Cherophobia – the fear of happiness
Workplace Manifestation
“If we give people too much freedom, they’ll start taking the piss.”
With the continuation of hybrid and remote working, the increase in phenomenon such as quiet quitting, plus sustained & low levels of productivity, positivity and workplace wellbeing should be at the top of leaders’ agenda. Yet instead, there appears to be a palpable fear amongst leaders that if they’re too nice, too flexible, too understanding or too kind, their employees won’t work as hard or be as productive.
Cherophobia (if it existed within organisations) could potentially result in toxic leadership, a propensity to lead with fear and would generally foster a deficit-based approach to managing and motivating the workforce. Not great.
Why we should be leaning into workplace flourishing
At TFC, we believe that a key responsibility of a leader is to create environments that are conducive to individual and organisational success. To cultivate and promote what is strong, rather than what is wrong.
Let’s face it, more often than not, if we fail, we’re the first to know and having someone else reiterate it, can lower our self-efficacy.
Put simply, the research tells us that where humans feel confident in their ability to succeed and perform, they tend to do better (Nuutila et al., 2020). Mainly the carrot and in the interest of balance, small measures of stick should also be applied. For instance, it’s good to talk about consequences of low performance and to not be overly optimistic (Tenney et al., 2015)
Don’t be scared of creating happy employees and being happy yourself!
The extant literature into workplace wellbeing and the recent reports by Gallup, Deloitte, Headspace and Great Places to Work show multi-faceted upside. Increases in engagement, performance, productivity, happiness, creativity and innovation. Decreases in turnover, intention to leave and sickness absence.
Good for the individuals. Good for the teams. Good for the company. What’s not to like?
The good news is that there are loads of options for pivoting from a deficit based approach. Individual and group coaching, leadership development programmes and workplace wellbeing audits are all brilliant starting points to overcoming workplace cherophobia. Feel free to get in touch to discuss in more detail here.
References
Nuutila, K., Tapola, A., Tuominen, H., Kupiainen, S., Pásztor, A., & Niemivirta, M. (2020). Reciprocal Predictions Between Interest, Self-Efficacy, and Performance During a Task. Frontiers in Education, 5(April). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00036
Tenney, E. R., Logg, J. M., & Moore, D. A. (2015). (Too) optimistic about optimism: The belief that optimism improves performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 377–399. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000018
