At Tuesday night’s sold-out Phish concert at Forest Hills Stadium (my first Phish concert in almost 20 years!), 13,000 people experienced pure, unguarded joy. If you’ve been to a Phish concert, you know exactly what I mean. Balloons abound, glow sticks alight, and everyone is dancing. 🎈
Since I don’t follow Phish myself, I found myself watching the crowd as much as the band. What I saw were thousands of fans feeling connected, energized, and focused while their favorite band played. But it was a Tuesday night, and most of them had to work the next morning.
Would they feel this same energy when they walked into their offices on Wednesday? This same sense of belonging, this freedom to be themselves, this collective joy in creating something together? Or would Wednesday morning mean returning to the version of themselves that appear most often at work: more contained, more careful, less free?
As I watched my new Phish friends, I thought about last week’s newsletter and Gallup’s research that hope is what people need most from their leaders. And here it was, right in front of me: pure joy in action because everyone felt free to be themselves. 🌟
The Science of Small Joys
Work will never be a Phish concert, but it doesn’t have to feel like the opposite either. Harvard Business Review’s Making Joy a Priority at Work shows that workplace joy comes from three things:
🎯 Harmony – using your distinct strengths
💫 Impact – feeling your work matters
👁️ Acknowledgment – being seen for your contributions.
But there’s a massive gap between expectation and reality. Though 90% of workers expect to feel joy at work, only 37% actually do. And that 53% “joy gap” is a missed opportunity for creating the hope and engagement that teams need.
Playing to Your Strengths 🎵
Phish isn’t just about the music: it’s seeing a band that has honored the contributions of its members over nearly 40 years. For example, they follow a “No Analyze” rule—no commenting on each other’s playing—allowing each person to contribute authentically.
That’s the same dynamic I strive for when I partner with leadership teams that engage in CliftonStrengths coaching: helping people bring their authentic selves to work. It’s how you create the three elements of workplace joy from that HBR research—harmony, impact, and acknowledgment—naturally. When leaders lean into their natural strengths, those small moments of joy start happening more often at work.
The Real Work
So I keep thinking about those 13,000 people at the concert, all having their own version of joy in the same moment. They weren’t trying to be happy; they just were, because everything aligned.
As leaders, that’s exactly what we can do: create conditions at work where people can access their natural strengths, their unique contributions, and their authentic way of making things better.
Hope gets built through daily experiences of “This is what I’m good at” and “This matters.” It’s those Wednesday morning moments after the big concert on Tuesday night that keep the feeling going.
PS – If you’re ready to help your team discover more of those natural moments where work feels joyful because people can do what they do best, I’d love to help.
As a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach, I work with leaders and teams to identify what makes each person come alive at work. You can learn more about individual CliftonStrengths coaching or team workshops, or learn more about CliftonStrengths to think about how you might want to leverage it in your workplace.
If you’re interested in learning more, reply to this email or contact me here. ✨