No matter what the state of the economy, research shows that the best way to sustain a consistently high performing workforce is to have a happy workforce. In their work on creating sustainable performance, Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine demonstrate the foundation of long term business success. Their message is simple: If you give your employees the chance to learn and grow, they’ll thrive – and so will your organization.

What does it mean to be happy in your job? For Spreitzer & Porath, it means to ‘thrive’. A thriving workforce is one where employees not just satisfied and productive but also engaged in creating the future – the company’s and their own. Thriving employees are highly energized and, importantly, they know how to avoid burnout.

Serious Impact

If you remain skeptical, here’s some numbers. People who thrive have:

• 16% – 27% better performance
•  125% less burnout (read: big impact!)
•  32% more committed to the organization
• 46% more satisfied with their jobs.

People who thrive also miss less work and have fewer doctor visits. This means significant health care savings and less lost time due to absenteeism. This is further backed up by recent work from Gallup which demonstrates that having high levels of wellbeing is good for both employee and employer alike.

Two Components

Spreitzer & Porath point to two underlying components of thriving: vitality and learning.

Vitality is the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited. Employees who experience vitality spark energy in themselves and others. Companies generate vitality by giving people the sense that what they do on a daily basis makes a difference.

Learning is the growth that comes from gaining new knowledge and skills. Learning triggers a virutous cycle: People who are developing their abilities tend to believe in their potential for further growth.

The two qualities work in concert. One requires the other. Each alone is unsustainable over the long term. The combination of vitality and learning is powerful.  It leads to people who deliver results and find ways to grow.

How To Help Your People Thrive

The best part is that leaders can spark a culture that supports people to thrive without dramatic measures or huge chunks of change. There are 4 mechanisms that set the foundation for employees to thrive. Like learning and vitality, all are necessary.

1. Provide Decision-Making Discretion – Empower your people at every level to have more say in the decisions effecting their work. This will energize them and provide them with a greater sense of control.
2. Share Information – Working in a vacuum sucks. It neither inspires or feeds innovation. Workplaces that make information widely available build trust and gives people the knowledge they need to make good decisions and take initiative with confidence.
3. Minimize Incivility – I can’t emphasize this enough. The costs of incivility are great. Employees who experience uncivil behaviour at work intentionally decrease their efforts and the quality of their work. A single bad player can set the culture awry.
4. Offer Performance Feedback – Feedback creates opportunities for learning and the energy so critical for a culture of thriving. The quicker and more direct the feedback, the more useful it is.

Creating the conditions for thriving requires focus and determination. As I’ve argued in the past, helping people grow and remain energized at work is worthy on its own merits. But by doing so, you’ll also boost your company’s performance over the long haul. Isn’t this the bottom line that we all want anyways?

Each year, we see the dawning of the New Year as a time for fresh starts. More exercise, a better job, more time with family and friends, perhaps quitting smoking? No matter what the goals, they’re usually focused on upping ourselves in the big game – the game of life. Well, why not use the ultimate template to help you set your goals? For more than 50 years, Gallup researchers have been exploring the raw materials of a life well-lived. They’ve come up with 5 essential elements that transcend countries & cultures.

So if you’re setting goals for 2012, why not set them based on the elements that differentiate a thriving life from one that’s simply endured?

The Central Five

1. Career Wellbeing: how you occupy your time or simply liking what you do every day is key.  Get this right and you’ll never look back.
2. Social Wellbeing: having strong relationships and love in your life can make a profound impact.  Building connections with friends, family, colleagues and neighbors will support and enrich you everyday.
3. Financial Wellbeing: effectively managing your economic life can remove untold stressors from you life. Learning to live within one’s means is a good place to begin.
4. Physical Wellbeing: having good health and enough energy to get things done on a daily basis. Go for a walk or run. Step outside. Garden. Dance. Exercising makes you feel good. Straight up.
5. Community Wellbeing: the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live is a cornerstone. Volunteer your time. Join a community group or your kid’s school sports committee. Being linked to the wider community can be incredibly rewarding.

So while it might be easier to treat these critical areas in our lives as if they were separate, they’re not.  They’re all interconnected and shape our lives.  So why not plan to get more out of each day, and your life, in 2012 by ensuring your goals take into account these essential five?

Follow these five and you will not only feel the better for it but you’ll be boosting the wellbeing of your friends, family members, colleagues, and others in your community.  Now that sounds like a great outcome.

Here’s to the best in 2012!

You’ve worked hard all year. And what a year it’s been. Economic uncertainty, increased competition and longer hours. So why not reward yourself with some really cool tools to help you optimize your life?  Here’s a top 10 list of fresh and leading edge gift ideas to help you be at the top of your game at home or work.

10. Stickk: A smart way to set and achieve your goals.  Visit Website >

Stickk helps you set a goal and stickk to it, with incentives of monetary rewards and social pressure. Want to quit smoking or lose weight? Get money and friends involved and you’ll hit your goal sooner than you think.

9. AskMeEvery: Track what’s most important. Visit Website >

There isn’t an easier way to self-track than with AskMeEvery, which will text you the same question once a day. How many miles did you drive today? How many hours did you spend with your family? You simply text the response back and AskMeEvery will graph the info for you.

8. Voyurl: Analytics on your personal trends. Visit Website >

Voyurl is a tiny plugin that sits in the background of you browser, logging every website you visit and how long you stay there. In a few days, it will be able to tell you which sites you spend the most time on.  Social networking anyone?

7. Fitbit: Exercise tracker and social motivator.  Visit Website >

The Fitbit is a tiny device that clips onto your clothes during the day, or can be worn on a wrist strap while you sleep. It tracks all your movement, all day long. At night it will determine the quality and length of your sleep. Think of it like a pedometer on steroids.

6. DailyBurn: Reach your health and fitness goals. Visit Website >

Another exercise tracker, DailyBurn is particularly useful as a nutrition log. Enter all the foods eaten at each meal, and receive an overview of how much sugar, fat, carbs, etc. you are consuming. Correlate this to you workout performance and you may find that that double cheeseburger took 10 seconds off your average mile.

5. SleepCycle: Feel more rested.  Visit Website >

SleepCycle is a cheap iPhone app that measures your sleep quallity through the accelerometer in your iPhone. Place the phone at the head of your bed and it determines your level of wakefulness. It’s a cost-effective sleep monitor, and one that I’ve been using myself.

4. Mint: A great free way to manage your money. Visit Website >

Mint tracks your money – all of it. Using the logins from your checking and savings accounts, credit cards and investment accounts, Mint provides an overview of where your money goes every month. You can also set budgets; Mint can be set to alert you when you go over your grocery budget for the month, for example.

3. MoodScope: Lift your mood.  Visit Website >

MoodScope provides a platform for tracking your mood quickly and easily. There are many different philosophies around mood tracking, but give it a try and see how it becomes relevant to you. Did you have a huge fight with your girlfriend yesterday and have no idea why? Maybe it’s because you were in a bad mood, didn’t get enough sleep and skipped breakfast.

2. Lumosity: Improve your brain.  Visit Website >

Lumosity challenges your brain with cognitive skill games. Work through each puzzle to theoretically improve your intelligence.

1.    Engage360º Coaching: Be at the top of your game.  Visit Website >

Part personal advisor, part sounding board and part strategist, Engage 360º is specifically focused on you and your success. It works with you to identify what you want and need personally and professionally and powerfully supports you in making it all happen.

Whatever you chose, chose to reward yourself. It’s been quite a roller coaster year.  Taking the time out to improve your sleep, fitness, wellness or satisfaction will help you tackle whatever the New Year throws at you.

Here’s to your health, success and happiness!

What would it be like to have a neighborhood ‘feel’ at work? Would it add or take away from your ability to get things done or for your company to be profitable?  In a refreshing take on corporate culture, business psychologist Art Markman argues that creating a sense of neighborhood at work can only help it succeed.

In hierarchies, everyone takes on a role.  If you’re at the top of the food chain you get more privileges and rewards.  Those at the bottom usually have less control, input and are often told what to do.  The understanding is that as one works their way up the hierarchy and takes on more responsibility, higher pay and benefits are provided.

In a neighborhood, while not everyone shares equally, we tend to strive for equality.  If you need help doing something like changing your tire, chances are a neighbor might offer to help. It would be strange for you to offer him or her money in return. In turn you reciprocate somewhere down the road and a relationship builds.

Interestingly a company cannot succeed unless you and your colleagues start to think of yourselves as a valued part of a bigger picture.  You might stay at work late a few times out of fear that your boss is watching.  But you’ll be more likely to put in that consistent effort if you feel part of the ‘neighborhood‘ and feel like everyone is pitching in.

To have a neighborhood culture, the company must respond in kind. Seemingly small actions like supporting you or your colleagues families through tough times and providing educational opportunities for you go a long way to creating a general sense of community.  This investment in community is repaid in behaviours that ultimately affect the company’s bottom line.

Fairness is key because it supports the creation of a community.  Ultimately, the loyalty of a company’s neighborhood helps them avoid or lessen the ills and impact of the market economy.

What’s the ethos of your workplace?  Is it a neighborly feel or more of an everyone for themselves feel?

I find it fitting that I am writing this from a tiny cafe deep in the labyrinth of Hong Kong’s SoHo District. I arrived a few days ago as part of my recent push to expand my business into China.  Ironically it just dawned on me that I am doing exactly that which I am writing about – taking a risk and consciously tempting failure.  It also struck me how these two former enemies of mine have become such good companions over the years.  Like many leaders and entrepreneurs, I have learned that risk and failure are the progenitors of success.

Much has been written about success, from Tom Peter’s “In Search of Excellence” to Steven Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”.   Now the new fixation in management thinking seems to be about failure, and it is here that I think we have really struck gold. The April issue of Harvard Business Review is devoted entirely to failure and is actually titled “The Failure Issue”.

Failure Begets Success

The basic argument is that success and failure are in fact not polar opposites: you often need the second to enjoy the first.  Indeed, much of my work focuses on helping business leaders to stick their necks out so that they can realize quite different and improved results.  Certainly the most common fear that I hear of from clients is that of failure.  But it is failure that proves to be grist for the richest vein of learning. Learning from failure can be the engine of startling innovation and creativity.  It took Thomas Edison 9000 experiments to concoct the successful version of the light bulb.  While this may be an extreme example, the key is that learning from failure begets extraordinary accomplishments.

Limiting Fallout

Individuals and companies will do themselves no favors by embracing failure if they do not learn from it or how to manage it.  Failing small and failing fast is a useful strategy.  By placing small bets, as opposed to riskier larger ones, you or your company can limit the downside of failure. Going down multiple avenues, ruling out those that lead to dead ends, and developing further those that prove promising is what leads to breakthroughs and previously unimagined possibilities.

When I first came to China several years back it was simply as a tourist.  After experiencing the palpable and rocketing energy of entrepreneurialism of Shanghai, I realized that something very powerful was happening here in Asia. I knew that I wanted to become part of this amazing phenomenon.  A combination of small steps, experimentation and analysis have lead to promising partnerships and opportunity to impact corporate culture in a way and on a scale I never imagined.  Risk and failure have served me well.

What roles do risk and failure play in your life or business?  How do they play out?  Is it a limiting or freeing role?

When you can’t stop moving then you’ve stopped living. My mind did a full stop when I first read these words recently in Brian Brett’s book Trauma Farm. Yes, I thought, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, learning how to slow down does allow you to experience more. The message struck me as both poignant and timely with New Years just around the corner.  How about for you?

Have you set any big goals for yourself for 2011?  Are they related to getting more out of life than having to running flat out?  Are you thinking that there simply has got to be more?  Do you frequently regret not having the time to spend with your kids or friends?  Are you tired of being tired?

If you’re like many of the busy men and women I work with, you’ve been asking yourself some version of these questions.  Perhaps now is the time to decide to change it up?

Here are five questions that will help you in your descent from warp speed:

1. What do you want to see or feel more of?
2. What will you change?
3. What will you stop doing?
4. What will you start doing?
5. How will you feel a year from now if nothing has changed?

Why not make 2011 be the year that you decide to stop racing and start living? If you are tired of not getting much traction in this area then I am here for you.