Bringing joy to your workplace can ease tensions

Showing how much you care at work can ease potential tensions. My father-in-law, Ron, was a great example of this before he retired.

Ron worked for Celanese Corporation years ago making plastic bottles. Thanks to his observations that helped increase safety and decrease leakage in their systems, he was quickly promoted. Ron was assigned to learn about some new machinery and to create a manual for it so anyone could run it.

He became a shift supervisor after only 2 ½ months and was promoted ahead of others who had been there for years. But he always remembered where he came from.

Ron gathered everyone together and said, “They’ve chosen me to do this, and I don’t know why. You guys taught me what I know now. We can work together as a team and try to make things better, or you can fight me.”

Thanks to his humility and honesty, everyone chose to work together – and later, people were asking to join his crew! I’ll tell you why later in this series.

No matter what your level is on the job, you can be a powerful force for change. Being a positive example at work is like the start of a ripple in a body of water – your bit of joy may be just a drop in the pond, but it can make circles and expand to all its edges and reach so many.

Let’s touch on to the first way we can start bringing joy to others at work – celebrations! Birthdays. Administrative Professionals Day. Boss’s Day. Christmas. Groundhog Day. Halloween. These are all occasions when we can do something special for others, recognize them on the job, or just simply dress up and look goofy for a day. Well, maybe not necessarily Groundhog Day, although during a particularly tough, long winter it could be the perfect excuse for some fun!

The first thing I do when I start a new job is learn everyone’s birthday in my company or, if it’s a large one, my department. It’s easy to put the dates in an Outlook calendar and set a recurrence for a reminder to pop up every year.

If you’re more of a paper planner/calendar person, you can buy a perpetual calendar at a reasonable price – I’ve seen some for as low as $3 – so once you write down a birthday, you’ll always have it. I also make certain to highlight what months Boss’s Day and Administrative Professionals Day fall in since these dates change every year.

Once you’ve marked down everyone’s birthdays or other special days and you get to know your co-workers a bit, it’s time to create a plan! We’ll delve into this process next week.

Amy Shankland is a writer and fundraising professional living in Noblesville with her husband John, two sons, two dogs and a cat. You can reach her via email at amys@greenavenue.info.