We all expe­ri­ence cer­tain mile­stone events in life that cause extra­or­di­nary joy and oth­ers of par­al­leled grief and sad­ness. When we are men­tally healthy we express our­selves accordingly.

Is that right? Does every one feel and express hap­pi­ness and sad­ness in the same way? Do these emo­tions affect every­one the same?

Gianni is a Senior Account Exec­u­tive at Eudai­monic Cre­ative, an ad agency that employs 25 oth­ers and where the cre­ative juice is pro­por­tion­ate to the amount of cof­fee con­sumed. Every­one that works there is truly tal­ented, as their port­fo­lios and resumes demon­strated when they were inter­viewed and hired. He has a col­lec­tion of Life is Good t-shirts and gen­er­ally walks around with a look of con­tent­ment on his face. He gets above aver­age per­for­mance reviews and hits or super­sedes his goals. Life is good.

In fact, there’s a kind of Zen going on in the office. Every­one is able to bounce ideas off one another, they social­ize after hours once in a while, and they work very well inde­pen­dently and as a team. It’s a great place to work and no one is look­ing to walk.

Max has a sim­i­lar posi­tion at Hedo­nic Inc., a com­peti­tor agency on the other side of town. They pump out some mean ass cam­paigns. A few weeks ago Max landed a much sought after account, par­tied for 3 days with­out sleep, called off when he needed to recu­per­ate and now the client’s demands are con­sum­ing him. He’s not smil­ing. No one wants to get too close to him for fear the cloud he walks under­neath will start to dump a tor­ren­tial down­pour at any moment.

It seems there are a lot of char­ac­ters like Max at the agency. There’s either jubi­la­tion or dev­as­ta­tion going on in more than one office on any given day.  They all cover for each other but it’s like a soap opera over there and it gets hairy some­times. In fact, it gets drain­ing after a while. The agency has had some dif­fi­culty retain­ing key asso­ciates and some accounts have been jeop­ar­dized because of this.

If you were look­ing for a job which agency would have more allure? As an employer or man­ager what kind of cul­ture do you wish to estab­lish and be known for?

There is no right or wrong answer. It’s about pref­er­ences and the cul­ture you wish to work in, or estab­lish if you are the boss. Both per­son­al­ity types con­tribute equally to the rich tapes­try of life.

Gianni has a Eudai­monic per­son­al­ity — the eudai­monic or psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being tra­di­tion (PWB) empha­sizes pos­i­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal func­tion­ing and human devel­op­ment. Eudai­monic the­o­ries of well-being assert the impor­tance of achiev­ing one’s full poten­tial through engag­ing in inher­ently mean­ing­ful endeav­ors. This cre­ates a sus­tain­ing feel­ing of well-being, sat­is­fac­tion and ful­fill­ment. Eudai­mon­ics do not exhibit “roller coaster” emo­tions. It’s not to say they do not exhibit emo­tion, on the con­trary. It’s sim­ply that their emo­tion is sustained.

Max has a hedo­nic per­son­al­ity — the hedo­nic or sub­jec­tive well-being (SWB) tra­di­tion empha­sizes con­structs such as hap­pi­ness, pos­i­tive affect, low neg­a­tive affect, and sat­is­fac­tion with life. With hedo­nia, hap­pi­ness is the goal sought and the greater extent of plea­sured expe­ri­enced by the per­son the bet­ter. There is no con­sid­er­a­tion given to the source or depth of hap­pi­ness a per­son is encoun­ter­ing. Hedo­nia involves feel­ing excited, relaxed, and con­tent, los­ing track of time, and for­get­ting per­sonal prob­lems. The hedo­nic “tread­mill” or roller coaster is inevitable for peo­ple like Max. He craves feel­ing good and flinches away from pain in very vis­i­ble ways.

Under­stand­ing eudai­monic and hedo­nic aspects of per­son­al­ity help in the selec­tion process in terms of fit. As you can see, the exec­u­tives at Gianni’s com­pany overtly hired a crew of eudai­mon­ics. It has resulted in their Zen like cul­ture. Max’s com­pany pri­mar­ily hired can­di­dates with hedo­nic per­son­al­i­ties and the result is a roller coaster cul­ture in the office.

Aware­ness of these per­son­al­ity attrib­utes is essen­tial in the selec­tion process when con­sid­er­ing teams, strengths and weak­nesses. While a bal­ance is favor­able, a team of all hedo­nic per­son­al­i­ties is chaotic. It’s also impor­tant to be aware of our own eudai­monic or hedo­nic ten­den­cies since it assists in the pre­ven­tion of hir­ing every­one in our own like­ness. Unless that’s what we con­sciously choose to do.

When select­ing a ven­dor and prod­ucts for psy­cho­me­t­ric per­son­al­ity assess­ments ask if this aspect is eval­u­ated. If you do not uti­lize this type of assess­ment con­sider doing so. Even with the use of these assess­ments, behav­ioral inter­view ques­tions for­mu­lated to eval­u­ate the eudai­monic and hedo­nic ten­den­cies of can­di­dates is essen­tial to a suc­cess­ful selection, the per­for­mance and har­mo­nious cul­ture of your orga­ni­za­tion, and retention.

Give me an exam­ple of a time you achieved a much desired goal. What was the day after like?

Tell me a time you expe­ri­enced a major pro­fes­sional dis­ap­point­ment. What method did you use to move on?

For the record, I’m eudai­monic.… I love life and I’m happy 99.9% of the time.

Ref­er­ence: Beyond Self-Report in the Study of Hedo­nic and Eudai­monic Well-Being: Cor­re­la­tions with Acquain­tance Reports, Clin­i­cian Judg­ments and Directly Observed Social Behav­ior — Christo­pher S. Nave, Ryne A. Sher­man, and David C. Funder