How Positive Leaders Use Purpose and Meaning to Create Extraordinary Organizations with Kim Cameron Part 2

The extent to which people were exposed to a positive leader was the single most important predictor in well being, innovation, productivity and interestingly, the most interesting finding, family well being. That is, it was outside of work impact that made such a big difference. We ought to pay attention to this. We ought to take this seriously.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Hello friends. I'm Ashish Kothari, the CEO of Happiness Squad and I welcome you to our podcast where we share practical tips to make flourishing your competitive edge and help you achieve stellar performance powered by well being, not at its expense. I'm on a mission to help a billion people not just experience happiness as an emotion, but use it as a tool to unlock their fullest potential. If you're interested in learning how to make happiness your competitive edge, make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter@happinesssquad.com today I'm honored to record the second part of our two part series podcast with one of my big time heroes in the field of human flourishing and positive leadership, Dr. Kim Cameron. Kim is one of the co founders of the center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan and he has dedicated his career to studying the power of virtues like gratitude, kindness and compassion in the workplace. With over 130 academic journals, articles and 15 books, Kim is recognized globally as one of the top 10 organizational flourishing scholars. In this episode, Kim and I explore the transformative power of positive leadership. Four key pillars, positive meaning, climate, relationships and communications. We dive into leaders and how leaders can create a thriving work environment and practical strategies to foster gratitude, compassion, mindfulness and unlock the full potential of their organizations through positive, energizing leadership. Join us as we uncover how these principles lead to greater well being, resilience and and sustainable and transformative success for individuals and organizations alike. Kim, I'm so excited. Welcome back for part two of our Positive Leadership episode here on the Happiness Squad podcast. Thank you for being so generous with your time.

Oh my goodness. It's an honor. It's a, a delight. I'm flattered and I'm an admirer of yours, Ashish. This is, this is a wonderful opportunity for me.

So today, you know Kim, we talked in the last episode about what positive leadership is. You know, this notion of virtuousness, this notion of heliotropic effects that it creates, how it actually drives, you know, positive deviance performance. I want to get into the four key pillars that I find, you know, so inspirational, so powerful, the science behind them and the stories that capture that really bring this to life. And those four pillars you talk so much about are positive meaning, positive climate, positive relationships, and positive communications. So maybe we start with positive meaning and just hear from you. What does your research suggest around why positive meaning is so important in the workplace?

Well, thanks for this opportunity. I have a colleague who has written a book on purpose and meaning. He's in the Health Department, Health Management Department of Michigan. He has a book that's a really good summary of all kinds of studies, lots of little studies. I'm going to give you a story in a minute, but here's a long list. If you have significant meaning in your work, in your life, if there's a profound purpose for which you're engaging what you're doing, lots of interesting outcomes occur, including life expectancy, fewer diseases, certainly less chronic diseases, more money earned in a lifetime, happier families, more successful marriages, and so on social media. So all that research is pretty compelling. You know, there's more recent work done with people who have a spiritual foundation, whose life is centered in something profound, spiritually profound. And sure enough, they're more generous again, they live longer, they live happier lives, they're more fulfilled and so on. There's all kinds, all kinds of research about that. The research I like a lot has to do with identifying meaning that has an impact on other people's lives. I mean, I was this morning, I was on a zoom call with people in the Army Intelligence, military intelligence function, and they're interested in trying to become much more facile, much more integrated into AI. They believe that AI, I mean, essentially there are some who believe we're in World War Three. It happens to be a cyber war, not a bullet.

Yes.

And so if we're not savvy, if we're not leading the pack in AI, and we're not now, we're lagging in many areas. You know, we could be speaking a different language in 20 years and so on. Well, turns out, by the way, people are willing to give up a quarter of their earnings in order to have meaningful work.

Absolutely.

That matters a lot. The idea that I'm doing something for someone else has big impact on, on human beings. I'll give you Some examples, I have a colleague at the University of Michigan, a psychology professor who took entering freshmen at Michigan. She asked them to identify their goals for the year. Now everybody has lots of goals. But she categorized the goals into two types. One type was called achievement goals. I want to get good grades, I want a girlfriend, I want to make the team, I want to whatever, be popular. The other kind of goal was called contribution goals. I want to make a difference, I want to have cont. I want to contribute to something else that helps somebody get better. Something is better because I've contributed. Everybody has both kinds of goals, but some people are dominated by one, some are dominated by the other. So she put people in two groups depending on which type of goal is dominant. Then she simply followed these students for one year, one academic year, measuring things like, for example, how well they got along with the roommates, how many times they got elected to a club office, popularity kind of measure, social factors, how many minor physiological symptoms they experience, got the flu, got headache, missed class, you know, got cramps, whatever. Physical factors, cognitive academic factors, what their grade point average was at the end of each semester, what their test scores were. So academic factors. On every single dimension, contribution goals were more productive than achievement goals. In predicting their success socially, physically, cognitively or academically. That is, it's the contribution they made to other people that mattered the most that were down to their own benefit, not to mention others benefit. That's also typical of several psychological studies. One of them, for example, they took multiple sclerosis patients. Half of these people were assigned to receive a phone call once a week from somebody expressing love, support and concern. The other half of these people were assigned to place a phone call to somebody else expressing love, support and concern to them. Two years later they measured self efficacy, confidence, confidence, physical activity, hope, depression, I can't remember the other eight fold difference. Those people who placed the phone call were eight times healthier than those people who received the phone call. That is the contribution to somebody else redounded to their own benefit. And that's so typical. If I can find something that I care about and I make it available to someone else, that is. I'm not doing this just to be famous. I'm not doing this just to make sure everybody knows who I am or any of that. Rather, if I feel like I have a meaning, a purpose, something that will improve humanity, that will improve my children, that will improve my spouse, that will improve my relationship, even on a temporary basis, it has big impact. It pays off.

You know, I love, I love those Examples. You know, Kim, so much of research that you're talking about, right. Highlights the power of when people find meaning, how much better they are in terms of the outcomes they experience. Right. So. And, you know, we. I've. It's interesting. So I was doing this research when, you know, when we were at McKinsey, when I was at McKinsey, and we find. Right. Like that. When you look at that study, 85, 90% of the people at senior leader levels find meaning in what they're doing. That drop number drops to like 10, 15, 16, 20% in frontline.

Wow.

So if you're a leader, you know, what are some ways in which, you know, of course, people can find meaning outside work, but I always say, you know, you spend most of your time at work.

That's right.

Why. So as a leader, recognizing how important meaning is, what are two or three strategies that people can use to help people connect more meaning to what they do every day at work?

So it's a wonderful question, and there are many answers. I'm not sure I'm. I've got all the. All the answers or the right answers, but here's some examples. One option is to provide or offer mentoring, coaching assistance, you know, benefit to somebody else who is struggling or needs it. I mean, one of the best examples I know is an organization where when people do something well, they get a reward. But the biggest reward they get is they get a chance to coach or teach or present in front of senior executives. Here's the things that occurred, and it's not me. It's. Here's the recognition that my people are deserving or something that is, you get a chance to make somebody else's life better. That's sort of one example. I can do that. Here's. Here's another. In my hometown, Ann Arbor, Michigan, there's a delicatessen. It's rated as one of the best delicatessens in the country. It's called Zingerman's.

Oh, yes.

Zingerman's has an interesting philosophy. They hold weekly meetings with the employees. So let's say we have somebody who's the greeter or somebody who's a sandwich maker, somebody who's. It's the. Buys the cheese, somebody who's a dishwasher, somebody who's a busboy, cleans up and so on. They all get together. We have a whiteboard with a bunch of items on it. The items are like, things like this. How many dishes did we break this week? What was the total amount of tips we got this week? How long did it take us from the order to make the sandwich and deliver it to the customer and so on. So, dishwasher, you're in charge of line one. How many dishes do we break this week? You report on that, but the most important part of the report is, here's my idea for improving that number next week. How many tips do we get this week? Person reader does responds on that. Here's my idea for surprising and delighting customers just a bit more, increasing tips and so on. Everybody has a chance to contribute to make the organization, make their colleagues better. I mean, there's a bunch.

I love that idea. Wow.

Small things. So, you know, not hard, they're not costly. It doesn't. You don't have to buy things to give folks. You know, it's just a matter of saying we can identify ways to contribute. I have a friend who's. He's the founder and CEO of an organization. He learned about some of this, and so he said, we're going to close the company for one day and we're going to have a volunteer day is truly a volunteer day. You don't have to come, but we're going to have a connection with Habitat and City Year and Salvation army and a bunch of organizations. And if you volunteer, we'll have you come and you'll just spend a day helping these various organizations. Helping in these various organizations. He didn't, you know, he thought, well, you know, there are a lot of people are going to take this day off and go home or have, have family time or take a vacation. 88% of his employees volunteered. He was dumbfounded. Anyway, they did this volunteer day. It was pretty expensive to shut the place down for one day, but he felt like it was important to do. About nine months later, he had a group of employees come into his office and they said, we're trying to schedule when is our volunteer day this year? He said, no, no, we didn't expect to do this again. It was pretty expensive. No, no, no. They said, you absolutely have to have a volunteer day. We demand a volunteer day. So once a year, he closes his place, closes his business, and I have a volunteer day. I mean, it's, you know, those.

I love it, I love it. And it's so powerful, right? Like this notion of, you know, people bond over happy hours, drinking, you know, alcohol and like, big meal, whatever, whatever. And I think, to me, I think creating opportunities where we serve together, where we do things together, I think those stick with us for much longer because they're tuning and creating Space for our humanity to truly arise, to connect. I love the contribution example of helping people contribute meaningfully to make a difference to what we are trying to do. And also really making it okay to say, you know, if things are like, I can't imagine any place where how many plates did you break? Would people try and like not tell the real number? Because they're like, we're doing it to kind of shame. But here it's like, okay, we're looking to ideas, right? What can you improve? You know, at McKinsey, we used to have a values day once a day, Kim. Once a day every year, the whole firm around the around. We had like at one, you know, when I left, I think we had about 60,000 employees. I think 70 or 80 offices. Every office, one day, the whole firm shut down.

Wow.

The whole firm shut down. Everyone. Whether you were client service or support. And that whole day was dedicated. We called it Values Day. And it was dedicated partly to having a conversation about how we are living our values. The second part was around how are we contributing? So like service, there was a service element of it in the community. And then the third part was about community building and connections. Right? So it was just, you know, heart, service, kindness, connect with others and connect with each other. It was so, so, so powerful. I've been to Zingerman's. Their food is amazing. They are people, employees. I've never seen more happier, you know, environment in which to work.

It's an amazing place, you know, founded by a couple of, couple of former hippies.

Well, let's shift gears a bit and let's talk about the second big element, which is what you call positive climate. And you know, you say positive climate is a work environment in which positive emotions predominate over negative emotions. And I like it. It's. We will always have negative emotions. But is the ratio of positive to negative, that is more positive. So talk to me a little bit around again the impact from consciously even measuring, hey, are we net positive energy or are we more of a negative energy place? What have you seen? What does the research say around that? The impact of that? I think intuitively we get one will be better. But is there research backing that? I'm curious about that?

There's lots, there's lots of research about the difference between a positive energy, pleasant, cohesive, loving culture versus hostility, anger, rigidity and so on in the United States right now. Gee, I just don't like it. I'm going to be so happy when this election's over. Yes, every newscast, every Headline in the newspaper is caustic and antagonistic and hostile and, oh, goodness, it's. It's really unpleasant. I hope we get past this. I really do. And the reason is that, you know, this. This is from our first conversation. There is something called a heliotropic effect. Human beings inherently flourish, grow in the presence of positive energy.

Yes.

And positive energy comes from all kinds of things. But for example, virtuousness, the kinds of virtues that we believe represent the best of the human condition, almost always help organizations flourish. For example, I know some organizations where every single employee, including some organizations where there are thousands of employees, every employee is given a notebook or a journal and they're told, this is your gratitude journal. We want every single person keeping a gratitude journal. What does that mean? That means write down every day three things for which you're grateful or the three best things that happen to you today. And as it turns out, there's a whole long list of studies of gratitude. Do you know about it?

Yes.

Where heart rhythms change. I mean, I have a friend who works for organization. They study heart rhythms. He simply shows the pattern of a heart rhythm. When you're in a gratitude or positive state versus a neutral or frustrated state.

Yeah, it's very jagged versus super smooth sinusidal waves.

That's true. The result of that is that people live much longer. I mean, that classic study of nuns living in a convention.

Yeah, you mentioned that last time around. You know, how they did so much, why they entered and what they were. Yeah. Oh my God. I thought that was crazy because the life conditions were the same after that.

That's exactly right. A wonderful study. They lived longer. I mean, seven years longer, something like that. So that's another. There are a number of places I know a CEO and an organization who. And he had between two and three thousand employees. He took over as the CEO after they had just lost $210 million the two years before. So he took over and he did a whole bunch of positive 1% practices, one of which was he assigned every employee to positively embarrass somebody every day. What does that mean? That means compliment somebody in front of somebody else who cares. Yet some people came to him and said, wow, that's kind of silly. It's kind of superficial, it's kind of uncomfortable, blah, blah, blah. He said, I don't care if you do it. You're going to unleash potential. You're going to help people feel confident and competent. You're going to help people feel like they're recognized. You're going to unleash potential and energy we don't even know exists. Bingo. Sure enough, in 12 months, a $90 million turnaround in that organization. And that was just one of several 1 percenters. But the idea is let's create an acclimate where people say, geez, I love this. I really enjoy being here, you know.

Enjoying this episode. If you think someone you know could benefit from these insights, why not share. Share the podcast with them right away. A quick share could make a big difference in someone's day. Thanks for spreading the happiness and being part of this happiness revolution with us. Yeah, no, I love this, Kim. And you know, it's the. One of the things I always encourage my clients to do in this space is, you know, everybody has, you know, there are tons of people who do once a month, a year, they do employee appreciation, you know, or member appreciation or manager appreciation. You know, Wayfair has one of the manager appreciation weeks. They always do it before the holiday season because they're going to run these guys racket in the holiday season. Right. Especially when it comes to call centers. And I always say, why do you do it once a year? How about doing it every week? You know, we connect as a team every week. We talk about, you know, targets and where we are. So if we made two tweaks every week, think about what happens. Number one, instead of starting the conversation with here's the gap to target, why don't we start the conversation with here's the gain from last week on what we have gained. Right? Everybody can see the gap. You don't need to point the gap. Right. But what did we gain? And let's celebrate that. Yes. And the second is who. Who are the three people who made the biggest impact? Who you think came up above and beyond? And what if we actually recognize them as a team? Not just on the team, but like, you know, people who might be working for the people on the team and have somebody two levels up call them or send them a note and say, hey, listen, I really appreciated how you stood up and here's what you did, and here was the impact and thank you. So that becomes a part of work rather than this thing that frankly, nobody. They're like, oh, yeah, here we go again. This month again, we're going to get something and then we're going to basically, for 11 months of the year, nobody knows us.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. We start every meeting in our research center, just going around the meeting, all the attendees, each person identifies the best thing that happened to them last week or the thing they want to celebrate or that is we just inject a little positive energy in the meeting before we ever start. And what we discover is problems sometimes go away or they get resolved easily or we get good ideas that we wouldn't have otherwise. I mean, injecting some positive energy in the system just to start is always. Yeah, one.

I love it. I love it. You know, I've been trying to get companies to start with one mindful minute just as a way to kind of. Right. And oftentimes, you know, I people don't do it because I don't know, people still have this thing with meditation and mindfulness and I just tell them, take six breaths. But I'm going to try this, Kim. I'm going to say, okay, maybe you don't feel comfortable starting a meeting with one mindful minute. Instead, why don't you go around and have everybody just say, what's one positive thing that has happened to them last week?

I love it. I love it.

That is, that is really great. I mean, I can just imagine because in effect what you're creating both from listening to other people and telling your story is you are basically directly going back to your heart rate variability and, you know, heart math work. You're basically getting into a more positive space, which is the space for more creativity, more connection, and frankly, a bigger space to navigate the hard conversations we want to have.

It's true. And it's a good example. There's a woman who was, who's a senior level officer in the FBI headquartered in Washington, D.C. her office was there. She learned about all this and decided that. And she had. Her office was at one of those offices with a big glass wall that looked out on an open area. She decided to simply go out on the outside of her wall and write gratitude wall across the top of her glass. Didn't say anything, didn't announce anything, just wrote gratitude wall. By the end of the day, several people had written things on her wall that were acknowledging somebody or something for which they were grateful. At the end of the week, it was plastered and there were two or three other gratitude walls that emerged in FBI headquarters. I've been close to a university down in Monterey, Mexico. You walk in the administration building, the very first thing you see is a gratitude wall where they can write and acknowledge and so on. So, you know, part of it is part of positive climate is simply doing small things that are uplifting to people. I hope people said, gee, I like this. And as you mentioned, it unleashes all kinds of energy, creativity, cohesion and so on. Communication channels are more available and more frequent and so on.

So, you know, I have a question, Kim. So equally important, right? If I think about our engagement with each other, you know, gratitude, compassion, you know, these are things that lift energy. But I often, you know, run into the reality of most organizations today is the conflicts, politics, conflicts, long term resentments that exist between functions. You know, marketing, R and D, manufacturing things. Marketing people are just, you know what, like they keep creating all these variants that may. Like hell. Everybody thinks procurement is just trying to cheapen the product and save the money. The R and D guys have their own things, right? So you have all of these moods of resentment, oftentimes resignation. And then you also have all these conflicts that happen that drain energy. What are some of the things you find are actions that leaders can take to not avoid conflict? Because I do believe conflict is good for innovation, but do it in a way that, you know, it doesn't drain us.

One of the reasons that I got involved with and interested in this concept of positive energy or especially positively energizing leadership is because it's one of those things that empirically it accounts for a lot of variance. In one particular study, for example, the extent to which people were exposed to a positive leader was the single most important predictor in well being, innovation. Oh shoot. Productivity. And interestingly, the most interesting finding, family well being. That is, it was outside of work impact that made such a big difference.

Wow.

So it's not hard to say we ought to pay attention to this. We had to take this seriously. It's not just sing a happy tune and walk around with a smile on your face. You know, there really are honest to goodness outcomes that matter a lot. So positive energy. Well, positive energizing leaders. I did a study where I interviewed 600 people, all of whom were identified as positive leaders, positive energizing leaders, and simply identified the attributes of those leaders that they identified. Now there's a long list, but it goes. And there's nothing that takes priority over something else. But here are some of the examples that they said. One of them is positively energizing leaders help other people flourish without expecting a return. That is, they tend to be generous. It's the contribution notion. You know, they tend to see opportunities as opposed to roadblocks. Have to do both. But they're on the hunt for opportunities. Small things, they simply smile, they have a pleasant look on their face, they tend to greet people. I mean, that's not tough, you know, they are individuals who help other people exceed their expectations in terms of performance. They help you be better than you thought you could be. That's what the best coaches in athletics do. They help players become better than they expected or that they assumed, you know, they are people who tend to be forgiving. That doesn't mean excusing, doesn't mean forgetting, doesn't mean minimizing, doesn't mean, oh, doesn't matter at all. Rather, it's people who turn mistakes, errors into learning opportunities. Let's think about another way, or let me give you some hints, or it may give you an opportunity to practice or whatever. But anyway, the whole notion is I'm not going to hold your career accountable. I'm going to help you become a lot better because of errors and mistakes. I was interested recently in hearing discussion by a former very famous college football coach at the University of Alabama, Nick Saban. There are many people who say Saban was the best college coach of his era, won a national championship multiple times and so on. When somebody asked him one of the, one of his secrets, he said, I always tell my players and my coaching staff, everybody else, to prepare for the next opportunity. What that means is don't fret about the mistakes we just made. Don't worry about and kick yourself because you just screwed up. Rather prepare for the next opportunity. In football, that's the next down, it's the next quarter, it's the next score, whatever. Always looking positively toward what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? I just thought it was very powerful.

Yeah. Quite opposite, right to organizations where we look at failures as like, what did we mess up? Instead you're saying, what's something we can learn and move forward?

I mean, you're, you're way ahead of the pack and things you're doing Ashish. And it's, and it's laudable and you need to be congratulated. But one of the things that's helpful is to know that there's a lot of scientific research that confirms this. Not very many books appear on the shelf that say, here's the evidence. If you do this, it pays off. Most of the time it's storytelling and inspirational events, but you've been way ahead of the pack. But having a lot of scientific evidence, empirical data that says do this, you.

Get what you want and you get this.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, one place where that is even more clear across any place is the power of positive relationships and high quality connections. And I think at the center, you know, you and Jane and so many others have done such an amazing body of work. So share a little bit with our listeners in your own words. Right. The power of positive relationships, the positive connections, and how as a leader we can start to harness that potential. I mean, it's unbelievable.

It is unbelievable. And you've had Jane talk to you and many others about high quality connections, not to mention longer term relationships. I mean, there's just an overwhelming amount of data that says that human beings literally at the cellular level and even at the DNA level, your DNA will fire differently in a loving, supportive relationship compared to the opposite.

Yeah.

And this work by Jane and others is so, in my opinion, so powerful because the difference between a relationship, which we can talk about in a minute and a quote, high quality connection, unquote, simply has to do with duration. For example, I can encounter, in our case, it's a post mistress. She delivers the mail and if we've been on vacation, she always brings it to the door because it's in a basket of some kind. That 20 second interaction often can be at least my, I'm hoping for her. It's like it is for me is just, it makes your day. It's a, it's an uplifting, elevating, wonderful, high quality connection of 20 seconds. And it happens. Walking down the aisle in a grocery store acknowledging somebody. I, the other day I was in a grocery store and there was a, a father, big gruff looking guy with a long beard. And you know, and I thought, gee, I don't want, I don't want to meet this guy in a D. He had with him probably a year and a half, maybe as old as 2 years old, but not any older than that. This sweet little girl just trying to learn how to walk and she was walking by herself and then it would grab his arm walking by himself. Anyway, it was this sweetest little thing. I took a picture, I said, hold on, I took a picture and then I asked him, put your email in my phone, I'll send this to you. I mean, that was just this wonderful little highlight, you know, it was a small connection. Both of us, I think, at least for me, walked away kind of a little, you know, one inch higher than we were before. So lots of physical, physiological data, hormonal data, all kinds of stuff we knew about. I saw something yesterday, I don't know where even where it was. It was an interview. He said he's actually done research with couples. A couple who on their way to work will kiss each other for six seconds versus those that don't end up living longer. And the question, and not only married longer and so on, but the question is why? And he said, it's endorphins, it's your hormonal system. Kissing somebody for six seconds unleashes. Who knew? I have no idea how legitimate that is. But he was. Oh, John Gottman is his name.

Yes.

Yeah. All right. Anyway, so those kind of things happen a lot. But in organizations where relationships matter a lot, simply being acknowledged by others, simply being loved by others, having feeling, compassion for or receiving compassion for others, all of those, we call them virtues. Virtue simply means the best of the human condition, the inherent goodness in all human beings. I'm just very convinced that people cannot resist that forever. They can resist for a time. You think about your children, they can go through a phase where, oh my goodness, it's difficult to deal with this crazy teenager, you know, but you can't. Nor, nor in a company can you resist loving, caring, compassion, generosity, trust. You can't resist that forever because it's not human. Human beings are inherently attracted to and respond to virtuous conditions. I think we talked about last time some children study, very, very young children before they learn anything else. They respond positively to that kind of behavior. So it's not tough. And an organization, I mean, it gets labeled as soupy and syrupy and saccharine, sweet, you know, toxic, positive. The camera near just telling me to smile and everything's going to be fine. It's not fine. Well, as it turns out, the research says it is fine. You earn more money. I mean, profitability literally goes up. We have a study done of an organ. Well, I'll tell you, the name of the company is Prudential Financial. I don't think I talked about this last time.

Yes, but tell me, please tell us the story.

If I told you that I don't need to repeat this story again. But the short version of the story is they had us come in and help them develop a positive culture. They made internal films of this for their in house, in house meetings and stuff. It was quite amazing. 5 times industry average growth. Profitability went up, productivity went up, you know, quality, all those kinds of things. And that's typical of many other studies we've done.

You know what I loved about that story also, Kim, was the fact that after the CEO change, it was so strong that it kept on. Right. So it's sustainable. You know, you talk about something as being a competitive advantage if it's not replicable and it's actually truly, you know, it's sticks On. And that was an example of that work that you all did, which is it had momentum beyond the leader because it becomes part of how the organization operates and how people relate to each other. I thought that was quite. I mean, I was still thinking about that on our trip when we were there. So if you're a leader, you're listening and saying, look, I operate under all these demands. I'm always busy. I'm trying to get stuff done. What might be two or three things that you would tell them around? Here's three actions you can take, and these are things that you can even weave into how you engage with others. Because a lot of people say, I don't have extra time to do this. But are there things that people can just change, modify how they approach people that they interact with every day? What might be those things you would recommend?

So the CEO of lg, the Korean conglomerate, came over and spent some time with us, learned about all this, went home, and he asked his assistant on his desk every day to place five cards. On one side of the card is printed thank you. On the other side is blank. He said, I've assigned myself every day to write five thank you notes, two or three lines to five different people in my organization. So he. Every day, Every day. He doesn't. Now, that was probably 10 years ago or so. And I asked him, are you still doing that? He said, absolutely. It's changed my whole organization because I'm so focused on problems, issues, difficulties, challenges. I force myself once a day to simply write five notes, something that I can congratulate or notice that I wouldn't notice otherwise if I didn't force myself. The CEO of Campbell's Soup was the CEO for former CEO Campbell. He was the CEO for 17 years. He didn't do it five times a day, but he wrote one note a day to somebody acknowledging them. Well, he had an assistant who went around the company noticing that those notes ended up on bulletin boards. They were framed. They were under the desk, under the glass, on people's desks. I mean, people hung around. Seventeen years later, this assistant went around the company, counted the number of notes that still existed that people had thrown away.

Wow.

4,000 notes. I mean, they were so important. I had somebody not long ago saying, by the way, I worked at Campbell Soup. And what happened is other people began doing the same thing. It sort of spread through the organization.

Yeah, you know, you highlight this thing, Kim. So one of the research during the big Covid post. Covid. During the COVID world, was this research that was done at McKinsey by one of my colleagues, Bonnie Dowlin, and a couple of other folks. And, you know, that we looked at, it was called Great Attraction or Great Resignation. That was the name of the article. And we looked at the top reasons why people leave or what thing matter to employees versus what matters to companies, or what people think matters versus what matters. And, you know, being valued showed up. No surprise is one of the top things. And so when this exercise is reminding me back to these simple practices, if we actually acknowledge and show people that they matter, you know, as common sense as it appears and it sounds, is so not common practice.

It's true. It's surprising. I think we mentioned last time that survey done by the Greater Good Soci Greater Good center in Berkeley. 10% of employees express gratitude or acknowledgement to somebody every day, and 60% never do. Most people do not acknowledge, do not congratulate, do not include, do not highlight another human being in their entire work setting. So, oh, goodness, these are not. These are cost free. They're not very difficult. I mean, to write a note takes you three or four minutes. But that's, you know, we waste three or four minutes a day doing all kinds of other things. There's another study done. It's. I like it. It's. It's a study done of people who had been clinically diagnosed with severe depression. Part of the therapy, I mean, they all went to therapy. Part of this group was assigned to write a gratitude letter to somebody once a week for three weeks. That was it. That was the only intervention. Two years later, they then went back and traced these people in terms of the extent to which they had continued to struggle with depression and so on. Turns out those who wrote the gratitude letter, and by the way, only 27% of them sent the letter. It wasn't receiving it, it was writing it. Those people who wrote the gratitude letter had not only licked depression, but that intervention was more powerful and succeeding than all of the other therapy they'd received. That is, simply writing it down was the thing that mattered.

Wow.

You know, if you. One other example, if one of the things I can do is to say, ashish, you're so spectacular. You're doing such a great job, having such a big impact. Congratulations. And I can then write a letter to your family in which I say, look, you got to be so proud of your spouse, your son, your dad, he is spectacular. He's doing such a wonderful job in our organization. We feel so grateful that he's here. I mean, we just want to thank you for lending the time of your spouse, your son, your dad. So he not only hears it from me, now he hears it from the most important people in his life. I mean, that lasts for a year for Evans.

Wow, that's so powerful.

Cost you 10 minutes. But so there are lots of small things.

Well, we're going to put the links of the books that I was just sharing with you and they're filled, you know, positive leadership, practicing positive leadership, another book filled with so many of these interventions. I love how practical they are. There is the positively energizing leadership, virtuous actions and relationships. I love how practical these things are and how easy to do they are.

Well, you're very kind. You are very kind.

Well, they are my go to. They're completely as I was sharing with you, Mark, I've read them multiple times over. I wish I had discovered this work, you know, 10 years ago. I only discovered it a year, year and a half ago. And as I was sharing with you, friends, you should really check this work out. I'm on a mission to make sure every person who is a people leader, whether they are in HR or not, it doesn't matter. Any person who's a people leader, you're a line leader, you're a commercial leader, you're an operations leader. I'm on a mission to make sure that everyone actually gets a chance to know about this work and tries. Even if you try one thing, you know, in the next year, you take one idea and you implement it, you will see the positive impact on your organizations, both in terms of how people feel, but more importantly, what together you're able to achieve. So that's the mission I'm on. Kim, I'm so grateful. Thank you for spending the time with us, sharing your wisdom, your life's work. I am blessed to have you in my life.

I feel the same toward you. You're a role model. Thank you so very much. Thanks for the chance to be with you.

Thank you, Kim. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more. More joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.