For managers, keeping everyone happy is tough!

You want to show your dedication, focus and vision with your team, delivering the best work you can for them. But sometimes the workload of being a manager can have its effect on the quality of your interactions with your team.

Stepping into the office every day becomes a game of balancing tasks, duties, and deadlines, but also balancing emotions, opinions and responsibilities.

From my short experience, the details matter when becoming a manager.

Adding the title “Chief Happiness Officer” to your job description is something everyone should consider, in your mission towards building a strong culture in your companies/teams.

I been able to work with some fantastic teams both remotely, in person with great company cultures. Here are my top tips to becoming that Chief Happiness Officer as a manager or team leader.

1:1 Meetings

In a recent article we discussed the unsung habits of highly respected managers, these habits were handy and raised some interest around the short 1:1 meetings managers can organise for their team.

These meetings are designed to give your team members the opportunity to discuss relevant topics with you to progress projects, but also to resolve issues ongoing that occur.

1:1 meetings are used by popular CEOs across the world to keep and are commonly quoted by the likes of Gary Vaynerchuk as a popular tool for “keeping in tune with all your employees”, Gary also elaborates with more advice on how employees should connect with their boss during these 1:1 meetings and use them as a Q&A opportunity to progress their career.

“The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.” — Jack Welch

Tactical behaviour has been implemented in the football scene by historic manager’s such as Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, and arguably the best manager in UK premier league history (football).

In a 2013 Harvard Business Review interview he discusses his ability to delegate these 1:1 meetings to other staff, but also his skill in keeping in tune with every player, whether in the corridors, in the cafeteria or by the side of the pitch — always looking for ways to stay connected in sharp mini-meetings to help resolve issues and build on strengths of all the team members.

“Observation is critical to management. The ability to see things is key — or, more specifically, the ability to see things you don’t expect to see.”- Sir Alex Ferguson.

Here are some top tips on 1:1 meetings:

Keep them short and precise (between 5–20 minutes).

Allow them to address any ongoing issues, struggles or challenges they face.

Open the meeting to discuss other business, outside of your list.

Retain privacy during the meetings so they feel confidential for sharing information.

Always extend if team members need points/or needs clarity.

Keep them regular, once a week.

Slack Messages

There’s no doubt, managers need to be using the IM/communication tools within their offices/remote setup to communicate effectively with teams remotely, on-the-go and in the office, they can be useful in developing the following:

Sharing valuable insights

Growing team confidence

Showcasing your availability

Productivity apps and their activity have grown by 125% over the last year (Flurry Insights) as businesses are becoming more reliant on the tools to keep a constant communication with their team.

Slack, one of the most popular communication apps for start-ups and businesses, and also one of fast growing business tools over the last two years, has been adopted by thousands of new companies to manage internal discussions and more. It’s no shock that it’s used by over 3 millions daily active users already. (Venture Beat).

Slack continues to grow, but every day works to open up a whole world of new communication, adding emoji support, reactions to posts, integrations, calls, video calls and much more to help teams connect remotely, in-office or on-the-go.

Emojis are still a growing trend, and they are filtering their way into the business world. Used professionally, they can help bring alive a text heavy conversation and help convey emotion as well as drive happiness.

In 2014, a study showed that 78% of American workers felt they were emotionally disconnected in the workplace, and 33% wished there was a better way to express emotions when communicating to those in the workplace. (Kelton, 2014)

One of the biggest problem with all electronic communication is that it’s “toneless”. In the lack of tone, people weave negative tone into it. 76% of American workers admit they have used emoji in digital communications in their professional life, here’s a breakdown of what they’ve used:

64% Happy face

16% Thumbs up

7% Winking face

3% Heart

3% Surprised face

3% Sad face

2% Thumbs down

1% Angry face

There’s still no study to show that emojis have directly improved workplace happiness, however after seeing the figures on emotional disconnection and expression I do think we’ll see some figures on this soon, and a day where emojis being used in the workplace can help lead to stronger communication, better emotional management and a happier workforce, Slack will play a huge part in that.

Here’s a quick round-up of advice:

Use Emoji with your team members to convey emotion

Remember to keep updated with the most efficient IM tools like Slack.

Integrate Todoist & Slack for efficient task management.

For the Emoji nomad out there, here is a simple guide to Emoji meanings.

Weekly Email update

Internal emails from teams are now less common thanks to the likes of Slack, so making sure that internal email communications aren’t abused is vital.

Weekly round-up emails have now become more and more popular around small to medium sized businesses across the world. As a manager, making sure all of your team are on the right page is crucial, after a busy week in the trenches sometimes this vision gets lost or at the start of a week, after a busy weekend, teams need to keep focused on the top line plans.

The weekly round-up emails are designed to summarise the week, cover key mission and vision, discuss focuses for week commencing and touch base with challenges and issues of the team.

This shouldn’t replace 1:1 meetings, but should be the summary of the week. This tactic should be similar to the weekly newsletter, but as a shorter form opportunity to align the team on their work. Keeping the compass in the right direction is so valuable for a business small or large.

Dan Ruch from Rocketrip explains in an inc. article, that he believes his Monday morning email is his “most vital to the company’s week”.

“I’m not a nutritionist, so I really can’t say whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But as a CEO, I know that the first email I send Monday morning is the most important one of my week.” — Dan Ruch.

Rocketrip CEO builds on this point by sharing some of the positives of using such a tactic, he’s managed to share the top priorities from his to do list to the team, it helps reduce individual 1:1 emails and also keeps the team clear of the top line focus points.

Advice surrounding the weekly email

Keep it short and precise (200–300 words)

Send Friday afternoon/Monday morning.

Make sure to send to all of your employees/team members.

Be clear and professional but positive and holistic.

Manage expectations and take into account situations of all members.

Support the team by offering a contact route — eg. “reply to this email”

Know your team

“Work hard, play hard” — a term used by a lot of individuals every day in the workplace. Spending time with family and friends, but working hard and focal is becoming a growing trend in a mindfulness revolution.

Managers need to focus on engaging with their employees about that they did during the weekends, days off and holiday time (unless that’s personal).

Monday mornings spending 10 minutes catching up on your weekend’s activities can be a great way to set-up the week for a closer connection. Thursday afternoons are a fantastic way to ask about plans for the weekend, and learn more about their characteristics outside of the workplace.

This is not only powerful for the team members to see their manager making a conscious effort to keep updated but allows them to feel less guilty about their pursuits after their 9–5 role, here’s an article we covered on reducing guilt after the day is over.

With 65% of employees saying that their manager expects them to be reachable outside of the office, as a manager you are also need to understand what plans you’re interrupting if this comes into play.

Here are some advice to keep updated with your team:

Ask only when they and you have some free time

Make sure to ask all of the team members.

Share what you activities you like doing.

Avoid sensitive topics.

Happiness levels

Simple yet effective tip. Making sure you’re the happiest person in the room, even through the tougher/more challenging times, brings out the best work in people. I have always appointed myself as “happiness officer” as a low-level manager in the past and this has become one of my abilities in the workplace.

A recent study from the University of Warwick has outlined that happy employees are 12% more productive in the workplace whilst unhappy employees were 10% less productive. Obviously, there are lots more variable in the process to keeping an employee happy, but a happy manager that observes and maintains a group of talented individuals is a good chunk of this.

Companies such as VaynerMedia, Buffer and even Google appoint specific roles like this as a mandatory, but this could be adopted by a lot of managers with small to large teams.

This article aims to highlight some of the ways you can become a “Chief Happiness Officer”, or a “Happiness Officer” at your workplace. This is self-appointed, and gives you the rights to support others around you.

Notes for being Chief Happiness Officer:

Always focus on listening to your team.

A smile can go a long way, wear one.

Reward high quality work

To finish off, a quote that I love for your new pursuit as a CHO.