The Real Value Of Happiness At Work-And how to achieve it. An interview with Srikumar S. Rao.

Srikumar S. Rao, who teaches at Columbia Business School, London Business School, the Kellogg School of Management and elsewhere, has done pioneering research into workplace motivation, and he advises senior executives on becoming more engaged in their work and discovering deep meaning in it. His celebrated MBA course, "Creativity and Personal Mastery," which he long taught at Columbia, has become the only business school course with its own alumni association. In it he counseled students on how to discover their unique purpose, creativity and route to happiness through group work and a philosophical perspective. His latest book, published this year, is Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated, and Successful--No Matter What.

Forbes: Why is happiness at work important?

Srikumar S. Rao: I believe that if you don't derive a deep sense of purpose from what you do, if you don't come radiantly alive several times a day, if you don't feel deeply grateful at the tremendous good fortune that has been bestowed on you, then you are wasting your life. And life is too short to waste.

This is important in all of life but particularly at work, because we spend so much of our waking moments at work, and the amount of time we spend there is increasing. Also, many report that they experience undue stress at work, as competition increases and globalization shrinks the world. This takes a tremendous toll on individuals, and there is also a societal cost, because unhappy disgruntled employees are more prone to health problems, less productive and a general drag on others.

Is happiness at work reflective of the workplace, or is it more a matter of the individual?

An excellent question. The short answer is both. However, the workplace is frequently beyond the ability of an employee to change. So the process of being happy has to start with that employee. The wonderful paradox is that once you begin the internal transformation, the external world also begins to change, spontaneously.

How is your course different from Tal Ben-Shahar's positive psychology class at Harvard?

I know about his work but am not familiar enough with it to give a definitive answer. I don't focus on happiness as a goal or an end. I encourage the participants in my program to discover how the mental models they use to make sense of the world are often dysfunctional, and I teach them to craft and use others. As they do such inner work, they automatically report that they're happier as a byproduct.