There’s a new epidemic sweeping companies worldwide: unhappiness. According to recent research, only 51% of employees frequently feel happy at work.
Being happy is not just a “nice to have” in the workplace. The same research found that happy workers are 42% more likely to feel productive or motivated, meaning that employee happiness is directly linked to business outcomes.
While many organizations have introduced initiatives such as “duvet days,” mindfulness classes, and wellbeing apps, recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that these have no discernible effect on employee mental wellbeing.
So, what is the answer to curing this unhappiness epidemic? It lies in your management approach.
Unlocking happiness with questions
As a manager, you play a crucial role in your employees’ happiness and mental well-being. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that those who work in companies with poor management practices are nearly 60% more likely to be stressed than those in companies with good management practices. Add to this the fact that managers have the same impact on people’s mental health as their partners, doctors, or therapists, and you can see that staff happiness, perhaps unsurprisingly, is contingent on how they’re managed.
Implement effective people management, however, and the results speak for themselves. If workers feel seen and understood, and believe that their strengths, values, and contributions are noted and celebrated, engagement, trust, and retention all improve. Once an employee is empowered by their manager to know and use their strengths daily, they’re nearly six times more engaged. Businesses with highly engaged staff experience 78% less absenteeism and significantly lower turnover rates. When employees feel that managers care about their well-being, they’re 73% less likely to feel burned out and 53% less likely to be actively seeking a new job.
If you’re a manager wondering how you can better motivate your team and reap these benefits for your organization, it’s time to consider a new style of management called Operational Coaching. Practitioners of this new approach learn to use an enquiry-led approach, asking purposeful questions intended to engage others’ thinking.
At the heart of developing an Operational Coaching style is learning to apply the STAR model in everyday situations:
● Stop: When an employee comes to you with a problem, as their manager, you must learn to stop, take a step back, and overcome your natural inclination to step in and solve the problem for them.
● Think: This gives you the space to think about whether the situation an employee has presented offers a “coachable moment”.
● Ask: Mastering the art of asking powerful, thought-provoking questions and then actively listening to your employees allows you to ditch the “fix and solve” response and instead presents the other person with a learning opportunity to become independent, solution-driven problem solvers.
● Result: Work with the employee to secure commitment to an action from this coachable moment, that they’ll see through. You may need to ask a few more questions to agree on the appropriate follow-up, increasing the likelihood that action will be taken and providing a future opportunity to give appropriate feedback.
By learning how to ask purposeful questions and actively listening to what your team members are saying, you’re supporting them on a journey of continuous performance improvement. Enabling and empowering employees to take action establishes a more equitable relationship and advances their skills, capabilities, and prospects.
An important part of Operational Coaching is also offering appreciative feedback to your staff. This is crucial for motivation, which, as we’ve already established, is what’s needed to banish workplace blues, boost morale, and ensure employees feel valued.
Learning to apply the STAR model also has benefits for you as a manager. Chances are, your responsibilities already mean you’re overstretched. In fact, you may be one of the 82% of people who have ended up as an “accidental” manager on top of your actual role. So learning to use an Operational Coaching style of management enables you to have “in the moment” daily coaching conversations with your employees and achieve great results, without the need for lengthy coaching-style sessions that drain your time and energy. This means you’ll likely be happier and have improved morale, too.
Reframing the purpose of management
The benefits of Operational Coaching in action have been clearly established. A large-scale randomised controlled trial, funded by the U.K. Government and conducted by the London School of Economics (LSE), showed statistically significant results across 62 organizations in 14 sectors. Managers who undertook the STAR Manager program went on to spend 70% more time coaching their team members in the flow of work than before adopting an Operational Coaching style of management.
Intervention group organizations also recorded a sixfold improvement in employee retention, and 48% of reported successes were related to increased engagement and productivity.
The robust results of the study show the benefits that await managers who learn how to adapt their management style to an enquiry-led approach. It clearly demonstrates that when managers are better trained to handle the people side of their roles, everyone feels happier and more motivated.
By reframing management’s purpose and intention to enable others to develop, empower them to act, and motivate them through appropriate appreciative and developmental feedback, you can ensure your organization is a place where employees feel motivated, supported, and able to grow. And this is exactly the type of workplace we desperately need in the U.S. and around the world.
