Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a term used to describe discretionary behavior at work where an employee goes above and beyond what’s written in their job description to either help other coworkers or to help the organization. The evidence shows that engagement, empowerment, and leading by example all produce more citizenship behavior from employees. You want your employees to be good citizens, because this extra effort at the individual level aggregates to enhanced performance of your business.

A new study published in Personnel Psychology (full citation below) suggests another reason to promote OCB at work – it can help your employees display a more positive mood. This unique study equipped 68 employees with mobile devices and cued them twice a day for 29 days to answer questions about their behaviors and moods. The helping behaviors examined in this study were altruism (e.g. helped someone from outside my workgroup, cooperatively worked with others) and courtesy (e.g. checked with others before doing something that would affect their work, taken steps to prevent problems with other workers).

The study found that when workers reported a negative mood and then engaged in altruistic helping behaviors, their mood became more positive. This effect was particularly strong for individuals high in extroversion. Courtesy behaviors also produced positive moods, but the results were somewhat mixed and not as strong as were the results for altruistic behaviors. According to the authors:

If indeed, “doing good” leads to “feeling good,” then organizations may consider feeling good an additional benefit to engaging in helping, which is often organizationally encouraged through mechanisms such as mentoring, participation in volunteer efforts, or team coaching. Expansion of such organizational practices, often designed with primarily employee development objectives important to the organization, may also reap unexpected benefits in terms of regulating individual mood. (p. 214).

So the next time you find yourself in a bad mood at work, consider getting up and helping someone with their work. Not only will it enhance productivity and your own social capital, it might also make you feel better! If you witness your employees in a down mood, find ways to get them helping others, or invite them to spend a little time helping you with something you are working on.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Full citation: Glomb, T.M. et al. (2011). Doing good, feeling good: Examining the role of organizational citizenship behavior in changing mood. Personnel Psychology, 64: 191-223.

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I’ve written before about the power of expressing gratitude, but on this day before Thanksgiving I wanted to see if I could learn more about it from a different source. Gratitude is listed as one of the strengths of transcendence in Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman’s book Character Strengths and Virtues. As a strength of transcendence, gratitude connects us to others and helps provide meaning to our lives. Here is how they define gratitude:

Gratitude is a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin gratia meaning “grace”, “graciousness,” or “gratefulness.” All derivatives from this Latin root “have to do with the kindness, generousness, gifts, the beauty of giving and receiving, or getting something for nothing” (Pruyser, 1976, p. 69). Prototypically, gratitude stems from the perception that one has benefited due to the actions of another person. There is an acknowledgment that one has received a gift and an appreciation of and recognition of the value of that gift. It would be unusual to say that one is grateful to oneself. (p. 554).

I really like the idea that the ability to give to others without expecting anything in return is a character strength. Graciousness is transformational both for those that give and those that receive. Those void of grace never experience the fullness of a life lived beyond transactional relationship with others.

Someone with a strong grateful disposition experiences gratitude with intensity and frequency. They feel grateful for numerous things (e.g. family, friends, job, and health) at any given time. For any given positive outcome or life circumstance, those with a strong grateful disposition can find numerous people (e.g. parents, co-workers, mentors, and role models) to feel grateful for.

How grateful are you? Here are six questions psychologists use to measure gratitude (McCullogh et al., 2002).

1.     I have so much in life to be thankful for

2.     If I had to list everything I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list

3.     When I look at the world, I don’t see much to be grateful for (reverse scored)

4.     I am grateful to a wide variety of people

5.     As I get older I find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have been part of my life history

6.     Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone (reverse scored)

Make an intentional choice to be more gracious and grateful toward others today, and every day from now on. Be grateful for the fact that you have the ability to continuously improve your strength of character.

I do not recommend this book.  The title leads you to believe that Marcus Buckingham applies his “decades of research” to once again tell us how simply finding your strength will make you a happier and more successful woman.  Don’t fall for it – he doesn’t prove anything close. 

I volunteered to read and review this book as part of the Thomas Nelson Book Review Bloggers Team.  In all fairness, I must reveal that I have read another one of Buckingham’s books, First Break All the Rules, and I hated it also.  That book started the employee engagement frenzy that I have written a lot about, most recently in my article Boosting Engagement.  Buckingham is extremely well known for his other books on strengths, and he is a very good writer, so I predict this book will also sell very well.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I is entitled “Something’s got to give” and details the unique challenges and stressors that women face. This part is actually pretty good.  Buckingham makes some very important points in this section, the most important being that “over the last few decades, women have become less happy with their lives, and as women get older, they get sadder” (p. 21).  That conclusion appears to be supported by independent research. 

Buckingham’s explanation for this is that women are not focusing their attention: “the challenge of all the different roles you play is not that you don’t have enough hours in the day. The challenge of all these roles is that during the hours you choose to work you have too many different things going on at any one time to focus properly no each of them. Your time isn’t stretched; your attention is.” (pp. 41-42).  He supports this conclusion based on the work of Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2005).

Chapters one through three are pretty well supported with notes and references that can be found in the back of the book. The next five chapters, where he presents his strength based solution to the problem he identified in Part I have no notes – none.  We don’t get another note until chapter nine and the last six chapters have very few notes to support his claims and advice.  So much for a book “packed with research.”

Buckingham tells women that they need to be strong, and he defines this as 1) successful, 2) instinctively looking forward to tomorrow, 3) growing and learning, 4) needs fulfilled.  He never tells us how he developed and verified this construct definition.  He also measures this with only five questions:

• How often do you feel an emotional high in your life?
• How often do you find yourself positively anticipating your day?
• How often do you become so involved in what you are doing that you lose track of time?
• How often do you feel invigorated at the end of each day?
• How often do you get to do things you really like to do?

I won’t bore you with psychometric theory, but I seriously doubt these five items hang together in a measure that is both reliable and valid. And we will never know how reliable and valid this measure is because Buckingham does not point us to the citation that shows where this measure has been subject to a peer-reviewed evaluation.  That is a HUGE problem, and makes everything else he says from this point forward (p. 55) unsupportable. 

If you don’t know it already, whenever someone that has something to sell tells you that they have data to back it up, you should be very, very skeptical.  This is consulting data, so of course it is only going to tell the positive story those that sell the concept want you to believe.  Unless the data is published in a peer reviewed journal (and sometimes even then!), it’s snake-oil. 

According to Buckingham, if only women knew how to find their strengths and focus their attention on them, they would be happier. Sorry, I don’t buy it – it is way too simplistic.  He offers no research evidence to support his advice, which is necessary because it lacks face validity.  Let me give you an example:

To solve the problems in your life – whether a hostile work environment, a sister-in-law who passively-aggressively criticizes your mothering technique, or a husband who doesn’t help our at home – you must do the same: focus your attention on what “working” would look like, organize your life to create a few more of these “working” moments, and then celebrate them. (p. 178)

Buckingham tell us to try to see any behavior, whether good or bad, as a thread of strength.  Benevolent distortion and positive illusion are other terms he uses to label this technique.

So if you work for a bully boss, the pathway to the positive is to find the strength in what they are doing, focus on that, and celebrate it?  Give me a break.  If you have a bully boss at work, your misery is not caused by your failure to understand strength-based philosophy.  It is a dysfunctional corporate culture that is allowing people to behave badly.  The way out is not to change your perspective on the abuse, but to change your situation – work with your company and its leaders to help change the culture or get the hell out of there!

The final sixty-three pages of the book are suggestions for tactics to lead a strong life.  There is some appealing advice in this final section, but you should take it for exactly what it is – anecdotal advice.

I strongly recommend you do not waste your time with this book.

If you are seriously interested in happiness, check out my series of articles from the book The How of Happiness.  There you will find solid evidence-based advice from a real scientist. 

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The How of Happiness: My Interview with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky

The final intentional activity from The How of Happiness is taking care of your body.  Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness.  The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, the fifth was social support, the sixth was coping with stress, the seventh was learning to forgive, the eight was increasing flow, the ninth was savoring the positive, the tenth was committing to your goals, and the eleventh was practicing spirituality and religion. 

Dr. Lyubomirsky suggests that taking care of your body can be done through meditation, physical exercise, and acting like a happy person.  Most of us can’t meditate or exercise at work, but we can act like a happy person.

Smile.  It is the easiest way to act like you are happy.  People will respond to you differently, more positively. 

Today in class I was explaining a concept and got myself tied in a knot.  A student called me on my explanation.  He knew I confused the issue, and so did I.  Thirty pairs of eyes were on me, and inside I was feeling the anxiety mount.  There was a tiny voice of experience in my head that told me this is a critical moment – don’t blow it!

I smiled. I chuckled and cracked a joke about myself. And instead of trying to escape the tension and brush off the question my student posed, I just stood silent, smiling, until I found a way out of the knot I had tied myself in.

My class smiled with me.  Almost all of them wanted to see me untie myself, and smiling with each other through those uncomfortable moments helped us work through it.

Live above your circumstances and choose to smile a lot at work today.  You will feel better, and so will those around you.

The next intentional activity from The How of Happiness is practicing spirituality and religion.  Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness.  The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, the fifth was social support, the sixth was coping with stress, the seventh was learning to forgive, the eight was increasing flow, the ninth was savoring the positive, and the tenth was committing to your goals. 

Spirituality is defined as a “search for the sacred”- that is, a search for meaning in life through something that is larger than the individual self (self-transcendence is a good label). Spiritual individuals refer to God or to related concepts like divine power or ultimate truth. Religion also involves a spiritual search, but this search usually takes place in a formal, institutional context. However, because the majority of spiritual people define themselves as also religious, the benefits of spirituality are essentially identical to the benefits of religion. Spiritual people are relatively happier than non-spiritual people, have superior mental images, cope better with stressors, have more satisfying marriages, use drugs and alcohol less often, are physically healthier, and live longer lives. People who perceive the divine being as loving and responsive are happier than those that don’t.  (Lyumbomirsky, p. 232).

 Dr. Lyumbomirsky offers two suggestions for practicing spirituality.  Here is how I see her suggestions applied at work:

 1.  Seek meaning and purpose: Even if you don’t consider yourself a spiritual person, meaningfulness and purpose are contemporary concepts in organizational psychology.  Hackman and Oldham’s classic job characteristics model of motivation identifies meaningful work as one of the critical components leading to valued work outcomes.  In my own research I found meaningfulness to be one of the best indicators of eustress, the positive response to stress.  Here meaningfulness was “the extent to which one feels that work makes sense emotionally, that problems and demands are worth investing energy in, are worthy of commitment and engagement, are challenges that are welcome.” (Simmons, 2000). 

And I believe purpose, why we do the work we do, is more powerful that either mission or vision, because purpose lives in the hearts and minds of those that serve and are served by them.  I have discussed purpose in my recent articles “Savoring the Positive” and “Flow”. 

2.  Prayer: I see no reason why a spiritual person could not pray continually while at work.  Regardless of how your specific spiritual beliefs define prayer, at work it boils down to being congruent with your authentic self, and seeking the wisdom, strength, and courage to behave consistent with your espoused beliefs.  Prayer can be as simple as the spiritual person seeking the answer to the question “what should I do in this situation?” and allowing personal spiritual beliefs the opportunity to influence choices and behavior. 

Work is a responsibility, and a huge part of our daily lives.  I can’t imagine any spiritual belief system that condones the abdication of personal responsibility.  Let me be clear that I would never encourage anyone to proselytize folks at work; however, I don’t think anyone should try to build a wall between their work and their spirituality. 

Be professionally authentic to your whole self and positively respectful of anyone with a different perspective than yours.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D. is the author of the book  The How of Happiness . She is a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside.  Her research has been written up in dozens of magazines and newspapers and she has appeared in multiple TV shows, radio shows, and feature documentaries in North America and Europe.  I’ve talked about her work at this site many times, so I was very pleased when she graciously agreed to this interview.

1.  Why are people so interested in happiness?

Because happiness in some ways is the Holy Grail!  Most people around the world report attaining happiness as one of their top goals in life.  In part this is because it feels good to be happy.  But I don’t think that fully explains the motivation to pursue happiness.  I think of happiness as a meta-construct – that is, if you are happy, you are more likely to have other “resources,” like optimism, self-esteem, sociability, energy, etc.  Furthermore, as my colleagues and I have shown, happy people are more likely to achieve success in life in multiple domains.  That is, if you are a happy person, you are more likely to get married, to make friends, to have a bolstered immune function, to live longer, to be more creative and productive, to earn more money, to be more helpful and philanthropic, and both to like people more and to be liked more by others.  So there are many reasons to be interested in happiness.

2.  What do we know about how work affects one’s overall happiness?

We know that people who have jobs that give them autonomy and variety are happier.  We know that people who have jobs that pay more are happier.  And we know that people who have higher-status jobs are slightly happier and healthier.  Finally, we also know that people who perceive their jobs as “callings” (rather than merely as “jobs” or “careers,” the latter simply being jobs with advancement) are happier.  So, in part, we have control over how happy our jobs can make us.  Of course, dead-end, monotonous, low-paying jobs are associated with unhappiness and stress.  Another important point, however, is that some of these correlations are due to happiness affecting work rather than the other way around.  In other words, happier people are more likely to obtain good jobs, high supervisor ratings, more help from colleagues, and better pay.  So the relationship between happiness and work is bi-directional.

3.  Does happiness affect how well one performs at work?

Yes, studies have shown that happier people – and people who experience more positive emotions – are more productive at work, more creative and flexible in their ideas, obtain higher praise from supervisors and coworkers, and earn more promotions, and higher pay.  Happier people are more likely to get a job interview, to get second interviews, and to get hired.  They are less likely to burn out, to quit, to engage in sabotaging work behaviors, and to be fired. They are also better organizational citizens and, in some studies, show higher performance (e.g., selling more widgets or earning more favorable customer evaluations).

4.  What is the biggest myth about happiness?

Well, there are many!  I would say the top two are (1) that happiness is genetic (i.e., you either have it or you don’t) and (2) that happiness can be found in circumstantial changes (i.e., I’ll only be happy when X happens).  Research shows that a large part of happiness is explained by what people do and how they think.  So even when X changes, if you’re an unhappy person, you’ll still remain an unhappy person, unless you change the way you think and the way you act.

Thanks, Sonja!

The next intentional activity from The How of Happiness is committing to your goals.  Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness.  The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, the fifth was social support, the sixth was coping with stress, the seventh was learning to forgive, the eight was increasing flow, and the ninth was savoring the positive. 

I have to confess that although I consider myself very happy, I don’t consider myself a goal setter.  I’m not sure why, but the fact that my MBTI type preference is INTP might have something to do with it.  But I am big on commitment, and I personally derive more pleasure from the process of committing to a goal than from the accomplishment of the goal.  Here are six reasons why that is true (pp. 206-208):

•  Commitment to a goal provides a sense of purpose and control
• Making progress on meaningful goals can buttress our core self-evaluation
• Goal commitment adds structure and meaning to our daily lives.  “It grants responsibilities, deadlines, timetables, opportunities for mastering new skills, and for social interaction” (p.207)
• It helps us to master the use of our time 
• Commitment to a goal during times of crisis can compel us to examine our most important priorities and help us cope better with problems
• Commitment requires and builds community.  Almost any goal you can think of will involve relationships with others to accomplish well, and the purposeful engagement with others is itself a source of pleasure. 

Five years ago I was having a casual conversation with a colleague at work and he mentioned that he ran two marathons when he was in his forties.  I don’t know what it was, but I decided then and there that if he could do it, so could I.  I learned as much as I could about running, both through reading and by joining running groups.  When I train for a marathon, every single day of my life for 18 weeks is somewhat ordered around my running. Sometimes my daily feedback says “well done!” and other times it is “that’s ok, be thankful for what you did today, there is always tomorrow.”  I’ve run eight marathons and as many half-marathons in that time, had a blast, and made a lot of great new friends along the way.  The pleasure is in the pursuit.

Work is a marathon, not a sprint.  Stay healthy; if you get hurt you can’t finish.  You WILL hit the wall, but remember, your preparation will get you through it.  Pace yourself, and try to do those last six difficult miles even better than the first six.  Enjoy the ride, and reach out and touch all those folks along the course that showed up to cheer you on. 

And don’t forget to smile for the camera at the finish line.

The next intentional activity from The How of Happiness is savoring life’s joys.  Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness.  The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, the fifth was social support, the sixth was coping with stress, the seventh was learning to forgive, and the eight was increasing flow.

Researchers define savoring as any thoughts or behaviors capable of “generating, intensifying, and prolonging enjoyment.” When you “stop and smell the roses” instead of walking by obliviously, you are savoring.  When you bask and take pride in your own or your friends’ accomplishments, you are savoring. When you suddenly emerge out of a frazzled or distracted state and become fully aware of how much there is to enjoy in life, you are savoring. This is the slight difference between savoring and flow: savoring requires a stepping outside of experience and reviewing it, whereas flow involves a complete immersion in the experience. Whether it involves a focus on the long ago, the present moment, or future times, the habit of savoring has been shown in empirical research to be related to intense and frequent happiness. (pp. 192-193).

Some of the best evidence-based writing on savoring can be found in the book Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience.  Savoring is a process of attending to, appreciating, or enhancing positive experience, not the outcome of enjoyment or pleasure.  Savoring, then, is a powerful positive capacity that we can all develop in ourselves.

Here are just a few suggestions on how to develop our capacity to savor at work:

•  Slow down enough to find the positive in your daily routine and activities.  Find a way to appreciate and enjoy the seemingly mundane part of your work.  Strive to bask in the feeling of accomplishment with the little things before you rush on to the next task.  Find the excellence in the things that you and others do daily.
• Celebrate good news.  If you are the leader, make sure you do this as often as possible for your folks.  If your leader is not doing this for you, do it for yourself.  I am constantly on the lookout for ways to reward myself with some dark chocolate or my favorite beer.
• Replay great days in your mind.  No need to analyze that day, just replay it.  What did you do, how did you feel?  Did your great day involve doing great things for others?  If so, can you remember the look on their faces or what they said to you?
• Reminisce with colleagues.  Remember that fantastic leader we used to work for?  How about that time we impressed the socks off a customer and won new business?  My first dean never missed an opportunity to tell me “You know, you were NOT our first choice for this job.”  That still cracks me up and I tell that story to a lot of my colleagues.   
• Transport yourself to the time when you will accomplish your goal.  How will you feel?  How will you celebrate?  How will you accomplishing this goal help those you have been given the privilege to lead?
• Focus daily on your larger purpose.  Maintain perspective.  Daily savor why you do what you do and why it matters so much. 

In my bathtub analogy of stress, savoring is the process of regulating the stock and flow of hot water in the tub, while coping focuses on the cold water.  The comfort of your bath is based on how well you learn to regulate both the positive and the negative.  Most of us are a lot better coping with the negative, but a focus on the positive merits more of our attention and effort.

Consider it a responsibility to develop these positive capacities in you.  Be a role model, and see what you can do to help others develop their own positive capacities.

The next intentional activity from The How of Happiness is increasing flow experiences.  Recall from my earlier blog that it’s these intentional activities and habits that can account for as much as 40% of our happiness.  The first intentional activity was expressing gratitude, the second was deliberate optimism, the third was to stop overthinking and comparing ourselves to others, the fourth was practicing acts of kindness, the fifth was social support, the sixth was coping with stress, and the seventh was learning to forgive.

Flow is the term Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi uses to describe being fully immersed or absorbed in what you are doing.  I’ve used this concept in my own published research to elaborate how I think engagement is one indicator of eustress – the positive response to stress.

One thing you can do at work to increase flow is to adopt new values.  Be open to new and different experiences, and constantly seek to learn new things (p. 184).  There is always something new we can learn at work, and always something about our jobs that can be improved if we will assume responsibility for initiating that behavior in ourselves. 

I also think clearly understanding the larger purpose of the work we do is absolutely critical.  Do you view work as your opportunity to do something, or is work just something that you do?  I know some of you may find this hard to swallow, but I personally believe that purpose can be present in any and all types of work.

For example, interviews with twenty-eight members of a hospital cleaning crew revealed that some of them disliked cleaning, felt that it entailed low-level skills, and did the minimum amount of work required; others, in contrast, transformed the job into something grander and more significant.  This second group of hospital cleaners described their work as bettering the daily lives of patients, visitors, and nurses….They set forth challenges for themselves – for example, how to get the job accomplished in a maximally efficient way or how to help patients heal faster by making them more comfortable.  They added tasks outside their formal duties, such as rearranging the paintings on the walls or fetching wildflowers. They saw themselves as part of a larger, integrated whole, not just mopping floors and emptying trash cans but serving as part of a system that improved people’s lives. (pp. 188-189).

Look around you – are the people you have been given the privilege to lead behaving purposefully and experiencing some degree of flow at work?  Are your employees kicking ass at work, or getting their asses kicked everyday they drag themselves to work?

Partner with your employees to fix your crappy systems and help them see the bigger picture in the work that they do.

In Me 2.0, Dan Shwabel writes “over the past few decades, the media has brainwashed us into thinking that most start-up companies fail” (p. 77) and goes on to site a source that says 2/3 of start-ups survive at least two years.  Yet in Illusions of Entrepreneurship, Scott Shane states “most start-ups do not succeed; the typical entrepreneur forms a business that is gone within five years” (p.109).  Yet even Shane admits that just because they are “gone” does not mean that they “failed”.  Only 18% fail and the rest “survive” or are closed by the founder (p.100).

The statistics on new business success are equivocal.  I stick with the “1/3” rule of thumb – 1/3 lose money, 1/3 just break even, and 1/3 earn some degree of profit.  Starting a business is risky and a lot of work.  While some founders become extremely wealthy, most work more hours and earn less money than their corporate counterparts.  So why do people do it?

Satisfaction – the kind driven by the autonomy, flexibility, and greater control over their lives that being their own boss provides (Scott, p.109).

There are five main things we can have degrees of satisfaction with at work: pay, opportunity for promotion, supervision, co-workers, and the work itself.  A lot of people think pay tops the list, but the two most consistently important sources of satisfaction are satisfaction with supervision and satisfaction with the work itself.

These are the two kinds of satisfaction the entrepreneur has the most control over.  So it makes perfect sense that despite the odds of success, running your own business makes people happier than working for someone else and that’s the main reason why entrepreneurship might be right for YOU.