Wall in the workplace

Doing business in today’s volatile, competitive and almost permanently shifting environment requires a strategically thought-through framework with support beams (committed employees), processes and calculated steps. Also, a leadership with unyielding courage and mindset that renders tacit and implicit ideas explicit.

I may sound poetic in my choice of those two (2) functional words or metaphors: “WALL” and “WORKPLACE”. The workplace is an umbrella word for the human factor. That is, employees and associates with their psychological, cognitive and performance makeups.

The “WALL” is the intense and debilitating competition that goes on in an organisation. Leaders undermining themselves and subordinates, setting traps, setting colleagues up, grand standing and playing to the gallery, micromanaging bosses and in an environment like ours in Nigeria, performing cruel diabolical actions and spiritualism.

A pattern recognition of these acts and how the patterns are formed will reveal that they are directed more to capable colleagues and high-performing subordinates. Those involved want to maintain the status quo and keep their positions. They want to ambush the career progression of others through backstabbing, blackmail, gaslighting and gossiping.

A diligent analysis of this scenario throws up the fact that the effect and spread of these negative ripples severely hurt the health of the organization and seriously disrupt the harmony of the value chain. It weakens individual employee’s performance and hampers collaboration as well as teamwork. Definitely, productive interaction within the system is progressively hampered and in addition growth and succession planning are mitigated.

This “wall” definitely blocks progress, productivity and growth. In a healthy organisation there must be peer-to-peer collaborative engagement. Performance evaluation must be transparent and carefully monitored. The leader must intentionally foster the culture of trust and engender commitment as well as a sense of belonging. Employees must be truly dedicated to the organisation. There must be unlimited flow of effective and strategic communication. No working in silos. Effective control systems are put in place and the gaps regularly detected, identified and securely closed. The leader who is committed and enthusiastic about progress, must pivot with mental agility. He must intentionally drill down for details, observable sabotage in the system, identify the victims of this sabotage and those who are guilty of the sabotage.

Let us look at some actionable ideas and learnings from the four disciplines of healthy organisation. It builds and maintains behaviourally cohesive employee teams. Every employee is behaviourally and intellectually aligned. There is clarity on organizational values, key goals and strategy. Employees believe these goals, imbibe them and work with them. For the people factor to be an indispensable asset, there must be buy-in into a well-articulated pact. We must institutionalize culture. How employees behave. Their responsibilities, and how and why the organisation must succeed.

A performing HR department must regularly assess employees’ communication ambiguities, their reactions to stress, management of conflicts and improvement of relationships.

The organisation must not just emphasize hard work, employees must demonstrate additional capabilities and be ready for reframed expectations. The morale must always be seen to be soaring. We must elevate employee confidence and practice immersive listening.

The WALL is an impediment, a barrier and always divisive. It is a signal of desperation. Those who indulge in it pivot towards vindictiveness, high-handedness, arrogance, domineering tendencies and overbearing actions.

We talk about ergonomics to achieve user-friendly designs that facilitate maximum quality delivery by the worker. Why will leaders not make the workplace employee-friendly?

Today’s leader must have an unyielding courage to totally demolish the wall and sharpen colleagues with extra fine grit.

Trust is the obvious baseline for effectiveness in the workplace. Commitment births peer to peer accountability. An employee that is committed is likely to be accountable and tolerant of healthy conflicts. Commitment will also, obviously, achieve bottom-line outcomes and organizational goals.

Trust is a personality challenge. It is reciprocal and therefore, a loop. It generates a length of fine thread that is always doubling over. Lack of trust or the deficiency of it, is a cog in the wheel of progress. You throw spanners in the works and inevitably contribute to the building of the “wall”. We need connection for collaboration and then, teamwork. For success and critical distinction, there must be coherence. For great teamwork, leaders and associates must stay connected.

An excellent leader requires a regularly tested mental agility. He must know that the organisation is evolving. Systems and identified patterns are always dynamic. Pivoting mentally is a prerequisite for progressing strategically. The leader must stay alert so that the big picture is seen to be progressing as envisioned and planned.

The courageous leader must see that employees achieve their dreams and ambitions. The leader’s responsibility is to see those around him rise in their careers and positions, and not shortchanged.

Achieving profitability, bottom-line or financial goals is not the only “proof positive” of value. Employees must feel safe, valued and cared for. Colleagues are not commodities that are replaceable. The leader must make them better human beings career-wise.

Do you know that there are differences between collaboration and teamwork in our desire to achieve outcomes and impact livelihood? Colleagues that trust their leaders are always ready to collaboratively churn out ideas and useful solutions to problems. Committed individual employees thrive and flourish in teams and turn solution-oriented ideas into plans and actions.

Loyal, satisfied and committed leaders and associates give fillip to the realization of organizational goals.

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