Become aware of the importance of Well-being to focus focus on purpose…. 12 steps to happiness
The Pandemic caused organizations to reinvent themselves and some subsidiaries were closed for not being core, due to low results, among others. This scenario produced a lot of uncertainty in the population, reaching 12% unemployment in Chile during 2020, according to data published by the National Institute of Studies (https://www.ine.cl)
The possibility of being unemployed increases uncertainty and significantly affects the well-being and happiness of human beings. According to Tokman (2003), “Work is a central source of identity, belonging and personal development, as well as making money to live. Unemployment is a subject of universal concern due to its consequences at the personal, macro-social, economic and social level ”.
This is the context of the organization that implemented the Twelve Steps to Happiness practice. This is a subsidiary of a retail company, dedicated to providing food services to supermarket employees. The team has already been informed that most of them will be unemployed, with only some relocating to the other subsidiaries.
The management of this business requests that you accompany that team giving psychological support and coaching. It was a team that I knew because we worked together in 2015.
The team consisted of an assistant manager and three reports (area leaders). I found a tired team, unmotivated, not very concerned with personal care, and far from a state of happiness and well-being. This situation was affecting them in different areas of their lives. They had been working together for five years, where there was a lot of trust and commitment between them.
If you want to know more about the twelve steps to happiness visit the site https://management30.com/practice/happiness-steps/
For this reason, I decided that the Twelve Steps to Happiness would be an excellent practice that will allow you to see your current state and generate actions that could reverse that state you were in. It is a practice that allows individuals and teams to review twelve concrete actions that promote happiness and understanding through an indicator and how we are creating spaces for these activities in our lives and work.
This dynamic consists of evaluating the following steps:
1. Thank your colleagues and family every day.
2. Give something to someone else or make it possible for others to offer gifts.
3. Help someone who needs help or let your colleagues help each other.
4. Eat right and make good, healthy foods available.
5. Exercise regularly and promote body care.
6. Get enough rest, sleep the necessary hours.
7. Try new things and encourage the team to experiment.
8. Take time to be in contact with nature or spaces to share with the team.
9. Meditate and promote practices that help to be more aware.
10. Socialize and connect with the team, family, and friends to feed on people.
11. Have goals and make the team follow its purpose.
12. Smile whenever you can, promote humor within the team and family to have fun especially in times of stress.
How do you carry out this practice?
• This dynamic was carried out virtually using the Miro tool.
• A work session was agreed in which we talked at the beginning about the dynamics they were in, what conversations they were having as a team, and with the family. Taking advantage of the trust they had between them, the conversation flowed very quickly, they expressed their feelings and allowed themselves the opportunity to thank for having shared together valuing those ties of friendship.
• Then we took the time to review the meaning of the concepts of each of the twelve steps of happiness.
• Once the concepts were understood, they were put to work individually evaluating with a score of 1 to 5 (where 1 is low and 5 is high) in respect to the twelve steps, ending with the sum of their individual score.
• After sharing with the team, the following questions appeared: Doesn’t it seem strange to you that we spend so much time connected to the computer knowing that we will be out of work? Do you also have problems with your partner because you are irritable? Are you staying up at night thinking about what will become of your family if you can’t find work? They learned that everyone had the same concerns.
• After the initial qualification we took time to share experiences and what they were seeing by becoming aware of how we were working today and what the costs were of continuing with that rhythm in relation to the team, family, and their well-being.
• Some of them shared good practices that we’re allowing them to feel better, so they were learnings for the team.
• When they finished scoring as a team for each step, they assigned concrete actions to improve each of these individually. This is the greatest asset of exercise because it puts people into action to produce changes in behavior. They had seen that everyone was very careless especially concerning sleep and food. They found that exercising and meditating could significantly improve their quality of life and allow them to disconnect from their computers and spend quality time. They also wanted to improve their relationship with their partners and children because their irritability had damaged their relationship with them.
• They spent as a team doing it in phases, placing focus, per week considering what each one had proposed:
1) The first week they would focus on repairing relationships with family and work teams. Be grateful, give something to another that makes their day better, help, and share spaces where they could laugh. For them, humor was a fundamental ingredient.
2) The second week the focus would be on health: eat healthy, exercise, walk, meditate, sleep more than eight hours and rest well.
3) In The third week they decided to focus on seeking new job options, that would fulfilling their purpose.
At the end of the third week, we meet again to see progress and results. They had committed themselves as a team to support each other so as not to let go of the agreements they made.
The team managed to improve their family relationships by connecting more from vulnerability, expressing their feelings rather than hiding them so as not to harm their loved ones. However, they realized not talking about this experience and feelings with their partners made it more difficult to face it.
They also reported feeling more rested after the third week due to hours of rest, physical activity, and changes in diet.
Some were left to learn meditation techniques because it was difficult.
But most importantly, they felt ready to start a new challenge. As a consequence, everyone expressed having progressed with this practice. They concluded that with such simple steps that they can incorporate into their day-to-day lives, they managed to make such powerful changes, changing their state of mind, well-being and putting the focus on work by setting priorities and organizing themselves better.
As a facilitator, I learned that it is very important to create a good introduction by explaining the concepts of the twelve steps and creating the context of trust to invite conversation.
My greatest learning and satisfaction was how this team managed to self-manage and define priorities. They decided to support each other and put weekly focus that allowed them to move forward and share achievements, experiences, and good practices. And finally, the actions implemented prepared them to go out to the market to seek employment from another emotional experience, leaving them more prepared and confident for interviews and with a clear focus on where to look, according to the report they made in the follow-up meeting.
The next steps will be individual sessions of coaching to delve more deeply into the problems of each person, every fifteen days.
Perhaps, for the next opportunity with highly affected teams like this one, due to the uncertainty they were experiencing and how united they were, I would do this practice in two parts since this dynamic lasted two and a half hours. Not all teams have that much time per session. On this occasion, I did not want to stop the conversation space that occurred when they shared how they were feeling.
I advise doing this practice that will mobilize concrete actions, allows us to reflect on what we are doing, and change priorities according to our life purpose. It is one of the practices that I like the most about Management 3.0.
You can be an agent of change if you apply these practices and give teams space to discover how to do their work better and enjoy what they do, but above all, learn from the experience of others by listening to their learning new ways of doing things.
I DARE YOU, PUT THE TWELVE STEPS OF HAPPINESS INTO PRACTICE! IT HAS GIVEN ME EXCELLENT RESULTS!
