As 2026 begins, Rich and Dave tackle a question many leaders avoid but feel deeply: How happy is my team really… and what role am I playing in that?

A recent 2025 report states that just over half (51%) of UK workers are frequently happy in their jobs, a quarter (25%) often don't feel appreciated, and 22% feel undervalued at work.

Moving beyond perks, incentives and short-term fixes, this conversation breaks workplace happiness down into five core leadership conditions that consistently drive engagement, wellbeing and performance: meaning, autonomy, progress, connection and fairness.

Drawing on research, real leadership experience and everyday situations, Rich and Dave explore the two forces every leader can shape; the eco-systems people work in and the mindsets they bring to work, and why small leadership shifts often produce the biggest results.

This is a grounded, honest and practical discussion about what it truly takes to build teams that are not only happier, but stronger, more resilient and more effective in the year ahead.

Key Talking Points

1. Why perks, benefits and wellbeing initiatives rarely fix disengagement, and what moves the needle
2. The two forces every leader can shape (whether they realise it or not): systems and mindset
3. Meaning and purpose: how leaders create the “golden thread” between daily work and real-world impact
4. Autonomy without abdication: building trust, confidence and ownership without micromanagement
5. Why progress and mastery mean people feel they’re getting better, not just getting through.
6. Connection and belonging, and why psychological safety is the number one predictor of team performance
7. Fairness and recognition, people don’t need constant praise, but they do need to believe effort is noticed and they are treated fairly
8. Practical leadership shifts that improve happiness, engagement and performance without adding pressure in 2026

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom, stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

So welcome once again to Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others. And Happy New Year to everybody, Rich. Happy New Year to you too.

Yeah. And to you, Dave. Yeah.

To everyone out there now, I say this is the first leadership unscripted episode of the year. Because actually the one that went out last week was recorded before Christmas.

And today, Rich, we're gonna talk about a subject which I think a lot of people tend to think about when they have time off at Christmas, which is, you know, how happy are they? How happy are they with their lives and their lot? So how do we have more happiness at work? That's the topic of today's podcast.

And I'm talking really about focusing on the stuff that really matters to people.

I'm not talking about whether you've got colorful beanbags in the office, whether your company gives you free quality coffee on tap, or whether on a Friday you get pizzas delivered. I mean, all these things, all these perks are really nice and lovely, but actually there's stuff that matters a lot more than that.

And I think that's where Rich and I want to focus today. As nice as these things can all be, leaders know that these things don't fix a lack of engagement in the workplace.

And I'm sure, Rich, you've seen that in previous jobs that you've had as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess what we ought to explore, Rich, with this is what are we really talking about?

Because we've got lots of capable, well intentioned leaders, but they still end up tired, frustrated, they have disengaged teams. And what can we do to help them change that? Yeah.

So we want to break this whole topic of happiness down into five core principles that we know through research and our own experience consistently links to higher levels of performance, retention, and well being. And we'll look at the two forces leaders always can always influence.

That's the system that people work in, the environment that they create, but also the mindset that those people bring to that environment. So we'll have a look at it from both those angles, and more importantly, we'll give you some practical ways to shift both the system and the mindset.

So I hope at the end of this episode you'll have a very clear set of usable Ideas that you can apply immediately to raise both happiness and performance in your team without adding any more pressure to your role. So, Rich, I guess the opening question for you is, how happy do you feel today?

Well, the sun's out. We had a bit of snow yesterday in Gloucester, which is very pretty. So, yeah, yeah, I'm feeling good. Feeling good. Looking forward to. To the new year.

It was nice to have a break, actually just have two weeks off, just, you know, chilling out, spending time with the family. So, yeah, I feel okay.

Yeah. And I guess for a lot of people, not, maybe not everybody, but spending time with family is something that makes some of us happy.

Although I am quite glad the girls are back at school now, but.

Yeah. So how are you, by the way? I should ask, shouldn't I?

Yeah, well, I guess if I was doing a sort of a check in, I'm probably a good 7 out of 10 at the moment. You know, I'm still trying to get some energy back after being poorly before Christmas, and that's 10 taking some time.

But now, generally speaking, like you, I've got a. I've got a positive outlook on the new year.

I know that the world's a difficult place at the moment, but we can very, very easily get wrapped up in the negative and forget there's a lot of positive out there, isn't there? And we can actually, we have some agency to create some positive.

And I think that's going to be the focus of our conversation this morning is how do we create that more positive, happy conditions where people can thrive. Yeah. So I've said in this, in that introduction, Rich, that happiness at work is about psychological conditions.

It's not about just the perks that we give people. And I mentioned there were two forces at play, the systemic factors.

So what I mean by that is the culture, the fairness, the autonomy, the accountability. It's those types of things. And we have an agency over how we create that stuff.

And the mindset factors, how people interpret and respond to the environment that we put them in. And leaders have an influence on both of those things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, something I'd add to that, Dave, is it's very easy for leaders. And I've experienced this myself when I was working in organizations.

When you have a team that's unhappy or say maybe a particular person in your team that's unhappy or perhaps a bit disengaged, it's very easy to blame that person's mindset. Now, one of the things we're trying to do here is to bring into play the systemic factors and the mindset factors.

So this is not belittling the fact that actually people in your teams and in your organizations need to take responsibility for their own response to the stressors in their environment. As leaders and managers, we can't control every aspect of the system that people work within.

But there are factors inside a leader's control in the system, in the organizational culture that can have a profound effect on people's happiness. And also I think it's important as leaders and managers to coach for that mindset stuff.

So how people respond to their environment, how they interpret their environment, how they develop skills like reframing and developing resilience, I think they're coachable skills that leaders and managers can do. So we're encouraging the both approaches systemic and the mindset coaching.

So I totally agree with you. Those are definitely things that are coachable.

I guess the other thing to throw in the mix here before we dive into principle one is do we spot when our people are unhappy? How easy is it to spot that our people are not happy?

Are we looking for and do we notice the signs maybe that our people aren't quite where they need to be?

Yeah.

And I think particularly it's important for leaders and managers to be cognizant of the fact perhaps a leader has been very successful in their career, so they've climbed maybe their career ladder, maybe they're paid well to do the job that they're doing. They're in a relatively senior position. So those factors can play into a leader's happiness if you like.

So don't assume just because you're happy and you've achieved a position in life and in your career actually where you feel that what you're doing is meaningful and purposeful, etc. Etc. That actually that means that your team are going to feel the same.

So I think it's really important to be sensitive to the fact that your mindset is not going to be the mindset that your team necessarily shares your perspective on the organization and the culture and the system is not necessarily going to be shared by your team.

And that's why I said in the introduction, Rich, why is it that capable, well intentioned leaders still end up with tired, frustrated and disengaged teams? Because we're not talking necessarily about this is a problem only for people who are poor leaders. This can happen to anybody.

And it is a case of, as you said, don't assume everyone sees the world like you do.

Yeah. And it plays into this emotional intelligence thing that we talk a lot about on the podcast.

You know, there's a danger in seeing emotional intelligence as just being about being self aware and the ability to self manage and self regulate. And to be sure, that's one facet of emotional intelligence. The other important facet of emotional intelligence is what we call social awareness.

So in other words, the sensitivity to which you can tune into other people and to be empathetic to their mindset.

So a person who would lack emotional intelligence would automatically project their own mindset onto their team and assume the team thinks and feels the same as they do. So an emotionally intelligent leader will tune in to other people's thoughts and feelings, regardless of their own thoughts and feelings.

So that's emotional intelligence.

Yeah, and I think you used a word there, which I'm increasingly understanding is something that's going to be very important for leaders to develop in the years ahead and that's empathy. Because I think with the way the world is at the moment, I don't think there's enough empathy in the workplace.

I think again, empathy is a skill that you can develop, but you have to be intentional about it. And I think the world needs a lot more empathy at the moment. And that's a skill that leaders really can develop.

Yeah, and I think that can play out.

We're not going to talk about this issue so much in this podcast, but if a leader is frustrated by some of the systemic and culture aspects of their organization and allow that frustration to seep into the way they deal with their team and team members and their one to one engagements, I mean, that's going to make your team unhappy because they're going to sense that frustration and they're going to feed off your frustration.

So the way you frame your own mindset and your own interpretation of your context and culture is definitely a factor that will impact people's happiness.

So let's dive into our five principles for happiness in the workplace then, rich and Principle 1 is all about meaning and purpose. So we know from research that people are not motivated by just doing tasks. They want to know that their work matters.

And I've realized this about myself for many, many years.

You know, I can be task orientated, but that alone does not motivate me, doesn't make make me happy just because I've ticked off a load of things at the end of the week.

Actually there is inherent in most of us, if not all of us this need to know that, yeah, the stuff that we do matters to somebody is making a difference. So. And we know that happiness Tends to rise when our effort feels worthwhile. Again, the research proves this.

So would you like to sort of just look at the two levers, the systemic lever and the mindset lever. Wretch. And just sort of pick this apart for me.

Yeah. So the concept of meaning and purpose, I think could be multifaceted. Some people listening to this podcast will. Will.

Will have a very strong sense of purpose in their life and that probably will go quite deep and be quite spiritual and, you know, so they will connect their, you know, their, their spirituality, if you like, to the sense of meaning and purpose in the workplace. But not everyone is like that.

No.

And not everyone in your team will be like that.

So I think it's important to think about actually what is it you can do inside your team to connect meaning and purpose for the individuals in your team. And that's going to be very different for each individual. I think there are some things that you can do to try to connect your team with.

With stuff that's just beyond the actual task that they're doing.

There was a bit of research I came across a while ago, some research done with some junior doctors in the US and this group of junior doctors were working lots of hours. They were highly stressed, and, you know, the burnout rate was really, really high.

So what they did with this, with this group of junior doctors, they created two groups. One was a control group which they did nothing with. They just kept the conditions the same.

But for the other group of junior doctors, what they did was they gave them the choice. On one day of the week, they were allowed to choose to work on something that had particular meaning or importance for them.

Right.

Okay. So the rest of the week was the same, but they had the freedom on one particular day to.

To work on stuff that was meaningful and had a sense of importance and purpose for them.

What was really interesting is when they measured the burnout in the control group versus the burnout in the group that were given that freedom to work on stuff that meant something to them. I can't remember the exact percentage, but there was a significant decrease in the burnout in the non control group.

So that's really interesting, isn't it? They didn't change any other factors in the environment.

They still worked the same hours, they still worked in the same context, but they had that opportunity to work on something that was meaningful and purposeful. Purposeful for them for a day. Now that can be quite tricky to do in, say, a production environment.

Yeah.

And the reason I mention that is because, you know, we've done some leadership development and training with organizations in the production environment. And there's one really interesting example I came across recently with one of the delegates who was on one of our.

I think it was one of our Pathfinder programs, leadership programs.

And he was on the production line, and he had a team of people basically doing very routine, very mundane work on the production line, you know, producing these plastic medical devices.

Now, what was really interesting, he talked very powerfully about helping his people on the production line to see the connection between the work they were doing and the medical benefit to people using those medical devices. You know what, you know, when, when they hit the market.

And he regularly would have conversations with them about the benefits that these devices would have.

And he would tell stories of where people out in the field, in other parts of the organization had seen the benefit of these devices that they produced. So he was trying to connect the tasks they were doing with a powerful story of the benefit that those devices had out in the wider community.

And that person, I think, has a really strong reputation inside that organization for being a very good leader and a manager. And that's one of the ways that he did that.

Do you know what's really interesting about that, though, Rich? It's a really good example what we're talking about here. But what he did there takes the systemic lever.

So it's connecting, as you said, the tasks people are doing, which are quite repetitive and you could argue, maybe quite boring, boring as a standalone thing, but connecting it to the bigger picture. But what he was also helping to do is flick the mindset lever, which is helping people reframe their.

Not doing just a job, they are part of something important. And I think it's a subtle shift, but it's a really important subtle shift. And you could do that in a lot of them.

If you can do it in a production environment, you can do it in lots of other environments as well.

Yeah, yeah. I remember talking to a friend of mine in it. I think I've used this example before where he worked in the nhs.

He had quite a big team and they were doing very, very detailed, IT sort of programming work. So very, very, very sort of technical stuff.

But he would regularly connect what they were doing with stuff that was happening out on the front line, you know, once their products had been come to life. He called it the golden thread between the work they were doing and the actual ultimate benefit of what they were doing.

So he would regularly talk about that golden thread and try to connect them with stuff beyond the actual task they were doing.

So I think the sum up of this first principle is, you know, maybe, yeah, put that golden thread in place. So connect people's tasks to some bigger picture. There's always a bigger picture.

There's always a reason for doing what you're doing and help individuals reframe their mindset from I'm just doing a job into actually I'm doing something which is part of something bigger and very beneficial.

For a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, for some people. Some people have a very strong calling sense of vocation for the work that they're doing.

You know, that can be, you know, I don't know because I've not worked in the sector, but maybe in the health sector you might find nurses and doctors having a sort of a strong vocational element to the work that they're doing. So you can build on that as a leader and a manager, but not everyone will have that sense of vocation and calling.

You know, you can coach people and help people to explore that for themselves, but that's largely beyond your control as a leader and a manager.

I think drawing that golden thread, helping them to look at how that task connects with the broader benefits of what they're producing for the organization and beyond.

Yeah, really important. So that's principle one, develop meaning and purpose. Principle two is about autonomy and control.

So we know that micromanagement kills happiness faster than anything else on the planet. Probably no one likes to be told what to do or micromanaged. And people do like a sense of having choice.

So here, Rich, there's a couple of things I'd like you to talk about, which is autonomy and how we coach confidence in decision making as well. So where do we start? With this?

Yeah, there's two facets here that perhaps are intention, I think. So people don't want to be micromanaged and you know, that can be exacerbated by leaders and managers are a bit of a control freak.

And you know, you know who you are right there, you know, so, you know, people don't like to be hemmed in.

No.

So that's one important thing to realize.

But at the same time, actually, if people have no boundaries and have no sense of direction and clarity in terms of their role and their objectives, etcetera, that's going to mean that they lack confidence and lack engagement, you know, so if you're going to, if you're going to coach people to be more confident in their role, it's important as a leader and a manager that you give them Clear context, clear sense of accountability that's connected to that context. So they know what their role is, they know what their job is, and they know what their objectives are.

So, you know, giving people autonomy and not micromanaging is not abdication of your leadership responsibilities. It's not give them. Giving them completely free rein in terms of what they can do. It's balancing those two things.

When I gave that example about the junior doctors being given freedom on one day, notice that all the other days, you know, they were required to, you know, give health care within the bounds of their job description. You know, so you can't. People can't just do what they like.

No, no, no.

So as a leader and a manager, balancing those two things, I think is important. I think we've used the analogy before in our podcast about. It's a bit like having a sheep in a pen. Imagine a sheep in a pen.

The fence, if you like, represents the boundary of their responsibilities. And as a leader and a manager, a good leader and manager will know, if you like, what the competencies and the skills of the people they're managing.

And they set the boundary based on their knowledge of that person's competency. Knowledge and skills. If you push out the fence too far, that goes way beyond a person's competence or skills or responsibilities.

They feel insecure and unsafe, and they will lack, if you like, the willingness to make decisions because they don't really understand the context in which they're operating.

So bringing that, creating the fence and setting that at the right, if you like, the right perimeter is the important factor that the leader and manager needs to take account of, even if rich.

So let's just say we have set very, very clear levels of accountability. We've got clarity of outcomes. We're very flexible about how we go about achieving that. There's still going to be, I guess, a case for.

People still sometimes suffer from confidence in decision making. So we. We've got. We've got the pen, right? Yeah, we've got our sheep. The sheep sat in their pen and we set the boundary. Right. But the.

But the sheep still isn't doing what it needs to do because there's a lack of confidence. So I just want to pick that bit up because you talked about this earlier on, about confidence being so important here.

Yeah. So I think with this. I mean, we said this on multiple occasions.

I think it's using a coaching approach to encourage people to take decisions and to take appropriate risks and to allow them to make mistakes. People build confidence when they feel they have this sense of autonomy. They feel actually that it's safe to make the mistake.

So actually, people will learn when they try it for themselves, when they make mistakes, and they learn from their mistakes, and they build their competence. And off the back of building their competence, their confidence will grow.

Yeah, okay.

But if you shut all that down and don't allow people to take responsibility for their own stuff, to make their own mistakes, they won't learn.

No. So I think with this second principle, this is really, really important.

The two elements here, autonomy and control, you have to make sure you get that balance right between how much you control them and how much you give them free rein. But also have to spot that for some people, they might need a bit more help with confidence to actually thrive in that environment.

It's not just a case of, I've put that boundary out there, my sheep can do what it needs to do. Now, it doesn't work like that, does it?

No, indeed, indeed.

Okay, so let's go into principle three, which is about progress and mastery. Now, we know if we stagnate as a human being, it drains our energy. If we make progress, it tends to fuel our energy.

And people generally, they want to feel they're getting better at stuff. They're not just getting through. Just, you know, the fact we're just getting through life is not a great feeling, is it?

It's certainly not going to make us happy if we feel that we're getting better at something in life, whatever that thing might be, that really does energize us. So I just want to pick up why Principle 3, progress in mastery is so important for happiness in the workplace.

Okay, so the connection I want to make here is, is to connect the idea of what your strengths are, and your strengths then are connected to, related to the mastery that you develop. In other words, you know, the skills and the competency that you develop as a human being.

When we get really good at something and that's related to our strengths, something we're naturally good at, what that then results in is it develops passion or intrinsic motivation.

Right?

So a really good leader and a manager will try to understand what the individual strengths in their team are. They will encourage the team to develop mastery in those strengths.

And then hopefully the byproduct of that is they develop a passion for what they're doing. So for me, for example, you know, I've talked about this before. You know, I'm a good pianist.

I learned to play the piano from a young age, and I developed a mastery for that and because that was linked to something I was naturally good at, I worked hard to, to develop mastery. I now have a passion for music still to this day. You know, because my competence and my mastery is related to my strength.

I was given the opportunity to develop that and now I'm passionate about it. And the same thing can happen inside the workplace.

So, Rich, that's a really good example there of, as you said, developing passion through something you're good at. What I've noticed I've got a daughter who has got a passion for a lot of creative things.

But one of the things I noticed over Christmas actually, I mean, she loves drawing. Both my girls love drawing.

All right, okay. Yeah, yeah.

One in particular, she just loves drawing and she's got a lot better over the last few years because she's just practiced drawing, practice drawing.

But what I'm noticing with her isn't just the fact she's really good at creating these lovely drawings, but that creative mindset, that ability to think beyond than the obvious stuff is actually now bleeding into other aspects of her life.

So for example, her creative writing has got a lot more because she's developing skills in terms of imagination and thinking beyond the obvious, connecting things maybe that seem disconnected. So it is bleeding into other aspects of her life. Now, if she can be good at drawing and creative writing and where else can she take that?

Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think when we create a passion for something as well, that that passion can become infectious.

So if you got, if you've got team members that are fully engaged, that that passion will become infectious inside the team as well. So there's benefits for encouraging that. It becomes almost like a self fulfilling prophecy, if you, if you see what I mean.

Yeah, yeah. So I think the point you're making here is we need to build learning into daily work. Learning drives performance. Learning drives happiness, actually.

So if we can build this into our daily work where progress and mastery are part of what we do in the workplace, that will lead on to. Yeah, but it also encourages the leader's role. And this is really important because it encourages what people understand by a growth mindset.

So we're focusing on that skill progression. Yeah, that's really, really important. So I think traditionally there's too much hierarchical thinking rich in the workplace.

It's about I need to get to the next promotion or the next level. Actually, for a lot of us that isn't what's most important. It's about I want to feel better at what I do.

I want to feel like what I do is actually I feel some passion for it.

Yeah, that's a really important point there, Dave.

I think around, see in development is beyond just the next progression in the career, you know, So I would encourage leaders and managers to have coaching conversations around people's strengths.

Encourage people to think about what their strengths are and then look for opportunities inside your team in terms of the projects that they're working on to connect that strength to something that needs to be done and have regular sort of learning conversations with that person and you'll see the passion and the mastery develop.

Yeah, what you're almost talking about there is setting some weekly monthly learning goals, isn't it? Alongside the actual performance outcomes that we want to see. But actually interesting. Okay, so that's principle three, progress and mastery.

Principle four for happiness in the workplace, connection and belonging. Now we know that human beings are wired to be social animals. Yeah, we.

The feeling of being respected and part of a trusted group matters to human beings in a huge, huge way. And I'm not always sure that leaders realize just how important this is.

So I'd like you to pick up this one, Rich, for me and tell us why it's so important.

Yeah, this is not just soft and fluffy stuff.

No, no, no, not at all. No.

It's interesting.

I came across this very issue in a team I was working with, it's quite a while ago now, where one of the issues inside the team was the leader and the manager was very keen to create this psychologically safe environment. And one of the ways he did that was to have these regular sessions where the team would, you know, get to know each other.

They would share a little about, a little bit about their stuff. And I saw that as a very powerful thing because it was a very technical team. The team didn't know each other very well.

So we did very simple things like, you know, at the beginning of each team meeting, just, you know, just share a bit about, you know, what happened at your weekend or, you know, some stuff that's going on for you and you know, inside a team, when a team starts to get to know each other at a deeper level, the research is very clear that it will build psychological safety because when you start to get to know people and get to know somebody personally when they make a mistake or they mess up, you're more likely to be more tolerant of that, the deeper the relationship that you have with that person. So creating psychological safety and doing stuff like having these check ins and stuff like that and having a bit of fun together as a Team maybe.

You know, you mentioned the Pizza Friday thing earlier and you know, actually that can be really useful if it's directed at helping the team get to know each other on a deeper level. And it's not just, just. What's the word I'm looking for here?

You're saying just a perk for a perk sake.

Yeah, a perk for a perk's sake, exactly right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, and I think what you've also mentioned there about the psychological safety being really important to develop, you know, go back to the previous principle, progress and mastery and the fact that we have to allow people to try things and they might get them wrong. So these principles are interconnected here, aren't they? It's not.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

It's not about listening to today and thinking, well, the first couple of principles, yeah, I think I need to do more on them and forgetting the rest. These are all very interconnected principles.

So if we build a sense of connection and belonging in the team, we've got much more chance of getting progress and mastery as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For example.

Is it. Yeah, it's interesting. Can I just go back to that example I was talking about?

Because I thought that that manager I was working with, I thought he was doing a very good job with, with his team and in some ways it was a challenging team to work with.

And I remember one of the team members complaining to me about the forced fun as he saw it, because the leader and manager would do things like quizzes and stuff just to have a little bit of downtime and a bit of fun, but in the context of what they were doing and what he was trying to do with the team.

Okay, so not everyone will enjoy that and some people will roll their eyes at it, but I personally saw actually a team with a high level of psychological safety, even though one or two, you know, didn't like the forced fun. But maybe that's a bit of a sensitivity that you've got to be aware of.

Not everyone will like what you do, but I still think you can get good results from doing those sorts of things.

But it's also about having. This is where, this is where the mindset issue comes in. You know, you have to be open minded and curious.

So just before Christmas, one of our clients invited me out for the day to take me to the horse racing at Cheltenham. Now I, for all the years I lived in Cheltenham and I lived there for 12 years, I never actually went to the races, believe it or not.

So this was the first time I'd ever been to the race, a race day in Cheltenham and I got a bit. Yeah, horse racing isn't my favorite sport by any stretch, but that wasn't the point.

Yeah, I can't imagine you're on a horse, Dave.

I know. Riding a horse. Yeah, no, I have ridden horses. Yeah, no, I have ridden horses. But actually that wasn't the point.

The point was I spent the best part of a day with some guys that are really good, fun to be with. We had the opportunity over lunch to just to get to know each other better in a non work environment.

And for me, that was the sort of really important part of the day. Okay. The horse racing was interesting and did I have a little side bet? Yes, I did. I was absolutely crap. Didn't win a thing.

But that didn't matter to me. It was about the connection and belonging on the day and one of the guys on the table I never met before. So that was a brand new relationship. Yeah.

I think what we have to do sometimes if we think, do I really want to get involved in this? Because it's not really the thing I want to do. Yeah. But actually you might be missing an opportunity here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I now know what that mystery item is on your credit card. Was that the bet? Was it? Only joking, by the way.

Shall we move on?

Yes, let's move on. Yeah.

So let's move on to Principle 5 before Rich starts checking my company credit card. Principle 5 is about fairness and recognition.

So people will tend to be happier when they're in an environment where it's fair and they get recognized. So I don't mean they get constant praise. It's not about that.

But what they do need is to believe that their effort is noticed and it's treated fairly. Suresh, you want to pick this one up for me?

Yeah. It's a tricky balance to strike this actually.

I came across an example recently where the manager was very good at giving praise, but one or two of the team members regarded it as almost like a constant tap, you know, like a dripping tap. And everything was praise and it wasn't balanced with, you know, more, perhaps more challenging, you know, performance led conversations.

So, you know, getting this balance right and the leader and the manager being seen to be fair and balanced in what they're doing, but still giving the recognition. It's a tricky balance to strike this actually.

And also the way the leader and manager deals with poor performance inside the team is just as important as giving recognition. So being seen to be Fair and being seen to address poor performance as the team sees it, that's going to have a massive impact.

If a leader and a manager leaves poor performance unmanaged and unresolved, people will see that as unfair and that will impact their happiness.

So I guess what we need here, we need some transparent standards of performance and behavior, but we also need to consistently enforce that. That's what you were saying, having the transparency of what's expected. But we've got to consistently enforce that.

And I think that doesn't tend to happen as much as people would like to think it does. But also help people on an individual level and a team level focus on what they can control and influence.

Because if they sort of veer off into the realm of stuff they can't control, that's not going to help either, is it? In terms of happiness and performance?

Yeah, yeah.

And the other thing just to say with this, you know, leaders and managers obviously need to make difficult decisions sometimes, but it's very important when you share the decisions that you've made with your team is to explain the rationale behind the decisions and that reduces the perception of favouritism and that will boost trust with your team.

If you explain the rationale, they might not necessarily agree with it, but they will see you as fair and balanced in terms of the decision making that you're making.

Yeah, really important.

Okay, so I think we've touched there on five really core principles for if we want to make 20, 26 and beyond, you know, a happier time in our workplaces. Not just happier, but we retain people.

We drive consistent, optimal performance, we look after the well being of our people and even attract new people into our teams as well. Because that's a big challenge as well these days. These five core principles are really important. So let's just recap those.

Principle one, make sure the workplace has meaning and purpose. Make sure people individually gain a sense of meaning and purpose. Yeah.

Principle two, allow them to have autonomy and control, but as you said, within obviously certain boundaries. And allow them to make mistakes if they need to. Principle three, focus on their progress and mastery.

Help them feel they're getting better at stuff, not just getting through stuff. Principle four, which I think for me is really important, foster a sense of connection and belonging, particularly if you're in a hybrid environment.

Cause that is harder to do, but you can still do it. And we've talked about this before on the podcast, foster a sense of connection and belonging. People feel respected and part of a trusted group.

And then the fifth one, fairness and recognition. It's not about constant praise. It's about actually believing that your effort is being noticed and that you're being treated fairly.

If we could get those five principles embedded in our workplaces, I think we would have happier teams, happier organizations, Rich.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, Definitely.

So before we wrap up, any sort of top tips, Rich, that you want to sort of with people or point people towards.

Don'T forget the golden thread.

Connect people's strengths with what they're good at so they develop passion, have learning conversations with people and just get to know people inside your team and just be very fair and straightforward in the way you deal with people in your team.

Lovely. Thanks, Rich. So here's my sort of wrap up for today. Happiness at work isn't about being comfortable.

It's about people feeling purposeful, trusted, that they're progressing, they're connected and they're treated fairly. When these conditions are in place, performance will follow. When they're missing. No amount of perks will compensate for that.

So as a leader, you influence both the system people work in and the mindset they bring to that work. Every conversation, every decision in, every standard that you set. So this week, don't try and fix everything.

This is not about trying to fix everything. Just pick up those five core principles. Maybe just pick up one at a time and ask one better question.

Adjust one leadership habit and then watch what shifts. So, Rich, for me, I think that sums up what we're talking about today.

Yep, absolutely.

And we'll be back next week.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank. You.