Goal Attainment and Gratitude

Friday, June 05, 2009



You are probably wondering what Goal Attainment and Gratitude have in common.  If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you might be able to figure it out.  I’ve been following the research on gratitude over the last few years and have been trying to find a way to make it applicable to our WorkPuzzle readers.  I believe I finally have.  First, some background information regarding gratitude: Gratitude


You see, gratitude has only recently been put under the microscope from a scientific research perspective.  Prior to the last 15 years, the subject was left to philosophers and religious leaders as the appropriate experts to extol its benefits.  However, once scientists began studying gratitude, they were so impressed by the findings, that research in this area has exploded.


The benefit of gratitude that I predict most of you will be interested in (at least initially), is the finding that gratitude is linked to significantly improved personal goal attainment.  In one study, participants in one group kept gratitude lists (more on this next blog).  This group ended up more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period than subjects in the control group, who underwent other exercises toward goal attainment.


However, a Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness confirms that goal attainment is not the only benefit to be gained from a practice of gratitude.  Check out the paraphrased list below for additional benefits a consistent discipline of practicing gratitude can bring:

1.  Studies show that those who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercise more regularly, report fewer physical symptoms, feel better about their lives as a whole, and are more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who record hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

2.  Young adults who are taught self-guided exercises for daily gratitude report higher levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to other groups, who tend to focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants think they are better off than others). 


3.  Study participants practicing gratitude are more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to someone, compared to a group focused on hassles or social comparison condition.


4.  In a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21-day gratitude intervention resulted in greater amounts of high-energy, positive moods; a greater sense of connectedness to others; more optimistic ratings of one’s life; and better sleep duration and sleep quality, relative to a control group.


5.  Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families (Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008).

6.  Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, and optimism.  In addition, they report lower levels of depression and stress.  The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions.  Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

7.  Prosociality:  People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathetic and to view the perspective of others.  They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).


8.  Spirituality:  Those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities, such as prayer reading, are more likely to be grateful.  Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life, and a commitment to, and responsibility to others (McCullough et. al., 2002). Gratitude does not require religious faith, but faith enhances the ability to be grateful.


9.  Materialism:  Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others’ success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others, relative to less grateful persons.

If that isn’t a good enough list of benefits to spur most of us to develop our own discipline of gratitude, I don’t know what will!


In Monday’s blog I’ll show you how you can begin to develop your own gratitude practice, and how to teach gratitude to those you coach and mentor.

Zappos and the Pursuit of Happiness – Part 2

Thursday, June 04, 2009



Yesterday, we spent some time learning about Tony Hsieh’s passion for making happiness the central focus of the Zappos culture.  The insight was gained from a recent article published in Inc. Magazine.


Tony Hsieh When companies think about happiness, particularly as it applies to employees, the attention usually shifts to perks and benefits.  Hsieh seems to know better:

“That single-minded focus on happiness has led to plenty of accolades for the company, which routinely scores high on lists of the best places to work. But Zappos’s approach to workplace bliss differs significantly from that of other employee-friendly businesses.


For one thing, Zappos pays salaries that are often below market rates — the average hourly worker makes just over $23,000 a year. Though the company covers 100 percent of health care costs, employees are not offered perks found at many companies, such as on-site child care, tuition reimbursement, and a 401(k) match.


Zappos does offer free food to its employees, but the pile of cold cuts in the small cafeteria loses its allure faster than you can say Googleplex. Instead of buying his employees’ loyalty, Hsieh has managed to design a corporate culture that challenges our conception of that tired phrase.”

As Dave Mashburn often points out in his WorkPuzzle posts:  Every human wants happiness, but we’re very poor at predicting what will make happiness a reality in our own lives.  This is exactly what intrigues Hsieh:

“’I’ve been doing a lot of research into the science of happiness,’ he says. In addition to asking everyone he meets what makes him or her happy, he has also been studying books on the subject, especially Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, which uses social psychology experiments to evaluate the world’s great religions and philosophies and concludes that ancient wisdom and science are both useful tools in the quest for contentment.”

So, what’s he come up with?  Hsieh has concluded that happiness comes from establishing a balance between the following four basic human needs:



  1. Perceived Progress:  The perception that you’re further along today than yesterday.

  2. Perceived Control:  The perception that you have a direct affect on the outcomes in your life.

  3. Relatedness:  Living life in the context of meaningful relationships.

  4. Connection to a Larger Vision:  Contributing to something bigger than yourself.



Hsieh admits that he doesn’t have this topic completely figured out yet:

“’I’ve got a few different frameworks and I’m just figuring out how to combine them,’ he says without irony or even a smile.  ‘I think I’m pretty close.’”

I find all of this intriguing, particularly because we now have hard-core business leaders addressing issues that previously “belonged” in the realm of philosophy.  Why?  Because these issues have a direct and profound impact on performance. 


If you have the responsibility for coaching and managing others, hopefully you will feel inspired to step into Tony Hsieh’s shoes, and view the vast benefits of happiness in a whole new light…




Zappos and the Pursuit of Happiness

Wednesday, June 03, 2009



About a year ago, I started seeing advertisements in the bottoms of the plastic bins at the security checkpoints at airports – You know, the containers that you put your shoes and other personal items in before they go through the x-ray machine? Zappos bins


The one advertisement that stands out in my mind from routinely using these bins, was placed by a company called Zappos. Unfortunately, the intended brand impact eluded me at the time… I had no idea that Zappos was a very large and successful online shoe retailer, hence the advertisement at the bottom of the shoe bin. How clever!


Inc. Magazine recently ran an article about Zappos that I found insightful. The Zappos story is very inspiring on its own, and worth reading from a human interest perspective. But, what caught my eye was the leadership insight of their CEO, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay).


Hsieh has received some media attention for the financial success of Zappos (their revenues now exceed $1 Billion per year), but most people are far more interested in the counter-intuitive way he runs the company.


What’s his secret? Happiness. Hsieh has decided to make happiness the central focus of his company:

“But Hsieh has a hard time getting excited about [the financial success of the company]. What he really cares about is making Zappos’s employees and customers feel really, really good. This is not because Hsieh is a nice guy (though he is a very nice guy), but because he has decided that his entire business revolves around one thing: happiness. Everything serves that single end. Other business innovators work with software code or circuit boards or molecular formulas. Hsieh prefers to work with something altogether more complex and volatile: human beings themselves.”

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss some of the principles that Hsieh has uncovered in making happiness the central focus of Zappos. In the meantime, try to find these shoe bin ads the next time you’re at the airport…now you know the story behind them!

What’s a Friend Worth?

Tuesday, June 02, 2009



If you are a Recruiter or Hiring Manager, you already know that network contacts can be very valuable.  People you know become a repository for new information and new contacts.


Online friendships While this may be old news for you, the marketing world is just starting to study this topic.  Due to the proliferation of online social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, businesses are starting to put a monetary value on these relationships.


Business Week ran a feature article on this topic last week.  Here are some insights that I picked up:

1.  Most people have many “friends,” but few close contacts:  The average Facebook user with 500 “friends” actively follows the news of 40 of them, communicates with 20, and keeps in close contact with about 10. 


2.  People tend to group other people into one of four categories: 


(a) Closest Friends — You trade email with these people or have other reciprocal communications.


(b) One-way Relationships — You send email to these people or post comments on their profile pages (but they don’t respond).


(c) Just Barely in Touch — You click on something these people post on Facebook or visit their profile page more than twice.


(d) Near Strangers — You let these people into your network, but you really don’t know or interact with them.


3.  So far, marketers are dismal at figuring out how to manipulate these networks for profit:  It is estimated that Facebook is able to generate less than a dime per member in advertising revenue.  Yes, they have a lot of members, but the end results pale in comparison to traditional advertising venues.  In my hometown of Seattle, radio stations capture about $200M in ad revenue from a population base of $3.2M people.  That’s over $60 per person compared to Facebook’s $0.10 per member.

So, what can we learn from all of this?  First, companies are spending a lot of money trying to crack the code of social marketing.  If it all seems confusing to you, you’re not alone.  Companies like Facebook and Microsoft have bunches of PhDs working on this stuff and they can’t even figure it out! 


Second, some of the traditional techniques you’ve used for networking should not be abandoned.  Most of your results are still going to come from these techniques. 


Lastly, don’t ignore the new tools, but don’t depend on them either.  Spend your extra time endearing yourself to your close contacts rather than adding “near strangers” to your online network.

Why Optimism Matters – Part 2: Optimism and Sport…What it Means for You

Monday, June 01, 2009



On Friday, we took a look at the toll that Optimism (or lack thereof) takes on health.  For those of you who want to apply this to business, the research on Optimism and Sports may be a better transfer of principles:



“Sports enthusiasts at every level are intuitively aware that the ‘mental’ part of performance can be just as important as the physical.  Gymnastics is often said to be 90% mental and 10% physical.  Other sports see ‘intangible’ factors, such as confidence and a ‘cool’ head under pressure, make up more than 50% of success. Linford Christie


Many will talk about ‘being in the zone’ when they perform at their peak.  Olympic 100- metre gold medalist Linford Christie described his focus on the starting line as being like looking down a long, straight tune.  His ability to blank out other competitors, the roar of the crowd, the flashbulbs, gave him those extra centimeters over his rivals.


In sport, psychology matters – and at every level.  If you go onto the squash court telling yourself that you’ve never beaten Joe before and that you’re not going to beat him today, then the result is very predictable.


Optimism boosts sporting performance, both at team and individual levels.  Research into baseball and basketball teams in the USA revealed that teams have their own explanatory styles.  The explanatory style used by teams after a defeat or when under pressure in the last few minutes of a game will determine future performance, regardless of the quality of the team.  Those who are optimistic in the face of defeat are more likely to be successful in their next game; those who explain setbacks negatively will perform more poorly.  Research into swimmers revealed that the same trend holds for individual athletes.  Quite simply, when under pressure optimistic sportsmen and women try harder – and they recover from defeat more quickly.


After conducting detail study of sports teams and on individual swimmers, Martin Seligman included a list of ‘What Every Coach Should Know’ in Learned Optimism: _

  • Optimism is not something you can know intuitively.  The ASQ (an optimism test developed by Seligman’s team) measures something you can’t.  It predicts success beyond experienced coaches’ judgments and handicappers’ expertise.

  • Optimism tells you when to use certain players rather than others.  Consider a crucial relay race.  You have a fast athlete, but he’s a pessimist who lost his last individual race.  Substitute.  Use pessimists only after they have done well.
  • Optimism tells you who to select and recruit.  If two prospects are close in raw talent, recruit the optimist.  He’ll do better in the long run.
  • You can train your pessimists to become optimists.”








If you’re interested, you and your team can go to http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx and take the Optimism Test to see where you rank.  But keep in mind…your entire team can’t be optimists.  Decisions would be far too impulsive. 









Why Optimism Matters

Friday, May 29, 2009



Over the course of the last 23 years of Consulting and providing Psychotherapy Services to countless individuals, I can tell you that the role of Optimism is a concept that is greatly misunderstood. 


Optimism It seems that there are two extremes when it comes to Optimism:  One extreme people experience is a Fear of Hope, usually due to having been burned several times previously, where feelings were severely hurt and all hope was shattered.  The other extreme is Endless, (and somewhat) Baseless Hope –  Hope built on nothing but hope alone (In other words, optimism without substance and hard work).


In following the research on Optimism, I found this great summary article called “Why Optimism Matters” that is helpful in realizing the impact that Optimism can have on every aspect of our lives, including business: 



“More than 100 studies have been conducted to measure the impact of optimism and pessimism on people’s lives.



One of the key factors is that pessimism can be very insidious, pervading all parts of people’s lives, causing them to lose heart and to give up. Research shows that people who have a pessimistic explanatory style are:

  • more susceptible to depression when things go wrong 

  • more likely to underachieve 

  • prone to passivity or helplessness when confronted with a stressful situation, such as a new job or leaving home for university 

  • liable to under-perform at sport when faced with stress or defeat on the field of play 

  • more likely to die from a heart attack following an initial coronary event, compared with people who have an optimistic explanatory style.

One of the reasons why optimists tend to be healthier than pessimists is that depression weakens certain hormones in the brain, sparking off a chain reaction that suppresses the immune system.


Optimists also pay more attention than pessimists to information that will help them reduce health risks.  A study by Dr Lisa Aspinwall, associate professor at the University of Utah, found that when subjects were given information about cancer and serious health issues, optimists spent more time than pessimists reading the severe risk material and they remembered more of it. It is because they are optimistic that they are prepared to bite the bullet and spend time attending to major health risks.


There is a simple explanation for the link between our explanatory style and the things that happen in our lives. Reivich points out that if you are a 50 year old man who smokes, drinks a lot of alcohol, eats a lot of red meat and has had a first coronary episode, then his explanatory style will have a big impact on the outcome. Pessimists will tend to behave passive in the face of this bad news, rather than spurred into action to change their lifestyle and improve their health.


‘The doctor says “you need to quit smoking, quit drinking and change your diet”. As a pessimist, you’ll most likely say to yourself something like “it’s in my genes, my father died of a heart attack, his father died of a heart attack, I’m just destined for this”.  And if that’s your belief then that’s going to dictate your behavior, and you’re going to be less likely to follow doctor’s orders.  So there’s nothing magical about the pathway through which explanatory style leads to real world outcome, explanatory style drives behaviour – and behaviour is what leads to outcomes.’ 


‘These are people,’ says Aspinwall, ‘who aren’t sitting around wishing things were different. They believe in a better outcome, and that whatever measures they take will help them to heal.’


Research led by Dr Mika Kivimaki in Finland concluded that optimism may reduce the risk of health problems and actually help a person recover after experiencing a serious life-changing event, such as death of a spouse or child. Following a major life crisis, pessimists tend to take more time off work than optimists. 


‘Pessimists frequently distance themselves from emotional events and this coping strategy may be less effective than using active problem-focused coping immediately after an uncontrollable severe event such as death of a family member’, said Kivimaki.


Pessimistic people face the real risk of giving up in the face of adversity, of passively accepting that they were born to draw the short straw in life. But we don’t need to live like this. When bad things happen we should take action by striving to find the explanations and thought patterns that give us hope, instead of the ‘This happpens to me’ ‘all the time’, ‘no matter what’.


For some people it could mean the difference between life and death.”











On Monday, I’ll share some examples and analogies within the sports arena that you can relate to your team and business competition practices.