Five Practical Leadership Moves For A Happier Team

Carly Cannings, Founder of The Happy Business School delivering a keynote.

Looking for some simple ways up your leadership game and build a thriving team culture? Then you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve recently created a brand new – and completely free – resource to help leaders lead more joyfully and build a culture that allows everyone to flourish.

The Joyful Leader’s Playbook contains five practical moves you can make right away to make a huge difference to your leadership game.

Leadership Move 1 – The 2-Minute Culture Check

This is a simple list of questions to ask before your next 1:1 with a team member. It will take five minutes but will give you a great temperature check and some points for discussion.


Leadership Move 2 – Listen Like You Mean It

We all know how important good listening is – it makes people feel valued and respected. Sometimes, however, we can be a bit too quick to jump to give our opinion or offer a fix, without really listening to what the person is saying. This move will help you listen more reflectively.


Leadership Move 3 – Hand Back The Reins

I often speak to leaders who are bogged down with tasks and decisions that should really be someone else’s responsibility but they struggle to delegate. This move provides some practical ways to hand back responsibility in a way that feels safe and structured.


Leadership Move 4 – Say The Hard Thing

I speak to too many leaders who are avoiding conversations they know they really need to have. They are constantly finding reasons why now isn’t the right time. This move will help you name it and instead of nursing it. A simple script to give you the confidence to say that thing you know you really need to say.


Leadership Move 5 – Make It Stick

When it comes to upping our leadership games good intentions alone won’t cut it. We need to find a way to make the behaviour change stick – and this is what this move is all about. Some ideas for regular rituals that will make your team feel more valued.

Grab your free copy of The Joyful Leader’s Playbook

Need a little more hands-on support?

If you want to build a people-centric culture that encourages everyone to thrive but need a little help, let’s chat. I offer workshops, keynotes, and consultancy to support leaders and their teams.

Get in touch to find out how The Happy Business School can make joy your organisation’s sharpest edge.

Latest Updates

5 myths about happiness at work

Wrong. The absence of disease isn’t health and the absence of misery isn’t happiness. Just because we might do enough as leaders to not have our people crying at their desks doesn’t mean we are invested in their happiness. Just because an employees comes in every day, does a good job and leaves without complaining about anything doesn’t mean they are happy.

Wrong. It’s right that some some people are more naturally optimistic but, with practice, you can become happier. There is a wealth of science that shows, when we know how, we can train our brains to be more positive. Asking someone to write down three good things that have happened in the last 24 hours may appear glib but this is about training the brain to spot positive things. When we learn to look for things we see them more easily.

Wrong. In fact blind optimism is a bad thing. Who wants to be in a plane where the pilot never believes anything bad can happen so doesn’t bother doing all the safety checks (not me for sure!). Just like in the world of work we don’t want to fail to look out for the risks and dangers, we just don’t want to be overwhelmed by the fear of them.

Wrong. The science tells us that being happier at work makes us more productive, more resilient, more creative, more accurate, more analytical, less likely to take time off sick, leave or burnout. Who doesn’t want those benefits? Yes, what a great wellbeing initiative to be able to say we are interested and investing in your happiness but it goes much further than that. There are real business benefits to helping people increase their happiness.

This one is only a half myth. Yes, people need to be invested in working on their own happiness but as a leader it is for us to help them with that, to show them we value their happiness, to allow them time to work on it, to give them the tools they need to become happier at work. Importantly we need to help them understand why being happy at work is important. As a leader if you can show you are invested in your own happiness it will show your people they should invest in theirs too.

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Together we can create happier workplaces.

Forget gimmicks like ice cream van visits or ping pong tables – let’s work together to build a positive culture where people feel valued and encouraged. Let’s help your people find purpose and meaning in their work.

What People Say...

“Passionate about happiness in the workplace and knowledgeable from her experience in senior leadership roles"

“There was a great balance of theory, purpose and some practical tips giving people an easy way of putting the theory into play immediately"

"Carly is highly motivated and hugely personable - I came away feeling inspired and armed with lots of practical tips and tricks"

"...there were so many happy smiles on the call that's for sure... the tips on putting things into action will definitely be of benefit to me personally and to those around me"

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