Employee Engagement 2.0

Kevin Kruse keeps employee engagement short and sweet. In Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A Real-World Guide for Busy Managers), which many will read in under an hour, he delivers a lot of important points. Definition & Data Kruse defines employee engagement as the emotional commitment an employee has read more…

Resilience: How to Build your Emotional Toolbox

Thanks to Noah Jacobson for this guest post about emotional resilience! Noah interned previously with Happy Brain Science and became fascinated with the application of positive psychology. He graduated from Grinnell College with a degree in Psychology and Neuroscience. Building Emotional Resilience Life can be hard. Losing a job, struggling with a tough relationship at read more…

Building Strong Virtual Teams: New Five Part Master Class Series!

Wouldn’t it be helpful to lead a strong virtual team during these tough times? I know how hard it is to build a strong virtual team. I’ve led teams for over 30 years, and I’ve dealt with communication problems, draining workloads, excess stress, and disengaged employees…and all of that was under “normal” circumstances! Leaders like read more…

Leading for Happiness & Building Strong Teams: New Coaching Groups!

Wouldn’t it be great to lead a happy, strong, thriving team at work? I know how hard it is for a team to thrive at work. I’ve led teams for 30 years, and I’ve dealt with communication problems, draining workloads, excess stress, and disengaged employees–problems you may be wrestling with right now. These problems can read more…

My review of the book “Character Strengths Matter” by Kathryn Britton and Shannon Polly

What’s even better than an inspiring, innovative, and useful book that helps us thrive? One that also supports a good cause. Character Strengths Matter: How to Live a Full Life, edited by Kathryn Britton and Shannon Polly, is just such a book. Character Strengths Matter explores strengths: those things we do very well and that energize us. The read more…

Truly Tap Your Strengths To Do Better Work and Enjoy It More!

Strengths = Talent + Energy At Happy Brain Science we teach individuals and organizations how to Truly Tap Strengths by focusing on examining beliefs that may be inhibiting strengths, exploring ways to discover strengths, and strategizing ways to act and build on strengths. A strength, as defined by strengths researchers, is a behavior that you read more…

Hire a set of strengths? Yes and no.

I often present the workshop Truly Tapping Your Strengths–And Those of Your Team! The basic gist is that if you focus on what’s right with people and get them to use that more, everyone does better work and enjoys it more. A common question from my awesome audiences is “If I think a job needs a particular set read more…

Book Summary and Review of We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement by Rudy Karsan and Kevin Kruse

We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement is so titled because the authors view employee engagement as a partnership between employees and their employers. I couldn’t agree more. Pay for Performance and Employee Engagement Early on in the book though, there is a part with which I disagree: the authors strongly argue that read more…

Mind Your Mind: Empowering Your "Inner CEO"

You start an email to your boss, “Dear total moron.” If a minute later you decide not to send it, you have one particular part of your brain to thank: your prefrontal cortex. This part of your brain is prime brain real estate. (It’s roughly speaking just behind your forehead and the thin layer marked in read more…

Leave The Change: Money, Generosity, and Happiness At Work

“Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.” – David Lee Roth While that’s a funny quote, it’s not terribly accurate according to the science of happiness. Long story short, money helps many individuals, families, and countries to be happier, but it typically doesn’t read more…