The power of friendliness can alleviate the negative impact of the increasingly online social world.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Harvard Business Review” (ID: hbrchinese), author: HBR-China.
Said Little Buddha
Spreading goodwill can bring many benefits. Gallup has found in years of investigations that being recognized at work can help reduce employee burnout and absenteeism, and improve employee well-being. Decades of research have shown that getting praise and recognition can improve people’s sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, improve self-evaluation, promote positive emotions, and confirm self-worth. So, do you often spread goodwill?
Everyone wants to be happy, but sometimes it’s hard to be happy, so how do we achieve this goal? Before the global new crown epidemic, this was a thorny problem, let alone the epidemic era. Due to changes in work styles, parents work hard to coordinate their remote office and children’s online learning. People living alone will also find ways to maintain their focus of life during home isolation. But when life is dominated by Zoom meeting after Zoom meeting, even taking a bath is like winning.
The shift from offline office to online office has led to the lack of “random encounters”. For many people, meeting a colleague in the hallway and hearing her sincere thanks, or being praised by a manager after a work report, these are the highlights of daily workplace life. But now, these scenes are as remote as the experience of the previous life. Without the small chats, lunch parties and coffee breaks with colleagues by the cold drink machine, we have also lost the social opportunities we had before. Without these social interactions, finding fun at work can be even harder. So, what can we do to make up for it?
Our tip is: spread goodwill.
In the past year, most management recommendations have focused on maintaining productivity during the epidemic, and the power of goodwill has been severely underestimated. Showing kindness through praise and recognition can actually improve social relationships and work status in remote offices.
Spread the benefits of goodwill
The spread of goodwill can bring many key benefits. The first and most obvious beneficiaries are colleagues. Gallup is doing a lot ofThe annual survey found that being recognized at work can help reduce employee burnout and absenteeism, and improve employee well-being. Decades of research have shown that getting praise and recognition can improve people’s sense of accomplishment and self-esteem, improve self-evaluation, promote positive emotions, and confirm self-worth.
Secondly, spreading kindness can make your life more meaningful. For example, research has found that spending money on others or taking time to participate in volunteer services can increase happiness and bring happiness and meaning to life. Spreading goodwill brings a sense of meaning because people are invested in something greater than themselves.
This behavior will also help us gain positive reviews from colleagues, thereby improving our company’s reputation and reputation, and have a positive impact on self-awareness and judgment. People gain insight into themselves by observing, explaining, and inferring their own behaviors, and acts of kindness make us believe that we have the conditions to be good people. It is difficult to cultivate fun in a remote working environment, but the sense of accomplishment and positive impact generated by being friendly to others can be transformed into long-term job satisfaction, which is even more significant during the epidemic.
Third, we found in a new set of studies that giving compliments is more joyful than receiving compliments. In the study, we paired participants, asked them to write down their names, and then talked about themselves with each other. Next, we asked one of them to truthfully express their appreciation of each other and give compliments after listening to the other’s self-evaluation. The results are consistent, and we found that giving compliments makes people feel happier than getting compliments. But surprisingly, many people don’t realize that spreading kindness will also reap happiness for themselves.
Why giving praise can improve people’s happiness to a certain extent? A key element of well-being is social connection, which is what we are sorely lacking during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our research, we found that giving compliments can strengthen people’s social connections more than receiving compliments, because giving compliments means that people pay more attention to others.
Getting compliments is certainly a great thing. Giving thoughtful and sincere compliments requires us to consider others, including their mental state, behavior, character, thoughts and feelings. Considering others is usually a prerequisite for connecting with others. In this way, praise can become a social glue, strengthen the connection and enthusiasm in interpersonal relationships, and make us happier.
Nevertheless, people often show praise for othersHesitate. why? Recent research by Erica Boothby and Vanesa Bohns has shown that requiring a person to approach others proactively and express compliments may trigger his social anxiety and discomfort . For this reason, people are often overly worried that their compliments will cause discomfort and distress to others, but the fact is just the opposite.
In addition to these psychological barriers, remote work adds more structural barriers to the random behaviors of friendliness, praise, and recognition. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, companies would express their recognition to employees through formal procedures, and ordinary encounters can easily produce simple words of thanks or praise. In contrast, today’s Zoom conferences often follow a strict agenda arrangement, and there is no room for discussing other topics, let alone praise.
Businesses can benefit from actively fostering friendly behavior. In workplaces where friendly behaviors become the norm, spillover effects can quickly multiply. Research shows that when people receive a gesture of goodwill, they will give back to the action, not just to the same person, but to other people as well. This fosters a culture of generosity in the company.
In a landmark study, researchers analyzed more than 50,000 people in more than 3,500 business units. They found that politeness, helpfulness, and compliments are closely related to the core goals of the company. The more these behaviors occur, the higher the productivity and efficiency of the company, and the lower the turnover rate. When leaders and employees are friendly to each other, it promotes a culture of collaboration and innovation.
Bring kindness to work
How can leaders promote friendly behavior in remote work? First, they should lead by example. People are inherently sensitive to the behavior of higher-ranking members of the team. By praising and praising employees, leaders can motivate team members to imitate their own behavior and establish friendly guidelines in the team.
Secondly, leaders can reserve time for “friendly sessions” in Zoom meetings. In this link, team members can recognize each other’s work. This does not take a lot of time, just a few minutes a week is enough. But these few minutes can improve morale and build social connections, especially if most of the months-long projects are completed through Zoom.
Third, leaders can consider giving out small bonuses. Companies such as Google have begun to use the “Peer Bonus” system to encourage employees to give each other a small amount of bonus (funds from the company) to express their appreciation for the efficient work of their colleagues. A few dollars can also have a positive effect. Research has found that even small acts of kindness are equally appreciated.
WeYou can also mail gift cards or small gifts to show kindness. As long as a person realizes that he is appreciated, he will be inspired to be kind to others. Spreading goodwill does not need to spend a lot of corporate funds.
The power of friendliness can alleviate the negative impact of the increasingly online social world. This is an essential leadership skill that connects people and improves workplace culture.
Keyword: Workplace
Nadav Klein, Kelly Nault, Ovul Sezer | Text
Nadav Klein is a behavioral science expert and an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. Kelly Nault is a PhD student in Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. Ovul Sezer is a behavioral science expert, a talk show comedian, and an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the UNC Kenan-Flagler School of Business.
Zhou Qiang|Edit