Book Review: Shawn Murphy’s ‘The Optimistic Workplace’

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

The Optimistic Workplace: Creating an environment that energizes everyone

By Shawn Murphy

Copyright 2016 Amacom

Price: $24.95

Pages: 224 with index

The world seems to be a more pessimistic place these days, and the workplace is no different. As we talk with our co-workers about our concerns over everything from the economy to politics and health, much of this negativity naturally sneaks into the workplace.

This new book by Shawn Murphy goes a long way towards relieving some of this stress that has caused our places of work to be less than optimistic. But as Murphy points out, there are a number of things we can do about this, the first one being creating a sense of purpose for what we are doing.

Make sure that everyone understands that what we do at work is important. Murphy explains some of the principles that help make our offices more cheerful, passionate and optimistic:

- Our relationships with one another at work have to matter. They have to be more important than the traditional co-worker relationship that involved just “getting along.” People have to matter to each another. They have to understand that appreciate that the team is more important than the individuals.

- We have to create benevolent places of work where people care as much for the people in the community as they do for the people in the company. As Murphy says, “Doing good is good for business.” And I might add that doing good is good for everybody.

- It is important that people know their true value both in and out of work. We all have to realize that what we do is important.

- Set goals to be all-inclusive. Not everyone is going to fit into every organization, but we have to try to include all people.

- Optimism is not a dirty word. Being optimistic is not the same as being naïve. There are many good reasons to strive for an optimistic workplace, and it is our job, not only as leaders but as employees, to work hard to make the workplace optimistic and to make work a great place.

Happy workers are great workers. Workers with a purpose, a true reason for being at work and finding importance in that work, are all part of a successful workplace in a successful company.

This is a good book on a timely subject.

Find it on Amazon here.