Transcript from Video
Hello, fellow connections on LinkedIn. It's Mike here.
I hope you're all having a fantastic day.
Over the next three months, I'm gonna be putting out two videos a week on how to be a happy manager or people leader.
And we're gonna call it the happy manager video series.
The reason for this is twofold. It's hiding with our vision a bit happy,
which is every employee happy, and every business thriving,
and that's got lots of other reasons behind it as well.
And secondly, I have the privilege of working with lots of different managers
and people leaders, and senior staff across a wide range of businesses,
different in different industries. And I recognize this as being an issue.
Man being a manager's a difficult job, being a people leader's a difficult job,
and lots of managers and leaders are struggling with their own health,
with their own happiness, which means that that passes down to the people
because culture travels downwards. so I recognize a need for it.
Also, we've got lots of data coming out showing us that generally throughout the UK levels of health and levels of engagement are relatively poor,
really poor, really low. So it's a big problem. It's affecting our businesses. It's affecting our personal lives. It's affecting our economy.
And I really do believe that managers and people leaders are the key to solving this.
Now, of course, business strategy has an impact as well,
and there's a lot of responsibility that lies with the business.
But ultimately, if our people that are leading people know how to be happy
and how to be healthy and how to enjoy their work,
that's gonna have a positive effect around them.
What do we mean by happiness? Well,
for me, happiness doesn't mean feeling ticking,
jumping, jumping with joy all day every day.
It's actually more of a feeling of contentment and peace.
And in regard to the workplace, I like to define happiness
as a combination of engagement and health.
So are we healthy? Are we able to look after our health to our own standards that we're happy with?
And are we enjoying our work? If we're able to get those two things right,
chances are we're pretty happy. Of course, other things are
gonna happen now largely we've got no effect over it.
If we can take care of those two things. Chances are we're gonna be happier than most
and feel that level of contentment.
So why is in this first video,
what I wanna talk about is why it's
so important now for managers
and people leaders to be able to promote and look after their own happiness.
in health, they're in engagement, they're in motivation levels.
Because many of us start our careers in the field,
doing technical, whatever it might have been.
And then five, ten, fifteen years later,
we've to point at leading a lot of people,
and we've also found ourselves feeling a level of responsibility for the health of these people, the mental health, the physical health. the happiness.
And this is a new thing. This is a really new thing in society.
So why is it a new thing? And this is all I wanna cover in this video.
So another minute on this before we go into tactics and tips on further videos.
If we go back in time fifty, to one hundred years were more in the industrial revolution.
Most of our jobs were sedentary. They were sorry.
We were active. Most of our jobs required us to do repetitive physical tasks over and over again.
Jobs were also scarce. So a manager's job historically was to
get somebody to do a repetitive task over
and over again to a high standard to as much volume as can possibly be done in that time.
Because there was a lack of jobs available,
people weren't gonna leave that job manager didn't have to keep the people motivated,
really didn't have to think about that. I'm sure a good manager would have,
but they didn't have to think about that because people were gonna stick around because they just appreciated, having a job. The customers weren't the staff weren't customer-facing, so they didn't have to be engaged and motivated for that.
The staff didn't have to be innovative and think of new ways of doing things because the competition was slow.
So a manager's job is really to get people to do stuff over and over again.
Couldn't be any different today. And then,
also, we've got the health piece. So if we think about health,
historically, a base. This is the biggest change that we've seen
in a society that I think people are noticing.
And that is fifty years ago,
less than fifty years ago, a baseline of health was a byproduct of life.
It was built into life because we had to
move for work We had to eat wholesome natural foods
because that was all that was available in processed foods.
We're not available widely yet. We'd
most for slept relatively well because we didn't have the distractions that we have today.
We talked to people regularly because we didn't have mobile phones in to put us off from doing that. So a baseline of health was built into life.
So the manager and staff didn't really have to think about it.
that can be any different. All of those things that contribute to good health are now an option
and in fact, society encourages us not to do them.
We're encouraged to eat processed food. We sit down for our jobs most of the time.
We don't talk to people because we spend time on the internet.
So health is no longer something that happens,
not even that baseline of health. It's something that has to be created through conscious design. And that falls on our feet as managers
because if we're not taking time to look after our health and our happiness.
Employees are gonna see what we're doing and they're gonna copy that.
That's the simple truth of things. Employees do what we do.
If we're finding ways to look after ourselves,
to look after our health, our physical health,
our mental health, to work, but still work in a way that's highly productive.
The staff is gonna start looking up to Now that is the unusual thing today.
It's very unusual to find people that are able to look after their health,
enjoy their work, and work to a high standard without running out.
That's a rarity because it's got to happen by design.
Most people are still just trying to go about things the way they used to,
which means that they either have suffered at the expense of their work,
or but when we're able to do that, we certainly exceptions
and that's why we believe that being happy is the key to happier businesses,
better businesses, happier people in a better future.
So over the next three months,
we're gonna be putting out two videos a week, giving you tips on how to achieve that,
how to be healthy, how to enjoy your work
and how to work to a high standard without letting your work-life balance be affected.
If there's anything you'd like to see as we're going through this video series,
please do comment below because obviously, it's much more engaging
for me and feels more like a feeling
for me when I've got people interacting and telling me that's what they'd like to like to hear more on.
But the content that we're producing is based on tons of feedback from tons of
people that we were with over the past three years.
Want to find out how well you're currently set up to support your managers & discover the best next steps?
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Mike Jones Better Happy Founder
Mike founded Better Happy in 2018.
He now works with a variety of businesses ranging from small accountancies up to large organisations such as Travelodge on improving employee happiness. Mike's vision and the vision of Better Happy is 'Every employee happy, every business thriving'