Here’s How Managers Can Rediscover Their Joy at Work

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

Being a manager can be a hard job. You’re distributing heavy workloads, delegating, shifting priorities, overseeing important tasks, and handling personalities and interpersonal tensions. You have to challenge your team, shield them and inspire them, no two days are the same. So managing can be powerful and meaningful work. It can also be a grind that wears you down, and if you feel anxious or burnt out as a manager, that can trickle down to your team faster than you realize.

Today’s guest is here to help managers rediscover the joy in their work and to amplify that… No, sorry. Today’s guest is here to help managers rediscover the joy in their work and amplify that joy throughout their teams. Daisy Auger Dominguez is a workplace strategist and author. She wrote the HBR article, Finding Joy as a Manager, Even on Bad Days, and she’s here to share some tangible things managers can do to be joyful in their not-so-easy jobs.

Hi, Daisy. Thanks for coming on the show.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Thank you so much for having me.

CURT NICKISCH: So when it comes to your role as a manager, what do you mean by joy? I mean we’re not talking about being happy every day at work. How do you think of joy in that context?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: For me, joy is more than just this fleeting feeling. It’s about finding deep, sustaining satisfaction in one’s work. It’s that energy that comes from engaging in meaningful connections, in fostering inclusive environments where people feel seen, heard and valued; in empowering others to thrive. When you see your team in their flow excited about what they’re working on, that’s joy. So for me, joy at work is closely tied to purpose, to alignment, and to wellbeing.

CURT NICKISCH: We’ve often heard the statistics, right? And there’s the annual Gallup Employee Engagement Survey that shows kind of a, I don’t know, dismal, very low – sort of 1/3 of employees being engaged in their jobs in the U.S. In your experience, is that different for managers? Are they kind of more susceptible to be joyless in their work? Or do they actually maybe have more? Or is that different for them?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: I think in many ways it’s not different, and in many ways it is, right? So when you see low employee engagement signals for managers, it means that something important is missing from their work. And it can be a reflection of various factors, right? Again, not feeling connected to the work, to their people, unclear expectations from the top that they have to then translate to the rest of their teams. And it can also be a sense of an absence of recognition. Here I am working myself to the bone and who cares, right? My leaders are not telling me that I’m doing a good job and my team keeps on complaining about everything that I do, right? I’m failing at everything.

CURT NICKISCH: Have you seen this in your clients? How does this joylessness manifest?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ:  I see it in many different forms. I see it in growing in anger and frustration that sort of snaps at moments that you least expected. I see it in a sense of this chronic fear and uncertainty that slows down their creativity, it slows down their productivity, it slows down their decision-making. It just wears them down.

And when your manager’s worn down, inevitably your team ends up getting worn down, right? That energy gets passed over. And I’ve seen it in just this growing cynicism about anything that gets put in their lap to do. It’s just like, “You’ve done this before, why is this particularly causing you more angst than always?” And it’s this accumulation of all of these moments.

What mostly worries me when it comes to this, the lack of joy and dissatisfaction with work is it gets manifested in anger and frustration that then gets passed on. And it is not just a symptom, it becomes kind of this dark shadow that looms over daily interactions. And you feel it, you definitely feel it.

CURT NICKISCH: Is this particularly hard for middle managers?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Absolutely. Middle managers are dealing with the relentless pressures from the top and the increasing pressures from the bottom. And by the same token, they’re also not getting sometimes even the support from their own peers. We tend to highly focus on leaders but it’s really the middle managers that are carrying out all of these tasks and all of these strategies that have to bring people together to get the work done. And when they’re struggling themselves with lack of clarity, when they’re struggling themselves with lack of recognition and resources and support, it’s just a recipe for deep, deep burnout.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. You brought up burnout. That’s something that managers have toolkits to try to address. Are you arguing for something a little different here, focusing more on the positive and trying to tackle burnout without bringing kind of everybody down at the same time?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Yeah. Whenever I talk about burnout, I like to tell folks, I’m like, “Listen, you may be already feeling burnt out about talking about burnout, because it’s become the topic everyone’s talking about.”

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. And the more you repeat it, it’s… Yeah.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Yeah. It just becomes this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, like wah wah wah, everything’s going to be bad. I want to emphasize the joy and the lightness that we can have at work, because I do believe that that helps reduce burnout. It helps bring people together. Sometimes we just have to find humor in the hamster wheel, right? Just kind of like, “I know this is a relentless wheel that I’m on, but where can I find some joy in this?”

Every day, goodness, sadly enough, right? A new crisis, a new nightmare is going to come in front of me, a new problem is going to come in front of me that I need to solve for. And so how do I harness my energy and my spirit in many ways so that I can be prepared to handle all of these things that are coming at me with the right mindset, with the right level of energy, right? And hopefully garner the right level of support that I need to get done whatever I need to get done.

What I don’t want to dismiss is that certainly the factors that lead to burnout are systemic failures, right? So overwork, lack of resources, lack of information, all of those pieces are systemic issues, but we can’t solve them every minute of the day.

And so the reason why I lean on joy is what do I have control over right now? Right? What do I have agency over that I can make this moment at least a little lighter, a little better, and be prepared to when the moment is right to address the systemic pieces that I can address to try and avoid this in the future? Right?

So how do I solve for what’s in front of me now and safeguard my health, my wellbeing, and that of my team, because that’s my responsibility as a manager? How do I do that so that I can be better prepared to then address the really gnarly systemic issues that need to be addressed?

CURT NICKISCH: So for a manager who’s managing sometimes remotely or remote workers, how is that impacting kind of their ability to find and speak joy in their jobs?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: I mean, Llsten, I think there’s a reason why burnout has become the recurring theme we’re all talking about right now. And it is the aftermath of the pandemic and the aftermath of this new way of working. It’s much harder when you’re on a screen to do the things that we do when we’re in a meeting. For example, at the end of a meeting, when you notice that somebody’s energy level was low or you notice that they were snapping at somebody in a way that they usually don’t, where you can just sort of grab them five minutes and be like, “Do we have five minutes? Can we chat? You want to walk around or have a coffee? Right?

We can’t do that. Yes, I can get on a phone and do that, but it’s just not the same. You don’t have the same human exchange that most of us need. And that leads to a lack of joy and enthusiasm and just an overall sense of just appreciation for not just the work that you’re doing, but the people that you’re doing it with.

CURT NICKISCH: You suggest that if you’re a manager and you’ve lost your joy in your work, there are a number of things that you can do about it. Starting with finding your why. What does that look like?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Finding your why is one that… it sounds kind of very simple, but we forget about it. We forget about why we go to work in the first place. I was really struck with the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which really translates to a reason for being. And that’s your purpose, that’s your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment with what you do. And finding your Ikigai requires you to lean into deep self-reflection about what are the things that make you happy? Right?

And you know that, right? If you’re a soccer player, and I mentioned a soccer game, I bet you your eyes would light up, right? Your energy all of a sudden shifts because this is something that’s generating happiness for you, right?

What is your best and highest use? Is one of the questions that I ask leaders often when I’m coaching them, because that makes you want to think about not just what brings you joy, but also what are the skills and the talents that you bring to the forefront? I know what brings me joy is connecting with people and is helping them find their purpose and their happiness. And sometimes it’s just helping them gain clarity over what they need to do next. That’s my highest and best use. And when I am doing that, my energy levels are off the charts, right? And I can do that for hours.

So securing the answers to those questions, but also getting a sense of what do you want to be recognized for? Right? What is it that you want to do? Do you want to be a leader? Do you want to be a manager? Do you want to be an individual contributor? Right? What is that highest and best use? And how does that impact others? We don’t spend enough time thinking about what is the impact of our work, good or bad on others? And when we spend some time going through those self-reflection questions, I think we get to a place of what we’re uniquely good at and what brings us joy and happiness and where we can deliver that to its highest impact.

CURT NICKISCH: So you lean into that. You also talk about embracing a beginner’s mindset. Which maybe for managers doesn’t feel as intuitive, right? You’re not supposed to feel like you’re a beginner, you’re supposed to know the answers.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: That’s right. That’s right. You’re supposed to be the expert.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: We spend our entire careers building expertise. But what happens is that when you’re an expert, you look at things with confinement of, “There are two or three ways of doing this, and we’re going to do it this way.” Versus a beginner’s mind that allows you to really embrace curiosity. And it allows you to look at things very differently. I talk about embracing a beginner’s mindset as not just something that a manager has to do, but as something that you need to encourage your teams to do, right? Kind of channel your inner five-year-old. Ask all the questions, explore new methods. Reignite your sense of wonder for anything that is in front of you. I was just coaching a senior manager a couple of days ago on a project that was put in front of him, and immediately he became sort of this grumpy, cantankerous like, “I’ve done this before. This is not going to work. I don’t want to waste my time and energy on this.”

And I just paused and asked them, “Okay, what if all of that were true? What does that say about you? Right? That you won’t try new things? That there is no other way of looking at things? What if we looked at this somewhat differently? What questions would you ask?” And then he started asking different questions. I was like, “That’s awesome. Okay. So what resources would you need?” And by the end of that 15, 20 minute conversation, his mindset had completely shifted to, “Okay, there’s a possibility here that I wasn’t seeing.” But you have to shift that notion of, “I know everything.” To, “You know what? There could be something here that I don’t know about, right? As a beginner, let me look at this with a very different light.” And 9 out of 10 times we can see something different and approach it differently and get a different outcome.

CURT NICKISCH: You also argue that sharing joy and giving gratitude is important. Is that more about yourself or with the team?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: It’s for both, right? I talk about it personally about those challenging days where I turn to what I call my happy folder, which is a collection of positive notes and affirmations that basically remind me that my work matters.

CURT NICKISCH: These are things you’ve gotten from others.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Yes. Yes, these are notes that I’ve received from team members. These are notes that I’ve received from partners, from consultants that I’ve worked with, right? Over the years, when there’s something that really, for me, it tugs up my heart because it’s something that makes me feel warm and fuzzy, if you will, right? I keep those. And I go to them from time to time because every once in a while I forget, right? I’m talking about this as a practice, and it’s kind of like building a muscle. If you stop working out for a couple of weeks, your muscles start deteriorating a bit. And so you have to try it again. And so for me, that happy folder is where I go and remind myself, “Oh, you know what? I’ve actually gotten a few things right.” I was like, “The work that I do matters, right? The work that I do is what I’m meant to be doing, right?” That’s the place that I go to.

And as a manager, we can encourage our teams to create their own happy folders, whatever that is. Recently, I was sharing this at a talk that I did, and someone referred to it as data that matters. And I love that, right? We’re surrounded by so much data, but sometimes we need to look at the data that matters, right? That really means something to us. But that spreading of gratitude is also about celebrating small victories, sharing moments that mean something to folks. Simon Sinek, I’m going to probably say this wrong, I’m going to try and paraphrase him. He says something like, “When we help ourselves, we find moments of happiness, but when we help others, we find lasting fulfillment.” That helping, that giving, that showing gratitude to someone, that approaching your relationships with that sense of gratitude and generosity, that’s what creates a network of mutual support and growth, and in many ways, resilience.

CURT NICKISCH: I went back and I listened to an episode that we did with a CEO. It’s titled How One CEO Creates Joy at Work. The guest there was Richard Sheridan. And he talked about how easy it is as a manager to create fear, right? You can easily just walk around and talk to people about what they’re working on and when they expect to deliver it, and are they coming in on the weekend to finish it up? And you can easily create fear. And he just finds that he doesn’t want to be that kind of manager, that kind of leader, that kind of CEO. But he also said it just takes constant vigilance to keep sending the right signals and not the wrong ones. Does that sound familiar to you?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Absolutely. We often forget the tremendous influence and power that our words have and that our actions have on others, right? Sometimes we’re human and we’ll have a bad day, or we’ll just be short with someone. And all of a sudden that becomes the one thing that that person remembers about you all day long, maybe for weeks.

CURT NICKISCH: Oh, yeah. I have a few of those.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Yes. And especially, because of the role that you play. And we may not like it, I know I struggled for years. I remember I would go to meetings, and I remember, especially when I worked at Google, I was always running late because we just always scheduled meetings 25 minutes at a time, and I was running from meeting to meeting. And every time I would go, the front seat was always available to me. And people would be sitting in the corner, sometimes on the floor. And I would look around and go, “Why did you save that seat for me? I’m late. My penalty is that I sit on the floor.” And they would look at me and go like, “Well, you’re the leader. We have to create this space for you.” And I remember struggling with that so often, and then I just gave up. I stopped asking because they just always did that for me.

But we can’t underestimate the impact of how others see us and the tremendous impact that our actions and our words have on others. As managers and as leaders, we have the power to lighten someone’s day and to also just destroy it. Even with the best of intentions and unknowingly. So it is our responsibility to show up for others in a way that not just helps give them the clarity and the tools and the resources that they need, but that also helps them feel that they’re cared for, that they’re supported, that this is a place that they’re meant to be. Those feelings of empathy and fondness that we all crave as humans, we as managers, have an opportunity to show that with… And it doesn’t take a lot of effort, but it absolutely requires intention and consistency.

CURT NICKISCH: So how this looks may vary team by team or by manager, but what are some of the examples of things that you like to do that you’ve seen clients do to share joy, give gratitude and instill joy in their teams?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: We all lead differently, right? We’re all different humans, but we often forget that before we can lead others, we have to lead ourselves. And so I like to think about making sure that I’m being kind to myself because when I’m kind to myself I’m kind to others, right? When I say to myself, “You did a good job, right? You are safe, you are worthy.” These are mantras that I say to myself.

And I have to be perfectly honest, before I wrote my last book, Burnt Out to Lit Up, I didn’t believe in the power of mantras. I thought they were kind of woo-woo things, and I was like, “Ah, that’s not me.” And I have now become one of the biggest advocates. And I have mantras all over my office that just help me get centered before I go and have a conversation with someone else, before I go coach someone, before I go lead a meeting. So that I can go into that space showing up as my best self, right? So that I can help create a space so that everybody else can show up as their best selves.

CURT NICKISCH: And that keeps you from being defensive or getting short in the meetings that you’re about to have?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Absolutely. Yes. It helps you come into a space. How many times have you been in a meeting when the manager rushes in and they’re just going through all the talking points and you can see that they’re bothered. All of a sudden the tenor in that meeting changes. People may have been laughing before and cracking jokes, and all of a sudden everyone gets tense. It’s just that that energy gets spread so quickly.

So why not do the counter of that? Why not just do two to three minutes? And I do this, whether it’s an in-person meeting or whether it’s a video meeting. It’s just, “Okay, how do I want to show up? Let me go into that meeting with the right mindset, the right energy, so that we can get done what we’re going to get done, and so that people leave that meeting feeling better than they did before they got there.”

CURT NICKISCH: Any other favorite things that you’ve seen clients do, that you’ve seen other managers do to celebrate their teams, to show gratitude, to find joy for them?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Yeah. I mean, these are simple things, and I used to do this, and one of my team members, I can’t remember who I borrowed it from. But before every meeting, we would spend 5 to 10 minutes answering a different question every week. That was a very personal question, kind of like when you were young, what did you dream of being? If you were to write a book about your life, how would you title it? For HR colleagues, what’s the wildest employee request you’ve ever received? Right?

Questions like that. Everybody goes around the room. It can usually take five to 10 minutes, but it’s this really great energy setter for folks. Moments of, “Oh, you feel that way too?” Right? That energy moment. I think that those are, whether it’s questions like that, whether it is starting out your meetings with a gratitude round where everybody goes around and just says one thing that they’re grateful for, either on a team member or that happened that week.

Whether it’s making sure that every time you start your one-on-ones, instead of going right into the agenda… I have a colleague of mine, Zander Grashow who’s an executive coach who taught me this line, and I love it. It’s “Do you need me to witness, help or distract you right now?” And the energy changes from that person serving you to you giving agency to somebody else to actually ask for what they need to do their work better. So those are just a few examples of phrases and activities that we can all undertake to create spaces where our teams can truly thrive.

CURT NICKISCH: How do you know when this is working?

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Oh my gosh. You see it in the energy of your team, not just in the output and the delivery, which is that productivity piece, which we’re all so keen on. But you see it in how people collaborate, you see it in the energies, you see it in reduced interpersonal tensions. Most of the tensions that as managers and leaders we solve for, like this person doesn’t like this person, or this person’s not delivering their project on time, and so then this person is still waiting for it. When you see a reduction in that is when people are really truly working together in a way that they’re managing their energy, they’re managing their resources, and they actually trust and enjoy working with each other.

You absolutely see that, and it’s not a result just on work output, it’s a result of energy in your team. And it’s the people that say, “Hey, we need to stay an extra three hours.” “I got you.” Right? “I’m going to do this.” Instead of, “I’m sorry, I’m out. I did not sign up for those extra three hours, and you need to find somebody else.” You see that in those moments, and you see that as a collective experience across the teams. I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, and it’s joyful to watch your team support, engage with each other, and actually enjoy working with each other.

CURT NICKISCH: Daisy, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

DAISY AUGER-DOMINGUEZ: Thank you so much.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s workplace strategist and author, Daisy Auger Dominguez. She wrote the HBR article, Finding Joy as a Manager, Even on Bad Days.

And we have nearly 1000 episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at HBR.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, Senior Producer Mary Dooe, Associate Producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. Thank you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back on Tuesday with our next episode. I’m Curt Nickisch.