Local leaders invited to happiness symposium at Kennedy School

Massachusetts municipal leaders can discover how to become “happiness teachers” during a free symposium being held June 19 through 21 by the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.

The symposium, which will be held both in person and virtually, is being organized by professors Arthur Brooks, founder and director of the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory, and Reece Brown, the laboratory’s assistant director.

Space is limited, so those who are interested will need to pre-register to join the waitlist. The forms are for pre-registration only, and in-person attendance is not guaranteed. In early spring, selected attendees will be notified when their registration is approved, along with a full itinerary and logistics.

In a video about his laboratory, Brooks, a quantitative social scientist, says happiness has 3 elemental parts: enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose.

“If you can answer affirmatively to the enjoyment, satisfaction and purpose questions in your life then you’ll be a happier person. If you want to be a happier person, that’s where to look. If you find you’re not happy enough, it’s because you’re lacking in one of those things. That’s what it comes down to.”

The mission of the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory is to help leaders learn to be happiness teachers.

“How can we teach leaders in all walks of life … that they are happiness teachers, and how they can be better happiness teachers, starting with their own happiness, and then how they can spread those principles to other people,” Brooks said.

The happiness symposium aims to instill leaders with the best happiness science so that they may learn to teach it.