Page 43 - Getting to the Heart of High Performance

THE COST OF UNHAPPINESS

Some executives might question whether happiness
deserves to be considered a deep strength. The easiest way
to answer this is to look at the costs associated with a nega-

tive corporate psyche.

Even if happiness doesn’t help drive your organization’s
top line, a lack of it certainly can damage its bottom line.
Happiness is essentially the opposite of depression,

which the World Health Organization (WHO) recently
declared to be the world’s fourth most debilitating con-
dition, behind heart disease, cancer, and traffic
accidents. WHO also predicts that depression will

become the second most debilitating condition world-
wide by 2020. US News & World Report states, “People
today are 10 times as likely to suffer from depression as
those born two generations ago.” 4 The Wall Street

Journal reports, “According to the National Institute of
Mental Health in Bethesda, MD, 9.5 percent of U.S.
5
adults suffer from depression.” You might take a minute
and run this calculation on your organization:

A New Leadership Priority: Build the Psychological Balance Sheet 27