How You Can be Remarkably Happier — Think of Your Boss as A Partner

Happy people are less likely to develop mental health problems. They lead more satisfying lives, something we can all appreciate. People who think of their supervisor as a “partner” rather than a “boss” are significantly happier with their day-to-day lives. Moreover, they are more satisfied with their lives overall.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Albert Schweitzer

A new branch of economics has emerged. It seeks a more satisfactory measure than money of human welfare. A team of Canadian and Korean economists (John Helliwell, Max Norton, Haifang Huang, and Shun Wang) set out intriguing details regarding the boss-partner findings in their paper Happiness at Different Ages: The Social Context Matters.

World Happiness Report

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open." — John Barrymore

The World Happiness Report identifies the state of global happiness. This report ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels. The rankings of country happiness are based on results from Gallup World Poll and show both change and stability.

In 2018 Finland became the top-ranking country. The same countries held the top ten positions in the last two years. The top spot in the four most recent reports was Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and now Finland. Canada ranks #7 and the United States at #18.

Top countries have high values for all six of the critical variables: income, life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust and generosity. Changes in the rankings among the top countries are expected as differences are small year-to-year.

What makes people happy?

Going deeper, data analysts are trying to find the answer to this perennial question. These surveys generally ask two main sorts of questions:

• One regarding people's assessment of their lives and the other how they feel at any time. The question goes along the lines of thinking about your life, how do you feel?
• The second is more direct like yesterday, did you feel happy/ satisfied/angry/anxious?

The first question measures global well-being and the second your emotional well-being. The questions elicit the different responses: having children, for instance, tends to make people feel better about their lives. However, it increases the chance that they felt angry or anxious yesterday.

Four Main Factors

The four main factors: gender, personality, external circumstances and age.

Gender — Women are slightly happier than men. However, they are also more susceptible to depression. About twenty-five percent of women experience depression at some point in their lives, compared with around ten percent of men. This suggests that women are more likely to experience more extreme emotions, or that some women are more miserable than men, while most are more cheerful.

Personality traits:

• Neurotic people—those who are predisposed to guilt, anger and anxiety—tend to be unhappy.
• Extroversion — those who like working in teams and who relish parties tend to be happier than those who close their office doors in the daytime and stay at home in the evenings.

Circumstance — All sorts of things in people's lives, such as relationships, education, income and health, shape the way they feel. Being married provides people with a considerable uplift, however, not as significant as the sadness that occurs from being unemployed. People with kids in the house are less happy than those without children.

Educated people tend to be happier. However, that effect disappears once income is controlled for. Education appears to make people happy because it makes them richer. Moreover, more prosperous people are happier than poor ones—though just how much is a source of argument.

Age — Happiness typically follows a U-shaped curve throughout a person’s life. People are satisfied and happy when they are young. In middle age, with the challenges and pressures of work and child-rearing are likely in their highest state of conflict, happiness drops considerably. When the children move out, and work starts to wind down happiness, tend to start trending upward again.

Difference between a partner-boss and a boss-boss

On the 10-point life satisfaction scale, the difference between a partner-boss and a boss-boss is about 0.4 points for middle-aged workers. This change is the equivalent in life satisfaction terms to more than a doubling of household income. The researchers also found similar effects for supervisors' influence on their workers' day-to-day happiness.

The research team examined if work stress causes part of this decrease. Do workers with different work environments follow different happiness trajectories through middle age?

To find out, they used the Gallup-Healthways daily poll. It surveys hundreds of adults each day on a variety of topics. They asked how employed respondents view their immediate supervisor:

• As a “boss” in the traditional sense? or
• More as a “partner”?

The researchers examined life satisfaction, by age, dependent on the type of supervisor respondents based on millions of responses throughout several years.

As the chart above shows, people with boss-supervisors exhibit a significant drop in life satisfaction between their early 20s and mid-40s. However, people with partner-bosses, the first half of the curve is flatter. Both groups, see a significant rise in life satisfaction as they enter their 50s.

We hypothesize that workplace social quality is more important for subjective well-being in mid-life than elsewhere, since mid-life years are for many people a time of stress created by competing demands from their work and family lives, and since these pressures are more easily reconciled when the workplace environment is more congenial and supportive.” — Helliwell, Norton, Huang, and Wang

Marriage and Community Help Too

Nothing is worth it if you are not happy.” — Carlos Rentalo

Interestingly, the researchers also found that other social factors appeared to protect people’s happiness in midlife.

• Marriage — married people showing much less decline in happiness as they approached middle age
• Community — the time that people had lived in their current community

Although the associations the researchers observed between social context and life satisfaction in middle age were quite real, the researchers do caution that their study, by design, cannot definitively say whether the effect is causal. For example, people who are naturally happier are more inclined to rate their bosses as more supportive. It is more probable that they are in stable long-term relationships.

Happier People are Productive

Understanding happiness and well-being have become more critical than ever. Happy people are more enjoyable to be around. However, there are other business benefits to a happy workforce besides a more favourable environment. Happy workers are more creative, innovative, and dedicated. They are more likely to stick around long-term. Plus, a happy workplace is a more productive workplace.

There’s a need for long-term, broad views of people's lives to understand the pathways to happiness and successful life outcomes.”— Nancy Galambos, University of Alberta

Happy people perform 12 percent better than their unhappy colleagues. The joyfulness of the old should help counteract their loss of productivity through declining cognitive skills—a point worth retaining as the world works out how to deal with an ageing workforce.

The ageing of the rich world is naturally seen as a burden on the economy and a problem to be solved. The U-bend argues for a more positive view of the matter. The greyer the world becomes, the brighter it gets!

Take the first step

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action." — Benjamin Desraeli

Most bosses, no matter how difficult, probably believe they are doing the right thing given the hand they have been dealt, so your empathy is essential. Think of empathy is a tool to help you develop the partnership relationship that you want in a healthy way. Understand your boss’ worldview from his or her perspective.

Often, when negative behaviours, such as being overly-critical, are coming to the fore, it is where the boss is maybe not getting what they need from you. So perhaps there is the opportunity to look at your own performance with a more honest lens. But also think about what other things you could be doing to make their life easier.”— Mary-Clare Race

The first step in developing your partnership is to learn to live with your boss:

• take responsibility for your part in the relationship
• find ways to work around his or her dysfunctional tendencies. For example, if your boss tends to micromanage, be proactive about getting things done ahead of time—you are giving them less room for criticism.
• empathize — try to put yourself in your boss’ shoes
• learn to anticipate bad behaviour and pre-empt it
• forecast potential conflicts and have strategies and solutions ready
• take time to understand your manager’s preferred way of working and try to match this. For example, if he or she is impatient, try to be succinct when you speak and in your written communication.

Evolving Your Relationship

As your partnership evolves, there is an opportunity to “set a new psychological contract.” Be clear about what you need from your boss, how they can get the best from you, and when you are likely to need your boss’ support, or they need your help.

To help it along at work, think of your boss as a partner. It is a two-way street. Understanding your behavioural DNA will help you better engage your boss as a partner. A partnering relationship will be better for both of you.