Sept. 14, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: 'The Happiness Advantage
Answers Age-Old Chicken-Egg Question: Which Comes First: Happiness or Success
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
When I opened the package and saw the jacket with the number seven in the subtitle of my review copy of Shawn Achor's "The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work" (Crown Business, a Random House imprint, 256 pages, notes, index, $25.00) I said to myself: "Oh, no! Not another Positive Thinking Book!"
I've reviewed a number of them and read even more and most of them are difficult to assess because they -- in my opinion -- restate the obvious without producing any original ideas. The number seven, for some reason, seems to be a regular feature of many self-help books.
As I read Achor's book, laced as it is with frequent doses of humor -- self-deprecating and otherwise -- I changed my mind about "The Happiness Advantage." Continued reading -- I finished it in one sitting -- produced so many "aha!" moments based on my own experiences in 60 years in the workplace -- counting my youthful work delivering a daily newspaper and reporting and editing on five daily newspapers -- that I decided to review it. I figured this "aw shucks" country boy from Waco, Texas was onto something. As we say in Texas -- I'm well into my third year of living in the Lone Star State -- he's definitely NOT "All hat and no cattle."
Achor grew up in Waco, the offspring of two teachers, and never dreamed of attending Harvard, he tells us in a very conversationally crafted book. His goal was completing firefighting training and contemplating becoming a volunteer firefighter. He applied for admission to Harvard on a dare and surprised everyone when he was accepted (I'm giving him the benefit of literary license here: I bet he had wonderful grades and suspected that Harvard wanted to expand its student base beyond the usual East Coast prep school suspects).
Arriving in Cambridge, Mass., he knew in an instant that he had arrived at his spiritual home. He stayed on campus a dozen years, through his undergraduate and graduate years and serving as a Proctor, a paid employee living in the dorm with students, guiding them through the twists and turns of college life, before forming his own consulting business. He has advised many Fortune 500 companies and has visited 42 countries practicing his version of positive workplace psychology.
Achor says our most widely held formula for success is broken.
Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
In "The Happiness Advantage," Achor draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG — to fix this broken formula. Drawing on his education, his extensive reading and studying positive psychology from the widely recognized father of the subject, Dr. Martin Seligman, and his own mentor, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, and many, many studies -- as well as his experience dealing with the problems of thousands of students he encountered as a Proctor, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.
I was surprised that students arriving at Harvard -- the ultimate goal for the offspring of moms and dads everywhere -- could experience clinical depression, but Achor says they can and do. It's especially bad for law students and medical students, he writes. He cites a 2004 Harvard Crimson poll found that as many as 4 of 5 Harvard students suffered from depression at least once during the school year.
Outside the Ivory Tower, the Unhappiness Epidemic prevails too, he says: A Conference Board survey released in January 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling. I'm surprised that it was as good as that after more than two years of recession following the 2007-2008 financial meltdown. My feelings of pessimism were reinforced when I read in the New York Times online site -- the lead story, no less -- on Sept. 7 that high tech industries not only are not hiring, they're outsourcing more jobs overseas, leaving skilled American workers high and dry and unemployed. The story asked the question if high-tech jobs are going across the big pond to China and India, what's left in the U.S.
Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, Achor shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:
• The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.
• The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.
• Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network
One of my major "aha!" moments occurred when Achor described the effect on negative bosses on their underlings. I've experienced both positive and negative bosses in my life and I can attest to the "happiness advantage" that flows from having a positive boss. In my case, I had worked on one of the nation's largest and most respected newspapers for more than a dozen years, supervised by the perfect editor. Several colleagues in other departments warned me that when he retired everything would change -- as it always does at newspapers -- for the worse. They were right and two years later, after my "perfect" boss had retired, I was out of the perfect job and seeking employment at the age of 51 in an industry with the ultimate future of a buggy whip manufacturer.
As the recession continues and the need to reduce stress and negativity in the workplace becomes even more important, "The Happiness Advantage" shows employers how to make the lot of their valuable employees better -- and to reap the benefits in terms of corporate success. And we can only pray that they don't outsource more of their operations, leaving skilled, motivated American workers high and dry -- and unemployed!
About the author
Shawn Achor is founder and Chief Advisor of Good Think Inc., an applied research consulting firm that works with organizations seeking to create a more positive, productive workplace. After spending nearly a decade teaching and researching at Harvard University, Achor now applies the latest scientific research in positive psychology to deliver lectures and trainings in over 40 countries worldwide.
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BOOK REVIEW: 'The Happiness Advantage
Answers Age-Old Chicken-Egg Question: Which Comes First: Happiness or Success
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
When I opened the package and saw the jacket with the number seven in the subtitle of my review copy of Shawn Achor's "The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work" (Crown Business, a Random House imprint, 256 pages, notes, index, $25.00) I said to myself: "Oh, no! Not another Positive Thinking Book!"
I've reviewed a number of them and read even more and most of them are difficult to assess because they -- in my opinion -- restate the obvious without producing any original ideas. The number seven, for some reason, seems to be a regular feature of many self-help books.
As I read Achor's book, laced as it is with frequent doses of humor -- self-deprecating and otherwise -- I changed my mind about "The Happiness Advantage." Continued reading -- I finished it in one sitting -- produced so many "aha!" moments based on my own experiences in 60 years in the workplace -- counting my youthful work delivering a daily newspaper and reporting and editing on five daily newspapers -- that I decided to review it. I figured this "aw shucks" country boy from Waco, Texas was onto something. As we say in Texas -- I'm well into my third year of living in the Lone Star State -- he's definitely NOT "All hat and no cattle."
Achor grew up in Waco, the offspring of two teachers, and never dreamed of attending Harvard, he tells us in a very conversationally crafted book. His goal was completing firefighting training and contemplating becoming a volunteer firefighter. He applied for admission to Harvard on a dare and surprised everyone when he was accepted (I'm giving him the benefit of literary license here: I bet he had wonderful grades and suspected that Harvard wanted to expand its student base beyond the usual East Coast prep school suspects).
Arriving in Cambridge, Mass., he knew in an instant that he had arrived at his spiritual home. He stayed on campus a dozen years, through his undergraduate and graduate years and serving as a Proctor, a paid employee living in the dorm with students, guiding them through the twists and turns of college life, before forming his own consulting business. He has advised many Fortune 500 companies and has visited 42 countries practicing his version of positive workplace psychology.
Achor says our most widely held formula for success is broken.
Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.
In "The Happiness Advantage," Achor draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG — to fix this broken formula. Drawing on his education, his extensive reading and studying positive psychology from the widely recognized father of the subject, Dr. Martin Seligman, and his own mentor, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, and many, many studies -- as well as his experience dealing with the problems of thousands of students he encountered as a Proctor, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.
I was surprised that students arriving at Harvard -- the ultimate goal for the offspring of moms and dads everywhere -- could experience clinical depression, but Achor says they can and do. It's especially bad for law students and medical students, he writes. He cites a 2004 Harvard Crimson poll found that as many as 4 of 5 Harvard students suffered from depression at least once during the school year.
Outside the Ivory Tower, the Unhappiness Epidemic prevails too, he says: A Conference Board survey released in January 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling. I'm surprised that it was as good as that after more than two years of recession following the 2007-2008 financial meltdown. My feelings of pessimism were reinforced when I read in the New York Times online site -- the lead story, no less -- on Sept. 7 that high tech industries not only are not hiring, they're outsourcing more jobs overseas, leaving skilled American workers high and dry and unemployed. The story asked the question if high-tech jobs are going across the big pond to China and India, what's left in the U.S.
Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, Achor shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential. Among the principles he outlines:
• The Tetris Effect: how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.
• The Zorro Circle: how to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.
• Social Investment: how to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network
One of my major "aha!" moments occurred when Achor described the effect on negative bosses on their underlings. I've experienced both positive and negative bosses in my life and I can attest to the "happiness advantage" that flows from having a positive boss. In my case, I had worked on one of the nation's largest and most respected newspapers for more than a dozen years, supervised by the perfect editor. Several colleagues in other departments warned me that when he retired everything would change -- as it always does at newspapers -- for the worse. They were right and two years later, after my "perfect" boss had retired, I was out of the perfect job and seeking employment at the age of 51 in an industry with the ultimate future of a buggy whip manufacturer.
As the recession continues and the need to reduce stress and negativity in the workplace becomes even more important, "The Happiness Advantage" shows employers how to make the lot of their valuable employees better -- and to reap the benefits in terms of corporate success. And we can only pray that they don't outsource more of their operations, leaving skilled, motivated American workers high and dry -- and unemployed!
About the author
Shawn Achor is founder and Chief Advisor of Good Think Inc., an applied research consulting firm that works with organizations seeking to create a more positive, productive workplace. After spending nearly a decade teaching and researching at Harvard University, Achor now applies the latest scientific research in positive psychology to deliver lectures and trainings in over 40 countries worldwide.
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