Stop trying to make your team happy!

This week, one of my coaching clients was talking about her team and she said, "I just want them to be happy. "My immediate response was to ask "How do you actually measure happiness in another person?"

She paused for a moment. Then she started describing things like energy, productivity, contributing in meetings, wanting to come to work and working well with others. Interestingly none of these things have anything to do with the emotional state of her team members. What she was describing was not happiness, what she was actually describing is the most important trait that every organisation and supervisor relies on to achieve collective results every day…

Willingness

Then I asked her another question. "Have you ever been really unhappy about doing a job... but still been willing to do it? "She laughed and replied "Most days... no, just kidding." Then we both laughed because it's true.

Someone can be frustrated, tired and annoyed and still be completely willing to do the work. Someone else can have absolutely nothing to complain about and still choose not to contribute.

Then I asked her “Who is responsible for happiness?” And again, she smiled and said “I know what you are getting at here and I know I am not responsible for someone else’s happiness but I am responsible for creating an environment where people can perform and feel good about coming to work.”

We then started talking about ways to create an environment that raised people’s willingness and she immediately started talking about coaching, understanding people and knowing what makes them tick. And then we identified the importance of another key ingredient that most people underestimate or overlook as a primary driver of motivation and willingness at work…

Certainty

If people know what's expected of them...If they feel they're meeting those expectations...If they know where they stand...their willingness naturally increases.

Then I reminded her about her own experience when she first started in her role. She'd spent months feeling frustrated. Not because she wasn't motivated and not because she didn't want to do a good job but because she didn't know what was expected of her. She didn't know if she was succeeding. She didn't know where she stood and that uncertainty drained her willingness.

That realisation shifted everything.

Now, instead of trying to motivate her team, or make them “happy” all of a sudden she realised that all she needs to focus on is providing her team with as much certainty as possible every day and monitoring the impact that then has on their levels of willingness .

It turns out that leadership isn’t about keeping people happy. It’s actually about creating an environment where people understand expectations and are willing to meet them. So, the question "Are you happy?" will get you the wrong answers. Instead, what you want to ask is “Are you willing?”.

Likewise, the question “Do you understand what’s expected?” will most often be met with the answer yes, because everyone has their own interpretation of what they think is expected. The question that will actually get you the answer you are after is this:

“Could you talk me through your understanding of what’s expected”

The answers to this question will enable both you and the other person to check whether the picture in their head matches the picture in yours.

And when certainty goes up... willingness usually follows and you may even get some happiness as a bonus byproduct of a job well done too!