How to Find Positive People

“Hi, I’m Paul Krismer with the Happiness Experts Company. Do you want to hire people who bring a powerful, positive attitude into your workplace? Do you want friends to be the kind of people who lift up your life? This video is just for you.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful.

Look, almost everyone can show a positive, pleasant demeanor during a job interview. And then, later you discover that you’ve hired someone who probably has the skill set you need, but sometimes a toxic personality that poisons your workplace. Just what do you do? What if you could hire people with a much, much greater chance that they will bring the kind of energy that powers up your team rather than takes them down?

Similarly, would you like to know after your very first date if your potential mate is the winner you’re looking for? Would you like to identify friends who know how to have happiness in their lives? As you know, the people who are around us have a huge influence on our own well-being. As you may have seen in my video about positive leadership, people who bring good energy to groups have an outsized impact on group productivity. Some of the ideas I’m sharing today are from Dr. Laura Keller’s Queen. She has created interview questions that help identify people who bring good mojo. At the end of the video, I’ll share some of the best interview questions for ferreting out which folks have personalities that you want to be with.

The importance of having positive people around you makes common sense. Our own experience of life is more fun and enjoyable when good people are with us. Yet it goes so much beyond just that. Really positive people make massive differences in their social and work circles. Positive leaders have much, much more impact than do sourpusses. Because emotions are so contagious, moving rapidly from one person to the next, we often fail to see how other people’s attitudes infect our own experiences of the world. When you bring upbeat, positive people around you, not only do you get to share in their happiness but you get all the benefits that come with happiness: better health, deeper, warmer relationships. You actually perform smarter — you cognitively function at a higher level. You’re in a good mood. You get better sleep and, of course, you get better career outcomes. Seriously, we so often underestimate the sheer magnitude of the effect that other people have in our lives.

Don’t do this. Be very conscious of creating environments filled with productive, optimistic people. You and your business will reap huge rewards. I have hired so many people when I used to be in the corporate world. Perhaps a hundred or more high-priced professionals. I’m proud of the work I did for the most part, but there are a few people where, quite frankly, I hired them and did a lot of damage to my organization. Years after selecting the wrong candidate, I was still trying to find ways to either get them on side or out the door. When you hire someone who can do the job but they’re a caustic addition to your workforce- you get yourself in a real pickle. I’ve been there and done that. However, with what I know now, I can be much more confident when hiring people into my small team.

So, let’s assume you have a candidate that has demonstrated the skill sets you need. They have a good resume with the right past experience. They have answered your questions to leave you confident that they know how to do what you need them to do. So now, how do you find out if they will be positive energizers in your workplace? It’s a matter of digging just a little deeper. When you ask the right questions, people will reveal how their attitude shows up on a day-to-day basis. For example, one great question is: ‘Looking back across your career, what was the one role that you most liked? What was that role and what did you like about it?’

Now, that sounds like a softball question, doesn’t it? But you wouldn’t believe how many people will struggle to talk about a job, maybe even a single project, that they loved. This is a very clear signal that they do not naturally find joy in life. Or, at least not in work. If they cannot give you a single example of a job they liked doing, you can be pretty sure that not all past jobs have been terrible. But instead, it shows you how they see the world. Now, you could shift this question to about past school classes, for example, if you’re hiring people straight out of school.

Here’s another great question: ‘Tell me about the best team you’ve ever worked with. What made this group of people so special? How did being a part of the team make you feel?’ People who struggle to answer clearly are problematic team members. Don’t hire them! If their answer to this line of questioning is not about the work itself and not about the people and the passion that they felt working with them, then keep digging. This candidate likely has deficient emotional intelligence. They don’t work or play well with others!

Now, you can see how readily questions like these will also prove useful when you’re dating someone new. Do you want to spend weeks, possibly even months and years to figure out what you really want in a mate? It’s someone who makes you smile! Someone who encourages you and sees the silver lining, even when lots of dark clouds are brewing. We become like the people we spend time with. This is a fact that you can take to the bank.

Quickly assess if your dates or your existing friends are people who lift you up. In the description below is a link to tons of the best interview questions. This will be a great resource for you when hiring people into your organization, or simply to contemplate your social circles. Now, it’s my life’s mission to help the world be a bit happier. Please like, share this video, comment, subscribe to my channel, do whatever you need to do! When you help me, you help the world get happier. Until next time, I’m your happiness expert, Paul Krismer.
Thanks for watching.”