Some successful leaders favour a fun, kind, and calm work environment.
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said:
“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done”.
Some successful leaders favour a serious, hard-driving, and formal work environment. Henry Ford comes to mind. Some claim Henry Ford fired people for smiling during working hours.
The important thing: your work environment must align with your personal values and your personality. Otherwise, sooner or later, you will lose patience and enthusiasm. With the loss of patience and enthusiasm…it will be tough to enjoy your work. In simple words: you will feel bad about work. That will remove the possibility of major business success. To make matters worse, it will cause dysfunction to grow and spread. Stresses will erupt. Attitudes and behaviours will become troubling, quite uncomfortable, and possibly even vicious.
You want none of these things.
Right!
You want your people to co-operate with one another and get along.
Right!
You want to enjoy your workday.
Right!
So, what do you need to do to bring that about and make sure it remains?
Let’s start with a seek simple thought: people only have two types of emotions/feelings.
- Some emotions cause people to feel good
- Some emotions cause people to feel bad
Yes, some emotions such as utter bliss or supreme joy make us feel much better than other emotions such as mildly amused and pleased. Similarly, feeling enraged is more extreme than feeling impatient or annoyed.
You can make your interpersonal activities simpler and more effective if you can accurately identify good feelings from bad feelings. That’s an achievement. For the most part, it doesn’t matter how extreme the feelings are. It is the direction of the feelings that counts the most. Are they ‘good’ or ‘bad’?
Let’s be honest about our ability to read other people’s feelings.
When it comes to understanding other people’s feelings many of us are not very skilled. We struggle with understanding our own feelings let alone understanding other people’s feelings.
So let’s start by looking at feelings only 2 ways: feelings are either (1) Good or (2) Bad.