If you’ve ever hit “snooze” one too many times, dreaded your Monday morning inbox, or watched a talented teammate quietly check out before they officially quit — you’ve felt the cost of a workplace running on empty. Burnout, disengagement, and unsustainable culture aren’t fringe issues anymore. They’re the norm. And on a recent episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness podcast, I sat down with Bose Akheduri — motivational speaker, corporate trainer, author, and CEO of Goal and Grind LLC — to talk about the one ingredient most organizations overlook when they try to fix it: joy.

Bose isn’t talking about joy as a nice-to-have, a “treat yourself” afterthought reserved for the weekend. She’s talking about joy for career growth as a strategic tool — one that shapes how leaders lead, how teams perform, and how professionals actually build careers that last. Here’s what I learned from our conversation, and why joy deserves a permanent seat at the leadership table.

The Real Reason Workplaces Are Struggling

According to Bose, most workplace disengagement traces back to one root cause: people don’t understand their purpose. She defines purpose as the overlap between your income-generating skills and what genuinely brings you joy. When that overlap is missing — when people are just going through the motions — the effects ripple outward fast.

The data backs this up. Gallup research has found that nearly half of employees who aren’t finding joy in their work are already looking for a new job. And by the time someone hands in their resignation, it’s usually too late — they checked out long before. Replacing that employee can cost anywhere from 50% to 200% of their salary. In other words, a joy deficit isn’t just a culture problem. It’s a financial one.

As Bose put it during our conversation:

Everybody’s joy is different, and I think that’s the most important thing to remember — not only is your joy important, but it is important to embrace exactly what it is.

That single idea reframes how we should think about leadership: it’s not about forcing a one-size-fits-all culture of positivity. It’s about creating space for people to understand and act on what genuinely energizes them — and then building teams and systems around that clarity.

Two Simple Tools to Start With

Before you can lead with joy, you have to understand your own. Bose shared two tools she teaches in her book, Stay Joyful: Using Joy as a Tool to Rise, Lead, and Redefine Success:

1. The Joy Bubble — Draw a circle on a piece of paper and fill it with everything that brings you joy. It becomes a visual, constant reminder of what actually matters to you.
2. The Accomplishments Journal — A running record of your skills and wins, so that during hard seasons, you have proof of what you’re capable of.

Together, these tools connect the dots between what you love and what you’re actually good at — which, as Bose explains, is the definition of purpose. That intersection is where sustainable joy for career growth actually lives.

The Stay Joyful Method: A Framework for Joyful Leadership

Bose’s Stay Joyful method breaks down into four parts, and it’s designed to build on itself:

1. Center on your own joy — Set personal, professional, health, and financial goals rooted in what genuinely brings you fulfillment.
2. Build community — Once you’re clear on your joy, you naturally attract people and opportunities aligned with it. Bose reframes networking as simply showing up with authentic energy and passion.
3. Lead by example — This is where joy becomes a leadership practice. You create space for your team to talk openly about strengths and weaknesses, building the kind of clarity and alignment that drives real performance.
4. Use joy in difficult seasons — The hardest part. Joy doesn’t mean everything is easy; it means you have a sustainable foundation to draw on when things get hard.

As Bose told me:

When you set goals from a place of joy, you’re setting them up for success rather than failure, because inevitably there are going to be difficult times. I’m not saying with joy that everything is easy — I’m saying it’s sustainable, and it creates a sustainable model for you and those around you.

That distinction matters. This isn’t toxic positivity. It’s a framework for resilience — one that acknowledges hard work while giving you something durable to stand on.

The Triple Win: A New Way to Think About Teamwork

One of the most practical concepts Bose shared is what she calls the “triple win” — a win for you, a win for your team, and a win for your organization. Instead of viewing coworkers as competition, the triple win asks you to understand your own strengths, appreciate the different strengths of others, and see how those pieces fit together toward a shared outcome.

It’s a mindset shift that changes how leadership shows up day to day — less about individual heroics, more about recognizing that your work and your teammates’ work are interdependent.

The Three C’s of Joyful Living

If you take away one practical, tomorrow-morning action from this conversation, let it be Bose’s three C’s of joyful living — her go-to framework for showing up as a more joyful leader, at work and at home:

• Cheer for others. Celebrate the wins of the people on your team. When people see this modeled, it becomes an expected — and contagious — practice.
• Celebrate your own successes. Joy isn’t only about recognizing others; it’s about acknowledging your own accomplishments, too.
• Continue building community. You don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to be a hero. Lean on the people around you.

In Bose’s words:

The biggest thing that I would say for everyone out there is to embrace what I call the three C’s of joyful living: cheer for others, celebrate your own success, and continue building community. Keep it simple. Just do those three things.

Joy Doesn’t Stop at 5 PM

One of my favorite parts of the conversation was talking about how leadership — and joy — don’t clock out when the workday ends. The same clarity and communication skills you build at work extend into your personal life, and vice versa. As Bose pointed out, this isn’t about “bringing your whole self to work” in a way that erases boundaries — it’s about alignment. You can set boundaries around what you share and still show up in a way that feels congruent across every part of your life.

The Takeaway

Joy at work isn’t fluff, and it isn’t a reward you earn after you’ve already succeeded. It’s a strategic tool for career growth and a foundation for sustainable leadership — one that reduces turnover, builds stronger teams, and helps professionals build careers that actually feel good to show up for.

If this resonates, start small: draw your own Joy Bubble, start an Accomplishments Journal, and pick one of the three C’s to practice this week. As Bose says — stay joyful.

Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, where Bose Akheduri and I dig even deeper into joyful leadership, purpose, and building a career and culture that lasts.

This post was originally a 9 to 5 wellness podcast and was posted on aeshatahir.com.