Happy, health, and doing your best

Ask soon-to-be parents whether they want a boy or a girl, and a typical response is, "I don't care. As long as they are healthy." Then shortly after the birth, you can listen to the shorthand for 'healthy' spreading out in phone calls to friends and relatives - "Yes, perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes."

After a few years, ask a parent what they want for their little one, for their work and life, and you have probably heard or thought, "I don't mind, as long as they are happy."

Then as their kids go to school or get involved in sporting or artistic activities, there are more expectations, but one is pretty much universal. You'll hear it when sons and daughters lose a match or don't achieve the grade they thought they would in a test, "As long as you did your best, that's all we ever expect."

Generally, being healthy, happy and doing your best is what parents want for their kids.

Good leaders want very similar things. When our employees walk through our real or virtual doors, we want our people to be safe and healthy, engaged with the work and connected to their colleagues in ways that add to their happiness, and that they show up and do their best.

Good organisations put a lot of time, attention and money into building a culture that supports these aims. We check how we are doing by measuring the health of the workplace, the levels of engagement and the performance of our people.

As leaders and organisations, we know that keeping our employees safe, engaged and performing well will increase discretionary effort, improve customer satisfaction and lift profits and success.

Great leaders and workplaces want health, happiness and achievement for their people because they genuinely care about the individual human beings that have arrived in their organisational orbit and were chosen to be here.

And let's not forget that as employees, we also have a degree of responsibility around ensuring we are doing our best, looking after ourselves and being actively engaged in the work and the culture. So it is a choice - sometimes in less than perfect environments. And we also have the opportunity as team members to support our colleagues do the same.

Every level playing their part with genuine goodwill will lift the individual, team, leader and organisation. Who wouldn't want to be part of that workplace and stay a while?