You Can’t Mandate Joy At Work, But You Can Create The Conditions For It

The emotional baseline people bring to work is heavier than many leaders realise.

Gallup’s global data revealed that 39% of adults reported feeling worried for much of the previous day, 37% felt stressed, and 26% reported sadness.¹

That context matters for leaders. Team members don’t leave their emotional weight at the door. They carry it into meetings, deadlines, decisions and conversations.

Which means the question of joy at work isn’t a soft issue or a nice-to-have. It is part of how organisations build energy, trust, resilience and performance.

But joy is often misunderstood.

Joy at work is not constant happiness, nor is it forced optimism and pretending everything is fine when the workload is heavy, the politics are messy, or the uncertainty is real. Joy is also deeper than fun. It is the felt experience of meaningful contribution, trusted connection, agency, fairness and positive energy. If you’re looking for where to start, these six practical ways to find more joy at work offer a useful foundation

Yet when organisations and leaders try to create joy, many default to something far more superficial: they schedule fun. Think Zoom trivia nights, mandatory social hours or team-building events designed to manufacture connection.

The intent is usually well-meaning, but the execution often misfires.

The Dodgem Car Problem

I’ve been to my share of team-building events over the years. Some were genuinely memorable. Others, less so.

The worst? Dodgem cars.

What was supposed to be light-hearted fun quickly became a contact sport, with some team members deciding the real game was seeing how hard they could ram each other. It was not my idea of a good time, though in fairness, a few others loved every second of it.

That’s precisely the problem with mandated fun. It’s designed for an imaginary average employee: someone who shares the same idea of enjoyment, the same comfort with physical contact, the same appetite for social performance and the same extroverted energy to turn up and be cheerful on cue.

Of course, that person rarely exists in your actual team.

The problem is not the idea of having fun at work. Fun can strengthen relationships, lift mood and create moments of shared humanity. The problem is when fun becomes compulsory, performative or designed around a narrow view of what people should enjoy.

For example:

• Some people love social games. Others find them draining.
• Some people enjoy physical activities. Others feel anxious, excluded or exposed.
• Some people are energised by after-work drinks. Others have caring responsibilities, health needs, cultural preferences or simply no desire to socialise after hours.

Connection at work matters deeply. But when connection feels managed, performative or obligatory, it can do more harm than good. It can signal to team members who don’t fit the prescribed mould that they don’t belong. Consequently, instead of building trust, it can quietly erode it.

Research on workplace fun reflects this nuance. Fun activities, coworker socialising and manager support for fun can all matter, but their impact depends on context, voluntariness, inclusion and whether employees experience the activity as authentic rather than imposed.²

If your culture is struggling, a scheduled social activity will not fix it. It’s simply a cheerful wrapper around issues your team isn’t yet comfortable discussing.

Related: Culture is Built by Friction Managers

What Real Joy Looks Like

A few years ago, I was at an Ed Sheeran concert. What struck me was not only the size of the stadium or the production quality, extraordinary as both were. It was the visible delight of someone deeply absorbed in his craft.

It was hard not to feel it because his energy and joy rippled through the stadium.

That experience reminded me of something we all recognise instantly, that genuine joy has a different texture from performed enthusiasm.

You can tell when someone is going through the motions. You can also tell when someone is connected to what they are doing, invested in the people around them and energised by the contribution they are making.

This is where joy at work starts to matter.

Positive emotions do more than make people feel good in the moment. Professor Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory suggests that positive emotions can expand people’s thinking, strengthen social connections, and help build enduring psychological and relational resources.³

In other words, joy is not merely decorative. When it is grounded in meaningful work and healthy relationships, it can broaden what you notice and think, and how you engage with your team members and colleagues.

You are more likely to experience joy when you do work you find meaningful, when you have enough agency to shape your contribution, and when you feel secure enough to be generous rather than territorial.

That is different from telling people to smile more, attend the team event or be grateful because it could be worse.

Joy Is Contagious, So Too Its Absence

Your emotional state is not as private as you think. It spreads.

Professor Sigal Barsade’s landmark research on emotional contagion showed that emotions spread through groups and shape more than mood. They influence cooperation, conflict, decision-making and task performance.⁴

Her research explored how emotions permeate group settings through what she termed the “ripple effect,” in which the emotions of one individual spread throughout a team.

Later research on leadership and emotion reinforces this point. Leaders’ moods and emotional expressions can influence group affect, team processes and performance.⁵

This is both a warning and an opportunity. If you show up disengaged, cynical, distracted or performatively cheerful, your team will sense it. They may not name it, but they will respond to it.

This does not mean you need to be relentlessly positive. In fact, forced cheerfulness can be just as corrosive as visible cynicism. Your team members don’t want you to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. They want you to have emotional presence that is congruent, constructive, and steady.

Start learning for free: Culture Transformation

The J.O.Y. Framework

So what should leaders focus on instead of mandated fun? The answer lies in creating the conditions where genuine joy is more likely to emerge, and there are three core elements to consider.

J: Justice and Psychological Safety
Joy can’t take root in environments where people feel unsafe, excluded, dismissed or unfairly treated.

Justice matters because people pay close attention to whether decisions are fair, processes are transparent, information is shared honestly, and they are treated with respect.

Organisational justice research has long shown that perceptions of fairness influence trust, commitment, job satisfaction and discretionary effort.⁶

Psychological safety adds the interpersonal foundation. Professor Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as the shared belief that people can speak up, ask questions, raise concerns, admit mistakes and offer ideas without fear of humiliation or punishment.⁷

Ask yourself:

• Do the quieter voices in your team have genuine space to contribute?
• Do people feel safe raising concerns, or only safe agreeing?
• Are mistakes treated as learning opportunities or as evidence to be used against someone later?

There is very little joy in a team where people are constantly managing impressions, scanning for risk or staying silent to protect themselves.

O: Ownership, Meaning and Agency

Joy also grows when people can see the value of their work and have some agency in how they do it.

Self-determination theory, developed by Professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, identifies autonomy, competence and relatedness as core psychological needs that support intrinsic motivation and well-being.⁸

At work, those needs show up in practical ways. People want to have some say in how they work. They want to feel capable and stretched. They want to know their effort connects to something that matters.

As a leader, your role is to help each person connect individual effort to meaningful impact. That requires more than reminding people of the organisation’s purpose. It means making the line of sight clear between the task in front of them, the customer or stakeholder it serves, and the broader outcome the team is working to achieve.

It also means giving people enough ownership to shape the work, not simply comply with instructions. When people feel trusted to contribute judgement, not just labour, work becomes a source of energy, pride and meaning, not just output.

Y: Your Energy, Modelled Intentionally
Because emotions are contagious, your energy as a leader is a cultural input.

The way you show up shapes the emotional climate around you. You don’t need to say a word. The way you walk into a room, engage in a conversation or respond to a setback sends a signal that your team reads and responds to, usually without either of you realising it.

The question worth sitting with is not whether you are modelling something; you always are. The question is: what are you modelling?

Joy does not come from pretending work is easy. It comes from creating an environment where people can do hard things with trust, meaning and support. That environment starts with you.

Five Practical Shifts for Leaders

As you go about implementing your J.O.Y. Framework, it helps to apply a set of daily, deliberate choices.

1. Stop measuring culture by calendar events
The best culture signals are often the least performative. Not the social occasion. Not the forced photo. Not the carefully curated offsite activity.

Instead, look at what happens in the quiet moments. Do people speak honestly in meetings? Do they help each other without being asked? Do they recover well after tension? Do they raise risks early? Do they trust that their contribution matters?

2. Ask better questions
In your next one-on-one, try asking: What part of your work gives you the most energy right now? or Where do you feel you are making the most useful contribution? or What is getting in the way of doing your best work?

Then listen carefully. The answer may tell you where someone is finding meaning. It may also reveal where their work has become depleted, disconnected or misaligned.

3. Design for inclusion, not the average
Any team activity, social or otherwise, should pass a simple test: will every person on this team feel genuinely welcome, respected and able to participate without pretending to be someone they are not? If the answer is uncertain, redesign.

Make activities optional where possible. Vary the format. Avoid assuming that connection requires alcohol, competition, physical activity or after-hours availability. Give your team members more than one way to participate.

4. Pay attention before you prescribe
Don’t assume what your team and team members need. It is far more effective to understand the dynamics, relationships and individual needs before prescribing a solution.

For example:

• An exhausted team may not need a social event. It may need workload relief.
• A team that is conflict-avoidant may not need another bonding activity. It may need clearer norms for challenge and repair.
• A disconnected team may not need more meetings. It may need better-quality conversations.

5. Model it first
Before you ask your team to be engaged, curious and generous, ask whether you are demonstrating those qualities yourself.

Do you show interest in people beyond their output? Do you acknowledge effort before moving to the next task? Do you create room for dissent? Do you bring energy to the work, or only urgency? Do you share credit? Do you make it safe for others to be human?

Your Reflection

When emotional strain is high and the world is heavier than usual, workplaces that respond with genuine humanity will stand apart.

Remember, your goal is not to remove all pressure from work; that’s neither possible nor desirable, but to create the conditions where your workplace’s culture enables you and your team to do their best work.

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com.

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