights, where's the best place for us to send them?   Shawn Johal: I say two places where I spend a lot of time, obviously my website, which is shawnjohal.com, so S.H.A.W.N-J.O.H.A.L.com and I spend a tremendous amount of time on LinkedIn as well. You'll always find me posting a lot of things on LinkedIn, trying to provide a little bit of ideas and learning to the community out there. And so those would be the two best places to find me for sure.   Steve Rush: Awesome. We'll make sure that those links are in the show notes and that anybody who's listened to today can literally just click on over and get straight to find more about you. So, it's only left for me, Shawn, to say, thank you for joining us on our community here. It's been amazing talking to you. You're truly inspirational guy. I've learned loads in just listening to you today. And every time I listened to speak with you, I always pick up a couple of nuggets. So, thank you for being part of our community on The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Shawn Johal: Well, thank you, Steve. It's been a real pleasure. I love what you're doing and keep it up. It's really inspiring, honestly.   Steve Rush: Thank you Shawn.   Shawn Johal: Thank you.   Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handle there is @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

Today I interview Nic Marks from Friday Pulse and we talk about positive emotions & happiness. Feelings and emotions - good and bad - can control our lives so it's important to know (and more importantly understand) what we can do to improve our wellbeing and own quality of life. Join us to hear more... For more information, please visit https://www.sophiepersonne.com. 

Don't we all want more happiness and well-being? You might not realize how these factors can be measured, but today's guest has devoted his work to this field. He's an expert on happiness and well-being, and he's to share his knowledge with us. Nic Marks is the founder and CEO of Friday Pulse. Described by one client as a “statistician with a soul,” Nic has been working in the field of happiness and well-being for over 25 years. He's done phenomenal work that has been duly recognized and rewarded. In 2010, Nic gave a TED talk on his previous work in public policy; that speech has been viewed over 2.3 million times! His work was hailed as one of Forbes Magazine's Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011. As founder and CEO of Friday Pulse, Nic shares his creative thinking with leading organizations on how positive emotions drive productivity and profit. Show Highlights: ●     Nic's journey that brought him to the work he does today ●     What coaches should know regarding the well-being and happiness of their clients within organizations ●     How we are shaped by the environment and systems around us ●     How coaches can use statistics and measurement to create believability ●     How Friday Pulse measures happiness and well-being with goal-specific questions and reflection ●     How to have conversations about Friday Pulse's findings about measuring and improving employee happiness ●     How Friday Pulse supports team leaders to help them be better ●     How to raise awareness about well-being in workplaces ●     A sampling of the benefits of Friday Pulse include being able to tackle problems faster to bring positive changes and delegating responsibility to improve communication ●     Nic's Five Keys to Happiness at Work: connect, be fair, empower, challenge, and inspire Resources: https://fridaypulse.com/ (Website) https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic (LinkedIn) https://www.ted.com/talks/nic_marks_the_happy_planet_index?language=en (TED Talk) Join Meg on FB Live every Wednesday at 9:00 am CT/10 am ET https://www.facebook.com/STaRCoachShow (STaRCoachShow)

Through the dare, Kitty and Klaudia measured their happiness daily with a simple scale of one (very unhappy) to five (very happy).  As much as Kitty was skeptical that we can put a number on happiness, we were delighted to be joined by Nic Marks, the founder of FridayPulse and one of the UK leading experts and statisticians on happiness. Join us on a journey of discovery where we find out how to measure our own happiness, why it is important for our  development and what are the key drivers of happiness at work. Remember, if “if you like it then you better put a ring on it” or rather “if you want to take it seriously, you better put a number on it”Support the show (http://www.andhappiness.co.uk)

Nic Marks is a statistician by trade but also trained as a psychotherapist - so he’s ended up with an unusual mix of hard data skills and soft people skills. Nic started work in consultancy, then academia and then public policy; where he advised the Tony Blair and David Cameron governments on how to measure wellbeing. He did a TED talk in 2010 on this work.  For the last 8 years, Nic has gone from challenging governments how they measure quality of life to challenging businesses how they measure the quality of employees' experience. Nic’s business Friday Pulse is the result of that work. They measure and improve employee happiness, as we know that when people feel good at work they do their best work. Press Play for: How covid-19 has affected the UK Secrets to happiness Quality of life vs longevity How happiness at work is a great thing for everyone (think about it ...miserable people do miserable work!)   Connect with Nic on Twitter and LinkedIn. Learn more at nicmarks.org   Connect with Rick @MrRickJordan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn    Help others find the show! Subscribe and Review on iTunes Subscribe and Comment on CastBox Subscribe on Google Podcasts or Google Play Follow on Spotify Subscribe and Review on Stitcher   Rick’s company: ReachOut IT   Production Credits

Nic Marks is a statistician by trade but also trained as a psychotherapist - so he’s ended up with an unusual mix of hard data skills and soft people skills. Nic started work in consultancy, then academia and then public policy; where he advised the Tony Blair and David Cameron governments on how to measure wellbeing. He did a TED talk in 2010 on this work.  For the last 8 years, Nic has gone from challenging governments how they measure quality of life to challenging businesses how they measure the quality of employees' experience. Nic’s business Friday Pulse is the result of that work. They measure and improve employee happiness, as we know that when people feel good at work they do their best work. Press Play for: How covid-19 has affected the UK Secrets to happiness Quality of life vs longevity How happiness at work is a great thing for everyone (think about it ...miserable people do miserable work!)   Connect with Nic on Twitter and LinkedIn. Learn more at nicmarks.org   Connect with Rick @MrRickJordan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn    Help others find the show! Subscribe and Review on iTunes Subscribe and Comment on CastBox Subscribe on Google Podcasts or Google Play Follow on Spotify Subscribe and Review on Stitcher   Rick’s company: ReachOut IT   Production Credits

Join us this week on Be Brave at Work as we hear from Nic Marks, a therapist and statistician with an unusual expertise in workplace happiness. Nic started out doing quality of life statistics and shifted to well-being and happiness for the United Kingdom and other national governments. In addition to hosting a couple of Ted Talks on how we measure and improve happiness at work, Nic launched his statistical tool and product, Friday Pulse, in 2019. With his unusual background, Nic shares with us his experiences working to measure and share workplace happiness and the role bravery plays in happiness in the workplace. Links of Interest On LinkedIn Friday Pulse Nic Marks More information about Ed, visit https://www.excellius.com/ © 2020 Ed Evarts

In this episode of the Championship Leadership podcast Nic Marks talks about his experience as an statistician, measuring employee experience, Friday Pulse and improving employee happiness, the importance of talking time to reflect on yourself and so much more.

E51: The Happiness Index with Special Guest Nic Marks   E51 Introduction Happiness is something that I have had a keen interest in for a long time. I have enjoyed looking at this topic and...

Nic Marks was once described as a “Statistician with a Soul” because of his unusual combination of ‘hard’ statistical skills and ‘soft’ people skills, he draws on scientific evidence to show that everyone benefits when businesses take happiness seriously.  Nic founded Friday Pulse, a London-based innovative tech business to be the catalyst in changing the world of work for the better. Previously, Nic worked in public policy and advised the UK Government on how to measure population wellbeing. His 2010 TED talk on his work has been watched over 2 million times and he is an in-demand public speaker and workshop leader. What We Discuss With Nic Marks In This Episode How do we measure happiness Happiness as a social emotion Which countries are the happiest in the world How happiness affects our health The 5 ways to wellbeing How happiness is transformative in organizations Episode Show Notes: https://tinyurl.com/y6x34wle 

Workplace wellbeing has been at the top of the agenda since the outbreak of covid-19. I think we can all agree it has been challenging for all of us in one way or another. For businesses who’s teams have been dispersed the emphasis on wellbeing has increased. In this week's episode I'm talking to Nic Marks, the CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse, the employee engagement survey that helps businesses quite literally keep their finger on the pulse when it comes to how their team is feeling. Today we’ll be delving into how a data led approach can help us learn more about employee happiness. Try Friday Pulse here > https://www.fridaypulse.com/

BIOGRAPHY Nic was once described as a “Statistician with a Soul” because of his unusual combination of ‘hard’ statistical skills and ‘soft’ people skills, he draws on scientific evidence to show that everyone benefits when businesses take happiness seriously. Nic founded Friday Pulse an innovative tech business based in London to be the catalyst in changing the world of work for the better.   After studying Mathematics, Economics and Management at the University of Cambridge, Nic gained postgraduate qualifications in Operational Research at Lancaster University and Organizational Change at the University of Surrey, also completing a three-year practical training in Counselling and Psychotherapy along the way.    In 2001 he founded the Centre for Wellbeing at the London-based think tank the New Economics Foundation. Nic and his team produced a stream of ground-breaking reports including the Happy Planet Index, Five Ways to Wellbeing and National Accounts of Wellbeing. In 2008 they were awarded the “Betterment of Humankind Award” from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies for their work on wellbeing in public policy.   Nic was an advisor to the UK Government Office for Science on the Wellbeing Foresight Programme and has written over 20 publications. In 2010 Nic was invited to speak at the prestigious TED global conference. His TED talk has now been watched well over a million times, and he authored one of the original three TEDbooks, entitled ‘A Happiness Manifesto’. Nic was named as one of the Top Ten Original Thinkers by the UK’s Institute of Directors magazine and his work was listed as one of Forbes Magazine’s Seven Most Powerful Ideas in 2011.   Nic is an in-demand public speaker, giving talks at a wide range of events from keynotes at HR conferences to an exclusive Virgin Unite gathering on Necker - Richard Branson’s private island - though undoubtedly his favourite recent talk was in a circus tent at the Wilderness music festival.   PICTURE SHOWNOTES Nic started out working in the public health field and over time started refining his skills working with the U.K. government and companies to help their employees. His priority to help to communicate health and happiness statistics to relay data in a meaningful way on how to live a better life. “Friday pulse” is about using KPIs to show how you measure staff engagement levels. It places an emphasis on how people “feel” and aim to have more good weeks than bad weeks and try to help with resilience in the workplace. Nic encourages people to be more open with people when they are working. Playing to their strengths, acknowledging their efforts and working on frustrations before they fester. Connect, being fair (balance), empowerment (delegation/autonomy), challenge, inspiration are examples of things organisations can do to help the happiness and well-being of their employees. Nic talks about staff morale in the time of Covid. Nic talks about the Happy Planet Index. Nic’s definition of happiness is feeling good and feeling well. Nic likes starting the morning slowly and eases into the day The top three things that make Nic’s heart sing is that he walks every day for an hour on his own to reflect and ponder, he likes dancing and being with people especially deep friendships, and being altruistic. Nic’s fantasy meal would alternate between salmon and salad or sausage and mash potato. Walking would be his non-negotiable thing he makes sure he does every day. Nic likes clever, improvised comedy and humour to make him laugh. Nic’s fantasy dinner guests would include his 80-year-old big-hearted friend Riccardo, Tim Minchin, Sandi Toksvig, and his wife Zoe. Jason Mraz “Have it All” and Leonard Cohen songs would be his theme songs BOOKS The Strange Order of Things – Antionio Demassio Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts THINGS DISCUSSED https://nicmarks.org/ fridaypulse.com Connect on LinkedIn Connect on Twitter  

Do you take happiness seriously? 6 questions. 7 minutes. Pure insights. Episode 83: Successful leaders who take happiness seriously achieve more. Wise words from Nic Marks, Statistician and Founder of Friday Pulse.

We’ve laid down lures of cool Friday drinks to catch the ‘Pharrell Williams’ of statistics; happiness expert Nic Marks. Nic is the CEO and Founder of Friday Pulse, helping organisations understand employee wellbeing, as well as being a leading statistician and TED speaker, and is arguably best known for his work in creating The Happy Planet Index; the first global measure of sustainable well-being. He’s worked with The British Government and The Kingdom of Bhutan and has been featured in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and Wired. He talks to us on the drivers of happiness, how businesses can measure and monitor happiness, Aristotle, shining toilet brass, tips for managing teams during the pandemic, how to have a good Zoom call, neuroscience and loads more. It’s packed like a pandemic second date picnic hamper (too soon?) so go consume until your ears are content. ///// Follow Nic on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/)   And on Twitter (https://twitter.com/iamnicmarks)   Check out his personal website (https://nicmarks.org/)   And the website for Friday Pulse (https://www.fridaypulse.com/) which helps companies measure happiness, and is free for all organisations with under 1000 employees during the COVID-19 crisis. Nic’s book recommendations are:  21 Letters on Life and its Challenges (https://www.amazon.co.uk/21-Letters-Life-Its-Challenges/dp/1786331950) by Charles Handy  Becoming Myself (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Becoming-Myself-Psychiatrists-Irvin-Yalom/dp/0349410062) & Love’s Executioner (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Loves-Executioner-Irvin-D-Yalom/dp/014197544X) by Irvin D. Yalom   The Strange Order of Things (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Order-Things-Feeling-Cultures/dp/0345807146)   by Antonio Damasio Shantaram (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shantaram-Gregory-David-Roberts/dp/0349117543) by Gregory David Roberts   Cloud Atlas (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cloud-Atlas-David-Mitchell/dp/0340822783) by David Mitchell  /////

Nic Marks is the special guest on show 18. He is the CEO and founder of Friday Pulse, Statistician, Happiness Expert, and Ted Speaker. Learn from Nic about: What happiness is and how to measure it How feelings and emotions come before cognition Why some nations and people are happier than others What leadership activities increase happiness in the workforce How human appreciation increases happiness in us all Follow us and explore our social media tribe from our Website: https://leadership-hacker.com Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services Find out more about Nic Marks Below:  www.fridaypulse.com Connect with Nic on LinkedIn Follow Nic on Twitter https://nicmarks.org   Full Transcript Below:    ----more----   Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.   Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.   Joining me on today's show is CEO and founder of Friday Pulse. Statistician, happiness expert, and Ted speaker, its Nic Marks. Before we get to speak with Nic, It is The Leadership Hacker News.   The Leadership Hacker News   Steve Rush: In our role as leaders, we have likely to have made some significant decisions of late. Our approach to making decisions will vary from individual to individual and while some considered and thoughtful strategic decisions would have absolutely been a must at work, recent research has found using a coin toss to decide major life decisions may ultimately make you happier. The new study has found overall happiness increased after a six-month period. The study titled, The Review of Economic Studies published in the Oxford University press also found that people that rely on a coin toss to make a decision are more likely to follow through with their choice and be more satisfied as a result. To find out the impact of using a coin toss economist Professor Steven Levitt from the university of Chicago, asked people to make important decisions such as whether to quit a job, move home, end a relationship or quit smoking using affirmative and negative assigned to either heads or tails of a coin.   Users were also asked to include their own questions such as, Should I get a tattoo? And prior to the coin toss, volunteers were also instructed to help identify third party judicators to verify the outcomes and assessed independently the results. After two months participants and their third party judicators were asked to conduct a survey; which found that participants favoured the status quo, making a change less frequently than they would predicted they would before the coin toss, according to phys.org. However, a further study conducted after six months found that this bias towards the status quo had gone, according to the six month survey. Those who were interested to make certain changes regarding major decisions were more likely to do so, and be happier as a result. Participants also said that they were more likely to make the same decision if they were to choose again.   According to the researchers, the findings were inconsistent with the conventional theory of choice, which states that people who are on the margins should on average report equal happiness, regardless of where they made the decisions. Professor Levitt said, society teaches us quitters, never win and winners never quit. But in reality, the data from his experiment suggests we would all be better off if we did more quitting. He went on to say, “a good rule of thumb in decision making is whenever you cannot decide what you should do choose the action that represents change rather than continue with the status quo”. The leadership lesson here is, we often get stuck in change and we're not sure on which direction to take, and whilst tossing a coin might give us a yes or a no to a certain direction. Does that change really bring something new? So that's been The Leadership Hacker News. We would really encourage you to share with us your insights, ideas, and funny stories around leadership, leaders around the world. Please get in touch.   Start of Podcast   Steve Rush: I am joined on today's show with Nic Marks. He is the CEO and creator of Friday Pulse. He is an author, Ted speaker and a statistician. Nic, welcome to The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Nic Marks: Thank you very much, Steve.   Steve Rush: So statistician, numbers, I guess that must have started at an early age for it to become such a big feature in your life? Tell us a little bit about that.   Nic Marks: Yeah, there is a lot of syllables in that word as well isn't there statistician? I just was, I was good at maths and was not very interested in much else at school. I mean, I did my A- levels with double mass Physics and half of Physics is mass as well. It was sort of I could do, and therefore, you know, I was top, of the year at school, pretty much all the way through and pretty much ended up at Cambridge reading mass before I made a decision about anything and actually ended up not liking maths at Cambridge. Because it is very, very pure and therefore discovering, I was really an applied statistician. I liked using numbers to solve problems rather than the sort of abstractness of mathematics, which is what you get into in that space. So yeah, was kind of, what I was good at.   Steve Rush: So the fascination really was not just about the patterns and the numbers, but actually how can you use these numbers in a positive way and how can I apply them in doing something that is relevant for people?   Nic Marks: Yeah, that was the big eye-opener. When I started sort of solving things, particularly on health statistics, you know, they start setting you problems to solve maybe in A-level and anything that sort of had a bit more human side to it. I got quite, I enjoyed those questions more and that is what I was actually able to do at Cambridge. I was able to switch into an applied statistics course and you know we did sort of industrial psychology and Queuing Theory. I accused even now if I get in a queue and I can see it is badly organized. That put me in a rage and it is partly my Queuing Theory sort of ideas, but yeah, so anything, it was very practical I got interested in.   Steve Rushs: And even more so, during lockdown where there are queue everywhere, I should imagine for you particularly that is really challenging, Right?   Nic Marks: Well actually, what I don't like about queue is when they're not fair, I don't mind a fair queue, and actually the lockdown queue are very fair, aren't they, you know, you're standing there in order and you let older people pass if you're a certain time or key workers and that all seems very fair. What I really hate is like when you come into an airport and you're queuing up and there's a big queue at the, you know, the passport control and you know, one, they haven't put enough people on, but then you can't see if the front of your queue has got one or two people on it. And so the queue go at different rates and you always end up in this lower queue. In fact, you are statistically more likely to end up in this lower queue anyway, and then it feels unfair. And I once actually had an argument with passport control guy, not an argument as a discussion. I said to him, you know, why don't you queue up in a snake? And he said, Oh, actually it makes the average queuing time go up, which is a very fair thing. And I said to him, well, the problem is the experience of queuing is related to the standard deviation, not the mean and he looked at me and went…   Steve Rush: I should imagine that when down well?   Nic Marks: …Can you put that in writing please? My kids were very embarrassed.   Steve Rush: And who would have known that queues have so much applied maths behind it; Which I guess if you look around society that we are in, there are maths and numbers behind everything.   Nic Marks: I mean, totally. I mean, if you do marketing these days, digital marketing, you've got a lot of queuing theory and mathematics in there and about friction and flow and the way you model it. There is so many ways that at least a sort of A-level understanding of mass can really, really help you. I don't think you need to go much beyond that, but well obviously some people do, but it is very interesting to me anyway.   Steve Rush: So beyond University, then you started applying your learned mathematics, what happened next?   Nic Marks: I did a Masters and then I joined a consultancy. Anderson consulting who sort of now called Accenture and did programming and things like that. I quit really, when I realized they were going to sort of move me around the country to wherever they wanted me to work. And I just got engaged and was in London and didn't really want to move around. And I also started to make more choices in my life. I mean I think some people, this comes earlier, but I started thinking actually, what do I really want to work on? And I went to work for sustainability, environmental investment company, and I started getting more interested in things which were sort of, as I say, sort of more socially useful statistics. Yeah, and I did that for a bit, but I also had a slightly kooky side, but slightly different side. I got very into sort of personal development and I used to go to sort of men's encounter groups. Cause I did not really quite understand how to be a man in the world. I found slightly misogynists, and so I just started exploring all that. And the reason for that really was my mum was a therapist and in the end I trained as a therapist as well as do math statistics, which sort of makes for, I think, a very creative mix, but then unusual mix anyway,   Steve Rush: So that creative mixture you now have, has smudged that psychotherapy and your statistician background together to create what you do now. The last 12-15 years of your life. You have been really focusing on the whole principle of happiness and how we can be more focused and understand some of the metrics and numbers that sit behind happiness. Tell us a little bit. About how that came about?   Nic Marks: Yeah, it started in about 2001. I was doing some other work with a think tank in London called New Economics Foundation. And the director then director said to me, Nic, there is this word called wellbeing coming into public policy and no one knows what it means. And can you help us, he said drive some meaning under the word? And I being a statistician, I said, well, I'd like to know how we could measure it because then, you know, policy makers might take it seriously. So we started a project which eventually became my whole work, and it became something called a centre for wellbeing, but we even started to create metrics around wellbeing that was useful for local, national, and international agencies about people's experiences with life effectively. And some people in the field were already calling that happiness and I shy away from that for a while because it sounded a bit light for the government policy.   But I started to realize that it was a much more attractive word than wellbeing and also more relatable. Ultimately, you know, whether we enjoy our lives or not in whatever basis we want to do, there is kind of, what it is about, so you know, and you can talk to anyone about whether they're happy or not. We can then discuss what that means and we can discuss, you know, whether we mean the same thing, but it makes a much more fruitful discussion, so that is kind of how I got into it. Yeah.   Steve Rush: It is really neat principle. The whole happiness thing that I have explored and there are a number of great authors that have written around the similar subject over the last sort of 10 or 15 years. It almost feels a little bit pink and fluffy and subjective, and I guess what you are seeking to do is to create some more objectivity so that leaders can be a bit more thoughtful of their personal impact around that. Would that be a kind of fair assumption?   Nic Marks: It is kind of fair, but I don't like… it is not you, but I don't like this sort of split between objective and subjective because our experience of life is sort of necessarily subjective. You know, we are the subject of that experience and actually, what a lot of statistics and data does is it objectifies things, so it will say we can measure your standard of life because we can see that and touch that. So we can touch your housing, your income, your whatever, we can measure that, but we don't know what you're feeling, so we can't measure that and actually that's not true. It is just a different type of measurement, and then you have to be careful about how you do it, but you can put numbers on it, and so there is a way we use the word subjective. Which makes it feel like it's very loose and it would change for everybody, but actually, whether people enjoy their lives or not is sort of gradable.   Steve Rush: Yeah, that makes those a sense actually. If somebody was to ask you, what does happiness mean? How would you describe it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I have had various descriptions over the years, but so I often say its feeling good and doing well. And by that, I mean that it got a feeling element, but it's got a functional element to it and we use the word happiness very broadly in English language. So we use it as a sort of momentary feeling. I feel happy, but we also use it as what's tends to be called a cognitive assessment. You know, I feel happy with, or I am happy with, so we are sort of reflecting on a sort of judgment about something. And then there's a school of thought that thinks that happiness is a sort of capability that it's, you know, that knowing or feeding that I can deal with, anything is a feeling of happiness. It is sort of like a perceived resilience going forward that, you know, I can cope with things. So in that sense, I think that there is a functional element to an actually purely from a psychological perspective or a nuisance perspective than our feelings and emotions actually help us acts in the world. So there is a sort of, they are not just there as sort of a nice sensation actually motivate us to behave in certain ways. So that is how I tend to think of it as a, you know, feeling good and doing well.   But then there's another nuance, which I quite like, which goes actually right back to ancient Greek Philosophy, which is whether it's about pleasure and meaning. And the hedonist talk about pleasure and Aristotle and people had talked about, eudemonia thought about it as sort of meaning and virtue. Justified this idea that you can only know if you're happy when you're at the end of your life and you're looking back, which is quite harsh, but in a way I think it's both in the sense that if we have a life which is meaningful, but no fun, then we run out of energy quite quickly. And if it's all fun and pleasure and there's no meaning, then we sort of lose our way and we kind of need both of those parts and, they work in different timeframes and so there's a nice tension between them and a nice synergy between them. And obviously there are times when it get you in life, which, you know, you feel you've got lots of meaning, but no pleasure. And you can get yourself into a crisis about that. I mean, I been divorced and I have actually gotten a situation where my marriage was hugely meaningful to me, but I really did not enjoy it and that created a sort of crack in my life that I had to resolve. I think that way as well, so that's sort of two different ways of feeling good and doing well and pleasure and meaning.   Steve Rush: I quite like the whole principle of it is quite an emotional response as well isn't it. It is a personal response to what is going on around us, I guess.   Nic Mark: Yeah, Our feelings are very much about what is going on around us. They are sort of us, and our environment. In fact, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio don't know, if you've ever read him. Have you read him?   Steve Rush: I have, I have.   Nic Marks: Have you read his most recent one? The strange order of things.   Steve Rush: Maybe give us a snippet from that.   Nic Marks: It is a funny title of a book, but basically he's talking about feelings and emotions come before cognition come before central nervous systems in our evolutionary history.   Steve Rush: Right.   Nic Markss: And, that they actually help us do three things, feelings. They help us monitor our environments. They help motivate us to act and they help us adjust those actions over time. And that first one of monitoring is sort of, you know, our feelings are actually, I have to say our feelings are data that they actually give us information about what's going on around us. And that's not just our feelings become emotions, but, you know, do we feel hot or cold? Do we feel hungry? Do we feel thirsty? It's basically telling us about, and it's motivating us to act in some sort of ways, but you know, our feeling of feeling frightened is that it feels like there's a danger out there and that we need to help avoid or get ourselves out of that threat. And we often have the feeling well before we have the cognition and that's really his argument is that the feeding comes first. Then we apply our intelligence to that feeling and deciding how we are going to act.   Steve Rush: And the cognition of course prevents us from doing crazy things, which is why the executive part of our brain slows down and stops in some cases what we will deal with those emotional reactions, of course.   Nic Marks: Yeah, I am not a total expert on the absolute specifics in it, but they absolutely are interconnected. Actually, even if you think about something positive, like happiness, which is a little bit of a sort of gateway word to a whole range of positive emotions. We can use the word very broadly, but then actually gets specifics. You know, some people would say, even if I say what happiness, mean to you? They will say contentment and other people will say joy. Contentment and joy quite different. Yeah, one is very high energy and one's quite low energy, and of course, there is actually a whole range of things in there. Like, you know, joy and enjoyment are different and amusement. And, you know, things like enjoyment, amusement, laughter are sort of very social and they are very about bonding with other people.   So when you're having a laugh with people or mucking around, you actually slow down…you shut down your executive decision making and your full intelligence because you're trying to bond, but it doesn't pay you to be your brightest, most sort of challenging self at that moment. You better to conform, so, you know, so actually, there are times when we are happy when, we are probably less intelligent, but there are other times, you know if we think about other forms of happiness, such as curiosity or interest, which are very engaging parts, that sort of positive emotion when we are absolutely fully using our intelligence. And I think it's sometimes why in business and organizations, people get worried about happiness. They try to think people be happy, clappy and not very bright. Well, there is certain forms of it, which that is true for, so they can point to it. But actually what they really want is people to be positive and safe, enthusiastic, and sometimes to have a laugh, but just maybe 5-10% of the time and other times we are doing other bits, so there's really this whole myriad of different positive emotions and we want to be agile and moving around between them.   Steve Rush: Sure. Now society also plays a massive part in this doesn't it? So over the last 10 or 15 years, if you think about it, societies describe happiness with good economies, wealth, good social wellbeing and obedience, having researched just that, all over the planet, what's your take on how that plays out?   Nic Marks: Well, it is for certain that nations have different levels of average happiness and actually different distributions of happiness in them and some that both the averages and the distribution can be explained by economic and societal factors. And, and then there's stuff more below that but you know, if we look at rank orders of nations on happiness, then Scandinavian countries tend to come top, and that's a lot to do with their social safety net. Which is, it's not really to do with the fact that that's the sort of…I was going to say the average, but by the average, I mean the media and the person in the middle is not particularly happy and Scandinavia and say in the UK or the U.S. but where they are, they do much, much better. Is that the bottom half of the distribution or the lowest 25% in terms of income are match less unhappy in Scandinavia than they are in the UK, the U.S. and places like that, so it is more that they don't have the tail of the distribution pulling the mean down. They have more equal distribution of happiness within it, and that's kind of interesting if you, you know, because people often go, oh, well, you know, you could say the Swedes are happier, but, you know, don't, they have high suicide rates, don't they have this. And, you know, I don't find the fins very extrovert, but, and that's probably all true. I mean, but there are other factors also, which is if you live in a broadly happy society and you are unhappy, you probably take it more personally, and so actually countries with a higher happiness rate may possibly have a highest suicide rate. Whereas if you live in a country such as India or Pakistan, or somewhere where there is much lower levels, you know, suicide rates are probably lower because people feel more normalized about their happiness.   Steve Rush: Less highs and lows, is that how I am reading it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, sort of. You feel less personal; you know if everyone around you is happy and you are miserable, you feel it is very much your fault. And so therefore, you know, I'm a burden on other people. Then you get into this very difficult logic where you start thinking it is actually better for you to take your own life, which is tragically, how some people get. Whereas if everybody is, you just feel like, what does that mean to all of us? Which you know, which in the current situation with the anxiety around looked down and COVID because everybody feels in the same boat, we are not sort of; we are feeling more open about our anxiety because we kind of know it's not about us feeling bad. It is about the environment, so that makes it easy to talk about.   Steve Rush: You also spent a significant amount of time pulling together, enormous research to create the Happy Planet Index. Just tell the listeners a little bit about what the Happy Planet Index is?   Nic Marks: Yeah, the Happy Planet Index is sort of a proposed alternative to GDP as a way of measuring the progress of nations. And I've always felt that GDP was a really bad measure of welfare, of the wellbeing of a nation. In fact, one of my first published bits of work is from 94 and it was an alternative to GDP, but it was very complicated. It was very objective. It was basically a huge cost benefit analysis of the economy and had a lot of assumptions in it. And I knew it was very complicated, but when I used to go talk to talks about it, rightly or wrongly, but it did show was that about the mid-seventies was about the highest in this index and it trading often. People go to me, that is how it feels to me, particularly older people would do.   Steve Rush: Right. Nic Marks: And I always thought that is interesting. It does not say anything about what you feel. It is just a whole lot of economic data put together. That started me perhaps thinking about how you measure what you feel, but when it came to the Happy Planet Index, which was released in 2006, so like 12 years after that first bit of work, I want to do something very simple and easier to agree with. I sort of learned that complexity and indicators tends to put people off, or if they get interested, they then start looking at all the assumptions and the debate gets about the detail and not the bigger picture. And so what I did with the HPI was I said, well, you know, what's the outcome you really want from a country, and I said, it's to produce good lives that don't cost the earth and the planet, but in there is the sustainability element of it.   And so I went, well, you could measure good lives by asking, by looking at the data on happiness, across nations, say the quality of people's lives, you can then adjust that for the length of our life, so life expectancy, which is a very good, reliable piece of health statistics. You've got data on from around the world, but you've also got to think about the efficiency as a nation. Like how much resources does it use to get there? So the Happy Planet Index became a, you know, environmental efficiency of delivering wellbeing, a sort of bang for your buck indicator and that is what it is. It rank ordered nations across the world and basically you have some countries which have got high wellbeing, but high environmental impact and that will be typically Western rich countries. You've got countries which have got low wellbeing, but low environmental impact, so those are sub Saharan Africa and other nations, which are really struggling. Then you've got countries which are interesting, which I've got pretty good levels of wellbeing and much lower resource use and typically they were central Latin America and, some of the islands of the world, or some of the Asian countries, which were doing well. And that became interesting to think, you know, okay, how can we create a sustainable future, which is also a good future. Because the problem with the environmental movement, which, you know, I certainly have been a part of and absolutely bought into. I think they sell very negative visions of the future with the idea that you can scare people into changing their behaviour and I think we can all see over the last 25 years that has not worked.   So, you know, how do we do it in a way which we actually say to people, actually, this could be a better future. And in some ways, some of that is going on right now with COVID in that people are thinking about, oh, I'm staying at home, I'm traveling much less. It is actually less stressful for me, and it is about identifying those positives, you know, as we come out of COVID. It would be a shame if we don't take some benefits in reducing carbon emissions and other things. I mean, that would be disappointing having had this forced on us to not, gets some positives out and not everyone welcomes COVID; we could still get some positives out of it.   Steve Rush: Almost the planet's opportunity, if you just start giving back, isn't it at this time?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I mean, there are people that go all that way and say it's in a guy's feedback and I don't go quite to that level, but it's an opportunity, isn't it? I think like any setback is an opportunity to learn, even if you didn't want to get into it.   Steve Rush: We are going to start to talk a little bit about what you're doing at the moment with Friday Pulse, but just before we do, what is the happiest place statistically on earth?   Nic Marks: Well, last year's data showed Finland as the happiest nation. Then I, the only within country data that I know very well is the UK. And the regions of the UK, and I think it always surprises people, but actually London is the least happy region because it's urban because inequalities are high there and things of that, and people are very close together. Whereas the happiest region of the UK is Northern Ireland, which is much more rural and of course, recent memories of troubles, so they've actually got sort of point to go back to.   So there's sort of different things, but at the national level, it's Finland at the moment, but it has been Norway previously and Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark have done well. Costa Rica is a very surprising one that comes through that is particularly happy compared to its GDP. So yeah, that is the way it is sort of is.   Steve Rush: Cool, and what would be the kind of one or two things that are consistent across those higher ranking, happier places?   Nic Marks: So there is income distribution, which they basically tend to be more equal countries which is what Scandinavia is, and actually even Costa Rica is more equal than such of neighbours around it, you know, Nicaragua, Guatemala and all those other places around there. So it does very well in that and there's also high levels of literacy. Gender equality in Costa Rico, which of course are things that Scandinavia is particularly good at, so equality tends to come out stronger than people think, but of course, you know, richer countries are happier. That is sort of undeniable. They are just not becoming any happier with the extra amounts of wealth we have. We are not seeing those countries on a trajectory to become happier. The countries that are on a trajectory to become happier are some of the developing countries because they are reducing poverty. They are reducing, you know, early deaths, so you know that obviously is a positive.   Steve Rush: And I wonder, is it more visible to them at the same time?   Nic Marks: Yes, it probably is. I mean, there are differences between them, like South Korea has been studied quite a lot because they have obviously been one of the Asian tigers and, you know, their happiness levels have gone up, but they are very, very materialistic there. And they haven't gone up as much as say a country like Vietnam or something like that who is slightly less so, so there were interesting differences between them. And some of them have to do with density of population as well, but there's not just sort of one straight pathway, there are differences.   Steve Rush: Makes lots of sense. Thank you very much, Nic. So the organization you lead now, Friday Pulse. Seeks to take that distillation of happiness data, but from the colleagues and customers of the organizations that you work with. To create something that leadership and other colleagues can actually use as a lens to get a sense check of how their workforce feels, how happy they are almost. Tell us a little bit, about how Friday Pulse was created?   Nic Marks: Yeah, I did my Ted talk on the Happy Planet Index and other work I have done in 2010. And obviously that's quite an honour, and I sort of came out of it, thinking it sort of allowed an opportunity to sort of bookend that part of my work and I accidentally got into policy and I done it for 10-12 years then. When you are working on something like climate change, it is quite slow moving and, you know, I thought when I have got something in and maybe do something and I was always interested in business, my dad was a businessman. He led an organization and I thought, well, this is very applicable there. You know, if leaders knew how happy you are not, teams were, that would get them useful information. So I started creating a happiness at work survey, which was a one off survey to begin with and learned a lot about how the data worked in organizations started to get my own opinion about what I thought the drivers of happiness at work were and how we could measure them. But actually hadn't created a tool that was exceptionally responsive. You know, it's like a one off survey, like most other surveys are, but started to think, well actually, what really an organization needs to know is how it's moving through time.   And so start thinking, there is a way of measurement of happiness we call. There is three ways of measuring happiness really, We can do, what is called a cognitive assessment, which is what most surveys are, which is we ask people to look overall and reflect on it. You can do something which is called experience sampling, where you basically bleed people during the day or text them or whatever. Say, how do you feel right now? It gives really nice data, but it's really annoying. So the one in between is called episodal, measurements and you get to the end of an episode, you ask people to reflect back on it. And I decided to go for that way of measuring it and started off asking people various cadences, so a month, how has the last month been. A day, how has your day been? and settled on a week because daily was a little bit too annoying.   And also you could only just ask people how happy were you or not, and nothing more. If you ask them monthly, it was not very responsive. You so much can happen in a month. As we have learned recently and weekly is the sort of sprint of work. We go; we tend to work too, so we ask people on a Friday that is why we called Friday Pulse. You know, how was your week? How did you feel this week? And that creates a very responsive, we call it happiness KPI, but a very responsive metric, which when you group at a team level, there's effectively a measure of team morale. When you group at an organizational level, it is people's experience of the culture of the organization, experience of work right now. And so you can look at that, and I mean, the good thing about a question like that is you can ask, you know, truck driver, that question, you can ask a CEO with that question and they can give you an answer to it.   Whereas if you ask people how engaged were you this week, most people don't even know how to answer that question. They have an idea of what the top of the scale is particularly. They know if they are disengaged, they know where the top of the scale is. So when you ask people how you felt and were you happy or not? They can give you an answer that is very good, reliable data in that way.   Steve Rush: And what do you notice the themes are that contribute to a happy culture at work for leaders listening to this podcast?   Nic Marks: There are some general themes across an organization, and there are ways that you can articulate it. So the way that we do is we say there were five ways to happiness at work and, and they are connect, which is relationships are the most important. They are the cornerstone of creating good experiences or undermining experience for that case, for that matter.   The second one is to be fair, which is if people feel they are treated fairly, respectfully, then they can bring themselves to work much more. The third is to empower them sort of their autonomy delegating yet and use their strengths. The fourth is to challenge them, so this is sort of misunderstanding of happiness that people are happy doing nothing. It is actually not true they board and actually, people would like it when there is a bit of stretch. Not, if you stretch them too much, challenge them too much, they go and stress. If you under challenge them, they are going into apathy and boredom. You've got to get the right sweet spot, which has always tends to be the way anyway, and then the fifth one is to inspire, which is about meaning purpose, where they feel it doing is worthwhile.   So those five things connect be fair, impact, challenge, inspire are the big drivers, but then there is specific things that go on, which has really to do with the environment and what is going on around them very locally. Which is that some people, some teams will find them in a very stressful situation or their work environments are stressful. So with people moving remote at the moment and very quickly moved remote a few weeks ago, you know, that some people were happier working at home than others and lots to do their environments, whether they got children, whether they have the right equipment at home, where they had a quiet space, you know, whatever it was. So some of those things are very, very local and some of those bigger, broader cultural things. So yeah, those two effects really.   Steve Rush: And like any business and any part of any business it is feedback, data that I am getting an also alien to that is that leadership choices to what I do with that information as I receive it. Right?   Nic Marks: Totally and in fact, the whole of Friday Pulse is really a feedback loop. And actually it's very similar to therapy in some ways, which is that in therapy. Therapist listens to their client, and they reflect back to them and then they work with them about the challenges that they are facing. And we listened to the population, the employees by asking them every Friday, how do they feel? We feed that back to them and the team leaders, and then senior leaders, you stack the data up in nice reporting, and that enables people to then work together to make better experiences. So one of the things I am very keen on this, people don't just focus on the negatives. Don't just focus on the deficits. They actually appreciate the assets and the positives going on, and so on a Friday, we don't only ask people how they felt. We also asked them, what was success for you this week? Have you got anyone you want to thank because appreciating each other, is really important for both sides of that equation. Then we give people the opportunity to share a frustration or an idea to make things better. But actually most of our clients really, really work on accentuating the positive because in lots of ways, businesses tend to focus on how do you solve problems? What comes up? And actually probably often don't take the time to go, yes, good job, and to actually get that human appreciation, which actually we all really respond well to.   Steve Rush: And hitting back to the neuroscience we talked on a little bit earlier; of course, it will release different neurotransmitters that create that self-fulfilling prophecy of getting additional positive outcomes from our thinking and our behaviours, which helps improve happiness of course.   Nic Marks: It certainly does. And I mean, all of this works together, you know, physically, but I always think about it as like, you know, if someone compliments you and your sort of head goes up and your shoulders go back and you sort of feel bigger because you're feeling confident. Whereas when someone criticizes you, you can tend to sort of hunch up and pull your shell in, you know, and protect yourself. And we're much better when we're expensive and shoulders back, and actually other people like working with us more like that as well. So there is so much to be gained from being positive, but of course you have to be realistic. You know, it does not mean to say you let people travel down into a sort of fantasy world where everyone is doing a good job. No, it was a point is, you know, really differentiating and really understanding and helping people build on their positives.   Steve Rush: So this part of the show, we are going to turn away from you being a statistician, but look at you through your leadership lens of running an organization. And at this part of the show, we like to ask our guests to share their top leadership hacks or ideas. So if you could share based on your experience as a leader, your top leadership hacks, what would they be? Nic.   Nic Marks: I think that the big thing is listening to people, you know, I don't employ people to tell them what to do. I employ people to work with them and, get the best out of them and actually learning to bring the best out of them. The main way is listening to them even when they disagree with you, so I think listening is probably the first one.   Second one is I think little and often, I think I've tried to where I've gone wrong previously would be when I've tried to do big interventions. And actually I think doing smaller ones, checking is a much better way. But consistently I definitely have had to learn that, you know, leadership is a, weekly process, maybe even a daily process, but a weekly one, you know, where you're asking questions every week and you're listening every week rather than just sort of going, right. These are our goals for the next quarter. Then checking in 2-3 months later, realizing people have gone down a different tangent or, something has emerged, maybe for good reasons, but you don't know about them so I think little and often is probably.   The next one for me, definitely, I think inspiring people, which is that I hold the vision for the company. I don't necessarily hold the solutions, but I hold the vision for where we're going and why we're doing it. And remembering to remind people about that, so reminding them of the why, but it's actually, you know, bringing that into, your weekly work. I mean, particularly with all the adjustments we have made just recently and COVID and everyone going remote, you know, I sort of had to remind myself to remind everybody why we're doing this. If that makes sense.   Steve Rush: It makes sense. One of those things that you set up a vision to start with and other things get in the way. And we, as leaders also need reminding that is our job to remind people and to make sure that, we continually talking about the journey and how are we going to get there and what's going to get in the way and remove barriers. It's part and parcel of that. Isn't it?   Nic Marks: Yeah, it definitely is and it is actually a bit of the job I really like. Some of the detail bits, I am less good at it. I mean, it is funny; I am very good at details and stats. But I can sometimes of like, you know, I probably like many people not got the longest attention span and I sometimes sort of get stopped and I have to beat myself up for it, but the inspiring bit and the listening to how they feel and what they're doing. I mean, I can do that for ages because I really liked people and I really believe in what we are doing. So those are the bits I find easier. It is keeping people on track and the detail that is always my learning edge.   Steve Rush: Thanks for being so honest and great hacks also. So when we start to think that this partnership we've really enjoyed getting into the heads of our leaders and our guests where they've maybe screwed up in the past or something's gone catastrophic wrong, and indeed they are now using that experience as a positive in their life. We call this Hack to Attack. What would yours be?   Nic Marks: Hack to Attack? Well, I mean, in some ways I've sort of pointed to it with a little bit of those last bits, but I think that I have definitely been guilty of letting things run for too long cause I wasn't confident enough to challenge people. And, and so, you know, previously had someone in the business and you know, she has some really strong qualities, but just sort of always going pear shapes. And, and I, kept on coming back to every three or four months, but really we should have partied companies at least a year before we eventually did. And that cost us a lot, and she wasn't happy. She was not doing quite what she wanted. I was trying to, I guess, force her, so there was a role that needed doing and I was wanting her to do that role and she was not quite wanting to do it and she was definitely capable of it. But it just sort of ran on far too long, and in the end it all became very messy and angry. If I dealt with it much earlier. We would have had a lot less problems and it's the same problem I had with my marriage actually, which was that, you know, I let things run too long and I should have been challenging about that earlier. I think that is my weaknesses tending to gloss over some of the negatives, my positivity overrides listening to negative feedback or negative signals. And I think that's actually really important leadership is to be able to one, hear the negative signal and two, deal with it because it doesn't go away.   Steve Rush: It is great learning, Nic and also think about the themes that you are now encouraging other leaders to talk about through Friday Pulse. There is a lot of synergies there in terms of what your learned behaviour. What you are encouraging others to learn from now, so that is super stuff. The last thing I wanted to talk to you about, and this is where we are going to ask you to do some time travel. I want you to think about if you were able to bump into Nic at 21; you are able to give him one bit of advice that would make the difference. What would it be?   Nic Marks: I quite like my life, even my mistakes. So, you know, that is not like something I would massively want to change. I mean, I think I was a little uptight as a 21. I was a little serious and I had the future weighed on me quite a lot. I sort of kind of had this feeling. I wanted to do something and I probably wanted to do it quicker than was possible. And you know, and I mean, I have actually done things which are interesting. I think I would just say, you know, relax. It will be okay. Follow what you are interested in, I mean, in some ways I have done that actually. So, but when I was 21, I was a little bit; I was a little bit still uptight, yeah.   Steve Rush: If only Nic would know the 21-year-old, Nic who might have been a little bit uptight. Still found is way to be where you are now, which is, you know, impacting the lives of many of the people, so that's great advice.   Nic Marks: It is nice to think that. The 21-year-old Nic would be horrified at the thought that that 55-year-old Nic got divorced. He would not like that at all, but apart from that, he pretty much take the rest.   Steve Rush: Good stuff. Okay, as people have been listening to you, Nic. We will make sure that we encourage him to get over to Ted and have a look at the Happy Planet Index talk, which I think is really inspiring and I love that, but where else can they find out about the work that you do with Friday Pulse and indeed some of the things that you do now?   Nic Marks: Yeah. Friday Pulse is the name of the company, so it is fridaypulse.com and it is actually, we are offering it free for organizations up to a thousand people at the moment. So they can try it for three months and see how they go with it and see how they like the data and how they can work with it. I create blog articles and posts on LinkedIn most week. Connect with me on LinkedIn; I always like meeting new people there and I have a personal website, which is more my sort of speaking musing, which is nicmark.org. Nic is no K a in that, so those are the main ways to find me.   Steve Rush: We will make sure there in the show notes to accompany this podcast as well Nic. So as people are finished listening, they can literally just click into those links and then hop over to find you.   Nic Marks: Fabulous, thank you.   Steve Rush: Nic, I just wanted to say I am incredibly happy that you have chosen to be with The Leadership Hacker Podcast. I have spoken to you a few times now and I have loved the conversations that we have had and as a result, I know we're going to get a lot of happy hackers listening to you too. So thanks for being on, The Leadership Hacker Podcast.   Nic Marks: Thank so much for having me.     Closing   Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.   Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler their @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.    

If you could do one thing to make work better for yourself and those around you, would you do it? What if that one thing was making happiness a priority? Would that change your answer? Happiness is a nebulous thing. It’s hard to create, understand, track, and measure—all the things leaders are generally asked to do in business. But Nic Marks disagrees. He’s a statistician and trained therapist who believes that happiness can be intentionally introduced with outcomes that can be measured. Not only that, there are inherent benefits to leaders by investing in happiness. Not only will you see your own well-being sky-rocket, your employees will enjoy fewer sick days, be more productive, unleash creativity, and more. And that will fuel your own sense of happiness, and let’s face it, make life that much better for everyone. Sounds like a sound investment to me. And so is the time spent on listening to my conversation with Nic. We talk about the science of happiness, how technology helps make sense of it, and how to find happy moments even when the world seems to be falling apart. Give it a listen and get happy! About our Guest Nic was once called a "statistician with a soul" by a client. No doubt because of his interesting mix of hard analytical skills and his soft people ones (he’s a trained therapist). Nic's wife complains that when he has had a drink he always starts giving young people life advice—whether they want it or not! You can connect with Nic on Twitter @iamnicmarks

Management thinker Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying: “you can't manage what you can't measure.” Another way of looking at that is that you can't improve what you don't measure. When seen against this backdrop, far too many organizations are leaving behind the opportunity to measure—and therefore manage—the wellbeing of their employees. The result? Far too many organizations are not leveraging the true power that comes with improving culture and employee happiness.In this episode, we meet Nic Marks, CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse. Nic is a Statistician, Happiness expert, and TED speaker. His company helps organizations measure employee happiness (among other cultural levers), in a very unique way.My Favorite Quotes from Nic Marks in this episode, (paraphrased):"Happiness is serious business!""Organizations need to build internal TRUST to get great happiness data!""Leaders can use employee happiness data to create great cultures and business success!"The best ways to connect with Nic Marks online are:Company Website: https://www.fridaypulse.com/Personal Website: https://nicmarks.org/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksnic/About the PROFITABLE HAPPINESS™ Podcast:The Profitable Happiness™ Podcast features stories from highly successful happiness professionals, executive coaches, experts, and entrepreneurs. Each week, our guests show us how they’ve used the art and science of happiness to build profitable workplace cultures. https://drpele.comSupport the show (https://drpele.com)

On this episode of the Pocket Mastermind Podcast I spoke with happiness expert, statistician, TED speaker and CEO of Friday Pulse, Nic Marks to learn about how happiness is measured and the impact COVID-19 has had on our wellbeing.Nic shared is fascinating career journey which includes statistician working in a think tank advising both the Blair and Cameron governments as well as some time advising the Kingdom of Bhutan, a spell as a part time therapist inspired by his mother, a brief meeting with the Dalai Lama, a successful TED talk and now the founder and CEO of Friday Pulse where he and the team work with organisations to measure happiness and wellbeing in the work-place."Happiness is a serious business!"You can find out more about Nic and Friday Pulse at https://www.fridaypulse.comVisit the Pocket Mastermind website at https:www.pocketmastermind.com

Happiness matters. When we’re happy, we are more productive. But when a person is generally unhappy, that person will bring it into other areas of their lives. In the workplace, happier employees translate to increased productivity, better team coordination, and it creates a more positive workplace and culture.  In this episode, happiness researcher, Nic Marks, joins us to talk about happiness! Nic is the CEO and founder of Friday Pulse, a firm that aims to improve the world of work so that every day, all of us can work happier.  Find out how you can have a happier workplace as Nic will explain how he measures happiness, it’s drivers, and how leaders/managers can contribute to their people’s happiness. Nic also shares the five ways you need to know to increase happiness at work! In this episode, you will learn about: The state of happiness in light of what’s happening today What drives happiness What led Nic to study the subject of happiness and how he made it his profession The policy side of happiness How Nic measures happiness Drivers of happiness at work Five ways to increase and experience happiness at work Connect with Nic LinkedIn nicmarks.org Friday Pulse   Resources: The Happy Planet Index Nic Marks TEDx talk What did you think of this episode? Give us a 5-star rating and write a review on Apple Podcasts, or take our survey. Contact Brandon: Email Brandon.Laws@xeniumhr.com or connect on LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram Learn more about Xenium HR at xeniumhr.com Follow Xenium on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Nic Marks, founder of Friday Pulse, is known as a ‘statistician with a soul’ due to his combination of analytical skills and the people skills he gained from his training as a psychotherapist. The post Nic Marks on Show #157: Building Happiness in the Workplace appeared first on POWER to Live More.

In this fun episode we discuss: Nic's experience as a renowned TED speaker on the Happy Planet Index and the Friday Pulse a leading survey used to measure and drive a happier and more productive workplace. We also discuss some of the pitfalls of traditional employee engagement surveys, and how the Friday Pulse is different.

In this episode of the HR Leaders podcast, I'm joined by my guest Nic Marks, CEO & Founder of Friday Pulse. Statistician, Happiness expert, and TED speaker.Special thanks to our friends at Oracle for supporting the show!Visit www.oracle.com/HCM to Discover how HR Leaders are using Analytics to optimize the workforce.Episode highlights[05:24] - The 5 ways to maintain Happiness[05:48] - Connection[06:40] - Fairness[07:24] - Empowerment[08:19] - Feedback[09:30] - Inspire[10:00] - Shifting from fear and anxiety to happiness[12:15] - Why are feelings are valuable data[14:51] - What is the good and bad signal?[15:36] - Tips for keeping positive during this crisisEnjoying our content? Access the shows resources and get access to future episodes first by Subscribing to HR Leaders: www.hrdleaders.com/podcast

Contact: matt@metashift.co.uk As we continue to move through extremely troubled and confusing times, I decided it would be good to have an episode about happiness. My guest this week is Nic Marks, a statistician who specialises in happiness and well being. In our conversation, we talk about the importance of happiness at work and how you can measure it. Nic also shares a lot of practical advice on how leaders can help improve the happiness of their teams in our current challenging times. In the interview, we discuss: • What does happiness actual mean • The benefits of happiness at work • Applying statistical thinking to measure happiness • What can leaders be doing in the current crisis to improve the happiness of their teams • The five main drivers of happiness at work • Happiness in the recruiting process • The future of happiness Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts

Nic Marks is a statistician with a slightly weird speciality - happiness. For the last three decades he has been creating measures of people's quality of life - with an increasing emphasis on their emotional experience and happiness. His strong proposition is that by measuring people's happiness, it kick-starts a process which builds happiness. The proposition really works well at scale and over the years he has learned this through his work with: The British Government designing national wellbeing indicators The kingdom of Bhutan measuring their Gross National Happiness And many businesses large and small Nic also gave a very popular TED talk. Nic is the Founder and CEO of Friday Pulse which tracks employee happiness helping businesses build a positive productive work culture. Thanks, Nic! Show notes here.

Jon talks to statistician, TED talker and wellbeing advocate Nic Marks about his work with the Government's behavioural insights team, the importance of a scientific look at wellbeing and of course, Coronavirus. Find out more about Nic's work with happiness here: https://www.fridaypulse.com/

Today's guest is Nic Marks, CEO and Founder of Friday, the company Nic set up to track employee happiness, in order to help businesses build a more positive, productive work culture. A statistician by trade but with a background as a therapist, Nic has a slightly weird speciality—happiness—having used it spending the last three decades creating a measure of people's quality of life. Nic firmly believes that measuring happiness kick-starts a process which ultimately builds happiness.In just over 6 years, Nic and the team at Friday have worked with more than 9,000 teams across 1,000 organisations, measuring and improving happiness at work. Happiness is a great proxy for quickly judging how things are in a team at a moment in time—if you're happy at work things are likely to be going well, if you're not happy, they're not. On today's podcast:Why Nic measures happinessHow happiness is an indicator of how content people areThe benefits of increasing happiness among the population of the UKThe link between happiness and political affiliationWhy Friday is the best day of the week to conduct a happiness survey5 ways to increase happiness at workLinks:FridayDaniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and SlowMaslow's hierarchy of needs

Vandaag, geen gast, je krijgt alleen mij. We gaan het hebben dingen die gelukkig maken. Geen grootse ingewikkelde dingen. Kleine dingen die je eenvoudig kunt doen. Laten we beginnen… Je kent er vast een paar, de vijf elementen die naar voren zijn gekomen in het onderzoek naar de happy planet index van Nic Marks. Het bijzondere aan deze elementen is dat ze heel klein zijn. Iedereen kan het. Je hebt er weinig voor nodig. Wat als je deze elementen bewust gaat toepassen het komende jaar? Hier komen ze. 1. Verbind Verbind jezelf met andere mensen. Ontmoet nieuwe mensen en maak de bestaande connecties sterker. Heb aandacht voor je gezin, familie en vrienden. 2. Wees actief Beweeg. Wanneer je wat minder energie hebt, ga dan naar buiten, ga wandelen of hardlopen. Ga de natuur in. Dagelijks actief zijn in de buitenlucht zorgt voor een goede gemoedsrust, en fitheid, maakt je creatiever en zorgt ervoor dat je beter en dieper slaapt. 3. Wees opmerkzaam Merk op wat er om je heen gebeurt. Wat zijn de veranderingen in je omgeving? Wat valt je op in de ruimte waar je nu bent? Let op veranderingen bij jezelf en bij anderen. Wat komt er naar boven borrelen? 4. Blijf leren Een leven lang leren betekent niet dat je altijd naar school moet. Leren kun je bijvoorbeeld doen door boeken te lezen of goede gesprekken te voeren. Iets nieuws leren kan ook in iets heel kleins zitten, bijvoorbeeld in het koken van een nieuw gerecht. Telkens hetzelfde doen zorgt voor ingesleten patronen. Blijven leren betekent dat je uit de bestaande patronen breekt. Je verlegt telkens je grenzen, meestal een klein beetje en soms met een grote sprong. Je wordt weer wakker. 5. Geef Dit weet je al langer: geven maakt gelukkiger dan nemen. Het volgende onderzoek liet dit zien. De onderzoekers gaven een groep $10 per persoon die ze voor het einde van het einde van de dag aan iemand anders mochten besteden. Een andere groep kreeg $10 per persoon die ze voor het einde van de dag aan zichzelf moesten besteden. De eerste groep was veel gelukkiger aan het einde van de dag dan de tweede groep. Wl je als ondernemer je medewerkers gelukkiger maken, of er in ieder geval aan bijdragen dan heb ik nog vijf andere elementen voor je. Meer geld of een bonus is er overigens niet één van, tenzij je nu te weinig betaald. Zo zorg jij als ondernemer voor meer geluk in je bedrijf: Verbind – collega's, teams, klanten, leveranciers. Creëer als ondernemer plekken in je bedrijf waar mensen elkaar als vanzelf kunnen ontmoeten.Wees eerlijk – betaal eerlijk en zorg bijvoorbeeld voor een eerlijke privé/werk-balans.Empower – durf te delegeren. Met micro-management maakt je medewerkers vooral ongelukkig.Uitdagen – geef iedereen in je team een passende uitdaging. Zo ga je telkens weer een klein stapje voorwaarts.Inspireer – laat mensen jouw visie zien, laat je collega's zien hoe jullie klanten en de gemeenschap helpen met jullie oplossingen.

Vandaag, geen gast, je krijgt alleen mij. We gaan het hebben dingen die gelukkig maken. Geen grootse ingewikkelde dingen. Kleine dingen die je eenvoudig kunt doen. Laten we beginnen… Je kent er vast een paar, de vijf elementen die naar voren zijn gekomen in het onderzoek naar de happy planet index van Nic Marks. Het bijzondere aan deze elementen is dat ze heel klein zijn. Iedereen kan het. Je hebt er weinig voor nodig. Wat als je deze elementen bewust gaat toepassen het komende jaar? Hier komen ze. 1. Verbind Verbind jezelf met andere mensen. Ontmoet nieuwe mensen en maak de bestaande connecties sterker. Heb aandacht voor je gezin, familie en vrienden. 2. Wees actief Beweeg. Wanneer je wat minder energie hebt, ga dan naar buiten, ga wandelen of hardlopen. Ga de natuur in. Dagelijks actief zijn in de buitenlucht zorgt voor een goede gemoedsrust, en fitheid, maakt je creatiever en zorgt ervoor dat je beter en dieper slaapt. 3. Wees opmerkzaam Merk op wat er om je heen gebeurt. Wat zijn de veranderingen in je omgeving? Wat valt je op in de ruimte waar je nu bent? Let op veranderingen bij jezelf en bij anderen. Wat komt er naar boven borrelen? 4. Blijf leren Een leven lang leren betekent niet dat je altijd naar school moet. Leren kun je bijvoorbeeld doen door boeken te lezen of goede gesprekken te voeren. Iets nieuws leren kan ook in iets heel kleins zitten, bijvoorbeeld in het koken van een nieuw gerecht. Telkens hetzelfde doen zorgt voor ingesleten patronen. Blijven leren betekent dat je uit de bestaande patronen breekt. Je verlegt telkens je grenzen, meestal een klein beetje en soms met een grote sprong. Je wordt weer wakker. 5. Geef Dit weet je al langer: geven maakt gelukkiger dan nemen. Het volgende onderzoek liet dit zien. De onderzoekers gaven een groep $10 per persoon die ze voor het einde van het einde van de dag aan iemand anders mochten besteden. Een andere groep kreeg $10 per persoon die ze voor het einde van de dag aan zichzelf moesten besteden. De eerste groep was veel gelukkiger aan het einde van de dag dan de tweede groep. Wl je als ondernemer je medewerkers gelukkiger maken, of er in ieder geval aan bijdragen dan heb ik nog vijf andere elementen voor je. Meer geld of een bonus is er overigens niet één van, tenzij je nu te weinig betaald. Zo zorg jij als ondernemer voor meer geluk in je bedrijf: Verbind – collega's, teams, klanten, leveranciers. Creëer als ondernemer plekken in je bedrijf waar mensen elkaar als vanzelf kunnen ontmoeten.Wees eerlijk – betaal eerlijk en zorg bijvoorbeeld voor een eerlijke privé/werk-balans.Empower – durf te delegeren. Met micro-management maakt je medewerkers vooral ongelukkig.Uitdagen – geef iedereen in je team een passende uitdaging. Zo ga je telkens weer een klein stapje voorwaarts.Inspireer – laat mensen jouw visie zien, laat je collega's zien hoe jullie klanten en de gemeenschap helpen met jullie oplossingen.

On the latest episode of our Career Chats podcast, we speak to the man behind the Happy Planet Index, Nic Marks. He explains how quantifying workplace happiness with data is the key to a fulfilling career. Career Chats is our inspirational podcast series. Presented by journalist Phil Reay-Smith, the episodes feature a diverse range of guests talking about their extraordinary careers, the skills they’ve needed and the lessons anyone could learn from their experiences. See our full episode list and get further career tips and advice by clicking here: https://www.michaelpage.co.uk/podcasts

Today's guest is Nic Marks, CEO and Founder of Friday, the company Nic set up to track employee happiness, in order to help businesses build a more positive, productive work culture. A statistician by trade but with a background as a therapist, Nic has a slightly weird speciality—happiness—having used it spending the last three decades creating a measure of people's quality of life. Nic firmly believes that measuring happiness kick-starts a process which ultimately builds happiness. In just over 6 years, Nic and the team at Friday have worked with more than 9,000 teams across 1,000 organisations, measuring and improving happiness at work. Happiness is a great proxy for quickly judging how things are in a team at a moment in time—if you're happy at work things are likely to be going well, if you're not happy, they're not. On today's podcast: Why Nic measures happiness How happiness is an indicator of how content people are The benefits of increasing happiness among the population of the UK The link between happiness and political affiliation Why Friday is the best day of the week to conduct a happiness survey 5 ways to increase happiness at work Links: Friday Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Nic is an engaging speaker full of passion and purpose. His work on happiness in the workplace has been at the forefront of explaining why happiness is a serious business. Nic is also the founder and CEO of Happiness Works, and a TED speaker.

097 Love with Full Intelligence URL:  http://www.julieannsullivan.com/love-with-full-intelligence/ ‎   Summary One of the most enduring questions of the human race is “What is love?” Is it an emotion? An action? A choice? A feeling? How does it relate to our thinking? Our guest today helps us clarify this misunderstood topic and shows us how to love with full intelligence. Nic Marks joins us from England, where he is the CEO of Happiness Works and a board member of Action for Happiness, a charity campaigning for a happier and more caring world.  Nic has been an advisor to the government of the UK, spoken at the TED global conference, and hung out with the Dali Llama. You’ll want to hear what he has to say about love, choices, and relationships. Nic’s bio: Nic Marks helps organizations build happier, more productive workplaces. Described as a “Statistician with a Soul” because of his unusual combination of ‘hard’ statistical skills and ‘soft’ people skills, he draws on scientific evidence to show that everyone benefits when businesses take happiness seriously. Nic founded Happiness Works, an innovative tech-based business with offices in London and San Francisco, to be the catalyst in changing the world of work for the better. Nic is an in-demand public speaker.  Undoubtedly his favorite talk of the year was in a circus tent at the Wilderness music festival. As well as being the CEO of Happiness Works, Nic is a board member at Action for Happiness, a charity campaigning for a happier and more caring world whose patron is the Dalai Lama and a Fellow of the New Economics Foundation. You’ll discover:  What it means to “love with full intelligence,” and the benefits it brings to your life. How systems change us much more than we realize. The importance of creating good choice sets. How “loving with full intelligence” helped Nic make a tough choice to leave an organization and stay true to his work. Why happiness should be a key performance indicator of every business. Nic’s daily practice of walking, and how it helps him to think clearly and love with full intelligence.   Interview Links & Other Resources HappinessWorks.com ActionForHappiness.org Happiness at work survey (free trial) Action for Happiness & the Dali Llama Follow Happiness Works on Twitter Mere Mortals Unite on C-Suite Radio iTunes - Subscribe, Rate and Review

What does it take to be intelligently happy? Speaker, statistician, and author, Nic Marks discusses the cyclical nature of happiness and why relationships are imperative to living happy lives. For more happiness, visit www.happymelly.com.  

Nic Marks is a Fellow of new economics foundation and recently founded Happiness Works www.happinessworks.com. Here he talks to Rob Hopkins of Transition Network.

Brought to you from day 2 of the 2012 Vitae Researcher Development International Conference, this podcast executively summarises many of our conference activities, from plenary speakers to workshop leaders, to the experiences of our conference participants, the engaging final keynote and closing thoughts from Vitae's Director. Podcast programme Introduction to the podcast - Michael Duignan, Vitae 'Research staff: professional development, career development and impact' day 2 plenary speakers - Elizabeth Wilkinson, Head of Postgraduate Career Developer, University of Manchester - Dr David Finger, National Podstdoc Association, US Introduction to day 2 workshops - Michael Duignan, Vitae Snapshot of the participant experiences - various Final keynote - 'Happiness Research and happier researchers', Nic Marks, Founder of the Centre for Well-being Closing thoughts, key points and messages from day 2 - Ellen Pearce, Director, Vitae

The United Kingdom's Prime Minister David Cameron plans to create a national well-being index. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has formed a team that includes two Nobel Prize-winning economists to come up with a system for measuring the nation's well-being. In China happiness indexes have become so popular that cities there compete for the title of China's happiest city. Many now argue that purely economic measures of a country's progress -- such as gross national product (GDP) -- fail to count many things people value highly such as personal and community relationships or a healthy environment. To learn more about measuring happiness Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Nic Marks author of the e-book The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

High and low scoring countries on the 'Well-Being' index tell us much about our own lifestyles and what makes us happy says Nic Marks, Founder of the Centre for Well-Being. Costa Rica does well.