LEADERSHIP AND HAPPINESS
By Tully Moss
The pandemic has made it hard for people to be happy. Cooped up in their homes, fearful of catching the coronavirus, and mourning the loss of their old lives, people are feeling a bit down.
How can we return to happiness? How can we help those who work for us to return to happiness?
Two Harvard professors — Arthur Brooks and Len Schlesinger teach a popular elective course on leadership and happiness at Harvard Business School. Recently, they shared highlights from that course with a wider audience. This article summarizes what they said.
Professors Brooks and Schlesinger asked three leadership and happiness questions that zero in on feelings many people are having during the current pandemic:
1. Are your frittering away a lot of time trying to get more certainty about what is going on in the world?
2. Are you having a hard time with loneliness?
3. Are you suffering because you’re afraid life is not going to be like it used to be?
The professors have observed that uncertainty is a core reason for stress and unhappiness during the pandemic. We are uncertain as to our safety. We are uncertain as to when everyone can safely return to work. We are uncertain as to when the pandemic will end.
People typically have one of two reactions when uncertainty is high. The first approach is one of avoidance. When this occurs, lurking behind the avoidance is fear. This fear can become vague and chronic, leading to anxiety. That anxiety in turn can lead us to seek greater control over other aspects of our lives. In individuals, this can get manifested in eating disorders. In managers, this can lead to despotic behavior.
The other reaction to uncertainty is to try to turn the situation into one where you can predict the outcome and the timing of the outcome, thereby turning uncertainty into risk (which would be somewhat like turning it into the kind of risk an insurance company could assess and quantify and for which it could provide coverage). People who follow this approach tend to gather a great deal of facts in an effort to turn the situation into one that is understood and where the outcome can be predicted. These people may be binge watchers of CNN, amassing more and more facts from more and more experts in the hopes that they can gain intellectual control over what is happening.
But the avoidance approach and the mental control approach do nothing to return us to happiness. They do the opposite. They exhaust us.
Three steps to take in overcoming this dysfunctional behavior include: First, acknowledge that you are experiencing fear from uncertainty. Second, recognize that you cannot convert your uncertainty into something more certain by bingeing on information. Third, resolve that, if you don’t know what is going to happen today or this week or this month, at a minimum, you will not waste the gift of this day.
Even with that kind of resolution, you may be feeling loneliness. If so, you’re not the only one. During this pandemic, many people are lonely.
How can we overcome this loneliness?
The key is to increase our oxytocin levels. What is oxytocin? It is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland. It is known as the “cuddle hormone” and the “love hormone” because it is released when people snuggle up or bond socially.
How can we increase our oxytocin levels if we’re on lockdown and isolated from each other? Oxytocin gets released through eye contact, so one approach is to make sure you make plenty of eye contact with people with whom you live. Another approach is to maximize your virtual eye contact: if you’re on a Zoom call, use that as an opportunity to make eye contact with those with whom you are meeting virtually. If you have a pet, particularly a dog, look that pet in the eye!
A common mistake people make in trying to pump up their oxytocin levels is to spend hours on social media. But there’s no eye contact, so bingeing on social media gives you very little oxytocin. More than an hour a day on social media has the opposite effect: it leads to loneliness and self-destructive behavior. The professors advise limiting social media activity to a half-hour a day and instead spending one to two hours a day on visual technologies (such as Zoom) where you have eye contact with others.
Another key to happiness is to make sure our haves and our wants are in balance. If our wants or desires far exceed what we have, that is a prescription for dissatisfaction. Be content with what you have and keep your desires in check. Being business school professors, Brooks and Schlesinger offer us a satisfaction formula: Satisfaction = Haves ÷ Wants. If your haves are much higher than your wants, you’re likely to be satisfied. If the reverse is true, if your wants are much higher than your haves, you may not have much satisfaction in life.
Then there are the four happiness basics: Faith, Family, Friends, and Work. Faith doesn’t necessarily require that you be religious. What it means is that, at a minimum, you should have a philosophy that pulls you away from seeing yourself as the center of the universe. Family is a considerable Filipino strength. Friendship is another Filipino strength, but it is something frequently neglected by successful people. Work should provide you with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of having lifted up other people.
Professors Brooks and Schlesinger concluded their talk with happiness resolutions for all of us to consider using:
1. I cannot turn this uncertainty into something more certain, and I will not waste this day trying to do so.
2. I will increase my own oxytocin levels and the oxytocin levels of others through eye contact and touch, and I will limit my use of social media.
3. I will not resist the transitions I am facing, but rather, I will lean in for growth and progress.
4. I will create a plan for sharing these ideas with family, friends, and the people I am charged with leading.
May your happiness ever increase!
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About the author:
Tully is well-versed in Harvard’s approach to business education. He has led numerous executive education programs utilizing Harvard Business Publishing materials and has taught over one thousand Asian managers and executives. He has been trained at Harvard Business School, having completed Parts I and II of Harvard’s Art & Craft of Discussion Leadership course. His facilitation work has covered issues such as leadership, innovation, marketing, change management, corporate strategy, and digital disruption.
Tully has close ties to Harvard: he is a moderator for Harvard Business Publishing, and he co-authored a Harvard Business School case study on the Philippines, entitled, “The Republic of the Philippines: The Next Asian Tiger?”
Tully brings to his facilitation work a rich perspective developed from over thirty years of management consulting. He has consulted in a broad array of services and manufacturing industries on issues such as business unit strategy, marketing strategy, organizational effectiveness, and mergers and acquisitions. He is skilled at improving go-to-market effectiveness through fact-based assessments of market positions, segmentation opportunities, value propositions, and sales and distribution channel opportunities. He also has experience in developing process improvements and change management programs. He has authored thought pieces on high performance companies, market trends in Asia, and mergers and acquisitions.
In addition to leading case study discussions, Tully is an accomplished coach. He has been certified by the International Coach Federation, and, for 360-degree assessments, has been certified by both Zenger Folkman and The Leadership Circle.
He has extensive experience consulting in North America, Europe, and Asia. His clients have included Fortune Global 500 corporations as well as small and medium-sized enterprises.
Tully received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and his bachelors, with honors, from Williams College. After graduating from Williams, he taught at a college in Hong Kong under a YALI grant.
