Find Your Happy Place at Work

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch, in for Sarah Green Carmichael.

If you’re unhappy at work, you could blame it on your company or where you live. Just ask the researchers at Columbia University and the Vancouver and London Schools of Economics. Their 2017 World Happiness Report maps job satisfaction around the globe.

In the United States and Brazil alike, 85 percent of workers say they’re “satisfied.” It’s about 70 percent in India and China. Nigeria and Sierra Leone, around 60 percent. Coming out on top is Austria—at 95 percent job satisfaction.

The study suggests that countries’ economies play a role in worker satisfaction. And the types of jobs do, too. People in well-paying, white-collar positions say they’re happier than those who aren’t in those jobs.

But our guest on the show today says wherever you live, and however you earn a living, you have much more control over your own happiness at work than you think. She says happiness is your choice, and that too many people get trapped in destructive ways of thinking that keep them in unfulfilling jobs.

Our guest is Annie McKee. She teaches leadership and emotional intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania. She’s the author of the new book How to Be Happy at Work. And she joins me now to talk about what she calls happiness traps—and how to escape them.

Annie, thanks for being on the HBR IdeaCast.

ANNIE MCKEE: Thank you very much. I’m glad to be here.

CURT NICKISCH: I want to ask you if you’re happy at work.

ANNIE MCKEE: I am happy at work. I’m very happy at work. I haven’t always been. There were times in my life where I stayed in a job a little bit too long. But recently I have made some decisions, over the last few years, to really practice what I preach and look at my work life to see whether in fact I’m able to live the way I want to live. That’s been really important to me.

CURT NICKISCH: When weren’t you happy at work?

ANNIE MCKEE: Well, if I go way back, I was in a very, very different phase of my life, and I took the kinds of jobs that you need to take to stay alive. I cleaned people’s houses. And I took care of elderly people in their homes. And at first, I was thrilled to have a job. Absolutely thrilled. But as time went on, I found myself becoming demoralized because I always thought I could do more.

And it was even way back then though that I realized that I had to find a way to feel somewhat satisfied, if not totally happy, with what I was doing. So, for example, one time, I worked for an elderly couple. I lived in their home over the weekends to help her take care of him. And I liked her a lot. I liked her a lot. And they lived in a beautiful house on the ocean so I said OK I’ve got. A friend in her. I’m in a beautiful place. Is there anything I can do to maximize some of that so that my job isn’t just cleaning their home, and, you know, taking care of his physical needs? So, I was able to do that.

CURT NICKISCH: How did you do that?

ANNIE MCKEE: I tried to look at the daily tasks that I had to do. I did have to clean the house and take care of his physical needs. And I did need to cook. For example. For them. And one of the things I did was I. Started to learn how to be a better cook. I spent more time in the kitchen preparing healthy meals for them and for myself, and I found that very rewarding. I also paid attention to how I felt when I was taking care of him. I realized I was a good caregiver, and that made me proud of myself. It made me feel good about myself, actually gave me confidence. I realized I was a good companion to her, and that that filled me somehow. And in the end, it actually gave me enough confidence to start looking beyond what I was doing.

Fast forward, and, you know, I found myself being recruited to work at a really exciting organization, kind of a shiny place; everybody would love to be asked to work there. And I I got stars in my eyes I felt really excited about being asked to work at this fancy place and it was a great organization from the outside looking in. It looked like it would provide me all sorts of opportunities.

But I had you know so many stars in my eyes actually that I, I didn’t actually really look at that organization closely enough. And they hired me. I went in; I was still excited. It wasn’t three months and before I realized I was in the wrong job. Now I did admit it to myself I could tell that my values were at odds with some of the values of this organization and I could tell frankly that they were probably looking for a different person than me.

I recognized that very early on I tried to make it work. I did the same thing I did in that elderly couple’s home I tried to find more meaning in the daily tasks. I tried to build relationships, and I made some progress. But ultimately, I became more and more unhappy in that job and to the point I actually started to get sick. I definitely had to go. My health was suffering my emotional health was suffering and I wasn’t as good as I had been in the past. I’d gotten trapped.

CURT NICKISCH: What was the reason that you were trapped in that job, and is that something you think a lot of people share?

ANNIE MCKEE: What I’ve come to realize is that when we feel stuck in a job or when we feel trapped, we often blame it on others. We blame it on the organization. We blame it on our bosses. We blame it on our coworkers. And in in many cases, there are problems in our organizations. Many organizations are not set up to provide meaning and fulfillment, really, to people at work; and there are a lot of bad bosses out there, as well, and coworkers that maybe we’d rather not spend time with.

But the real reason we get trapped at work has to do with us and how we view our work and what we do in our workplaces and what we don’t do. It’s really more about how we understand what work is supposed to be for us and what it’s not supposed to be and what has driven us to make certain choices along the way that may or may not have been the right choices for us. So, we can try to be happy at work by trying to change our organization or change our organizational culture. We can run away from that bad boss or those bad coworkers. But as long as we’re running away from something outside ourselves, we’re probably not going to find happiness.

CURT NICKISCH: Let’s talk about these traps and also why they’re so hard to escape, because, you know, there’s something about our understanding of what work should be, or what we should be doing, that affects how we even get into situations where we feel trapped?

ANNIE MCKEE: We go to work to make money so we can have a real life somewhere else. And if we complain about it, you know, well-meaning friends and family say, Stop complaining; it’s work. That’s why they call it work. It’s meant to be hard. You should be feel lucky that you have a job.

What’s wrong with that is that in a 24/7 world, we work all the time. We have our work in our pockets. We sleep with it next to our bed, and we can be called on at any moment in time to stop what we’re doing in our so-called real lives and work. And even when we’re not actually engaging in tasks, we’re thinking about work. We spend eight, 10, 12 hours a day working. I find it wholly unacceptable that we continue to believe that a full third of our adult lives or more is meant to be miserable.

CURT NICKISCH: How do you define happiness?

ANNIE MCKEE: When I’m thinking about happiness at work, I’m relying on my own observations of people in workplaces and my own studies of organizations. And I see happiness at work as deep and abiding pleasure that is fueled by a sense of meaningful purpose hope and friendships. I stand firmly on the side that everybody can be happy. I also stand firmly in the belief that happiness is a human right, in life and at work.

CURT NICKISCH: Even so, people stay in jobs when they’re unhappy for very long periods of time. Why?

ANNIE MCKEE: People stay in jobs that they hate for very long periods of time for a few reasons. No. 1, the external environment looks scary to them, and they feel stuck. No. 2, they’ve been told work isn’t supposed to be a place where you fulfill yourself. The third reason has to do with habits of mind—I call them the happiness traps—that have us believe we should do certain things that in actuality don’t lead to happiness.

CURT NICKISCH: Like what?

ANNIE MCKEE: Well if I stay with that for a minute, the “should trap” is a happiness trap that directs us to do what we think we are supposed to do, and it starts very early in life. When we’re very small children, we learn to wave bye-bye and not step off the curb. Those are shoulds that are nice. You know, they are about learning how to be with people and not getting hurt.

As we grow, however, those should sit on the surface seem great sometimes get us in trouble. We should get good grades. That’s wonderful. Until you meet a 16-year-old who is suffering from anxiety and depression because they’re not living up to the expectations that have been set for themselves that they’ve now internalized.

It also happens when we enter the workplace. We should advance in our organization. We should make more money. We should be promoted. All of those things are fine, unless we are doing them because others or our society or our organization expects us to.

Once we’re directed more from the outside in than from the inside out, we can find ourselves experiencing a sense of being adrift, rudderless, and as if what we do doesn’t really matter anyway.

CURT NICKISCH: There’s another outside in pressure that you write about in your book. How have you seen the money trap play out for people?

ANNIE MCKEE: Money is great. Ask anybody who doesn’t have it. There’s nothing wrong with having money. But some people become obsessed with it and addicted to it. I think it’s partly because money is a sign of success, and people are measuring their success with money. It’s kind of a false measure, because it only measures one aspect of success. It does not measure internal success: Are we happier or not? Are we fulfilled or not? Are our families happy or not? Some people will trade just about anything for that big bonus or that next big paycheck. And some people don’t know when to quit.

I was sitting with somebody not too long ago and talking about her the next phase of her career. And she was talking to me about having reached a plateau where she was. She actually reached the top job in her field in that organization; she’d done what she could do. She was ready to go. She had been ready to go for a couple of years. She’d been rewarded handsomely for doing a decent job, and she actually didn’t have to work another day in her life if she didn’t want to. But she really wanted to, and she was talking about the future.

So, we began talking about what she might do. She got excited. She was enthusiastic. We had some plans on the table together. It was a pretty nice conversation— until she, sort of, threw the papers aside and said, “I can’t do any of this.” And I said, “Well, why, why not?” And she said, “I don’t have enough money.” And I knew her finances, so I said, “Well, actually, you have plenty of money. You could not generate income doing this new thing for four years, and you’d still be fine for 10 years, and you’d still be fine.” She said, “Uh-uh. I need a couple more million in the bank before I can leave this job.”

She was trapped. But how many of us have stayed in a job that makes us absolutely miserable just for the money?

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. And, I mean, you’re painting extreme examples, but there are a lot of times when people may see other opportunities to grow, or to be happier in their work, or have a better work-life balance. But even just being paid marginally less make someone feel like, Well, I’m moving backwards.

ANNIE MCKEE: Money is a measure of success. So, if we, and I’m putting this in quotes, “compromise” and take a job with the same money or less, we feel like we’re going backwards; and we feel that possibly we’re not being honored for who we are. Our worth is not being measured appropriately, or so we think by others. And, you know, the reason that’s a problem is because it comes out of a place of insecurity and a lack of self-worth.

If we don’t see the worth in ourselves, we’re very keen to believe that others don’t see it either. And money is a proxy for people’s opinions of us in the workplace.

CURT NICKISCH: Let’s talk about one of your—the other traps that you write about in your book: it’s the ambition trap.

ANNIE MCKEE: Ambition is a great thing, unless it forces us to fall prey to a desire to win at any cost. And what happens to people over time is that ambition gets warped, and we move from one goal to the next, thinking that we’re being driven by healthy ambition, when in fact we’re really driven simply by the achievement of that next goal. Whether the goal means anything to us or not no longer matters. Whether the goal is a worthy goal no longer matters. It’s just a goal we have to go for.

And the saddest part of all of it is that when we win, when we achieve that goal, we don’t celebrate. We don’t pat ourselves on the back. We certainly don’t congratulate the people who helped us get there. We’re already looking at the next one. When people live like this for a period of time, for a long period of time, as many people do, we can find ourselves desperately dissatisfied.

CURT NICKISCH: Who have you seen in this situation?

ANNIE MCKEE: I see a lot of people get trapped by their own ambition and by the desire to win at any cost. It’s sort of the win-lose trap, really: you either win, or you lose. Our organizations are often set up to put people in the situation, to direct them toward targets, to direct them toward objectives, to direct them toward metrics, and the targets, metrics, objectives are not bad. It’s the fact that we go for it. The minute we get there, we go for the next one. And I’ve seen everybody from people who work as first line supervisors or on the line, all the way up to the most senior executives in the boardroom, behave this way. They will do anything to achieve that next goal.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, speaking of achieving the next goal, I want to talk about the next trap. But, it’s the final one, and that’s the fate trap, which has maybe the best name of all, but also the most dire-sounding.

ANNIE MCKEE: When we look at the world as a place that is powerful, far more powerful than us; that is by and large not going to support us in what we hope for, what we dream for, and what we want; and when we truly believe that we have no control, then we give up. These are the fatalists amongst us, the disengaged amongst us, the people who come to work in body, but they leave their minds at home.

CURT NICKISCH:  It just feels like all of these traps seem to center on one thing, when happiness is really many different relationships; it’s many different experiences at work. I don’t know: am I looking at this correctly from a behavioral perspective?

ANNIE MCKEE: Most of us fall victim to all of the happiness traps just a little bit. We live in society, and many of these traps are socially acceptable. You know work, for example, is often seen as not the place you’re supposed to have fun.

CURT NICKISCH:  Right.

ANNIE MCKEE: We learn to believe that. We learn along the way that ambition is a fabulous and powerful driving force, until it’s not; and money’s great, until we become addicted to it. So, the issue isn’t whether we should banish all of our old ways of doing work or give up all the social “should”s of the world or tamp down our ambition completely or stop seeking money. Of course not. What we need to do is to understand why we are doing those things.

If we are pursuing ways of working and goals at work that are meaningful to us, give us a sense of purpose, that speak to our values and make us feel like we’re making difference, well, then the “should”s are fine. The money is fine, and our ambition is in line with who we hope we will be in our lives.

CURT NICKISCH: What are the ways that you can get out of these, these traps?

ANNIE MCKEE: The first step toward happiness at work is accepting that happiness is important at work. That means giving up the old myths that tell us that work shouldn’t be fun, that work should be painful. We need to let those myths go. And there’s a lot of science behind this now. We know that the positive emotions that go along with being happy, like enthusiasm and excitement, joy, and pleasure, actually help us to think better. Our minds open up; we can take in more information; we can process it more quickly. Ultimately, we can make better decisions. We’re also more resilient. And, oh, by the way, we’re physically and psychologically healthier. Those conditions allow us to be more successful at work.

Next, we need to understand that real happiness comes from the inside out. What that means is learning how to examine our needs and desires, our motivation, our hopes, our dreams, and our wants, and compare what we really want with what we’ve been told we should do. If we look from the inside out and determine what it is that we do, then we’re more likely to be on a path of happiness toward happiness. We’re more likely to be able to avoid the most typical traps that keep us stuck going on a hamster wheel at work.

CURT NICKISCH: Tell a story of somebody you’re proud of as an example of what the rest of us can aspire to.

ANNIE MCKEE: Sure. Let me talk about a person I’ll call Julie. Julie was very ambitious in her early career. Funny thing happened though. When she hit the time in her life, in her late 20s, when she was pointed to a management position, some of those things that had been serving her really well all along—her competitiveness, her ambition, her desire to win—all of sudden started getting in her way. Now, she felt that she was doing everything she should do: she had gone through school; she’d gotten the job; she was rising up through the organization. And now she was behaving in a way that she thought was appropriate for managers.

CURT NICKISCH: So how is it getting in her way?

ANNIE MCKEE: First of all, she was telling people what to do, as opposed to coaching people about what to do. Second of all, her desire to win started to cloud her judgment. And her desire to accomplish goals that were being set for her started driving her to drive her people in such a way that it wasn’t long before they hated her. They really hated her. Now, mind you, her bosses were happy because she was delivering.

CURT NICKISCH: Right.

ANNIE MCKEE: So, she got a promotion.

CURT NICKISCH: Seen that before.

ANNIE MCKEE: Yeah, we’ve all seen that. And a couple of years later, the same thing happened. Ten years, in Julie had left a wake behind her of broken relationships, teams that didn’t work anymore, goals that had been met but that were not sustainable over time. And a few smart people started to wake up and, say, Hey, maybe she’s not such a star after all.

She, at the same time, was waking up and realizing that she had been spending so much of her time and energy achieving these goals, accomplishing the “should”s, chasing the money dream, all the rest of it, that she had ignored her personal life—in particular, her family—and she was finding that there were some big cracks in her relationships at home.

So, her organization was waking up. She was waking up. And at about that time, I met her, and we talked. We spent a lot of time together, and we started delving into why she was doing what she was doing. And we discovered some things that were pretty interesting: patterns that that formed early in her adult life, even in her college years, were patterns that she took with her into the workplace, patterns that at first helped her—and very soon thereafter didn’t help her at all.

By understanding those patterns, and then doing the hard work of trying to look at who she actually is who she wants to be, what’s important to her, what she really cares about, her values, how she wants to have impact on people, what she hopes for, for herself and her organization really, and the kinds of relationships she wants at work and at home, we were able to craft a slow but steady plan for change.

And over time she did make those changes, and she came out of it, still pretty young, still with her relationships intact, still in her organization, and still on a path to success.

CURT NICKISCH: I just wonder, do you think it’s equally hard for other people to change, who are maybe unhappy in their jobs and are trying to seek more happiness and fulfillment?

ANNIE MCKEE: I would love to see people wake up to happiness before the wake-up calls in their lives are loud, shrill, and unpleasant as Julie’s were. And, unfortunately, a lot of people wait a very long time before they seek true happiness in the workplace before they attempt to really live their purpose or craft a vision for themselves that’s personally meaningful or build the kind of relationships they want.

Because people wait so long, the work of getting back to happiness can be very difficult. It can be done, but it can be very difficult. What I suggest is that we start listening to those faint whispers of a wake-up call long before they’re loud, long before they disrupt our lives, long before our relationships at home and at work are at risk. This we can all do.

And if we’re able to start noticing when we go back to those patterns that have us chasing the holy grail of goal after goal after goal, or when we start following those old should dictates that we learned as children that don’t work in the modern world, or when we really do get seduced by money. If we can listen to those early, faint whispers of wake-up call, we’ve got a lot better chance of staying happy; if we do fall off the track, getting back on.

CURT NICKISCH: When you hear those faint whispers, and you feel those pangs of dissatisfaction, and you hear that voice saying, You know this job isn’t really right for you, what can you do to get out of that?

ANNIE MCKEE: Learning how to be happy at work starts with self-awareness. And if we’re self-aware enough to hear the faint whispers of a wake-up call, we’re self-aware enough to push a little bit further and try to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing to ourselves. That is step number one. It’s an emotional intelligence competency. We know it helps us be effective at work. It also helps us to be effective when we’re seeking happiness.

Once we begin to get clear about what it is we’re seeking in our work—purpose, hopeful view of the future, relationships that fulfill—us then we’re going to need to employ other emotional intelligence competencies to make sure that we actually do some things to make that happen. We have to manage our emotional life so that we can overcome the, you know, some of the fear and trepidation that comes with change.

We also need to manage emotions in the opposite direction. We need to focus on the positive more than the negative; focus on looking at glass half full, looking at things through, not rose- colored glasses, but at least not glasses that have doom and gloom be the way things are. That competency the ability to manage our emotions and steer ourselves toward a positive outlook is what gives us energy for the hard work of change

CURT NICKISCH: Is it possible for everybody to be happy at work?

ANNIE MCKEE: It is possible for everybody to be happy at work, and it is our individual responsibility to begin the process of seeking happiness at work. Nobody is going to do this for us. If we wait for someone else to make us happy at work, we’ll be waiting a very long time.

CURT NICKISCH: When you look back, what is it that you think is key?

ANNIE MCKEE: If I think back over my own career, my own work life—all the way back to waitressing and cleaning people’s houses and taking care of people—I realize that early on I recognize that you can find joy in many activities, even those that are considered menial work. It’s partly your attitude, how you look at it. It’s also recognizing when and how you’re making an impact, when and how you’re making a difference for people, when and how you’re living your values.

It is as easy to lose ourselves in a career as it is in menial work. And it’s as easy to find joy and purpose, hope and friendships, in our day-to-day work—as I did as a waitress or cleaning houses— as it is sitting behind a nice desk in a beautiful office.

CURT NICKISCH: And when you say easy, you mean hard.

ANNIE MCKEE: It’s difficult to pursue happiness. But once the will is there, it is surprising how easy it is to keep going.

CURT NICKISCH: Annie McKee, thanks so much for talking to the HBR IdeaCast.

ANNIE MCKEE: Thank you.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s Annie McKee. She’s a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. And she’s the author of the new book How to Be Happy at Work: The Power of Purpose, Hope, and Friendship.

Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Curt Nickisch.