The Happy at Work Podcast
The Happy at Work podcast explores the intersection of organizational culture, positive psychology, and employee branding to create thriving workplaces. Our expert hosts—Dr. Laura Hamill, Michael McCarthy, and Dr. Tessa Misiaszek—bring diverse perspectives and deep expertise to uncover practical strategies for fostering happiness and success at work.
We engage with various guests, including organizational leaders, HR professionals, psychologists, researchers, and employees across various industries. Through thought-provoking conversations, we delve into:
- How organizational culture shapes employee experiences and drives engagement
- Evidence-based positive psychology strategies that boost both human flourishing and business metrics
- Innovative approaches to align brand identity with employee experience and operationalize company values
Our mission is to give listeners actionable insights and tools to transform their workplaces. Whether you're a CEO, an HR professional, a manager, or an employee seeking to make a positive impact, the Happy at Work podcast offers valuable perspectives to help you create a more fulfilling, productive, and positive work environment.
Join us as we explore the cutting edge of workplace well-being and performance, uncovering the strategies that lead to truly happy, engaged, and successful organizations.
The Happy at Work Podcast
The Business Case for Being Nice: How Kindness Transforms Workplaces
MJ Scharr, a kindness strategist and wellness thought leader, explains how kindness provides the most effective entry point to improving our overall wellness and transforming workplace culture. Through compelling research and personal insights, she reveals how kindness impacts everything from arterial health to company profits.
• Mood is the easiest wellness habit to change, and kindness provides the most effective and lasting boost
• Kindness in the workplace directly improves engagement: 54% of employees who can approach managers with questions are engaged versus only 2% of those who can't
• Workplace incivility costs US businesses an estimated $2.7 billion daily through lost productivity
• A groundbreaking study showed rabbits receiving affectionate handling had 60% less arterial plaque despite identical high-fat diets
• Experiencing kindness reduces cortisol, inflammation, and stress while improving sleep quality
• Learning to receive kindness graciously creates "positive resonance," strengthening relationships and multiplying benefits
• Rather than random acts of kindness, aim for routine "micro-kindnesses" that become part of your identity
• Addressing burnout through kindness requires organizational change that creates psychological safety
If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the Happy at Work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts. Send us an email at admin@happyatworkpodcast.com if you're interested in collaborating with us or appearing on a future episode.
To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.
And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!
Welcome back for another episode of the Happy at Work podcast with Laura Tessa and Michael.
Speaker 1:Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.
Speaker 3:Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the Happy at Work podcast. I'm Michael McCarthy and I want to welcome our guest today, mj Scharr. Mj is a keynote speaker, a kindness strategist and a wellness thought leader. Mj, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:Thank you, michael. I'm so happy to be here. Those are some fabulous titles, I just have to say so. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Speaker 3:They're really good, they're really good.
Speaker 2:I did work on it.
Speaker 3:There has been so much talk about kindness lately and I was wondering could you tell us about your career journey? How did you end up with kindness and how did you become an expert? Tell us your story.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for asking this question, michael. I think it's a very interesting path. How I got here?
Speaker 2:At first I was very interested in personal wellness and at the time we limited personal wellness a whole lot to food and exercise habits. But we already were starting to realize that this was incomplete. So I created a model to help people improve sleep, food, mood and exercise in rotation, not all at once. But what I realized is that a lot of people would tell me, mj, I've tried everything, I still can't sleep. Or, mj, I hate to exercise. The minute I sweat or my heartbeat goes up, I'm uncomfortable. But I never heard anyone tell me, mj, I've tried all the tricks in the book and I'm still the same old grumpy guy I was last year.
Speaker 2:So I realized mood is the easiest entry point to improving our habits. And inside of mood, what positive psychology reveals is that the easiest way to have an effective boost, and a long lasting one, is to start with kindness. So I decided let's go straight for kindness. And then over time I realized it improves our biometrics, it improves our longevity, it improves obviously our relationships, our work, culture. The benefits are seemingly endless. And the more I study, the more I discover, the more committed I am to boosting our ability to be kinder to each other.
Speaker 4:So, mj, I mean I absolutely love this, and if there's a shortcut to having a healthier lifestyle that doesn't necessarily include running a marathon, then I am all ears for this type of strategy. But I would love to for you to talk a little bit more about how people access kindness, right? So if you think about someone in a really stressful job situation or with stressful family situations, how how can people actually you know, actually quote unquote access kindness in a way that can really be beneficial to them?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think we have to realize that we all want to be kind. Everybody that I know wants to be a good person.
Speaker 2:I don't know one single person who's proud to be a jerk right. And so the desire is within us. I think it's innate, and if we look at studies in babies, we realize that humans tend to learn kindness and generosity way before they learn competition and the more harsher behaviors that we see in the workplace. So those harsher behaviors are learned, and they're learned because in our culture we value the achievement of goals over and above alignment with our personal values, of goals over and above alignment with our personal values. But people who do a simple exercise of identifying their personal values and then align their decisions and their behaviors with those values see an increase in their self-esteem, an increase in their fulfillment and an improvement of their relationships. Suddenly we feel more attuned to other people's needs. So I think that we need to stop prioritizing our goals so much and instead pursue value alignment If we want to access that kindness and with it we also enjoy our lives a little bit better.
Speaker 3:I love that. Now, when you said the grumpy person. If there's a grumpy CEO who might be listening to this podcast who says listen, I don't care if you're kind or not, get the job done and these are people that look at metrics, how could we convince a CEO who's really just focused on the bottom line that kindness can help the bottom line?
Speaker 2:Yes, it can. If you are one of those show me the money, ceo, then you are also someone who believes in numbers, and what we know is that there are so many statistics I don't even know which ones to throw at you. So, for example, 54% of employees who know they can approach their manager with just about any question they might have are engaged, versus only 2% of those who say no, I can't approach my manager are engaged. And of those who say I can't approach my manager, 65% are actively disengaged. So they're actually hurting your company willfully. So that's just one example. You have a question?
Speaker 3:Go ahead. I was just going to follow up. Those are incredible statistics. I mean that's money, that's money out the door. That's money out the door. Incredible statistics. I mean that's money, that's money out the door.
Speaker 2:Yes that's money out the door, and there's so many more. Like 76 percent of employees have directly experienced incivility at work and, as a result, they lose two days of productivity a month. Q4 of 2024 shows that incivility at work, or a lack of kindness, really costs US business 2.7 billion a day. Can you believe that? You said money out the window? That's the next statistic that I went to.
Speaker 3:You need a big window to push that much out the door.
Speaker 2:You do. Now. Employees who have a sense of belonging are 1.5 times more productive, 2.2 times more satisfied with their work, so they're more loyal. It reduces your cost of hiring and firing and all of those things I mean. I can keep on going, but there's so many numbers and if you are someone who believes in the numbers, you can't just dismiss this data.
Speaker 4:I think that's so important, MJ, especially in the context of conversations that we're having today with companies around DEI diversity, equity and inclusion. And oftentimes, when we talk about inclusive workplaces, we're talking about belongingness, we're talking about psychological safety, and what I find interesting is that a lot of the statistics you're talking about in the context of kindness really leads to more employee engagement, which leads to higher productivity, which leads to, obviously, revenue generation and growth and so forth. But I haven't heard the connections before or at least I haven't made them in my own mind but between kindness and kind of the major principles in which diversity, equity, inclusion are based upon, kind of the major principles in which diversity, equity, inclusion are based upon right. So I'm just curious in your own work, have you seen these connections made between concepts around psychological safety and Amy Edmondson's work and then the positive psychology and the kindness research? Like, what are the connections that you're seeing? Are we talking about the same thing or are they kind of distinctly different but connected to each other?
Speaker 2:They are all connected and I think that kindness has many flavors, right? So acceptance for a variety of backgrounds and interests and styles is one thing. Compassion for other people's struggles and situations is another one. Thanksgiving gratitude, right, for people's contributions, for what they bring not only to the workplace but to your life, is another flavor of kindness. So I pulled from the research, from all of these other connects domains, because I think that they all are part of a greater whole and they all come together. You can't really easily you know, part from one another. Oh, this is when I'm kind versus this is when I'm compassionate. Well, you know, you can be compassionate without being kind, but it's kind of hard to do, right, like you can give the money to the homeless guy and not really give him a second. Look, you haven't been kind, but you've been a little bit compassionate, right, you can be kind without being compassionate. If you give somebody praise, you're not necessarily expressing compassion. So they are separate, but the overlap or the intersection if they were a Venn diagram is very large.
Speaker 3:You know, MJ, I believe in being kind because it's just how I was raised. I find that when I'm kind to someone, I feel like I get more out of it than they do Like helping people who help yes, they get.
Speaker 3:They feel better than the person who received the help. I could just imagine, you know some snarky person in their cubicle saying, oh great, now I get to go to a kindness training. Like what's that about? How do you? How would you actually get people to start Like what's one or two things that they could do today that are real and not just some sort of like fake check the box? Like, like, how does someone start with this? If they're, if they want to try it, they're willing, how do they start? What do we do?
Speaker 2:Right, so well. First I'd like to start with the people who are really willing and able. And you know, just like in positive psychology, focus on your strengths, right, focus on your assets. So those who are really willing and who are eager to do it are going to already start to transform the relationships, and then those who are a little bit more snarky will probably become the recipient of that kindness. Now that can also become difficult, and I found in my own little research.
Speaker 2:I was trying to identify what are the obstacles to kindness, and by far what rose to the top in my project was the ability to receive kindness. So we have this thought that it's better to give than to receive. We're a little bit afraid to have to reciprocate later or to be vulnerable. Or maybe we're cynics and we're like no, I don't believe that you're just being kind, I believe that you want something in return. So sometimes it's difficult to accept the kindness, and I know for me, I want to receive the kindness. I'm very willing to do it, but I've been trained over the years or I've trained myself. I'm not sure to say things like oh, thank you, it really wasn't that big a deal. Or somebody compliments my shirt and I'll say, oh, I got this on sale, or this is so old, or you know, like I'll try to deflect and diminish, like I have a hard time to accept wholeheartedly. So that's something that I teach in my trainings and for those people who have a hard time, maybe that's the very first step. How do you receive the?
Speaker 3:kindness. I was that person that I'm more than happy to help. I will help you all day long. As far as receiving help, I would feel awkward that I don't deserve it, and I guess that's something to do with self-esteem or whatever. And I told this to a friend and we both knew the data that the person who receives the help the other person is getting more, more out of it. And he had said this to I think it was his pastor at church and he was saying you know, I'm happy to help, but I have a hard time receiving it. And the pastor said well, you know, they really, they really feel great when they help, and when you say no to help, you're depriving them of joy. Yes, that's what switched me. That's when I said I will let you help me because I want you to feel good. I don't tell them that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 3:And now that was. That was sort of like my little baby step into receiving help. And when I had my first major operation almost a year ago, I needed help. I was on crutches. I had to say yes to everything. It felt so good for people just to hold the door for me and hold the elevator for me and they would say hey, can I walk your dog? And I was like yeah, here's the leash, there you go.
Speaker 3:I was like I'm making you feel great. Go walk my dog. It was a great way to ease into it and it took a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes. But here's the thing when we accept the kindness graciously, we become givers. We create a chance at positive resonance. Where the giver feels good, we accept graciously, we make them feel a little bit better than they already felt through our reaction. So the positivity resonates between the two people, the relationship strengthens. That's really where the magic happens.
Speaker 2:So in my trainings I try to give people like ready answers to have in their back pockets, so that when they are offered kindness, instead of trying to deflect, which is their usual mental pathways, they know exactly what to respond. So simple things like thank you, I really received that. Or thank you that just uplifted me, or that's so kind of you right, focusing on the other person, or that meant a lot, whatever feels funny or sorry, whatever feels authentic. And sometimes I even like to go to something funny, like now, if somebody compliments my shirt, instead of saying, oh, I got this on sale, I say, oh, thank you, now I feel sexy, right. So anything to kind of nourish that positivity between the two people helps and I think that grumpy person you were talking about earlier will not be able to resist it.
Speaker 4:So I really want to hone in on something you said really at the top of the podcast, which was about the health benefits, because another piece that we talk, a topic we talk about a lot on this podcast, is wellbeing, addressing burnout. We started this podcast during the pandemic and so many conversations we've had since have been around health, well-being, addressing burnout and so forth. So can you talk a little bit more about what are those health benefits that can be received as a result of kindness either receiving kindness or being kind and how can that be applied? If you really want to think about your overall health and well-being, how can you be really intentional as a person and what kind of benefits might you see from that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I would love to. There's really three big things that we see with kindness. So the first one I have to tell you the study, the design of that study, how they found those results. So in 1978, dr Naram which is a professor emeritus in bioengineering at Georgia Tech right, so not something lighthearted, right he was studying rabbits and back in those days we didn't yet know the connection between what we eat and our cholesterol levels. So he was trying to establish that connection and what he was testing out was what happens to rabbits if we feed them high fat diets and as we. How is that possible? Genetically they are all similar. They all have the same exercise routine, they're all fed at the same time. They're all fed the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:He went back to his study design, talked to people what's the difference? What's the difference? What's the difference? He could not figure it out. One day he saw the animal handlers and one of them had a very natural caring instinct and when she grabbed the bunnies, instead of treating them with indifference which is how we treat each other in the workplace she treated them with care. She would pet them and say, oh, you're such a sweet bunny, I love you, you're so soft and all these things. And that was a difference, because the bunnies were treated with love. Their blood vessels reacted differently to the cholesterol that was in their bloodstream right.
Speaker 3:I wonder if there's a correlation with reduced inflammation. I've heard that inflammation is such a link to so many things that if your inflammation was reduced through kindness and petting the rabbit or someone holding your hand, I wonder if that would be so now, if people are nicer to each other or kinder to each other in work. Could our insurance bills go down?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would like to say yes, honestly. So just to finish up the first study, he couldn't believe it. He replicated the study, he replicated the results and this time, instead of assigning the bunnies you know and kind of, instead of looking at which bunnies were with whom, he assigned them to this caretaker versus another caretaker and realized, wow, she is the one really that makes a difference for the blood vessels. So now, michael, you were asking me about my point number two. When we are kinder, when we exercise kindness, or even when we receive kindness actually even when we just witness kindness our stress response is diminished, our rest and relaxation response is heightened, our production of cortisol is reduced and with that we reduce food cravings, we sleep better at night, we are more likely to implement our good, healthy intentions elsewhere in our life, and so we have other physiological reactions that kick in and that keep us healthy.
Speaker 2:You know Barbara Fredrickson I'm sure you've talked about her before on this podcast right, and her work shows that people who enjoy more micro moments of connection. So a micro moment of connection is when two human beings look at each other in their eyes and just have the subtext. I get you, I understand, I'm with you, right, you're truly connecting. More of those moments lead to reduced inflammation exactly where you were going, michael and that also leads to less cancer, less diabetes, less Alzheimer's. I don't know about you, guys, I'd rather do without those things. So I'm working on my micro connections instead.
Speaker 4:Well, so just to make the connection to the workplace, are there recommendations that you make when it comes to personal well-being or addressing burnout? Specifically, what kind of recommendations would you make to either an individual or perhaps a workplace to think about how to integrate more of these acts of kindness in order to boost wellness?
Speaker 2:Yes, so burnout is really a systemic issue. Right, you can reframe all day long, you can try and be grateful all day long and positive and not sweat the small stuff. But if there is just too much pressure, there is just too much pressure. If there is just too much work and a normal human being cannot get through it and that leads to being absent at home, cutting out your workouts, cutting out your night's sleep, an amount of stress that is undue to your brain and body. I mean, there is only so much you can do about burnout as an individual. But when the whole culture starts to become kinder, right, then it makes a difference.
Speaker 2:Suddenly you don't have to go to all of these other meetings that are not really your expertise but you have to be part of, just to see why. Right, suddenly it is possible to say to someone with a little bit more confidence I am just drowning right now. Can I get this back to you in two weeks instead of in three days? Suddenly it is possible to go to your manager and say I have a little too much, I'm stressed out. Can I get some help? Can we hire some external help for the next two weeks, the next month? Can I step out of this committee? And now?
Speaker 2:You don't fear of retribution, you don't fear for your career trajectory, because people have that compassion, they have that understanding, they want you to be at your best. They don't want you to just check the box and be there. They want you to perform well and they understand that. For that to happen, you need to have a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more psychological safety, a little bit more ability to rest in between pushes at work. So it really needs to be applied at the organizational level for it to have an impact on burnout rates.
Speaker 3:I love this and we always run out of time but I like to talk. So my, my, my final thing and I'm so glad that you came onto the show and it's um reminded me that when I was in a training for something and they were, they were they used the phrase microaggressions. You know, people just kind of doing these little little little nasty tidbits here and there, and it gave me the idea of what do you think about micro-kindnesses and how could people try them, Like what's a few micro-kindnesses someone could just kind of check?
Speaker 4:out. Michael, I was thinking the exact same thing, because, we are. We obviously have been working together for a long time. Micro-kindnesses Sorry, MJ. What would you say to that? I was literally thinking the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:I I mean micro. The more you can infuse your personality with kindness, the better the results, right? I don't really love the random acts of kindness campaigns, because, sure, it's good, but we don't want kindness to be random, we want it to be routine, right? So all of the micro kindnesses, starting with receiving kindness a little bit more willingly, right? Just more civility, like you said, people holding the door for me I thought that was so kind. Is it really kindness or is it just pure civility? Right, but it's an entry point, it is something, it is a step in the right direction.
Speaker 2:So, all of these little things, a little bit more of the thank yous, the pleases I appreciate that, right, using the language that we have learned as kids we shouldn't be using all the time and that as grownups we're rushing and we forget about them. Right? All of these little things they do add up, but their power is in transforming how you view yourself, right? If you just do them just to say oh yeah, I said please, I said thank you and I held the door today, I'm good, it won't do much. But if you see yourself as I am someone who never misses a chance to say thank you, I am someone who appreciates other people and it shows in such and such ways, right, you make it more part of your identity, then that's when it's really powerful.
Speaker 3:I love that. Mj, thank you so much for being on the show. What, what? I'm going to leave anyone who's still feeling a little bit skeptical. The other day, daniel Pink shared a little bit of research that people who were kind look physically more attractive to other people.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 3:So there's another reason to check it out. Thank you so much for joining us today, mj, and we'd love to have you back and talk a little bit more about kindness, thank you so much.
Speaker 4:Thank you, MJ. This was a wonderful conversation. Thank you for having me, guys.
Speaker 2:This was super fun.
Speaker 3:We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the Happy at Work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Are you interested in speaking on a future episode or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin at happyatworkpodcastcom.
Speaker 2:And lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness. See you soon.
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