The Hygge Manifesto meets Working Out Loud Circles: 6 - Harmony: It’s not a competition. We already love you. There is no need to brag about your achievements.

This is the seventh post in a series of posts looking at hygge and working out loud circles using Meik Wiking’s The Hygge Manifesto from his book “The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well” as a framework for discussion.

The Cambridge Dictionary definition of “harmony” is a “situation in which people are peaceful and agree with each other, or when things seem right or suitable together”.

Hygge is best experienced in this way when you are one with yourself and other people and the world around you and simply living in the moment with no pressure or conflict in your mind. This also speaks of people not caring what the other person does for a job, how “important” they are and so on.

This may be experienced the majority of the time in working out loud circles. But I would also say there are times where I have challenged others and others have challenged me as we have sought to tease out or respond to a specific issue for a consensus if one is required. I have never experienced out-and-out conflict in a circle and every call has started and finished in this state.

In terms of diversity of circles, you sometimes have to tease out of others how “important” they are (aka what do you do!) to understand their challenges and work pressures. It is amazing to me that I can jump on a weekly call with people doing amazing work in amazing organisations (or as freelancers, even more amazing!) in senior/influential positions and in some cases globally and support one another on sometimes deep and challenging issues for a 12-week period in the first instance.

What would you add to the hygge part and/or the working out loud circle part of this post?

Resources

For a full list of posts in this series see the index post

My Top Ten Resources for Encouraging People To Actually Work Out Loud (as at 6 November 2017) (this post includes links to Working Out Loud resources)

Author Info

Simon Fogg is an IT professional who has worked in IT for all bar 8 months of his 34 year career to date. He delivers business consultancy, project management and service management services as part of the Claritas Solutions team in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Claritas deliver solutions to clients in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors across the UK. He was first introduced to Working Out Loud Circles in 2016 and has since led 2 x 12-week global/virtual circles (using Slack and Zoom) and is currently recruiting and setting up for launching an “out-of-the-ordinary” (more than 5 people) 3rd circle on a trial Workplace by Facebook community in January 2018 with members already using the platform.