These are my 5 tips for managers seeking to boost employee engagement.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by Henry Ford:

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.”

I love it because it brilliantly captures the importance of believing in a positive outcome.

It’s easy to see how believing you are unable to do something will lead you to not even try, which will prevent any chance of success. In other words believing something is impossible is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Predicting your own failure is no challenge at all, but how about the reverse? Does believing in success cause us to be successful?

According to Shawn Achor, professor at Harvard and author of The Happiness Advantage intelligence and technical skills can only explain a quarter of peoples success at the office, whereas optimism, friendships at work, and a positive view on challenges is able to predict three quarters of successes.

What he found is that the classic thinking that we must work hard to achieve successes that will make us happy is in fact backwards, and that instead of success leading to happiness it is happiness that leads us to be successful.

If you haven’t seen it already I highly recommend Shawn’s TED Talk:

Positive thinking cannot only be used to predict individual success; it also works on teams or even whole companies.

The opposite of happiness at work is not unhappiness, it is apathy. When your colleagues lose interest in their work, lack enthusiasm or become jaded this creates real organizational challenges.

Employee engagement is consistently ranked as one of the top drivers of business success, yet less than one in four employees consider themselves to be highly engaged at work.

So for the majority of companies there is significant opportunity to improve results by training people to think positively.

That’s right, positivity can be taught and learned!

We often tend to think of positivity as something innate; “That guy was born happy” or “I don’t mean to be negative, it’s just who I am”.

In fact, it is less about who you are and more about who you’re with. You see, positivity and negativity are highly contagious emotions (as are many other feelings). We all tend to become a mirror of the people we are surrounded by.

The scientific explanation of the viral effect of emotions is something called Mirror Neurons. These are cells in your brain who try to understand and interpret the feelings of others by mimicking those feelings in your own brain. Mirror Neurons are super fast and work outside our conscious control, which is why it takes great effort not to yawn or laugh when you observe another person either yawning or laughing.

What about in a meeting room with several people? Who will influence the group more? The negative guy or the positive guy? It depends on a lot of factors, mainly it will be the person who is getting the most attention – if you are the boss, chances are good that it will be you who is setting the tone in the room. However it could be any member of the group who is communicating his feelings loudly (both verbally and non-verbally).

The good news is; Positive Thinking is Naturally Contagious.

The bad news is that so is negativity and a long range of unproductive emotions. However knowing this you can start to proactively incorporate positivity in your daily interactions and it will spread like ripples throughout the organization.

Sure, if you are someone who has practiced negativity for a very long time chances are you have become rather good at it, and it will take some effort to change behavior, but it can be done. Here are a few ideas how:

1) Smile!

The most powerful thing you can do is also the simplest. Smiling is an easy and effective way to spread happiness all around, and it is highly contagious.

In hotels all over the world service staff are trained in the 10 & 5 Rule.

Simply explained, the 10 & 5 Rule suggests that anytime a guest is within ten feet of a staff member, the staff member should make eye contact and warmly smile to acknowledge the oncoming guests.

When a staff member is approximately five feet from a guest, a sincere greeting or friendly gesture of acknowledgement should accompany the eye contact and smile.

Researches tried to implement this rule in a hospital setting by training all the doctors and nurses. Within six months the employee satisfaction AND the patient satisfaction had jumped to new highs.

2) Show the purpose

John F. Kenedy quoting the ancient Greeks once said:

“The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

In other words, happiness is working hard at work worth doing.

Numerous studies have found a strong link between engagement at work, and having a clear understanding of the purpose and mission of why you are doing the work.

Clearly communicating the goal and vision you are pursuing is a great way to boost positivity and engagement. It is the difference between laying bricks and building a cathedral.

3) Silently wish the other person happiness

If you are the modest type, or if you are dealing with a particularly negative individual this could be the tool for you.

The method is very simple: In your own thoughts make a commitment to helping the other person achieve happiness.

That’s all it is, a silent reminder to yourself to be a good colleague and a good friend – with a little luck both of you will experience a positive boost, and you will bank some good karma.

4) Give praise

Handing out praise and showing gratitude are supper powerful and effective motivators that the majority of managers love to receive but struggle to give.

It can be as simple as saying “Thank You” or “Good Job”, but for some reason it feels quite hard.

For most people the limiting factor is a feeling that their praise will mean less if they give it out too often. As if it was somehow a finite resource that should be given only to those most deserving.

In reality though there is hardly any limit to how often you can say Thank You or tell someone that you are impressed with their work.

Sure, praise should be genuine and sincere, you should not start praising undesirable behavior – however for most people there exist plenty untapped opportunities to be thankful.

A simple systematic approach could be to start every day by sending an email with praise to someone – you can limit this task to 2 minutes to keep the mail short. I am certain you will find that being grateful also raises your own level of positivity.

5) Celebrate small wins

One of the reasons success does not lead to happiness is that every time we achieve our targets we or our boss will raise the bar.

If happiness depended on us reaching our goals it would be forever out of reach.

Luckily it is the other way around, and our positivity actually helps us achieve more success. That is why celebrating our wins is so important.

Big wins should of course be celebrated in a big way, but since they are often few and far in between a good approach is to break the project or goal into smaller wins and celebrate them appropriately.

Try to be creative, celebrating small wins is more about togetherness and sharing a good time, less about budget and bonuses. It can be as simple as sharing a cake after lunch or ringing a bell when a salesman lands a big order.

I hope you found some inspiration in these tips, and would love to hear your ideas for spreading happiness at work?