If you want to increase satisfaction at work, talk about the things people like. If you want to increase dissatisfaction, talk about what makes them unhappy.
I recently talked to a manager – let’s call him Roy – whose company had completed a series of employee satisfaction surveys. It turns out that although Roy’s unit scored higher than others on overall happiness, there were a few areas in which his unit was lower. To find out why, the people who conducted the survey had a meeting with the employees in Roy’s unit in which they were asked to talk about the things they didn’t like.
“After that meeting, I am convinced people were more unhappy with work than they were before,” Roy told me. “Why is that?” he wanted to know.
What Roy’s unit went through is what might be called “trauma sharing”, which is a form of understanding conversation in which people want other people to understand how bad things really are. There is no purpose to the conversation other than to get the misery out. In the process, people try to “one up” each other with how their problem or situation is so much worse than anyone else. The result is a form of emotional contagion in which people become increasing dissatisfied and unhappy.
An alternative to “trauma sharing” is to have people talk about what they like at work and how they could get more of that. In this case, people talk about the things that give them satisfaction and happiness. The point here is not to outdo each other, but to share the things that you like about your work: the people, the assignments, the equipment, and humorous interchanges, anything that gives you satisfaction. The result is a positive form of emotional contagion in which people become increasingly satisfied, animated, and happy.
People’s emotions and attitudes are a product of the conversations they are having. If they are having conversations about things they find dissatisfying, they will become increasingly dissatisfied. By the same token, if they are in conversations about things that are satisfying to them, they will be satisfied. Want to increase your satisfaction at work? Change what you talk about from what you don’t like to what you do and see what happens.