Dilemma of work

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Arnold Schwarzenegger, former “terminator” and Governor of California recently made a startling revelation. He said a quarter of the workforce in America is unfairly involved in work as a chore. He explained that employees on a daily basis are engaged in tasks, functions and assignments just to earn a livelihood instead of “shooting for gold by way of goals and purpose.”

The said results of “work as chore” in workplaces have been identified as zero enthusiasm and near-absence of confidence by disillusioned employees. Other unsalutary effects include: variable commitment, capable but unproductive and cautious workforce.

Barack Obama, former American President, in a recent lecture on ‘Survival and purpose at work,’ pointed out that a way to tackle the current harsh economic climate is to make “work satisfying to employees.” He pointed out that “if we are to produce in a sustainable manner, products that consumers appreciate there is an urgent demand on employers for a share of the pie to employees.

It is incumbent on today’s vision-driven and smart leaders to do something urgently to remove this bump (work as chore) on the road to the much-needed productivity and profitability.

Harvard Business School in a recent research on today’s urgent need for high performance by teams in workplaces has prescribed what it called “Psychological Safety”.

Professor Amy Edmondson said “High performance teams need psychological safety”. According to Professor Edmondson, “employees must feel psychologically safe by being empowered to iterate and take risks that will, in a definitive manner, lead to better team performance.”

Prescriptions are; firstly, leaders must encourage teams to bond through day-to-day tasks. There must be knowledge sharing, team work and shared decision-making. Secondly, we must “normalise” opportunities to learn from mistakes. We must encourage and promote learning behaviours by organising team meetings to understand why some things went wrong and glean lessons for next time.

Thirdly, we must ensure that employees or associates feel “seen”. Psychological safety, according to Professor Edmondson, is one good prediction of more positive work experiences. It is greater when employees “feel authentically seen”. This step reduces stress and strain as well as fosters inclusivity.

The fourth point is a challenge to good leaders to seek inputs from their subordinates with humility and openness. They must also not get angry if responses to their enquiries are not what they want to hear.

A useful and very effective tool to achieve and always guarantee “team collaboration” is the Game Theory.

Life is an omnipresent game of adaptation because it is driven by evolution. Humans thrive in cooperation because that is the logical way to achieve growth and development. The Game Theory stipulates that people must work together to survive and thrive.

Leaders must always let employees know that “the bigger the cake, the larger the individual employee’s slice.” Whatever strategies we adopt, we (leaders and employees) must pull the trigger together. We must collaborate for success.

Let us look at another model that will help us solve this “work as chore” syndrome. David Goleman, the father of emotional intelligence said we should use “emotional intelligence with resonant leadership” as our strategic choice.

He advises that leaders should be in sync with their teams by “resonating” with their feelings and influencing a positive emotional direction as well as healthy environment in the workplace. He says we should “create a positive emotional impact by using emotional intelligence to imprint positive and energetic emotions. An emotional sync, he added, would generate comfort, cooperation, idea-sharing and strong bonding.

The resonant leadership model can ride effectively with Theresa Amabile’s Inner Work Life model that I discussed last week. Theresa Amabile told us that the “central driver of creative and productive performance is the quality of person’s inner work life: the mix of emotions, motivations and perceptions over the course of a work day. How happy workers feel, how motivated they are by an intrinsic interest in the work; how positively they view their organization, their management, their team, their work and themselves; all these combine either to push them to higher levels of achievement or to drag them down”.

Leaders must create “work” that is fulfilling. President Obama pointed out that “employers and employees must create the business stories that matter, together, just like the military. We must appreciate each other and go through those great responsibilities together.”

The key building blocks are very clear: impacting performance culture, governance architecture, communicating and sharing valuable work skills and experience, focus improvement and achievement of goals. The greatest of all is customer satisfaction.

Projected sales of our value-adding products and services will fix everything and we will surely achieve the numbers.

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