In an increasingly competitive environment, where the results and the contribution of each person to them within their organization must be increasing, people are often overwhelmed by what is expected of them. They try to contribute the best they have, but the own pressure of the environment paralyzes them, reduces concentration and their performance is usually far from their potential. They feel disconnected from their environment.
When changing jobs, for example , who has not felt the need to do an excellent job, to embroider what has been asked of them and, in carrying it out, has been harmed by their own desire to do it well? There is so much effort to please, to feel useful in the organization, recognized, to demonstrate value, that sometimes you end up doing things in a mediocre way and significantly worse than it would have been if there had been no internal tension.
On one occasion I met a person, Ana, who was so eager to please her director that he ended up avoiding her, since instead of solving problems or providing solutions, he took great energy from the manager, who had to explain over and over again the correct way to focus their work and this required permanent guardianship, becoming an obstacle in their already busy schedule.
In this line of concern, Edward M. Hallowell, in his book "Highlight" (Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People) leans on Psychology and Neuroscience to identify some facilitating practices that avoid blocking people and improve your performance. This is what he calls the "Cycle of Excellence". This program consists of five steps related to:
1. Help people find the most suitable job.
2. Help employees connect with those around them.
3. Encourage creativity and play in the workplace.
4. Help people identify what is the most crucial job and focus diligently on it.
5. Recognize the hard work that staff do. The cycle of excellence consists of a series of concatenated steps, so that each one lays the foundations for the next and therefore must be approached in an orderly manner, without shortcuts and respecting the established order.
According to Hallowell, each step pivots on the previous ones so that it manages to lift the spirits and create synergies in the process, facilitating creativity and increasing productivity.
1. Help people find the most suitable job.
Assigning each employee the work activity to be carried out is a critical task, the result of which depends on performance and feelings of satisfaction. Doing a job that you don't like or for which you don't have the skills is equivalent to marrying the wrong person: it involves many sacrifices and few moments of success and well-being.
The work of the person in charge therefore focuses on identifying those activities that the employee is passionate about. Frequent complaints, lack of enthusiasm, lack of commitment are symptoms that warn that something is wrong and that their work may not be fun.
2. Help employees connect with those around them.
Sometimes personal antipathy or what is known today as “lack of chemistry” contributes to people, especially in large organizations, feeling “isolated” within the organization. This fact also contributes to subtract energy and damages its performance.
The challenge for the head of the unit is to find a way to “connect” that person with the other colleagues, removing the obstacles that prevent the referred connection. Connection is a precondition for people, and with them the organization, to prosper.
How can connection be fostered within the organization?
Some of the recommendations in this book involve showing genuine interest in the person in question and sharing experiences within the organization. The abuse of just email goes in the opposite direction, in the impersonalization and in the distance. It is just a matter of triggering social interactions to make it easier for people to feel comfortable and relaxed and thus contribute to their socialization. The physical environment also plays a significant role in the effort. Improving lighting, making the workspace more welcoming, encouraging people to take breaks and to chat help in the described socialization process.
As difficult as it may seem, I think it is possible to recover some people who are disconnected from organizations, on more occasions than we think. A friend told me that in his small organization, a service company with half a dozen employees, two of the secretaries spent years ignoring each other, not collaborating and trying to avoid all joint action. Obviously this was an awkward situation for both of them. With the passage of time, suddenly, they decided, since each of them was precisely with their partner with more time spent together throughout the day, change their attitude and try to get along. The climate in the company improved very substantially, as well as the own productivity and feeling of well-being of all employees.
Identify the factors and causes that influence change in the sense of How and why has the situation changed? What has contributed to it? What is the attitude that resolves the conflict? It would be the learning that this evolution would have to highlight as a way to improve relationships within the company. In this sense, I have just read an interesting article entitled "Lessons learned, time will tell…" by Javier Martínez Aldanondo on knowledge management and learning, where he emphasizes the importance of systematically spending time to see what is learned in each of life's interactions or experiences.
In short, those responsible for managing people or units can change the relationship habits in the workplace and create the favorable conditions for people to develop their full potential, through the assignment of tasks or tasks in accordance with the employee profiles and facilitating the creation of conditions that promote their positive interaction with other close colleagues.
It would be great if you reflected on whether:
Have you ever felt offline in your work environment?
For what reasons? Could you save the situation and improve it? How?
What advice would you give to someone who is like this or to the head of units where people feel disconnected?
These are just some of the reflections that sharing them would help improve the employment situation of many (perhaps only some, but it is worth it). If you share them with us much better.
In a next post I will develop the remaining three steps.
