Thriving goes by other names including flourishing, positivity, and happiness. Barbara Frederickson in her book Positivity, talks about how positive emotions aren’t just signals of well-being; they are creators of well-being.
A study of nearly every scientific happiness study available—over 200 studies on 275,000 people worldwide—show that happiness leads to success in nearly every domain, including work, health, friendship, sociability, creativity and energy. – from Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage
When people work with a positive mind-set and mood, productivity, creativity, and engagement improves:
- Positive employees outperform negative employees in terms of sales, energy levels, turnover rates and health-care costs by as much as 30%
- Optimistic salespeople outperform their pessimistic colleagues by up to 37%
- Medical doctors are three times more creative and 19% more accurate at diagnosing patients when positive
Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage, shares that when our mindset and mood are positive—we are smarter, more motivated, and thus more successful. It turns out that our brains are literally hardwired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive. Yet in today’s world, we continually sacrifice happiness for success only to lower our brain’s rate of success.
So what are the benefits of a positive mindset and mood (thriving) at work? Researchers have found an extensive list that includes:
- Lower turnover at work
- Better reports of customer service
- Better supervisor evaluations
- Lower emotional exhaustion
- Higher job satisfaction
- More inclusive thinking toward others
- Fewer work absences
- More social involvement
- More volunteerism
- Others perceive the individual as friendlier, more assertive and more confident
- Higher annual salaries
- Higher longevity
- Lower incidence of alcohol or other drug abuse
- Faster recovery from illness or injury
- More likely to be judged worthy of receiving a pay raise
- More likely to resolve conflict through collaboration
- Increased motivation
- Better decision-making efficiency
- Increased creative thinking
- Better organizational citizenship behavior
In my coaching practice, I work with individuals on Thriving at Work and leaders who want to create thriving workplaces for people, profit and the planet. Imagine leading an organization where you could reap all 20 of these benefits – and more!