Arthur C. Brooks on How Leaders Can Be Happier

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It isn't always easy to feel like you can have it all: career, family, hobbies and inner peace. Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks studies happiness and says it is a direction, not a destination. Brooks believes happiness is especially important for leaders, as the higher you climb the more stressful the job can get - and the wider impact you can have on others. Live in conversation at Harvard Business School's Klarman Hall, he speaks with IdeaCast host and HBR editor at large Adi Ignatius about the importance of empathy and having a greater purpose in your life, not just in your career. Brooks is author of the book The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Deal's not just another payroll platform.
0:04.6	It's one your team might actually enjoy.
0:06.8	H.R, IT, and payroll, together, finally.
0:10.6	Built in-house, built for peace of mind.
0:13.1	Visit D-E-E-E-L.com slash HBR.
0:16.3	Thank you. I'm Audie Ignatius.
0:33.3	I'm Alison Beard, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:36.5	Thank you. I'm Alison Beard and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:55.2	So for all the things we write about, leadership, talent, technology, strategy, the one topic that seems to resonate with our audience above all others is something that may be a bit surprising, and that is happiness,
1:00.1	how to find it, how to maintain it, how to make it part of your work life. And the fact is the data shows that leaders are struggling to find happiness at work and that this affects what they do.
1:05.8	Yeah, I think this is a real problem right now, particularly for people in stressful jobs,
1:10.6	and especially because anxiety and uncertainty are so high.
1:15.2	You know, I interviewed Leslie Perlow of Harvard a few episodes back about her research on how the busiest people find joy.
1:22.2	And it's a tough subject to study because happiness is subjective.
1:26.5	But I think it's key for us to cover it right now
1:30.3	because unhappy people tend to not be good employees or leaders. And we really all want a need
1:38.6	to find well-being, you know, in both our personal and professional lives. So the guy to make sense of all of this is my guest today, Arthur C. Brooks.
1:48.0	He's also Harvard professor.
1:50.0	He used to focus on straightforward economic issues in recent years has devoted himself to this basic but elusive goal of how to be happy.
1:58.9	He integrates social science, neuroscience, and philosophy, and his
2:02.1	latest book is The Happiness Files, Insights on Work and Life. He joined me at Harvard Business
2:06.6	School's Claremont Hall for live recording of this episode. Here's my conversation with Arthur
	...

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