Why a Head of Happiness Is Actually a Hindrance

Of course, happiness does matter, but your people's happiness should never sit with one person. Give someone the title Head of Happiness and, however well intentioned, you risk creating a very strange dynamic -they become responsible for making everyone else feel better.

·         Organise the wellbeing initiatives

·         Improve engagement

·         Boost morale

·         Plan the away day

·         Monitor the employee experience

Perhaps, somewhere along the way, the rest of the organisation quietly steps back from its responsibility. “That's the happiness person's job.”

But what if the problem isn't that your people need more happiness? What if they need better leadership?

People aren't machines and yet, we’ve become incredibly good at measuring people.

·         Productivity

·         Performance

·         Absence

·         Turnover

·         Engagement

·         Satisfaction

·         Wellbeing

The measures in themselves aren't necessarily the problem, and they can give us useful information. The problem comes when we start managing the metric rather than understanding the human being behind it.

·         A person becomes an absence percentage.

·         A resignation becomes a turnover figure.

·         A mistake becomes a performance issue.

·         A difficult conversation becomes something to manage.

Suddenly we're optimising people rather than leading them. They are a statistic to be measured and improved.

Happiness isn't a leadership outcome you can manufacture

People aren't going to be happy all the time; they shouldn't be expected to be. People have things happen in their lives that have nothing to do with work, they experience grief, frustration, disappointment, stress, ambition, uncertainty and conflict. A good organisation doesn't try to eliminate those human experiences. It creates an environment where people can navigate them without being treated as a problem.

That is a very different proposition.

So who is responsible in this?

Everyone, but particularly and undeniably those at the top. Culture isn't created because you decided to create a role with “happiness” in the job title. It’s not created because you have massage chairs to destress or ping pong tables and free drinks. It's created by what leaders tolerate.

·         What they prioritise

·         How they communicate

·         How they respond when something goes wrong

·         Whether they listen

·         Whether expectations are clear

·         Whether people have the tools and resources to do their jobs

·         Whether people are treated with dignity when they struggle

·         Whether leaders are willing to admit when they have got something wrong

You don't need a Head of Happiness to do those things, you need leaders who understand that people are human.

Human-centred leadership isn't about making excuses, its not mean you need to lower standards and make every decision based on how somebody feels – you have zero control over that. What you can control is how you behave and how you decide information is delivered.

·         Be clear about what good looks like

·         Give people what they need to achieve it

·         Hold people accountable when things don't happen

·         Listen when they tell you something isn't working

·         Learn when mistakes happen

·         And treat people with respect throughout

That sounds remarkably simple, perhaps because it is. People have spent years trying to overcomplicate matters, creating new jobs and systems to make things better, and sometimes they do, but the fundamentals of human relationships, what we need to thrive haven’t changed.

The leadership fundamentals that are essential

Be clear - people shouldn't have to guess what is expected of them.

Give people the tools - give them the resources, knowledge, time or support to achieve the outcomes you want – you cannot hold people accountable if you don’t

Be respectful - people don't become less deserving of dignity because they have made a mistake.

Be empathetic - understanding someone's circumstances doesn't mean removing accountability.

Be human - leaders don't need to have all the answers, you are also a person. It’s ok to listen, take time to answer, say ‘I got that wrong’.

Acknowledge that sometimes the right decision won't always be the easiest or most profitable one.

Perhaps happiness isn't really the goal. Instead of asking: “How do we make our people happier?” perhaps what we should be asking is far more difficult :

“What are we doing that makes it harder for people to do good work?”

·         Are expectations unclear?

·         Are systems creating unnecessary frustration?

·         Are people being asked to achieve more with less?

·         Do they have the tools they need?

·         Can they speak up?

·         Are mistakes punished or explored?

·         Do leaders listen?

·         Does the culture people experience match the culture the organisation says it has?

These questions take us somewhere much more useful. People don't necessarily need their employer to make them happy, they need to be able to do meaningful work, understand what is expected, have the support to do it, feel respected and know that they can be human while doing it.

That's not the job of a Head of Happiness; that's the job of leadership. Perhaps the most human thing a leader can do is stop attempting to manage people's happiness and start paying attention to what they really experience.