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October 3, 2010
Happiness Matters
by Bob Tschannen-Moran

Laser Provision

As someone concerned about the future of education in America and around the world, I have watched with increasing dismay the strident calls to get tough with teachers. There's no hiding the behaviorist philosophy: punish the low-performers and reward the high-performers. But are such threats and incentives the best way to change behavior and reform the system? Twelve years of coaching adults to higher-levels of learning and performance tell me the answer is no. Happiness matters. That's the most important incentive of them all.

LifeTrek Provision

• Edward Deci from the University of Rochester, NY spoke to the power of choice and positive feedback. Why? Because choice meets our need for autonomy and positive feedback meets our need for competence. When such needs are met, we feel happy.
   
• Deci also spoke to the need for relatedness. When people have high levels of trust and rapport with significant others, they are more likely to set and cooperate on mutual goals. Controlling environments work against this dynamic; need-supportive environments help to get and keep people in the game.
   
• Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill spoke to the power of positive emotions. It's not enough just to feel happy with our work environment, we also have to feel happy with our whole lives. Personal well-being matters. The happier we feel in life, the more creative, resilient, and competent we become at work.

These four needs -- autonomy, competence, relatedness, and well-being -- underlie human happiness. And human happiness underlies work performance, whether that work is teaching or doing anything else.

Understanding the importance of happiness, great leaders strive to create need-supporting environments. They talk to and treat people in ways that foster autonomy, competence, relatedness, and well-being. Such environments are not expendable nice-to-haves. They are essential have-to-haves. It really does matter if leaders alienate the people they work with. Principle is no excuse for pugnacity. Great leaders make work fun.

That explains the approach we take with evocative coaching through the Center for School Transformation. When we write about "transforming schools one conversation at a time," we are referring to the power of conversations to change the framework through which people view their life and work. When that framework is happy and positive, all manner of things become possible. When that framework is unhappy and negative, just about everything gets bogged down and difficult. The framework we come from, how we carry ourselves, is a choice every leader has to make.

Coaching Inquiries: What framework do you come from? How can you make life and work more positive? What is one thing that could make you happy right now? How can you meet more of your needs for autonomy, competence, relatedness, and well-being? How could you assist others to meet those needs as well?

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