I’m not sure why I didn’t think being a full time grad student with a full time job would be a lot to handle! I’m making it through though and am still finding time to rest and be with friends. But I did not have as much time to read as I had hoped. I still wanted to do a book blog this month, so instead I’ll bring to you a spin on a great book I read in my class and how it could help us find happiness on any team whether the team is at school, work, or anywhere for that matter.
If you haven’t read this book and you are part of a team, I strongly suggest it! The book shares about a dysfunctional team and the things that are important to well… functioning. It was a narrative though and it allows you to feel like you are in the team and I could tell one thing for sure and that is that none of them were happy. It got me thinking that maybe these dysfunctions come into play more than we think when we’re unhappy as a team with a common goal. When your team isn’t working well, it makes you less motivated and unhappy. However, rather than pushing the team we dislike aside, why not embrace it and see what we can do to fix the dysfunctions and find happiness. The first dysfunction is the absence of trust. Trust can have a lot of meanings, but in this case it means “the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good and there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.” Creating a happier team can be really hard if you don’t have trust already, but if your team isn’t able to trust each other, how will they be able to form relationships that help create happiness? Trust needs to be shared through the team. The second dysfunction is a fear of conflict. If your team is consistently agreeing on everything and there is never any conflict, it is likely at least one person isn’t happy with the decisions that are being made as a team. (I know that’s a tough one to hear). When a team engages in productive conflict, good things happen and more people are willing to speak up. Even though it brings a few moments (or more) of being uncomfortable and maybe a little unhappy, it will bring to a longer lasting happiness in the team because everyone will feel like they are being heard and more new ideas will be brought to the table! The third dysfunction is a lack of commitment. A good team makes clear and timely decisions and everyone is ready to be a part of the action. Everyone’s ideas are genuinely considered and in the end they are able to unite behind a final decision with commitment. This can bring happiness to the team because everyone is working together on a decision they all agreed to. People are able to move forward without hesitation and feel good about what they and their team are working on. The fourth dysfunction is an avoidance of accountability. This refers to “the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team.” You might be wondering how calling someone out is going to bring happiness to the team, but this one is huge for happiness. If someone isn’t doing something correctly or acting in behavior that will harm the team, it is going to make everyone else unhappy. Even though it will be uncomfortable to bring attention to someone, in the end it will bring peace to the situation and allow it to be resolved in a way that benefits everyone. It is key to have trust with the team before jumping right to this though. The fifth dysfunction is an inattention to results. This is when members care about something other than the collective goal of the group first. If a team doesn’t have the same goal, then everyone will be working towards something else and in the end, it won’t end well for every single person. A collective goal will not only drive the team forward, but will create an environment for everyone to find joy when things are accomplished and goals are achieved. It allows for happiness to be achieved sooner as a team and gives more room for the team to bond. All of these dysfunctions greatly impact how a team works and in turn impacts how happiness can be achieved at work or wherever a team is in tact. A happy team creates happy team members. It is important to remember that people need to work together to find happiness at work because of the relationships that can be formed from it. I’ll leave you at a cliff hanger with how to fix these dysfunctions though. Check out the book for yourself! It’s a quick read and a fun one too. An insight to the cliff hanger to fixing these is to focus on the reverse of the dysfunctions. For example, having more trust. These five things will help your team grow and it will help not only yourself find more happiness at work, but your team will find more happiness as well. Now that you got a peek into my MBA course, comment which function your team does well at below! Note: These quotes were taken from the book: Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass.
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“All that time we spend staring at screens is time we don’t spend on things that can make us happier” (36).
When I picked up this book, it wasn't what I expected it to be. The Happiness Hack by Ellen Petry Leanse started out by explaining with science how the brain works to give us this feeling of what we call happiness. At first it was hard to get started, but it quickly got more interesting as I went. In the end, I learned about the things we can do to be happy and how we really need to get off of our phones. There were so many good points this book had to offer, so of course I’ll share a few, but if you’re interested in how the brain works, I strongly suggest this one! This book shared everything from facts to stories and it was hard to pick just a few of my favorite things to share. Something she shared that really stood out to me was when we take a picture, we barely retain the memory of what the camera saw. Our brain decides that we’ve outsourced that memory so it doesn’t bother to map it (37). That means when we go on vacation and spend half of the time taking pictures, our memory isn’t actually retaining any of it. How are we supposed to look back on that then and find happiness? Another thing she shared was that as we are directing our attention on things rather than people, our brains are adapting and rewiring to our “new normal.” Although this normal isn’t leading us to happiness, but rather feeling lost, out of sorts, and alone (45). It’s almost the opposite of happiness, which makes sense as we see depression rates rise and more and more people feeling unhappy. We have to focus on things that aren’t part of our automatic habits to find our happiness. It may even mean that we have to disconnect from them. We have to invest the energy and practice into activating parts of our brains that aren’t always used when in automatic mode. If we learn to take back some control, it can be a path to more happiness and satisfaction than we can find in our usual habits (25-26). I’m sure you’ve heard people say that taking a break is good for you, but to actually take a break means we have to not take the prior stress along with us. We have to focus on how we’re doing what we’re doing and be in the present moment, whether that is a walk or doing the laundry. If we “take a break” and just go through the motions we’re not refreshing the brain. Having a true break away from it could even help you overcome your roadblock (88). One of my favorite things she shared about is how a smile activates mirror neurons. That means that smiling is literally contagious! They activate neuropeptides that work to reduce stress and spread happy messages throughout the body. So make sure you do some smiling (39-40). With all of this information about how happiness works in our brain, what can we do to actually take advantage of it? (Besides smile of course). Remembering that you are here for a reason and your feelings and worth are what your happiness stems from. It is easy for that fact to get lost in all the noise and distraction of everyday life, but we need to remember to know and act on it (97). Before you do something, think about why you’re doing it. If it distracts you, why does it distract you and take your time? How does it serve you? (97). Your challenge this week is to choose one real-world thing you’d like to do more of and one screen-based thing you’d like to do less of. Next time you go into the coffee shop, remind yourself to say good morning before you place your order and put your phone away (46). If you truly want to find your happiness, take what you learned and put it in action. As Ellen says, “The journey of happiness is mapped by your brain, but it’s directed by you” (97). I want to end with a wonderful quote by Steve Jobs that she shared in her book: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become” (100). In a recent book group, we read a small book that showed me a big truth. The way we act doesn’t have to be dependent on what happens around us, but is something that we can change within us. In a year like this, this book is perfect. We can’t change how anything is on the outside of us, but there is a way we could change how we react on the inside. The Coffee Bean by Jon Gordon and Damon West should probably be your next read. If you’re one of those people who say you don’t have time to read – you’re in luck because this one is short and fast and has a super great message. The book starts with “Are you an egg, a carrot, or a coffee bean?” When these three things are in a pot of boiling water the carrot is softened and weakened, the egg is hardened, and the coffee bean, on the other hand, transforms its environment. Which of these are you when your environment gets difficult? If we remember to be like the coffee bean, we can overcome these hard environments and not let them affect us as much because of our power that comes from the inside. My favorite part of the book was when he shared about failure. “Failure is not a definition. It’s just an event. Just because you fail doesn’t mean you are a failure. It’s just a situation to overcome and transform.” It’s so easy to let one thing define you and have it break us but if we remember the story with the coffee bean, we can let it not affect us as much. We can grow from it and become stronger. Although, it is important to remember we can’t be a coffee bean all of the time because we are humans, but if we strive for it, maybe our outlook on life will be just a little bit better. Being a coffee bean affects not only you but everyone around you. I, of course, had to try the ‘experiment’ and reflected on the book as I did it. The carrot softened, the egg hardened, but the coffee bean changed the water. Now that the holidays are around the corner and we’re home with the same family we’ve been with for the last however many months, you can share what you learned about the coffee bean! If you have kids, do the experiment and share how this works. If you don’t live with kids, facetime them and have them experiment at their home. If there’s no kids at all, be like me and just do it – it will give you something to do and will give you something to reflect on. Have you been a coffee bean? How can you be a coffee bean? Most importantly, I strongly suggest reading the book even if you don’t try the fun experiment. You can get this book for literally less than $10 used from Amazon… so why not read something that will impact your life? Share below in the comments what you learned and what stood out to you the most! How are you going to be a coffee bean?
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