Company leaders repeatedly say something like: “Our employees
are our strength” and then set out to starve those employees
completely by ignoring them, berating them or treating them like
less than full human beings. No leader intends to belittle an
employee, but when the leader becomes frustrated by a lack of
results from an underling, and especially a continuing failure of
expectations, striking out at that employee often seems to be the
only option.
I am here to say striking out at employees doesn’t work and sets back
your company’s productivity in direct proportion to the amount of berating
inflicted1. Such behavior stems from not taking time to understand the
employee’s position. We call this and other such behaviors: ‘starving the
employee’1. Here are some self-evident axioms:
a. No employee sets out to be a ‘bad’ employee.
b. All people (all employees) want to feel they are in charge
of items over which they have been assumed to have control or
responsibility.
c. Every2 employee has feelings, pride and wants to gain a
sense of achievement.
d. Every employee wants to feel appreciated on the job by
being listened to by people important to them, especially their
bosses.
e. Most employees want to achieve success in what they are
doing.
f. Upon achieving success, most employees want to move to
the next level of task complexity or challenge.
Canadian employers are mostly unable to fulfill these needs and as a
the result, a report indicates that 61% of the Canadian workforce says they
“don’t trust what their leaders say”.
What’s going on?
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1. See Feeding or Starving the Organization, W. Caswell, General Store Publishing House,
Renfrew ON, 2006.
2. “Every” can be replaced with “Almost every” since there will be exceptions. However
managers ought to ensure that rules that they make do affect most employees and not be
lured into making policies for the dysfunctional few, thereby penalizing the good workers.
3. Canadian Management Centre, in partnership with Ipso-Reid, 30 Oct. 2012
What’s going on is that employees are not fixed rods or staple supplies.
They are delicate individuals with fears, issues and sensitivities – just as
you harbor your own doubts or concerns from time to time.
You can dream and fantasize that all employees should be ‘normal’ but
they’re not. Each one will have a weak point that keeps interfering with
the productivity you would like.
And it doesn’t take much to trigger a severe reaction based on the
employees’ emotional gremlins (sitting in that individual’s stomach). If
you have doubts, review your own experience over the past month; how
often has someone’s trigger in your company been ignited? Perhaps
more than you would like.
The smart manager instead of ‘blaming’ employees for being too much of
a wuss, will figure out how to work around the ‘weakness’ to the leader’s
own and the employee’s mutual benefit. Your gain would be a greater
output from the employee and the employee’s benefit would be a better
sense of accomplishment.
And how do you do that? You feed the employees instead of starving
them. Feeding or nurturing means: listening when they want to be
heard, not when you want to hear. It means validating their concerns as
legitimate (rather than imposing your values on the ‘whiners’). It
translates into giving the annual review on time; not postponing meetings
with an employee; not shouting at them when you are angry; not seeking
revenge (silence or pouting) when you’re upset with them. It entails
finding time to be alone with the employee – sharing at least an hour a
month with each directly reporting individual.
On the other hand, you must remain firm and fair. One step to achieve
steadiness is to bring closure to every event. “Would you bolt these two
parts together?” should be: “Would you bolt these two pieces together by
4 pm today and report to me when it’s done.”
In a few words, people are far more delicate than we would like. If we
nurture (feed with appropriate attention) the employee rather than starve,
we will be better able to deal with the largest problem of any company
anywhere: people who think differently than us – which, of course is
everyone else.
Bill