The Happiness Audit

A simple way to assess leadership effectiveness and organizational health

Earlier this week, I wrote about what an 80-year Harvard study reveals about happiness and leadership. The core insight is simple: the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of long-term well-being. What’s less obvious, is how this shows up inside organizations.

Relationships create connection and energy. Purpose provides direction and meaning. And together, they influence whether leadership is sustainable over time.

The Three Areas

A simple way to assess this is across three areas.

• Purpose. Do we have clarity on what we’re working toward, and does it feel meaningful? It’s possible to be productive without being aligned toward a larger purpose, but over time, energy and commitment to the work can degrade.

• Relationships. Do the people around us create trust, support, and connection? Strong relationships accelerate decisions, reduce friction, and build resilience. Weak or transactional relationships tend to do the opposite.

• Energy. Do we have the capacity to sustain the role we’re in? It’s possible to operate at a high level for a period of time on intensity alone, but it’s much harder to sustain that without recovery, reflection, and balance.

When all three are working together, leadership feels different. Decisions are clearer. Energy is more consistent. Progress feels meaningful. And the work becomes more sustainable.

The Audit

A simple starting point is to rate each of these areas on a scale from one to five. Not to get a perfect score, but to identify where things might be out of balance and as a conversation starter on where things can be improved.

You can do that by asking, “What is one thing that would move this from an n to an n+1?”. Small changes tend to compound faster than big resets because they are easier to adopt and more sustainable.

Applications for Teams

You can use this as a personal leadership diagnostic. But its also interesting when you use it with a team.

Have each person complete the assessment individually, then compare results by asking:

• Where are you aligned? and misaligned?

• Are there new ideas of things that could move your ratings forward?

Using this audit this way, it becomes more than reflection. It becomes a signal of organizational health.

Misalignment on purpose shows up as confusion or competing priorities. Gaps in relationships show up as friction and slower decisions. Low energy shows up as burnout or inconsistent execution. The scores matter less than the conversation they create or the changes you make to improve.

Closing Thought

Relationships matter more than we tend to think. But on their own, they’re not enough. Purpose provides direction. Relationships create connection and energy. Energy makes sustained leadership possible.

When those three are aligned, not just for a leader, but across the team, the organization operates differently. Decisions improve. Friction decreases. Energy becomes more consistent.

And the work, and the people doing it, become much easier to sustain over time.