272: Beyond Happiness at Work with Dr. Mark Fabian

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:00]

Would you like to know more about motivation at work, how to stay motivated, how to motivate your team, and how to get into a state of flow? Well, we answer that question on today’s episode of the award-winning Happier at Work podcast. The podcast for people first, leaders all about culture and career.

I’m your host, Aoife O’Brien. I’m the career and culture strategist for commercial leaders and teams. And my guest today is Dr. Mark Fabian. He shares insights from his book Beyond Happiness, and we also touch on My Happier At Work Framework. We talking about things like values and the importance of need satisfaction at work.

I really hope you enjoy today’s episode. Do let me know what is one thing that you’re gonna do differently after listening to today?

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:46]:

Mark, welcome to the Happier at Work podcast. I’m really excited for this conversation. I can’t wait to nerd out with you on all things happiness at work. And we probably, you know, we’ll try not to bore people too much with the theory, but more around the practical applications and what self determination theory means for happiness at work. Do you want to introduce yourself and let people know a little bit about your career history and how you got into doing what you’re doing?

Mark Fabian [00:01:11]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m Associate professor of Public Policy at the University of Warwick in the UK and I’m also an affiliate fellow at the Bennett Institute of Public Policy in Cambridge University. I’ve been working on well being from an interdisciplinary point of view for a really long time. Mostly policy applications, but sort of doing everything. Bit of philosophy, a bit of psychology. I’ve got a book out that kind of tries to pull all that together. Also throwing in folk wisdom, religious perspectives, literature, all sorts of things like that. I got into this kind of research because I was depressed as a teenager.

Mark Fabian [00:01:02]:

I think that’s how a lot of people get into well being research. But then I kind of muddled about doing all sorts of stuff. So I have a past life as a tennis coach. I also have a past life in development economics and I worked in India for a member of Parliament for a while. So I’ve been around the traps a little bit. But now I’m very much in the kind of academic space and yeah, mostly working on happiness and wellbeing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:25]:

It’s definitely a varied and wide reaching career. I think the thing that interests me most is the different disciplines like you mentioned, psychology and philosophy and bringing those things together, I think into one. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the book specifically? Because I think what drew us to each other specifically was I did my master’s research mostly based on this theory of self determination. And I know you know a large part of your book is based around that as well.

Mark Fabian [00:01:55]:

Yeah, absolutely. So self determination theory, as you well know, is one of the most prominent theories of motivation going around in psychology. And it’s also a very prominent theory of well being and it’s quite a large cornerstone of the sort of model of self actualization that I present in the book. So I think we hear a lot about self actualization. It’s at the top of Maslow’s pyramid, which a lot of people have heard of. It’s a big part of Jungian psychology, Carl Rogers’s work. It’s in the pop space a bit as well. But I don’t think a lot of people have really articulated sort of step by step how you go about it.

Mark Fabian [00:02:28]:

And I try to present that in one of the chapters in the book. And one of the first building blocks is to bring in self determination theory alongside self discrepancy theory, self verification theory, a few other bits and pieces from psychology. But then there’s a lot of other parts to the book. So the first couple of chapters on the book are more about understanding the hedonic treadmill and why you’re kind of stuck in this never ending loop of desiring things and you don’t ever feel kind of content and satisfied and chill. And then also the kind of character traits that you want to develop and the kind of methods of mood management that you can use to keep yourself happy. And then the third part of the book is really about values and nihilism and how to kind of craft a purposeful life for yourself and contribute to a better world. So, yeah, I think that’s. That last part is much more philosophical.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:16]:

Love it. Can I ask you a challenging question in relation to Maslow? Because I was always taught that and you know, again, like you say, it’s part of pop psychology. Most people know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the recent things that we see, like I’ve seen it turned into memes where the very bottom of the pyramid is WI fi, for example, it’s like, oh, we have to have WI fi first before we could do anything else. So it is very much part of popular cult culture, I think. And now what I always, you know, I was always very much aware of it. But then when I did my masters, we were told, do not refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I’ve since read a book called Transcendence which, which says that the hierarchy was never actually supposed to be a pyramid. You don’t have to achieve one level of needs to get to the next level.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:05]:

And I think, I suppose it’s debunking that, that whole myth. So any, any thoughts around that?

Mark Fabian [00:04:11]:

Yeah, I think that’s broadly correct. So I think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is still seen as a very kind of useful conceptual framework just to sort of initially get contact with a lot of these ideas. But yeah, in his original writings it doesn’t really seem to be presented as a hierarchy. And certainly empirically the results seem to suggest that it’s not especially hierarchical and rather that, you know, as you go about self actualization, you will take care of a lot of the other needs that seem to be lower down the hierarchy. And I think that’s also broadly how self determination theory thinks about it, that you have these basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And if those are met, then barring a really hostile environment, like predators or a volcanic explosion or something, it will probably be able to meet your physical needs and your social needs and these kinds of things as well.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:03]:

Yeah, yeah. I love that you mentioned self discrepancy theory. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

Mark Fabian [00:05:09]:

Yeah, sure. So self discrepancy theory, another one of these ones that I think is more useful as a kind of thinking tool rather than as a kind of really empirically accurate description of reality. But it comes from Tori Higgins, who is a psychologist at Columbia University. And as I understand it, it was developed mostly out of clinical perspectives for trying to understand where depression and anxiety come from. And I use it mostly to think about emotional signals and what our emotions are trying to tell us. So the basic idea in self discrepancy theory is that we have a vague sense of who we actually are, who we would ideally like to be, and who we feel a responsibility to be. So that’s our actual self, our ideal self, and our self. And then we try to bring these three things into harmony.

Mark Fabian [00:05:53]:

So we try to become more the kind of person we’d ideally like to be without sort of transgressing any of the constraints imposed by the person we feel a responsibility to be. So, for example, if you’re a very ambitious young woman, you might want to be a career judge or something like that, be under a lot of family pressure to have kids, and those two things are in a bit of tension, Then how do you kind of resolve that tension? So how do you bring these three senses of yourself into harmony with each other? And a lot of it comes down to following your emotional signals. So in self discrepancy theory, the idea is that if there is a discrepancy between your actual self and your ideal self, then you’ll probably feel depression because you’re not living up to the kind of person you’d be proud to be.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:36]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:06:36]:

And if there’s a discrepancy between your actual self and your old self, then you might feel anxiety or shame, guilt, these kind of moral emotions, because you’re worried about what other people will think of you. If you align your actual self with your ideal and old self, then you’re more likely to get positive feedback. Things like a sense of achievement, things like joy, things like accomplishment, camaraderie or a sense of solidarity with the people around you. And so I think these kind of emotional signals are the first way to start thinking about self actualization and the most important guide to that process.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:10]:

So I suppose to summarize what you’re saying, it’s really important to be our. To be our authentic selves. Is that kind of how you would describe all of that? And it’s more about the internal feelings that we get from realizing our actual selves rather than the external validation or the external things that. That come from someone else.

Mark Fabian [00:07:35]:

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. But I think we should acknowledge that that’s really complicated.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:44]:

Yeah, okay.

Mark Fabian [00:07:46]:

And it’s likely to be iterative. I think that’s the first thing. So often these emotional signals will be ambig and we’ll really have to learn how to. How to be mindful of them and then also how to interrogate them and learn from them. We might get that wrong. So we’ll make an inference from our emotions, we’ll change our behavior, and then it’ll turn out that we got the interpretation a bit off. And then we’ll have to try again. And there’s no shame in that.

Mark Fabian [00:08:11]:

I think that’s something we need to underline that happiness is not like something you can just read in a book and go out tomorrow and you’ll have it. Probably you’re going to need to learn by doing a bit.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:22]:

Yeah. And if there’s a practical application that people can take away from listening, what. How would you kind of summarize that? And like, for me, I often talk about awareness, just recognizing the fact that we have these different selves and that might be what’s driving some sort of internal conflict in us.

Mark Fabian [00:08:43]:

Yeah, I think that’s a. That’s a really nice takeaway that oftentimes the ideal and the ought self are in conflict or intention and you’ve got to think about how to resolve those two. Also to realize sometimes that the ideal self that you’re chasing is just not compatible with your actual self.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:58]:

Okay.

Mark Fabian [00:08:59]:

Really simple example is like you can’t be a professional basketball if you’re five foot three.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:04]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:09:05]:

And so you want to kind of have a bit of a think about the actual self. Not necessarily in terms of authenticity. It might just be like dispositions, talents, constraints that you face and working within the limits that that imposes on what you want to do with your life in terms of emotions. And like a practical thing you can do with emotions. I think coming back to self determination Theory here is understanding the different kinds of motivation and the sort of feelings that you’ll get from them. So if something’s really intrinsically motivated, then you’re likely to do it spontaneously. It’s going to give you a sense of vitality when you do it. It’s going to energize you.

Mark Fabian [00:09:45]:

If something is interjected in motivation, which means that you don’t value the thing itself, you value something contingent to it. So the example I always use is that a lot of us exercise not because we like exercising, but because we want to be healthy. That sort of activity, if it’s interjected in motivation, it requires a lot of self regulation. That means you’ve got to use willpower to do it. Okay, yeah, when you’re doing it, you’ll feel fatigue. And if you feel that fatigue and you don’t feel a sense of accomplishment that after you’ve done it anyway, if you push yourself, you’ve achieved it. If you then just feel like relief or something like that, then this is probably a very inauthentic activity. If instead you feel like, all right, I worked hard and I did it and I’ve achieved it and I feel good about stuff and that was difficult, but I’m going to come back tomorrow or next week and do it again, then that’s, that’s a sense of this, while interjected, is probably something still worth doing and something that is emerging from you in some sort of authentic way.

Mark Fabian [00:10:42]:

So there’s a whole section in the book on interpreting these motivational signals and I think that’s a really important practical insight.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:49]:

Yeah, and I think, I mean the, the exercise example is really interesting. And if you think of that from the perspective of any sort of long term goal that we’re trying to achieve and you carry out the activity and you’re not seeing immediate results, which you don’t from exercise, you’re not coming away going, wow, I feel maybe you are. I feel really strong now or I feel really fit after doing it once. It’s the enjoyment that you get from it intrinsically and then continuing to do it over time for the attainment of doing it for its own sake rather than the long term benefit of being healthy. And like, when do you become healthy versus not healthy as well?

Mark Fabian [00:11:30]:

Yeah, I think that these temporal considerations and how long payoffs take to emerge and how long change takes to be perceptible and then you get a payoff for it. So like when you’re trying to change your body, for example, that might take a really long time before you even are able to notice the change, such that you can feel proud of yourself. I think patience with those kinds of things, or at least understanding how long it might take to see the result and committing to that period is quite important. Another related like hot tip that I have that I think is very related to workplaces and how you relate to your work is that if you don’t enjoy the sort of drudge level tasks in a particular occupation or the real entry level stuff, you only like the top of the pyramid in that particular occupation and that’s probably not the occupation for you. I think the example that I use in the book is that a lot of people would like to be diplomats. They like the idea of going to swanky parties and that sort of thing. They don’t like the idea of processing cables in the Foreign Ministry, but actually the majority of what an entry level diplomat does is just processing cables. And similarly a lot of people would like to be a politician, but they don’t want to go door knocking these kind of things.

Mark Fabian [00:12:46]:

You’ve got to think about the real drudge tasks in your occupation. Those are things that at the very least you don’t mind, but especially if you actually kind of like them, then I think that’s a good sign that that’s a, that’s the place for you to go.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:59]:

The example that springs to my mind that I heard of recently that a retired Taoiseach in Ireland and how much money they get for being a retired Taoiseach. So that’s the Prime Minister of Ireland. So maybe the equivalent of a Prime Minister another country or a retired president, for example, like how much money they earn for, you know, for being retired. I’m like, oh, that sounds like a really great job, but do I want to be shocker, Do I want to be president? No, I do not. So, yeah, it’s. Yeah, if you’re comfortable with doing that of drudge work. I know you talk about this idea of needs satisfaction in, in terms of self determination theory in the book and I’d love to explore that a little bit more detail because based on my research that I did for, for my dissertation, for my master’s, which was about five years ago now that I did that, I mean, I was so intrigued by the idea that we even had needs. It’s not something I think we often talk about at work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:14:01]:

It’s not something I think we get out on the table and maybe even that language of needs is not something that, that we talk about. Any, any thoughts on where to start? On that.

Mark Fabian [00:14:13]:

Yeah. So I think it’s worth distinguishing the needs that self determination theory emphasizes. So the need for autonomy, that’s to feel volitional in your life, competence, to feel skillful at the things that you especially need to do. And then relatedness, which is like to feel loved and cared for, have social support. And then in, I mean, you know this better than me. In the kind of job fit literature, the, the needs, there are more about the things that you want from your job, like a salary or work from home or a short commute or whatever it might be. And if I remember correctly from your dissertation, there was three parts to this fit stuff. There’s the fit between your needs in terms of salary, commute, whatever, and what the job offers you.

Mark Fabian [00:15:00]:

The suppliers.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:01]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:15:01]:

There’s the job demands and then the abilities that you have to meet those demands. And then there’s the values that you have in the congruence of that with the workplace.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:11]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:15:12]:

And I think what was really interesting to me about your research is that you found that the self determination theory, basic needs were, if I remember correctly, really important for the needs that you want from the job and the suppliers, moderately important for demands and abilities and didn’t really matter to the values and the congruence piece.

Aoife O’Brien [00:15:31]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:15:31]:

And I’m very struck by that because I think that what’s missing from self determination theory is some engagement with purpose and meaning in life and what you’re doing that’s significant or feel significant to you and valuable. And my book is split into a pleasant life, a fulfilling life, and a valuable life. And self determination theory is big in the middle piece there, that fulfilling part. But I think you need some extra architecture to understand values better.

Aoife O’Brien [00:16:00]:

Yeah, no, it’s, it’s really interesting because, you know, the. I devised my happy at work framework based on that research that I did, and I divided it into three things and the names kind of change occasionally, but it’s basically values, needs and strengths. Sometimes I call needs drivers. So those as the three pillars essentially of the framework. And in needs in particular, the interesting thing I found, I didn’t include it in my research, but it was something that I found in secondary research. You know, I think it was, it was basically didn’t have enough space to include it in my dissertation, but it was something that I thought was really interesting nonetheless. And this idea that it’s not just about supplying the needs or meeting the needs. So let’s take autonomy as a really powerful example that overnight, you know, I’m thinking back the 12th or 13th March 2020.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:00]:

Overnight, everyone had suddenly a whole load of autonomy. And it’s not just about giving people autonomy, it’s about giving them direction and guidance as to what to do. So it’s a balance of the needs. It’s kind of meeting people where they are at and giving them a language to understand where their needs are not being satisfied, essentially. So if they have too much autonomy, they’re not getting enough guidance or control or, sorry, they’re not getting enough guidance or direction. But if they have too little, they’re feeling like they’re being told what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and they feel they’re being micromanaged. And I think it’s the same across, definitely across at least one of the other needs. The need for competence, for example, where if you have too much competence, you feel like you’re not being challenged enough and actually you feel like you could do it with your eyes closed, you get bored and complacent.

Aoife O’Brien [00:17:54]:

And then on the other side, if you feel like you’re being challenged too much and you feel like you’re out of your depth, maybe you feel like you have imposter syndrome, you’re like, oh, I can’t do this. I’m really struggling. And so for me, the interesting part around that is getting the balance right. And I think at different points in our career we will have different levels of those needs. If we join a new organization, we might need more guidance rather than this whole thing of we want someone who can hit the ground running. It’s like you still need to provide people with that really clear guidance about what is expected. And I think like that was one of the really interesting things that I didn’t have the opportunity to cover in, in the, in the dissertation. And we’ll come on to the values piece in a minute, but I’d love to know any thoughts on the.

Aoife O’Brien [00:18:45]:

That balance of needs.

Mark Fabian [00:18:48]:

Yeah, like I like what you’re saying. That all sounds right to me. I was particularly struck by the competence piece and that if you’re sort of over competent for the tasks, then you just feel bored. I think this speaks very powerfully to, I think one of the like falsehoods or myths in a lot of the pop happiness literature, which is just that you just need to lower your expectations or lower your aspirations or just aim lower basically. Okay, so one way that this sometimes comes across is these experiments where they. Well, not experiments, correlational studies where they found that bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists in the Long term.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:26]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:19:27]:

And I think that’s misleading because for the star bronze medalists are usually people who could have come third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and achieved third. And that was the best they could be done.

Aoife O’Brien [00:19:38]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:19:38]:

Whereas the person that comes second, like they know that they could have come first, they had it in them, they just couldn’t quite pull it off that day. And particularly for Olympic medalists, where you get one shot every four years and maybe two shots in your whole career, that must be devastating. I’m not surprised that they feel a bit bummed, but if those people had aimed lower and said, oh, I’d be satisfied with the bronze, I think in the long run, they may often have felt like they just didn’t push themselves properly. They didn’t realize their potential. They slacked off these kind of feelings.

Aoife O’Brien [00:20:10]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:20:11]:

So I think you’ve got to be careful with this sort of advice to sort of be softer. You need to be compassionate with yourself, you need to be understanding all this kind of thing. But you need to calibrate your life so that the challenge matches the skill and that you stay engaged, interested in your life. And I think this leads into a separate idea of flow, which is fairly prominent again in pop psych and in psychological science. And flow is this state of being in the zone or lost in the moment. And it requires a fit between challenge and capacity. It’s usually studied in the context of activities like sport or playing the piano or something like that. But in Csiks and Mihaly’s original formulation of flow, it was something that could characterize your whole life.

Mark Fabian [00:20:58]:

And I think that’s what I try to build the self actualization model to achieve. So all these different things that you’re doing, you’re gradually comporting towards things that give you these more positive, affective, emotional signals. And you’re also gradually investing in things that you like, so you develop competence in them. And that then gradually brings you this, this match of competence and challenge across many parts of your life. You get high quality feedback because you’re good at being mindful of your emotions, good at introspecting on those emotions, and you generally have more intrinsic motivation or the kind of easier types of motivation, which also means that you keep doing these things. You wake up in the morning ready to go and live your life, and then that brings about that flow. So that was kind of the reactions that I got listening to what you were saying, but it all sounded really good to me.

Aoife O’Brien [00:21:47]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s. I think it’s really Interesting. I want to come back for just for a second to this idea of the challenge because something that I’ve only recently discovered. I’m quite an ambitious person. I always kind of. I always want to get to that next level. I’ve always been like that and I assumed that everyone else was like that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:22:09]:

But now I know that not everyone is like that. A and B, there are different times of our life where it’s okay to kind of take the pedal off and not be that ambitious person. I’m trying to get to the next level. I have to be really challenged all the time. It’s okay to be comfortable. Not bored, I would say, but comfortable in the role that you’re doing. Because I think, you know, boredom and over challenge can, can lead. Can both lead to demotivation when it comes to work.

Mark Fabian [00:22:38]:

Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And I think this really needs to be underlined in our kind of present capitalistic, hyper competitive environment. And for a lot of people, it’s much more important to live relationally, to live with balance, to live in a way that’s, that’s leisured. And it will often be the case that the reason why you’re not going hell for leather at work or whatever is because you just want to have more spare capacity for when something comes up in your community or comes up in your family or whatever and you’re available to take care of that. I think there can be all sorts of ways to relate to work and an ambition and challenge and these kind of things. And again, it’s just important to be in touch with your authenticity. You might authentically be a very ambitious person who wants to drive for certain outcomes. Yeah, that might be completely not the case.

Mark Fabian [00:23:25]:

And we should find different ways to celebrate people who are living their lives in their genuine way and making contributions in whatever way they happen to contribute.

Aoife O’Brien [00:23:34]:

Yeah, love that. I want to come back to this idea of relatedness because I know the strictly the theory talks about your relationships with other people. But Daniel Pink’s book Drive, which really popularized the concept of self determination theory. So for anyone who’s read it, that’s essentially what we’re talking about. He uses different language, but in it, when he talks about relatedness, I think the word he uses is purpose, if I’m not wrong. And what he talks about is it’s not just our relationships with other people, but it’s the impact that we have. And when I’m talking to organizations, a lot of it when I talk about relatedness. And again, this is Something I think that really needs to be underlined is the, the relationship between what you do on a day to day basis, how you spend your time, and the impact that you have on other people internally, whether it’s the team, the department, the clients that you work with.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:31]:

Making that link very explicit because so many of us are caught up doing the tasks on a day to day basis and we don’t necessarily see the impact that we’re having. And especially over time, those longer term goals, like this is the contribution that you’ve actually made.

Mark Fabian [00:24:49]:

That’s really interesting. I like that. I do think that that is probably specific to the workplace context.

Aoife O’Brien [00:24:58]:

Yeah. Okay.

Mark Fabian [00:24:58]:

Yeah, yeah. So I’m a little bit reluctant to put all that into a single idea. I can see the thread that runs through them, and I think that’s really neat to put it that way. But I do think there are issues that are unique to relatedness, issues that are unique to purpose, and then issues that are unique to, like, how you do purpose with other people. And that oftentimes the most sort of impactful things that we do are things that we only achieve in teams or in organizations. And we need to recognize that. But equally, I think there are many aspects of. So one of the kind of catchphrases in my book, beyond happy is that well being is something we do together.

Mark Fabian [00:25:37]:

And I think that well being is often not a matter of purpose necessarily. It might be a matter of celebrating shared values, like doing maple dances or something. Or in Oxford University they have this May Day celebration where the choir goes up into one of the towers and the whole town comes out, stuff like that. I think that really gives you a sense that we all value the same thing. We all have this kind of community that has social support, but it’s not really purposeful in any particular way. And the impact is kind of a shared impact that we generate on each other at the same time. Yeah. I think this, this idea that we should be attentive to the difference between the, like, tasks that we’re ticking off each day, getting to Inbox zero versus what contribution that makes to, well, what impact that has on other people, just in terms of, like, whether their interactions with us are pleasant or irritating, these kind of things, but then also how we’re contributing to wider outcomes from the organization.

Mark Fabian [00:26:37]:

That’s super important.

Aoife O’Brien [00:26:39]:

Mm. I think, you know, separate to the podcast, we’ll have to have a, a conversation about this and try and thrash it out, try and flesh it out a bit, because I am really interested if you’re Saying especially that there’s. There’s something that’s slightly missing from self determination theory in general. Like, that we need to bring in something more to that, to. To speak to that. So that. I think that’s really interesting. Back to this idea of needs specifically.

Aoife O’Brien [00:27:05]:

And like, where do our needs actually come from? And, and, you know, we haven’t maybe touched on the podcast yet, but what the part of self determination theory, what it says, is that we all have these universal needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. And there was research done on other needs, like money. And I’m trying to think of some of the other research that was done on it. But like, basically people think that money is a really fundamental need, but it’s actually not. And so these. It was essentially, the theory says that these are our universal needs and other needs are not universal. So these are needs that everyone has, but the. The rest of the needs are not universal.

Mark Fabian [00:27:48]:

So I think it’s useful to distinguish in the terminology between these universal needs. So autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And then what Ken and Sheldon, I think, especially Tim Casser, call pursuits. So you have your extrinsic pursuits, which are for money, power, status, fame, popularity, these kind of things. And the whole problem with them is that they’re universal. They’re not specific to you. So when you’re pursuing status, it’s not relationships where people value you and your individuality, your peculiarity, it’s people who value you for your status, which is this kind of generic thing. And you then get really worried that.

Mark Fabian [00:28:35]:

I call this, like, defensive status signaling. You get very worried that as soon as you lose that status or that power, that wealth or whatever it might be, those people will drop you because they’re only interested in you for that kind of cachet that you have. They’re not connecting with you on a personal level. The other reason why extrinsic pursuits are really dangerous is because they’re usually a kind of poor compensation for an unmet need. So, for example, if you don’t have autonomy because you’re raised by very controlling parents, for example, then you often compensate by seeking power in your career. And so I think you’ll see this with a lot of executives, but you also see it with a lot of, like, petty bureaucrats, like people who stamp your passport at the airport. A lot of. There was a period where a lot of the people who went into those kind of jobs were people who had bad histories with authority, with teachers at high school, with medical practitioners, whatever it might be, and they were seeking compensation in power.

Mark Fabian [00:29:34]:

But those compensations, status, fame, money, success at work in a way that’s very generic, where I think you mentioned this before we got started with the recording, that there’s this stereotype of the very successful person who actually feels kind of empty inside, that that’s probably a situation where they’ve sought success as a poor compensation for competence, and that actually the thing that they want to be competent with is something quite different. Yeah. We could talk separately about where. Where to identify our intrinsic pursuits, but maybe I’ll throw it back to you.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:08]:

Yeah, I mean, I have so much to say about that. I am an avid listener of podcasts as well, and I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts recently that I can relate to based on what you’re talking about, Mark. One of them is this idea that when you’re a leader and you have that power or you have that status, that you’re worried not just about losing that, but that people treat you differently because of that. So they’re not treating you as a human or because you’re you, but rather because of the status that you have.

Mark Fabian [00:30:39]:

Instruments.

Aoife O’Brien [00:30:40]:

Quite an interesting thing, isn’t it? And then the other one was in relation to those people who have power but don’t have status. So the. The people who stamp your passports, the bouncers in a nightclub, for example, and the drivers behind those people. And you know what the. What the podcast guest said was that he. The people who do those kind of roles, they. What they want is respect. And so if you can treat them with respect when you’re in those kinds of situations, then, you know, rather than kind of being quite dismissive, because oftentimes people are dismissive of those kinds of.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:16]:

You know, they get frustrated or, you know, the pencil pushers or the people who have a lot of. Who have a lot of that power but don’t necessarily have the status if you treat them with respect. I thought that was quite interesting as well.

Mark Fabian [00:31:27]:

Yeah, I think that brings in the relatedness of Engel. I think respect is a big part of feeling like you’re in a social community that, I don’t know, take care, takes care of you, but values you in some way and recognizes the value that you’re trying to give to that community.

Aoife O’Brien [00:31:42]:

Yeah. The other thing I wanted to come back to. So you mentioned that these things, these extrinsic pursuits like money, status and power are universal, but I suppose I want to challenge that and say, does everyone feel that, or do you mean they’re universal, as in they’re generic you know, it’s not specific to you.

Mark Fabian [00:32:02]:

Definitely the latter. Yeah. So it’s a generic thing to pursue status. I think a simple example maybe is. And the one that’s very common but not universal is that a lot of people don’t quite know what to do with themselves at the end of high school. So they set a goal like, I want to retire at 35, or I want to retire at 40. And then when they retire successfully, you know, in the best case, then they still need to figure out what it is that they want to do with their life.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:27]:

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:32:28]:

I don’t think they’re really solved. Yeah, exactly. So I think that’s an example where you’re not actually thinking particularly deeply about your values, your pursuits, your character, this kind of stuff. It might be very entertaining in the short term, stimulating, whatever. You might end up in a good spot at 35, but you haven’t resolved those fundamental issues.

Aoife O’Brien [00:32:48]:

Yeah. And I think that’s interesting. And again, tapping back to this question of where do our needs come from? So maybe they’re drivers for some, for an unmet needs that we had when we were younger. Any thoughts on. On some unique needs that people have? Like, I often talk about autonomy, relatedness and competence as a universal needs. And then I have a list which includes things like status and power as needs. But I think I’m going to rethink what I talk about after today’s conversation. Just in relation to.

Aoife O’Brien [00:33:18]:

They are pursuits rather than needs.

Mark Fabian [00:33:22]:

Yeah, I’m inclined to think of them as pursuits, but that might be for sort of relatively technical reasons. Like self determination theory basically says that for something to be a need, if it’s met or thwarted, there should be a bunch of sort of correlations with that. Like you should be more satisfied with your life, have more positive emotions, these kind of things. If a need is satisfied. And equally if a need is not satisfied, we’ll see more symptoms of psychopathology, depression, anxiety, low energy, this kind of stuff. I think there are a bunch of things that will be peculiar to individuals that will also have these kind of effects in terms of emotions and that sort of stuff. But they might not be easily connected back to basic psychological needs. They’ll be more easily connected to peculiarities of that person’s life story, the values that they’ve had, the experiences that they’ve had.

Mark Fabian [00:34:15]:

And I think that’s the clue to where to go looking for your authentic pursuits or your authentic values is to reflect on your narrative. So I think particularly worth starting with your childhood and just and your teenage years and that sort of thing, and whether there were things that just got you really riled up, either positively or negatively. So simple example for me is I have always, since I was a small child, hated walking past rubbish in the street and it really bothers me. And so that’s something where I should probably take that seriously. Join a litter picking group because I will probably vibe with the people that I meet there. Yeah, these kind of things. And so I think in, in reflecting on formative experiences in your childhood and teenage years. Formative like things that you encountered in the world that you had a very strong reaction to and then trying to interrogate those reactions and thinking about what sort of signals they’re sending you rather than living your life, I think a little bit relatively more on autopilot, where you just kind of do what the people around you are saying that might be very reasonable things to do.

Mark Fabian [00:35:21]:

Like a lot of people are trustworthy. A lot of people know us better than we know ourselves when we’re teenagers. So it’s worth taking that seriously too. But just, yeah, interrogating it a bit more.

Aoife O’Brien [00:35:30]:

I love that. And in tying into that as well, I know we were going to talk about this idea of values, which is, I mean, for me it’s a core part of the happy artwork framework. It’s the thing I talk about most often. And relating it back to me personally, if you had asked me, you know, six, seven, eight years ago, what are your values? I’d be like, oh, well, I know we have company values, I know we have corporate values because they’re on the wall, they’re in the email signature. But I didn’t know that I personally as an individual had values as well. I just didn’t know that. So I’d love to have a conversation about where do they come from? How, you know, how do we find out what our values are?

Mark Fabian [00:36:07]:

Sure, I think again, like reflecting on, on the past and things that got us R up. But also then I think it’s worth going out into the world specifically to seek values. I, I spent a lot of my twenties just traveling and that sort of thing. I think partially to discover these sorts of things. There are a lot of things out in the world that are worth caring about, but we have a limited amount of energy and care to give. So I think it’s worth identifying the things that you might, you might think, oh, that’s very valuable too, but it’s just not quite the thing that I’m going to do. So for example, I have a Lot of friends who are very invested in, in development of, of, of less advanced nations, as they’re called, and they spend a lot of time in Africa and places like that. I did that for a while, but I ultimately thought that I actually cared more about making sure that the people in the countries where I live, like Australia and the UK in particular, are doing well.

Mark Fabian [00:37:02]:

And so I’m more interested in anti poverty work in the UK than I am in anti poverty working in Somalia or something like that. That’s not to say that Somalia is bad or whatever. It’s just where my energies go. And I think motivation here is again important that the things that I can sustain attention to are the things that are reflective of my core values in some way. I think the key thing is really just have values. I think a lot of the time we’re living very unexamined lives and that means that we miss out on a lot of opportunities to do good and we might also end up inadvertently doing harm. I think you don’t necessarily need to be working in an organization that’s, that’s got moral objectives written into its charter. You might just be making biscuits, but a lot of people really value a good, good biscuit.

Mark Fabian [00:37:49]:

A lot of people really value a well made pillow or whatever it might be. You can make that better. But you can also then think about, well, how do I make this office a more pleasant environment for everyone to work in? How can we clean up our supply chains? Just thinking a little bit more about the values you put out into the world as you go about your office day to day.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:07]:

Yeah, I love that. I mean, a few things again coming up for me. I was only thinking earlier today about my childhood. And you know, for me the whole process of uncovering what my values are has been a process. It hasn’t been a, oh, I’m just going to pick out these words and they’re my values. It’s been examining, like, like you say, examining what that means and how I show up and thinking back to when I was younger and how those kinds of things and it has evolved over time. Like so for me, excellence, like doing things really well is really important to me. And that has been the case since I was younger.

Aoife O’Brien [00:38:40]:

And I remember this time where we were on holidays and I think I went out and I was supposed to have done the washing up and my friend came to find me because my mom was looking for me because I had to wash up the dishes and I was like, oh man, I have to go back, I have to wash up the dishes. And normally someone in that situation might do kind of a half assed job. I’m like, oh, I’m just gonna do. And my friend actually commented saying, I can’t believe how well you’ve done that. And you took your time and you know, like that’s something that sticks in my mind. And another example I thought of just randomly this morning was when we were kids and we were emptying the dishwasher and we used to do it like I would do the top and my brother would do the bottom and I think the bottom was worse. And then we would switch, you know, and I made the suggestion that like, why don’t we just do it all at once rather than having to wait for us both to be there at the same time or doing one and then waiting till later to do the other one. And like for me that’s efficiency.

Aoife O’Brien [00:39:42]:

Like I love continuous improvement and looking, you know, learning and how to do things better and making things really as efficient as they can be. So yeah, just things like that that sort of now stick my mind now that I know what my values are, they’re just kind of coming to the surface I suppose. And I suppose for people to. Yeah, sorry, go on.

Mark Fabian [00:40:03]:

Well, so just. That sounds really great. I think that’s exactly the sort of stuff that I’m talking about. It might seem a bit small initially, it might just be like this little event, but it sticks with you. And then once you think about it a bit, it really leads you down a whole path of understanding why certain job tasks work for you, why certain roles work for you, and also helps you to like plan more. So I think if you know that you’re someone who is quite meticulous, then you’ve got to make sure you’re in a job that lets you be meticulous.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:29]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:40:29]:

But also doesn’t kind of drain you. Because meticulousness then means that you often quite are taking a long time to do everything. And if there’s lots of small tasks that require that kind of meticulousness, you just get burnt out. And so I think these kind of small insights can often cascade.

Aoife O’Brien [00:40:46]:

Yeah. How do you think that that translates into the workplace in particular? So let’s say, you know, companies talk about their values, they know that it’s something that’s really important. Important. When I talk about it, I talk about a few different things. So there’s the values as we say they are, there’s the lived experience that people have which may or may not match the, the experience that we’re trying to create. And then there’s our own core values and seeing whether they are in alignment with the behavior that we experience at work as well.

Mark Fabian [00:41:18]:

I think, yeah, it’s a tough one for me. And I have to confess that I have worked in not so many workplaces, like when I was a tennis coach, small clubs, and then I was mostly sole trading.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:29]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:41:29]:

And then universities are all pretty similar workplaces.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:33]:

Okay.

Mark Fabian [00:41:33]:

All very bureaucratic. And I think most academics are not especially bureaucratic people. So there’s always this kind of constant tension between the academics and the like, corporate staff or the service staff who want a lot of processes, want us to work on forms, that sort of thing.

Aoife O’Brien [00:41:50]:

Yes.

Mark Fabian [00:41:50]:

Then the academics just want to like have flexibility to do it however they feel like doing it. I think one angle here that I think is quite important and that can be very cynically exploited by kind of bad hr, is that we know that when people are happier at work, when they have a sense of belonging at work, when their work feels meaningful, they put more into it. Not just that they’re more productive, but that they just invest more in their workplace. And so I think it’s worth thinking quite robustly in workplaces about what it is that you’re trying to achieve and getting people to think about their workplace in terms of values, purpose, this kind of thing. And if you’re a biscuit making company, as I said, it’s worth thinking about, well, we’re taking seriously our supply chains and then people might get more serious about work in that way. And equally, as an employee, you want to be on guard for when these kind of things are being deployed to suck more out of you in a disingenuous way, which I think does happen occasionally. So if you know that people treat workplace as a family and then they’re going to just live at work, then you might kind of cynically try to exploit that. I think that’s very dangerous.

Mark Fabian [00:43:02]:

And again, if you know your values and you know why you’re aware, then you’re going to be more robust to those kind of tactics.

Aoife O’Brien [00:43:08]:

I love that. Yeah. I think it underlines the importance of knowing as an individual what your values are and continue continuously exploring what they are and having those opportunities to show up. And in a way like you’re saying meticulous. I’m like, oh, I think I’m kind of meticulous. I would like a role that requires me to be very detail oriented. You know, a story for another conversation. Yeah, like a, I suppose a question for another conversation after this.

Aoife O’Brien [00:43:33]:

But like, for me, I wonder, is that more to do with strengths rather than values? Like, is it something that you value versus is it something that you, you’re naturally good at and, and feel energized by? And so I think we’ll, we’ll leave it there and maybe answer that conversation, that question another time. And mark the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast. What does being happier at work mean to you?

Mark Fabian [00:43:55]:

So I, I’d first say the things that are unhappy at work. So being surrounded by various forms of toxicity would be the main ones for me. And I, unfortunately, I would say academia, especially high level academia, is full of toxicity. So we’re very peculiar minds. A lot of people are highly introverted, not particularly good social skills, this sort of stuff. And so there’s a lot of weird behavior and I find that, yeah, unpleasant. I want people to be more low stakes when I interact with them and I want people to feel that I’m a low stakes person. Even if they like blow up at me or something, it’s going to be water under the bridge pretty quickly.

Aoife O’Brien [00:44:34]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:44:34]:

The things that are more about happier at work, for me, the main ones is motivational, that I want to go to work, get up in the morning and I’m like ready to go and I don’t need to drag myself there. It gives me energy, it gives me vitality. And then the next piece would be the values. So that I feel like what I’m doing at work is contributing to something. And I, like, I don’t want to begrudge people who have things that they’re really passionate about that seem really peculiar to them, like, I don’t know, building matchstick models of the Titanic, which some people do. But when you get that model at the end, you show it to people and they’re like, wow, that’s really cool. A lot of academics do work on these kind of niche, esoteric topics that a lot of other people don’t care about, but in some ways it might eventually contribute to human knowledge or something spicy like that.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:24]:

Something bigger than themselves. Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:45:27]:

And then community is one that I think we lack in academia, but that I would like. So I really missed that from when I was younger playing in sports teams and that sort of thing, and the sense that we were achieving something as a group. So, yeah. And I think some research teams are getting bigger and bigger and bigger and then you can get that kind of feeling as well. But yeah, that’s something I’d like to get more into my life.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:49]:

Yeah.

Mark Fabian [00:45:50]:

Because It’ll make me happier.

Aoife O’Brien [00:45:51]:

I can. I can definitely relate to that. Having set up my business and working on my own for a lot of the time, I can definitely relate to that. It’s something I really, really miss from working in corporate life. Like, no matter how well you get along with the people you work with or don’t get along, it’s. There’s still a team of people there to work with, you know? And Mark, if people want to reach out, if they want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about the book, what’s the best way to do that?

Mark Fabian [00:46:19]:

I think for your audience, probably LinkedIn or Blue Sky. So I think on Blue Sky I’m just Mark Fabian, and on LinkedIn it’s Dr. Mark Fabian. But it should be pretty easy to find me there. And if they want the book, any high street bookstore in the UK should have it. Otherwise, Waterstones, Amazon, Foyles, all their websites, you should be able to find it. The hardback’s out now and the paperback should be out in January 26th.

Aoife O’Brien [00:46:43]:

Brilliant. Love it. I absolutely loved this conversation. Really, really enjoyed it and definitely want to continue it. Aside from the podcast, we can decide ourselves whether we want to share more with listeners. What. But really, really enjoy this. Loved Nerding out about needs and values and happiness at work.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:00]:

So thank you so much for your time today.

Mark Fabian [00:47:02]:

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to nerd out. That’s not something I get to do very often in popular media. Thanks.

Aoife O’Brien [00:47:05]

That was Dr. Mark Fabian talking all things happiness at work. I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode and took at least one thing away to do differently. If you know someone else who would benefit from listening to today’s episode, don’t forget to share it with them, and I’d also love to see a rating or a review on your favorite podcast platform.