legal sanity

If you regularly stop by here, you’ve likely noticed that I devote a lot of blog posts and other professional space to exploring the topic of human energy and how it factors into our ability to create successful business relationships and avoid unsuccessful ones. This is much more than an academic interest for me.

For close to 25 years, I’ve tried my best to keep good company; that is, to surround myself as much as possible with positive people as opposed to negative people who drain the heck out of me. In any situation, I’m vigilant of the energetic influences around me and monitor whether I’m experiencing them as filling or draining. Of course, as a practicing lawyer and mediator, steering clear of negativity has been a big challenge. And I’ve noticed that, where negative people and positive people co-mingle, the negative energy usually ends up trumping and stifling the positive to a large extent.

Given my interest and observations about negativity and positivity, I was captivated by a terrific post from Chief Happiness Officer Alexander Kjerulf on happiness and workplace productivity. Starting with the premise that “happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster,” Kjerulf shares 10 reasons why this is the case. Topping the list is this point:

Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:

• Better teamwork with your colleagues
• Better employee relations if you’re a manager
• More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
• Improved sales if you’re a sales person

In making the case for the happiness-productivity connection, Kjerulf (who, by the way, has a book on the topic called Happy Hour is 9 to 5 that you can buy or read online for free) points us to a related post by one of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra. Hopping over to her space, I read her take on how Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain.

In it, Sierra provides scientific backing – neuroscience, to be exact – for the finding that negativity tends to be contagious. Specifically, she writes, due to the phenomenon of emotional contagion, “negative emotions exert a more powerful effect in social situations than positive ones.” That’s why a generally happy and upbeat person will likely become depressed or angry when hanging out with someone who’s depressed or angry. According to a source Sierra quotes, the converse is also true: If we’re around someone who’s self-confident and buoyant long enough, we’re likely to feel good about ourselves.

For more on the impact of negativity around us, tune in to Anna Farmery’s podcast on Managing Negativity at Work. For more on the intersection of neuroscience and business, check out the archived posts at Stephanie West Allen’s idealawg. West Allen has also written a couple of recent posts on two of my favorite subjects to cover at legal sanity: energy and self-esteem at work.