Happiness and Workplace Influence

It’s no mystery that happy employees are more productive but unhappy employees can become extremely debilitated and unwilling to follow leaders.  This lack of influence leads to a breakdown in organizational morale, positional power and stability within organizations.

Crystal Miller wrote a great piece on Blogging4Jobs about how asserting influence is not a passive thing but takes active tactics to spread and promote environmental change within work environments to increase employee productivity and influence. Here are some of her best practices for leaders who want to promote happiness and maintain influence:

Be Passionate – people want to be led by someone with passion and conviction. Showcase your confidence and enthusiasm and it will be infectious.

Give Reciprocal Credits – rewards and recognition are still wise methods of asserting influence. Share public kudos, recognition, or even better – find out what is really meaningful to an individual and reward them accordingly.

Find Common Ground – help others find points of commonality when there is a disagreement. Bridge the gap, find a solution and be ready to deal with opposing views but allow people to be heard and you will garner influence.

Establish a Healthy Sense of Urgency – be a catalyst for change and encourage people to expand their comfort zones and try new things. Innovation can lead to new opportunities.

Maintain Peace & Flexibility – it takes 30 days to create sustainable change in a person so don’t expect immediate results when implementing new things. Influence is lost when resolve is not kept.

Put Others First – followers want to believe that their leaders really care about them. Be authentic and use your influence to create a harmonious work environment that is selfless so all team members have buy-in, accountability and a sense of value regardless of rank.