+ Leadership

Photo Taken by my awesome friend, Tara Booth.

"You are a great coach, but I get the feeling that people don't take you seriously with your Happiness Coach title..."

It wasn't the first time I had heard that. Hearing that from Szilvia, my tarot card healer in Bali, somehow made the gravity of it all sink in that much more.

Talking to old classmates about trying to bring my signature Happiness Workshop to their corporations was met with resistance similar to what Szilvia foretold:

"Well, we are about our bottom line here, unfortunately. Money."
"Our bank thinks that if we have a workshop like that, people in the company will assume that we are not happy..."

I wanted to scream from the top of my lungs or I guess in this case text in capital letters, HAPPY employees lead to:

• 22% more PRODUCTIVITY
• 25-65% lower TURNOVER
• 40% (roughly) fewer SAFETY Incidences
• DOUBLE success rate then less happy organizations
• LOWER ABSENTEEISM (due to less stress/sickness/etc.)

And the list goes on...Yet, we persist in following this intangible "bottom line"  through sickness, health, stress, like a marriage gone wrong. Really wrong.

I watched a documentary recently entitled "The Corporation," in which today's corporation was compared to The World Health Organization's checklist for its definition for a psychopath:​

• Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
• Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
• Reckless disregard for the safety of others
• Deceitfulness/Repeated Lying and conning others for profit
• Incapacity to experience guilt
• Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior

Before corporations were corporations, there were moral codes, values, traditions that did not allow us to wreak havoc on the environment, blatantly ignore human rights/suffering, do mind numbing work, meaningless work for profit and not purpose. We all lived in a community: we shared the land, the rivers, the crops, and so much more. Our social relationships based on our shared values created everlasting bonds of happiness.

Now we live online, hiding behind computer screens/the latest smartphone device, devoid of human contact and social relationships--
the very thing that feeds our souls. We work in cubicles communicating not face-to-face, but online. We live in cities far removed from nature.

Our brains were not built for this type of work either. Just as much as our bodies cannot process fast food, our brains were built for flight or fight responses. If there's a lion, we run. Then cortisol levels drop, and the stress goes. Now, if there's an angry boss, we stay, cortisol levels don't drop, and the stress never leaves. And we all know, chronic stress leads to increased risk for depression, mental illness, lower life expectancy, and the laundry list goes on.

So what now? We need a change. A change in a POSITIVE direction. A POSITIVE environment where people feel free to work on work that matters. POSITIVE co-workers: people who love what they do genuinely, because it benefits the greater good. POSITIVE outcomes: goals that change the world for the better, not built on profit. POSITIVE perspectives: finding creative solutions not problems, such that the majority will benefit and thrive. And of course, POSITIVE leaders who will lead all of this, elevate all of us (and themselves), and create a fundamental shift by putting others before themselves.

Gosh, now more than ever, I think corporations need to move from their psychopathic leadership to one of kindness, compassion, giving, and of course HAPPINESS towards a more POSITIVE (+) kind of LEADership.

Now I'm Kyla the Positive Leadership Coach, no longer Kyla the Happiness Coach, but what remains the same is my purpose, my vision of driving this change towards a brighter, better, happier, more positive society. 

*This blog post is inspired by + dedicated to my husband: the most positive leader out there!