Published  on  LinkedIn.  May  15,  2015.  

How to measure Happiness & Emotions to Influence Performance

By Rash Khan (https://au.linkedin.com/in/rashkhan1)

Our emotions have a strong influence on how we behave, act; make decisions consequently how we perform on a day-to-day basis. Also it has been scientifically proven that the happier we are the better we perform. Given the fact our 'happiness' and 'emotions' have strong correlations to our productivity and performance it makes a lot of sense to measure these two key human performance attributes to generate knowledge that would help us positively influence performance.

Measuring happiness (team temperature) is a common technique used in many organisations to understand team engagement and there are many ways to do it. Ever since I started learning about emotional intelligence, thanks to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis's awesome literature, I have coupled measuring emotions with happiness , which gave me powerful insights on my team's state of mind that helped me be a better leader for them.

Sharing what I practice

I use two simple questions using an Anonymous SurveyMonkey survey as a tool to measure happiness and emotions. It takes literally less than 2 mins to respond. Anonymous nature of the survey gives team members an opportunity to be brutally honest. 1. How happy are you at work this week from a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 being the Happiest?

Purpose: Response from this question gives leaders an indication of our team moral, happiness, engagement.

2. Describe how you feel this week in three words?

Purpose: For team members - By default we avoid talking about emotions because its perceived as being soft which is why most people struggle to express how they feel and finds it awkward to discuss emotions. This question makes people really think how they feel in order to express in 3 words, as a result over time this question influences them to get better at expressing how they feel enabling them to be more attuned to their own emotions and feel comfortable expressing it. Purpose: For leaders - It generates great insights that enables leaders to be more attuned to the team's state of mind equipping them with knowledge to influence performance.

 

    Published  on  LinkedIn.  May  15,  2015.  

Mechanics of the practice -

• I created a free Anonymous Survey-monkey page to collect responses and then plot the weekly average happiness score in excel for trend analysis. (see 'example insights')

• Work out average happiness of the particular week. Not everyone will respond which is Ok. As long as over 70% team members responds you get a strong indication.

• I recommend running the survey on Wednesdays to ensure unbiased response because Monday, Tuesday people are either too stressed or too busy and Thursday, Friday they are mostly happy due to the weekend ahead :)

• Use http://www.wordle.net/ to generate 'word cloud' that gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the emotions expressed by the team members. (see 'example insights')

• I shared outcome, 1) Average weekly happiness score and 2) Word cloud each week with the team to keep it transparent and keep me honest as a leader.

Example Insights -

 

    Published  on  LinkedIn.  May  15,  2015.  

A personal story of how insights could help influence performance -

Insight - Few years ago I received a consistent average happiness score of below 6 two weeks in a row and prominent words were, 'direction', 'lack', 'lost' and 'worried'. I had a large globally distributed team and from the surface I had no way of knowing people were feeling that way.

Action - After getting such powerful yet concerning insights I started talking to people straight away without waiting for the next scheduled one on one catch-up. I learnt team was struggling to understand 1) how multiple projects we were working on fits in the big picture to drive business value, 2) should we still be even doing some of them. I realized I needed to do a better job of communicating to my team how our projects are aligned to business strategy.

I developed a visual roadmap showing all our projects on a timeline and collaborated with business stakeholders to explain to the team how delivery of these projects in target timeframe will generate value for business. This exercise gave them a sense of purpose and magically average happiness score rose to above 7 over few weeks. We managed to deliver the projects on time. I strongly believe if I didn't have the insights from 'how people were feeling' those projects would have been at critical risk to meet the timeline because people simply weren't engaged.

Call to Action

Our happiness is a key ingredient in our productivity. Lets measure happiness to generate actionable insight so that we have engaged, inspired, happy teams thriving to make a difference.