Happiness IS a Serious Issue
Notes from the Leadership & Happiness Symposium at the Harvard Kennedy School, June 2023
Antonia and Arthur C. Brooks
I was fortunate to be invited to the recent Leadership & Happiness Symposium at the Harvard Kennedy School, sponsored by the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory. Arthur Brooks was the key organizer and he managed to get some of the most influential academics teaching and researching happiness in the room. To say it was an exhilarating two days would be a huge understatement. The focus was on how and why we should teach about happiness, and lessons learned thus far from happiness courses and research. I left the symposium completely energized to incorporate more happiness research into my coaching, speaking and workshops. Happiness is a serious subject for leaders. We need to embody it into how we live, lead and love. In the words of Arthur Brooks, “Leaders in all walks of life will be more effective if they see themselves as “happiness teachers.”
My key takeaways from the symposium.
I am going to use the term wellbeing instead of happiness going forward because I find it more substantive, and we associate happiness to easily with feelings, and it’s so much more.
Loneliness is as toxic as physical illness.
Social connection is critical and while it doesn’t have to be in person, voice-to-voice IS important.
There is much to teach about wellbeing – as an area of serious research and in practical ways to increase our individual and collective levels of happiness.
In the workplace we should hold leaders accountable for employee wellbeing, it should be part of their job description.
What is happiness? This is a good place to start. There is not one definition, but the various definitions shared at the symposium have a lot in common. Here are three:
Happiness = Enjoyment + Satisfaction + Purpose
Happiness is love and social connection.
Happiness is the experience of frequent positive emotions and a sense that one’s life is good. In other words, happy in one’s life and happy with one’s life.
Can we increase happiness? Yes!
According to Sonja Lyubormirsky, about 50% of our happiness is genetic; 10% is contextual…so we have 40% to work with. We can try different habits and strategies to increase what makes up that 40%. All of the commonsense strategies she presented to increase happiness levels focused on her positive activity model framework and are backed by research done by her and her team.
Acts of kindness are more powerful than gratitude.
Increased social connection with others increases wellbeing. Curiously, results for in-person, video and phone were similar. Voice connection seems to be the key.
Extraverted behavior, even for introverts, has a positive impact.
Laurie Santos knows how much we care about building happiness. When she first offered her happiness course to students at Yale pre-COVID, she expected about 50 to sign up. In fact, a quarter of the student body signed up! And upwards of 4 million folks have enrolled in her happiness course available through Coursera. Here are some of her research-based strategies for building happiness habits.
We can be happier if we create better habits – starting with sleep and exercise. 30 minutes of exercise can be as helpful as taking an antidepressant.
We also have the power to change our thoughts to be happier. Amy Wrzesniewski’s research on job crafting indicates that if we reframe our work to focus on purpose, we can improve work satisfaction measures.
Time affluence is another strategy for happiness, and more potent than wealth affluence. If you don’t feel wealthy in time it can affect your wellbeing. Research shows time famine is as bad for you as being unemployed. Yes, big chunks of time affluence matter (don’t forget to take that vacation!). But we can also increase well-being through making better use of smaller chunks of time (delightfully named time confetti). For example, staring out the window, savoring that coffee, taking a short walk. These small chunks of time are precious and support positive wellbeing.
Self-compassion is in short supply. Data suggests negative self-talk is bad for you and reduces creativity. The self-compassion guru, Kristin Neff proposes a 3-part strategy to build yourself compassion: mindfulness to build awareness of how you are feeling in the moment; self-kindness - can you talk to yourself the way a good friend would? common humanity connects you to others by realizing you aren’t perfect nor particularly special since everyone experiences negativity in life. In other words, self-love builds your ability to love others better.
Social connection and community affect our happiness, and both are less prioritized today in the US. Robert Waldinger of Harvard Medical School shared insights from Harvard’s 85-year longitudinal study that has measured health and happiness for 85 years and is still going strong. The key finding can be summed up in a single sentence. The number and quality of relationships is the biggest predictor of longevity and wellbeing. He too touched upon the toxicity of loneliness and how it is a predictor of cognitive and physical decline. And relationships don’t have to be conflict free to be successful. What determines the solidity of a relationship is whether there is a bedrock of affection and respect, even when the pair is arguing. He also cautioned us against neglecting our closest relationships because it’s easy to take them for granted. He discussed some research-based highly accessible ways to build social connection including date nights, family dinners and joining clubs in your community.
A caution raised by all the symposium presenters. Happiness interventions are not a panacea for serious conditions. They can backfire for people who are clinically depressed, anxious, or clinically burnt out. While we talk a lot about burn out, full burn out includes three components: 1) emotional exhaustion; 2) depersonalization (cynicism); and 3) a deep sense of personal ineffectiveness. More information about full burn-out can be found here.
Carol Graham of the Brookings Institute talked about hope and its strong link to future oriented behavior because “if you believe in your future, you invest in it.” The absence of hope for many young folks today is well documented, and it’s important to note that this despair uptick started in 2012, so it’s not a COVID phenomenon. What is the game-changer for black and white low-income young adults going to college? Mentorship.
Gabriella Rosen Kellerman talked about the importance of resilience for anyone wanting to succeed in today’s economy. I wrote about this in a recent Forbes article, Resilience: Why We Need It and How to Build It. The book she co-authored with Marty Seligman, Tomorrowmind, presents deep research on resilience and other characteristics we need to navigate the white water turbulence of today’s economy.
She defined resilience as the ability to bounce back from challenge without harm, or even grow stronger because of it. Its more than “I got through it”. Most importantly, resilience isn’t one characteristic. In fact, there are 5 core psychological drivers of resilience including emotional regulation, optimism, cognitive agility, self-compassion, and self-efficacy. She confirmed that its uncommon for most people to see self-compassion as an aspect of resilience.
The good news is that these drivers of resilience can be learned. For instance, learning how to reduce catastrophization (imagining the worst possible outcome of an action or event) builds optimism, cognitive agility, and emotional regulation. She gave the example of your boss asking to see you late on a Friday afternoon. The worst possible outcome is that you are about to be fired but there are so many other explanations and its about training ourselves to embrace the possibility of numerous options, rather than honing in immediately on the worst one.
The basics of positive psychology. Marty Seligman, considered the father of positive psychology, brought us back to basics. He doesn’t believe we should study how leaders lead because it is so heterogeneous. For him the focus should be on how much a leader increases PERMA (positive emotion, engagement, good relations, meaning and purpose, and achievement) for their followers. And he’d like to see this measured rigorously.
What currently excites Marty Seligman?
The current longitudinal research being done by John Emanual De Nev on how the wellbeing of workers has a positive impact on corporations’ profitability and stock prices.
The extensive research study he led on PTSD predictors for US military personnel. Soldiers higher in catastrophic thinking and experiencing higher combat intensity were 274% more likely to develop PTSD than those low on both. He recommended that The Army might consider interventions to reduce catastrophic thinking prior to combat to lower PTSD casualties.
He is more bullish on coaching than therapy. He believes it produces more wellbeing because the person being coached is less resistant than a patient in therapy. He also believes wellbeing can be increased through education. He reminded us of his website authetichappiness.org that offers 20+ self-assessments that can be used in teaching and encouraging wellbeing awareness and new behaviors.
How does AI play into teaching happiness? We don’t know but speakers agreed that it will have a role. Presenters agreed that AI needs guard rails and that it is most positive when there is a human in the loop. There was agreement that technologies substituting for human relations are probably not good for you; but if they complement human relations, then their role could be positive.
Marty Seligman sees AI having a big role in the future since many countries don’t have enough coaches and therapists to meet the growing demand. He believes we could incorporate AI safely and responsibly to reach more folks in need. He also cautioned us about potential legal issues, and the sophistication needed in the phrasing of prompts. I love Marty’s positivity about the AI possibilities in addressing mental health and overall wellbeing. “AI is going to deliver major online assistance for coaching and psychotherapy. AI is right on the edge of massively increasing human wellbeing.”
How do you close a symposium about leadership and happiness?
Arthur Brooks reminded us why a lack of wellbeing is a big problem individually, for companies and for society as a whole.
He also reminded us that we are each responsible for our very own start up “YOU.Inc “If we don’t focus on our own wellbeing, it’s a huge, missed opportunity for ourselves, and then how can we expect to raise the wellbeing of our teams at work?
According to Arthur Brooks, “To leave your emotions up to chance is like leaving money up to chance in your business. In terms of happiness, love is our currency.” He reminded us of the multi-faced framework (questions, mechanisms, evidence, practices, applications) that he presented at the start of the symposium to help us answer the question of how we teach and improve our wellbeing.
What is next?
We want to get happiness and wellbeing to be taken even more seriously. We want to get resources and education out there at scale – in schools, in the workplace, and for anyone interested in increasing their own wellbeing. We know that people want more tools to increase their happiness. This is a journey that many teachers and leaders have embarked on. And it’s a long road to travel and we are just starting. What a beautiful journey it is! I’m thrilled to be on this journey myself and sharing resources with clients, groups I coach and facilitate and through my writings and talks.
The symposium’s key message is that happiness is grounded in love and connection. Onwards.