Tag:

Happiness

Kell onni on

by Ron Potter January 19, 2023

Kell onni on, se onnen Katkekoon. I’m sure many of you know this already but this is an old Finnish saying that roughly means, “Don’t compare or brag about your happiness.”

I’ve lived through a few nasty winters in Michigan where I’ve lived most of my life. But Helsinki, Findland’s capital, resides farther north than any other capital except Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Finland is also the most sparsely populated country in the EU. So if you’re not happy, what else do you have?

Happiest Country in the World

The basis for this blog are some notes from Frank Martela, a philosopher, psychology researcher, and lecturer at Aalto University in Finland. He lists three things the Finns seem to avoid.

1. Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

I’ve been talking about happiness lately during poor health, loss, and life in general. Here are three things that Dr. Martella talks about.

The first is the Finnish quote I gave you above. Don’t compare or brag. If you compare yourself to others and start thinking that you’re better than some (or the best in one way or another), something or someone will come across pretty quickly to knock you off that perch.

Also, if you’re bragging, you’ll create some enemies pretty quickly. Someone will be gunning for you to knock you down a few notches.

Success to the Finns means looking like everyone else.

2. Don’t Overlook the Benefits of Nature

I grew up in the country. Our nearest neighbor was a mile away. Our property had a stream, fish, crawdads, and many trees. I didn’t know it at the time (I was just a kid growing up) but research later showed how much being in nature is good for us. If you’re feeling down, take a walk in the woods.

Sometimes there is not a woods available but further research discovered just how much one tree helped. There was a study of kids who grew up in the “projects” on the south side of Chicago. They found a small set of kids who seemed to be much happier than the others. At first, there seemed to be no explanation but someone finally noticed that the group of happier kids had a tree outside their window. If you only have one tree, sit down at its base and focus on the sounds and feel of nature.

I currently live in a neighborhood called “Thousand Oaks.” It is well-named and I find myself looking out the window at the trees for long periods of time. Because of the trees and our bird feeders, we tend to have many types of birds that hang around Michigan in winter. I find myself getting lost watching them and lose all track of time.

3. Don’t Break Trust

This was an interesting one to me for several reasons. One is that I see generally two types of people in the world. One type starts out skeptical of everyone and won’t grant trust until they believe the other person has earned it. The second type (I seem to fall into this category) is a very trusting person right from the start and only considers another person untrustworthy after they have violated the granted trust.

I see issues with both approaches.

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Team Elements: Level 4 Happiness

by Ron Potter January 10, 2019

The last Thursday post was an Introduction to Teams. Teams are at the heart of great performance, the greatest happiness, and the best memories. This post starts a deeper breakdown of the elements involved in building and maintaining great teams.

In describing Level 4 Happiness, Aristotle used five words:

Truth
Love
Purpose
Beauty
Unity

Purpose is the word right in the middle of all five. I don’t spend a lot of time concentrating on Purpose because it is so essential and obvious.

That doesn’t mean it’s not important. I’ve already described it as essential! Without a purpose, there is no team. Without a purpose, it’s just a group of people. They may enjoy each other and have a lot of fun together, but without a purpose, they are not a team.

Team Elements

The bigger issue I often see is a lack of aligned purpose and many times conflicting beliefs on what the purpose is or should be. It is essential that teams align on and commit to a focused purpose. But that’s a topic that would require several blog posts to cover. For these blog posts about Team, I’m going to focus on the four team elements:

Truth
Love
Beauty
Unity

I’ve read different books and papers with slightly different words in the last slot. The one that I see most often is Justice, but I’ve focused on the element of Unity because it applies so directly to great teams.

I also try to use team elements that more directly apply to the business environment. Elements like love and beauty are words you don’t often hear in corporate meetings. Using elements that essentially mean the same thing as the original words and yet seem appropriate in the corporate world, I’ve modified the last three words in an attempt to make them immediately identifiable and to help you remember them. The four team elements I’ll explore are:

Truth
Respect
Elegance
Commitment

Truth

Truth remains truth for obvious reasons. If a team can’t speak the truth with each other, they will never grow or prosper as a team. However, we need to spend some time discussing the truth. Some of the findings may surprise you.

Respect

The Greeks had several words that all get translated into the English word Love. The Greek word for Love that Aristotle used had nothing to do with emotions or the feeling of love that we have for another person. This word referred to treating the other person with respect. As human beings, we seem to have an innate sense that someone respects us or not. Great teams require great respect (love) for each other.

Elegance

Beauty may be one of the hardest words to understand in a business sense. I’ve chosen the word elegance because Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity. Effectiveness and simplicity are the hallmarks of highly productive teams.

Commitment

I’ve chosen the word commitment here for two reasons.

Commitment is the observable outcome of unity. In team meetings, unity is often expressed by words or a nod of the head, but how one behaves away from the meeting is a clear demonstration of unity.
Commitment leads us to an acronym that helps us remember the four elements.

TREC

The acronym TREC sounds the same as the word TREK. The definition of a TREK is “A trip or movement especially when involving difficulties or complex organization: an arduous journey.”

Building a great team in a complex organization during difficult times is an arduous journey.

First, it’s a journey. It goes on for a long time. I might even say it’s an epic journey
Second, it’s a strenuous effort; difficult and tiring.

But it also provides the highest level of happiness. When you talk with people about their great memories in life, they will often talk of the time than spent on wonderful teams. The obstacles they overcame. The accomplishments they achieved.

Let’s start this TREC together and see if we can uncover the secrets of building and being a part of a great team. I guarantee it will bring you great happiness, even during a tiring, difficult, arduous journey.

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Blog Team Team Series

Team: Introduction

by Ron Potter January 3, 2019

A new year, a new series. Ready to talk teams?

When Wayne Hastings and I began writing our first book, Trust Me, I assumed we would cover all three areas that I focus on, building Teams, Growing Leaders, and creating Cultures—TLC. As we began to work with the publisher, it became obvious that the first book was going to focus on the leadership area. The team and cultures would have to wait their turn to be covered in future books. The good news is that over the years I’ve learned more about what makes great teams work.

A few of the things that I’ve learned about teams include:

Hitting the sweet spot of TLC
Team is the leading element
Being a great leader, functioning as part of a great team and creating great cultures makes you happy!

Hitting the Sweet Spot

When I formed my company in 2000 (I had been in the business for ten years at that point), I wanted to give it a name that described what we did. Reflecting on the previous ten years, one pattern that emerged was that new clients hired me at one of three entry points:

Leadership

I was being asked to help improve the leadership skills of existing or up-and-coming leaders.

Or a slight variation was the young hotshot contributor that the company thought would make a great leader someday but was currently advancing based on some great competency and had not learned the role of being a leader.

Or sometimes I was being asked to help save a derailed leader who had been in the organization for a long time but had gotten off track.

Team building

Team building was the second point of entry into a client. The work wasn’t necessarily related to a leader (at least in their mind), but the team wasn’t performing well.

Many times, these were existing teams where:

Productivity had fallen off or never existed.
There was a conflict or rift in the team that they couldn’t get past.
The team was facing dramatic change they weren’t handling well.

Sometimes they were ad hoc teams where:

They were pulled together for a short-term project that needed a quick launch to get productivity levels high as soon as possible.

A side story to that scenario was my first taste of team building when I was a young engineer. My company brought in a consulting firm (HRDA—Human Resource Development Association) to help facilitate communication, understanding, and decision making between ourselves (the constructor) and the design engineers. The process was called “Face-to-Face.”

Both companies had good people. We were all good engineers but weren’t communicating or more importantly, understanding each other. I began to realize that understanding relied more on good relationships and character than it did on competency.

Corporate Culture

My third possible entry point is corporate culture. When I started in the business in the early 1990s, the idea that you had to understand, pay attention to, and mold corporate cultures wasn’t well known, understood, or accepted. By the early 2000s, it had become an accepted fact.

Those seemed to be the solid entry points for me to provide services and add value to all the companies I worked with in those early years of my consulting work—leadership, team building, corporate culture.

Team is the leading element

After ten years I could see that my three entry points were leaders, teams, and cultures. The challenge was what do I name my new company that reflected those points?

Leaders—Teams—Cultures LTC

Culture—Leaders—Team CLT

Teams—Culture—Leaders TCL

Teams—Leaders—Culture TLC!!

TLC, that was it. Team Leadership Culture, LLC. That was my new company, TLC!

I must admit that I still thought of leadership being at the core and many of my presentations still reflected that belief. But how could I pass on TLC, so that became the name of my company, Team Leadership Culture, LLC.

What’s interesting is that over time, I’ve come to believe that great teams are the essential lead element. I’ve seen more corporate failures caused by the lack of teamwork than either of the other two elements. Great teamwork can overcome mediocre leadership and lack of a good culture, but neither leadership or great culture can overcome a bad team.

TLC is indeed the right sequence.

Happiness

One of my friends is Jim Berlucchi, who is the executive director for The Spitzer Center. Jim introduced me to the four levels of happiness that were described by Aristotle and greatly expanded into a mental model of leadership by Dr. Spitzer.

Aristotle concluded that what makes us uniquely human is our pursuit of happiness. That is why our forefathers included it in the Declaration of Independence.

It seems even more visible when we see the opposite. Despair and depression seem to occur when there is a loss of hope or happiness. If the ability to pursue happiness is lost, depression fills the void.

The pursuit of Happiness has Four Levels

Level 1 drives our basic needs for food, money, and sustenance — anything that relates to the senses. Without level 1, we don’t survive.

Level 2 drives us to win, improve, get better, achieve, grow. Without level 2, we don’t thrive.

Level 3 is focused on providing blessings to others. These are the elements of our book “Trust Me” which provide great leadership.

Humility – “I don’t have all the ”
Development – “I want us to grow through the ”
Focus – “Let’s not get ”
Commitment – “We’re looking for the greater ”
Compassion – “I care about what you think and who you ”
Integrity – “I will not hold back, I will share who I am and what I ”
Peacemaking – “We want divergent perceptions leading to ”
Endurance – “We will endure to a committed ”

Level 4 is described by Aristotle as

Truth
Love
Purpose
Beauty
Unity

These become the elements of great teams and deliver the greatest level of happiness.

Over the next several blog posts, we will be exploring each of these “Team” elements in more detail.

The team is the sweet spot. The team is what makes you happier. The team is what provides the greatest value to your organization. A great team will provide the greatest of memories when you think back over your career and lifetime.

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Absurd!Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Absurd!: To Be a Professional One Must be an Amateur

by Ron Potter April 24, 2017

Amateur stems from the Latin word amator, which means “lover,” Amateurs do what they do out of love. Love is fundamental to good leadership because leadership is all about caring.

Aristotle spoke of Love as being one of the key elements to the highest level of happiness. His other words included at that level are Trust, Beauty, and Unity. All traits of great teams. Great leaders care for their people. Farson says “Indeed, caring is the basis for community, and the first job of the leader is to build community, a deep feeling of unity, a fellowship. Community is one of the most powerful yet most fragile concepts in the building of organizations.”

I’m afraid the lovers of the arts would never understand or agree that leadership would fall into the same category as a great symphony or painting, but I’ve experienced that kind of joy when great teams really get on a roll. “Management and leadership are high arts. When they are working well, they compare favorably to the other great aesthetic moments of our lives, to symphonies and sunsets.”

Leaders like to think of themselves as professional and indeed they are. “But the amateur performs work out of love, out of sensuous pleasure in the act of accomplishment, in the creation of community, in the bonds of compassion that unite.”

Great teams are built with great leaders based on the highest level of happiness: Truth, Love, Beauty and Unity. Aristotle may not have been thinking about our corporate leadership teams of today when he explained the four levels of happiness. But our nation’s founding fathers knew it was relevant when they declared in our Declaration of Independence that we find life, liberty and the “pursuit of happiness” to be our unalienable Rights.

What will you do to be an amateur today?

I’m continuing my series on an in-depth look at a wonderful little book that’s twenty years old this year. The title is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson. You may want to consider dropping back and reading the previous blog posts about ABSURD! I think it will put each new one in great context.

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Blog Culture

Discovering Ancient Truths

by Ron Potter January 7, 2016

Source: Dogancan Ozturan, Creative Commons

A recent CBS News article caught my eye. The headline read:

Are you happy? Do you know how to be happy?

After decades of studying and working with tens of thousands of patients, researchers at the Mayo Clinic say they’ve cracked the code to being happy.

Psychiatrist John Tamerin says for many people the root of everything we’re chasing, a better job, more money or true love, is happiness.

But this endless pursuit often backfires.

Now, after decades of research and a dozen clinical trials, researchers at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, say they’ve actually cracked the code to being happy, and published it in a handbook.

Dr. Amit Sood led the research and says the first and foremost way to be happy is to focus our attention.

“… one of the biggest hindrances to being happy is too much thinking about one’s self, research shows.

So why did the Mayo Clinic decide to study happiness? Studies show happier people are healthier people.

Wow, “after decades of research and a dozen clinical trials” the researchers cracked the code to happiness. Even though over 2,300 years ago Aristotle wrote in his “Nicomachean Ethics” that the pursuit of happiness was the ultimate purpose of human existence.

This concept of the pursuit of happiness really forms the foundation for great leadership and great teams. I’m currently working my second book on how to create great teams. It’s built precisely on the concepts of Aristotle’s pursuit of happiness.

If you take a look at the four levels in the pursuit of happiness that Aristotle lays out, you’ll see that levels one and two are focused on self. As the researchers says above, “one of the biggest hindrances to being happy is too much thinking about one’s self.” Levels 3 and 4 are built on thinking about and blessing others. Level 3 describes the perfect model for great leadership. Level 4 describes the elements of great teams.

So, if you want to break your own code to happiness, become a great leader of people and a great team member. It provides the ultimate level of happiness.

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