Happiness Traps

Life is too short to be unhappy at work. Yet many professionals who are free to shape their careers are just that: disengaged, unfulfilled, and miserable. Take “Sharon,” a vice president at a global energy firm and one of my consulting clients. She’s smart and hardworking and has risen through the ranks by following the rules. She makes a lot of money, is married to a man she loves, and is devoted to her children. She had everything she thought she wanted, but she wasn’t happy. Things were tense at home, and work no longer gratified her. She was tired of workplace politics and cynical about the never-ending changes that would supposedly fix whatever was wrong with the company in a given quarter. She resented the long hours she was required to put in. That next promotion and bonus weren’t as enticing as they used to be, but she still worked as hard as ever: Striving was a habit.
Sharon blamed others for her disenchantment. She believed that the executive team was disconnected from the day-to-day business. She complained to friends and coworkers about management’s bad decisions, the company’s strategy, and what she perceived as a lack of vision on the part of senior leadership. All the members of her team seemed to be slacking.

After coaching Sharon for several months, I grew to like her. But even I found her complaints tedious. I can only imagine what her coworkers thought. When we finally got past why everyone else was to blame for her dissatisfaction, she said, “I know I could probably make things better. I’m just so busy. Besides, it doesn’t matter whether I’m happy or not. What matters is that I hit my targets.” In her more reflective moments, Sharon admitted that her stress and unhappiness were affecting her work relationships, her family, and her health. She even noticed that she had begun to compromise her ethics in small ways. What she didn’t see was the link between her growing misery and her dwindling ability to do her job effectively.

Sharon is not alone. For years we’ve heard about dismal levels of employee engagement. Numerous studies show that close to two-thirds of employees in the United States are bored, detached, or jaded and ready to sabotage plans, projects, and other people. This makes no sense to me. Why do so many of us accept unsatisfying work, high levels of stress, looming burnout, and chronic unhappiness? Why don’t we fight back?

Multiple factors account for this contemporary malaise. The American Psychological Association found early in 2017 that Americans are reporting more stress than ever owing to politics, the speed of change, and uncertainty in the world. But it’s not always outside forces that push us over the happiness line. Sometimes we do it to ourselves. Throughout my 30-year career advising leaders of major businesses, governments, and NGOs around the globe, I’ve discovered that far too many of us fall into common “happiness traps”—destructive mindsets and ways of working that keep us stuck, unhappy, and ultimately less successful. Three of the most common happiness traps—ambition, doing what’s expected of us, and working too hard—seem productive on the surface but are harmful when taken to the extreme.

The Ambition Trap

The drive to achieve goals and further our careers pushes us to be and do our best. But when ambition is coupled with hypercompetitiveness and a single-minded focus on winning, we get into trouble. We become blind to the impact of our actions on ourselves and others; relationships are damaged and collaboration suffers; we start chasing goals for the sake of hitting targets; and work begins to lose its meaning.

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