Today, we’re bringing you an episode about joy to help you get back to work on a high note. Recent research by Oxford University found that workers are 13% more productive when they’re happy. And yet, another study by BCG found that most company leaders aren’t building their strategies around how their employees feel at work. So joy? It’s a real business question.

In this episode, we are joined by designer and joy specialist Ingrid Fetell Lee, to find out how to make our workplaces, our jobs, and ourselves more joyful. A former design director for IDEO, Ingrid is a self-starter with a decade’s worth of research into the science of joy. Her findings made it into a book: Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.

Today, she helps us answer the hard questions: how do we get to feel joyful? Our surroundings, the objects in our homes, the things and people we interact with every day… Why do they influence our emotions? And crucially: what does that mean for our companies? Together, we discuss how to make our workplaces more enjoyable and productive, and what joy means for leadership, teamwork and our business philosophy.

Join Ingrid and Ari to spread joy today and make it an integral function of your organization.

Highlights:

• When Ingrid first stumbled upon Joy (2:45)
• Universal joyful patterns (4:54)
• The evolutionary explanation for joy (7:32)
• The difference between joy and happiness (9:33)
• The Aesthetics of Joy in the Workplace (10:29)
• The branded environment: “No one wants to work inside the corporate logo” (15:30)
• The case of joy contagion at Coca-Cola (16:34)
• Adopting a new joyful leadership (18:56)
• “The biggest mistake that I've seen employers make is inconsistency” (20:56)
• Undoing the corporate bias against joy (22:03)
• Signs that we have changed our team for the better (23:23)
• Finding joy while working remotely (25:57)
• Embracing joy in the present (27:46)
• Gen Z: a new philosophy of joy (29:27)

Links:

• Cadence Bank Website
• Cadence Bank X (Twitter)
• Cadence Bank LinkedIn
• The Aesthetics of Joy Website
• The Aesthetics of Joy Instagram
• Ingrid Fetell Lee X (Twitter)
• Ingrid Fetell Lee LinkedIn
• Ingrid Fetell Lee Instagram
• Ingrid Fetell Lee Pinterest
• Ted Talk: “Where Joy Hides and How to Find It”
• Research: Oxford University - “Happy workers are 13% more productive” 
• Research: BCG - “Joy at work matters more than you realize”

Feedback:

If you have questions about the show or topics you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producers, [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].

Read the full show transcript.

Meet the Host

Ari Marin, SVP, Family Enterprise Advisor, Cadence Asset Management & Trust and the new host of Cadence Bank’s In Good Companies (IGC) podcast, says his idea of “good company” is being around creative, insightful people who enjoy sharing personal stories about the things that helped make them successful.

From 9 to 5, Marin is a Cadence Bank senior vice president and family wealth strategist, whose specialty is consulting with family-owned and small businesses. Now, he’s squeezing in IGC hosting duties, bringing in a new voice and fresh perspectives.

As a lawyer with a master’s in taxation from Villanova, Marin holds his own in the business world. But hosting IGC gives him a new way of engaging with entrepreneurs and experts to learn smart ideas and new ways of doing things.

Outside the office, Marin is a history fan and podcast aficionado who loves reading and exercising with his two dogs: Friday–aka “the angel”--and Mahla, the stubborn Shih Tzu with selective hearing.

Meet the Speaker

Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer and author whose groundbreaking work reveals the hidden influence of our surroundings on our emotions and wellbeing. As a former design director at IDEO, author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, and the founder of the website The Aesthetics of Joy, she empowers people to find more joy in life and work through design. Her immensely popular TED talk “Where Joy Hides and How to Find It” has been viewed more than 17 million times.

Lee has been featured as an expert on design and joy by outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Real Simple, The Atlantic, the Today Show, HGTV Magazine, and Fast Company. She has over fifteen years of experience in design and branding, having led design programs for Target, Condé Nast, Eileen Fisher, American Express, Kate Spade, Diageo, Pepsico, and the US government, among others. She was a founding faculty member in the Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her design work has been exhibited at imm Cologne, Germany.

Lee holds a Master’s in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University. She loves pancakes, polka dots, and rainbow sprinkles, and has an extensive repertoire of happy dances for any occasion.

This podcast is provided as a free service to you and is for general informational purposes only. Cadence Bank and its affiliates make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content in the podcast. The podcast is not intended to provide legal, accounting or tax advice and should not be relied upon for such purposes.