Bree Groff has a unusual motto: “Most work, most days, should be fun.”
Groff, an author and senior advisor at SYPartners, a management consultancy, recognizes that “fun” is not the first word that most people would associate with their job.
However, she’s on a mission to challenge the idea that work has to be a monotonous grind,
“There’s been this shared philosophy that struggle is what makes greatness, or that nothing worth doing ever comes easily,” she says. “I want to provide a bit of a counter narrative.”
As Groff writes in her recent book “Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously),” going to the office shouldn’t feel like a chore. Instead, it should be a place where we find joy and camaraderie, she says.
From a young age, Groff remembers seeing her parents, who both worked in education, laughing and joking with co-workers when she visited them at their jobs. “I grew up thinking that work was a place to have fun,” she says.
Her belief that work should be enjoyable strengthened when her late mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Groff had an epiphany at the doctor’s office: while every cancer patient was praying for more time, “everyone at the office is just hoping for Friday,” she says.
“We’re just really not valuing our days properly,” she says. “Our days at work are also our days on this planet.”
Connection is key
Today, Groff adheres to a simple philosophy: “If I want to enjoy my life and have fun in my life, and work is a big part of it, then ergo, work should also be fun,” she says.
Of course, you don’t have to be a professional ice cream taster to enjoy work. In fact, having fun at your job has less to do with your actual work, and more to do with your co-workers, Groff says.
Groff uses the classic sitcom “The Office” as an example: while working in paper sales at Dunder Mifflin was objectively boring, the employees always seemed to have a good time together.
Forming authentic relationships is the key to a happy workplace, Groff says.
On every team she manages, Groff encourages each of her employees to create a personal “user manual” to share with other co-workers. The user manual can contain information on everything from the most important people in their lives to their preferred communication style, she says.
“Sometimes what feels so dreadful and inhuman about work is that we don’t know the people that we work with,” Groff says. “We can work with someone for years before realizing like, oh, you have a brother.”
Building meaningful relationships also requires vulnerability — which isn’t always common at the office.
To promote emotional honesty, Groff asks her team to rate their day on a scale of 1 to 5 at the beginning of each meeting. The practice makes everyone feel “a lot more grounded and seen.”
“Small acts of connection are good for reminding us that it’s not all so heavy,” she says.
Of course, not every day will be a walk in the park — “that’s just part and parcel of doing things with other humans,” Groff says.
However, “a little bit of connection can go a long way,” she says.
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