Today we’d like to introduce you to Silvia Garcia Barnechea.
Silvia, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started my career in marketing and communication. When I was Director of Marketing at Coca-Cola; the President of the company called me to his office. It was not usual to be called to the President’s office so I was both excited and worried. He asked me if I had ever thought of a career in happiness. You need to imagine that fifteen years ago, there was nothing like a Chief Happiness Officer’s job, and most people thought that happiness was something you pursued on the weekends. So I seriously thought that the President of Coca-Cola was trying to make me understand that I should go home and pursue happiness..by leaving the company! By it was not the case. He had heard of my interest for understanding how our emotions impact what we do, and how successful we are; and offered me to work with scientists around the world to learn everything about happiness and how to apply it in order to help people and business thrive.
Fifteen years later, and having been to the United Nations to discuss happiness, having talked to leaders around the world, and helped organizations achieve a positive culture, I decided to spin off to be able to offer all this knowledge to more organizations and leaders. Fortune 500 and Fortune 5,000 companies. I am on a quest to find those who think that people and business thrive, in this order. I want to help them in three different ways. 1st, I give keynote speeches around the country to awake people on the importance of happiness to unleash our potential (literally, our brain works much better when we are happy). 2nd I help companies measure each ingredient of happiness at work or in life, with the first scientific index of happiness. 3rd. I help them implement the right behaviors to transform their culture. I use training and coaching, like the Chief Happiness Officer online training.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. Being in charge of happiness sounds like a dream job. Yet, when I started asking for support and funding for my projects, I found that the majority of leaders did not think that happiness was important. I first thought that it was because they needed to see the proofs that there was a high ROI from focusing on happiness. But once I demonstrated to them that it was the most profitable decision they could invest in, they continued to reject most of my proposals. I even had a boss that wanted to make my job disappear!
Eventually, I realized that happiness attracts the right leaders. That those leaders who don’t want to increase employees’ happiness are usually unhappy themselves and have an old-fashioned way to look at the workplace, as a competition of all against all for limited resources. I now know that happiness calls for the right type of leaders, those who have a growing mindset and think that unleashing the whole potential of employees by setting the conditions for them to thrive is a win-win. And it is such a pleasure to work with these people! I am also thrilled that the online Chief Happiness Officer training has such a high demand from people on the five continents! There is a revolution happening around positive cultures, as the most talented millennials, and younger generations, want to work for companies that care about their happiness.
Please tell us about Happiest Places to Work.
I created Happiest Places to Work and Feel Logic to help people and business thrive by using the science of happiness. I help small and big companies in three different ways. 1st, I give keynote speeches around the country to awake people on the importance of happiness to unleash our potential (literally, our brain works much better when we are happy). 2nd, I help companies measure each ingredient of happiness at work or in life, with the first scientific index of happiness. 3rd, I help them implement the right behaviors to transform their culture. I use consulting, coaching, and training, for example, training Chief Happiness Officers online.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have devoted more time to figuring out which were my real dreams so instead of employing energy in pursuing cookie-cut dreams, I would had started building mine earlier. And I would have stopped trying to be perfect sooner, and I would have told to myself, “you are just good enough, let’s do the best we can what we have!”
Pricing:
- Culture Audit with the scientific index of happiness at work, from 15,000 USD
- Chief Happiness Officer training (online): 4,489 USD.
- Keynote speeches, from 15,000 USD
Contact Info:
- Address: 128 N 4th Ave. Decatur, 30030 GA
- Website: www.HappiestPlacesToWork.org
- Phone: 4708095138
- Email: silvia@happiestplacestowork.org
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvia-garcia-barnechea/
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