This episode is part of the Happiness Reset at Work campaign, where Klaudia introduces you to 5 drivers that contribute to building more satisfaction in our careers so that you can reconnect and re-energise with your work in 2025. 

The 1st driver of happiness at work is: Autonomy. Described as the freedom to control our tasks and decisions, autonomy plays a crucial role in our job satisfaction and overall happiness.

Tune in to learn how building more autonomy at work can help you create a more fulfilling and impactful work life.

Hello Happiness seekers. My name is Klaudia and you are listening to the Happiness Challenge.

In those episodes, I will bring you the science behind each driver with a set of reflective questions, some hands on ideas to implement in your working life, and a piece of expert advice.

Follow me on LinkedIn and join my new substac newsletter to receive a summary of each driver and also to get free tickets to a webinar on the science of happiness that I'll be hosting in February.

And finally, if you would like to dive deeper, join my new masterclass program online to build your individual action plan to create more fulfillment and impact at work.

There are only 15 places available and you can sign up at happinesschallenge.co.uk courses and in this episode, we dive into the first driver of happiness at Work.

Autonomy Autonomy, simply known as freedom at work, refers to the degree to which we feel we have control over our work and the decisions that affect our roles.

And it really includes everything from having flexibility in when and how tasks are completed to being involved in some decision making processes that shape our work environment. I often say that the best way to think about autonomy at work is to contrast it with the complete opposite, micromanagement.

The moment we think about micromanagement, we feel it really feels stifling and limiting and it makes us feel conscious, like very, very conscious of what we do and how. While autonomy, completely opposite, it gives us that space to focus on what matters and can really spark that creativity and innovation.

And research consistently shows that greater autonomy leads to higher levels of job satisfaction.

So when we feel that we have autonomy in our role, we will take ownership of our work and we tend to be more motivated, engaged, and ultimately happier. And if you're thinking great, I would love to have more autonomy in our role, what can I do to improve that factor?

It's very important to understand that there is one specific factor that influences the level of autonomy at work, and that is the level of trust we receive from our leaders and colleagues.

And if you pause for a moment, it really makes sense that if people don't trust us that we can deliver on a specific project, or that we don't maybe even have the right skills to make the most beneficial decisions, then we won't have Much autonomy of how we work. So in order to increase our autonomy, we need to be thinking how much trust we building and how much trust we have with people around us.

And here we can refer to a fantastic research by Francis Frey. Trust trungle. In that model, there are specific three components that can help us to build trust in our relationships. And these are being authentic.

So this is about being genuine and transparent.

So at work this could look like being open and transparent on what we are working on, what we are spending our time on, and what is the progress on our goals and tasks. It's also about keeping our promises and being consistent in how we act as colleagues. The second component of building more trust is ability.

This component highlights the importance of making our skills visible so people can see that we are good at what we do.

Because again, it really makes sense that if people see that we have a fantastic skill set that enhances our credibility and therefore gives us more trust. And with more trust, we have more autonomy to be making the key decisions.

And the final component that can help us to gain more trust from people is empathy. Empathy involves understanding and acknowledging the feelings and perspectives of other people.

When people feel we care for them, we are interested in what they want to say. We are more likely to be trusted by them.

And balancing these three elements is crucial for building and maintaining trust at any relationship at work. The moment one component is lacking that can negatively impact trust.

I personally really love this model of trust strangle because when I deal with, let's say, more tricky stakeholders, I often ask myself, which component of trust triangle is missing and how can I improve it? But overall, the idea here is that by building more trust with people around us, we can gain more autonomy in our roles.

Now I have six reflective questions for you to think about autonomy at work. So I think it's very beneficial to just sit down, think about those questions to kind of understand. How much autonomy do you feel you have at work?

How could you potentially increase it? What could you change? So, first question, how much autonomy do you have in prioritizing the tasks you want to do?

Second question, if it were up to you, how would you spend your time at work? What activities and tasks would you engage in? Third question, how transparent are you when making decisions or completing tasks?

Number four, how often do you share your achievements with others to be able to demonstrate your abilities at work? Number five, how visible are your strengths to the stakeholders that matter around you?

And number six, who are the right stakeholders for you to gain their trust to build more autonomy? Again, you don't have to answer all of these questions, but I think they really prompting us to think about autonomy.

What does it mean at work for us and how maybe different elements of autonomy are lacking and how can we change that? So thank you so much for listening to the Happiness Reset Campaign network.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with someone who might find it beneficial. And I always say that often we are maybe in tricky situations at work, but we always have freedom and autonomy to take a deep breath.

So if you up for learning more on how breath work can help you to create more freedom and space in your work, listen to episode 124 briefing your way to Happiness the Power of Breathwork with Isabel Chu. But I hope to see you at the next episode 134 where I will share more practical hacks on gaining more autonomy and freedom at work.

So until next time, keep being free and the wonderful spirit that you are and I see you at the next episode. Bye.