Which came first— Career Success or Happiness?

Episode 16

Does career success lead to happiness, or is it the other way around? What behaviors have philosophy, religion and modern science proven lead to happiness? Author of One People One Planet Michael Glauser shares the winning recipe for happiness and how it can be applied in the workplace.

Listen on Spotify

Guest

Michael Glauser

Follow on LinkedIn

Visit Website

About the Guest

Michael Glauser is an entrepreneur, author, business consultant, and university professor. He has built successful companies in the retail, wholesale, and educational industries and has worked with hundreds of businesses—from startups to multinational enterprises—in leadership development, communication, team building, and organizational strategy. Today, Mike serves as Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He’s also the Director of the SEED poverty alleviation program, helping thousands of people around the world to improve their standard of living and benefit their communities through entrepreneurship. Mike has published three books on entrepreneurship: Glorious Accidents, The Business of Heart and Main Street Entrepreneur, which chronicles his 4,000 mile bicycle ride across America to interview 100 remarkable entrepreneurs who have successfully merged livelihood and lifestyle in places they want to live. His latest book, One People One Planet: Six Universal Truths for Being Happy Together, presents six proven principles to help us increase our happiness, improve our relationships, and create greater civility in organizations and communities.

‍Episode Highlights

What is corporate civility and why is it important?

Mike Glauser: “Corporate civility has to do with respectful dialogue; the ability to talk to each other respectfully and value each other’s opinions. So if we’re civil at work, we realize we’ve all had different experiences. We have different values. We practice deep listening. We don’t try to process and think of what we’re going to say when the other person stops talking, but we listen deeply and then we respond to each other with respect.

It’s part of what Joseph Granny calls crucial conversations and the reason it’s important is that civility is a part of this overall culture that has such a huge impact on the big outcomes of organizations. and what we found is that civility cannot be mandated, monitored, enforced, rewarded or punished. But it comes when we teach and people internalize and practice values and certain behaviors in the organization. And so in our book, “One People, One Planet”, we focus on some behaviors that help people enjoy being together and working well together. And that improves civility. But most important, it improves culture as a subset of civility at work.”

‍

One People One Planet

Matt Vance: “For people leaders who are searching for some foundational values to anchor their company values, this is that blueprint where any organization could build from and customize their company values, blended with their brand voice and with research, and founded in human happiness.”

‍

Training programs to create or improve culture

Mike Glauser: “It’s a long process to create a positive culture or to improve culture.

Leaders need to understand the behaviors and start practicing them.
Provide training to teach others.
Practice those behaviors.

‍Over time, we start seeing shifts in organizational culture. There are lots of ways to assess this: employee surveys, exit interviews and focus groups. One of the best systems we’ve seen, from Automated Systems Inc., has a program called Humble, where they actually assess how humble the organization is. Metrics surround promoting civility and positive relationships. Their program actually creates a humble score which then promotes civil interactions.”

‍