How do you engage your people to be more involved in their work? The old cliché about the carrot and the stick comes to mind. Some managers feel that they need to be tough, demanding, or unrelenting in their approach.
Well, barking at your employees or dictating to them or condescending to them is usually more detrimental than effective. And if you randomly schmooze with them, people may feel good, but this doesn’t portend more engagement.
A recent article in The Washington Post discussed the concept of emotional labor. This is described as “the work someone does to regulate, modulate or manipulate their feelings to affect the emotions of people around them.”
The author, Rose Hackman, suggests that most emotional labor is provided by women. She contends that those who embrace emotional labor in the workplace are not being compensated for these behaviors.
This topic has come up with clients several times in the past few weeks. For example, one executive who is preparing for retirement wants to hire someone to manage operational issues in the company. He hadn’t thought of this as succession, but that’s exactly what it is.
When you hire for succession, you’re not just thinking about hiring a competent person to fill a position. You’re considering a longer-term leader for key positions in your company or department.
I received some great comments on last week’s column on “Think Time.” Although it’s a relatively simple concept, it isn’t that easy to implement consistently. Over time, tight schedules take over and people forget about it, schedule over it, or procrastinate doing it.
The comments triggered a good segue to a directly related theme. One of the factors that differentiates top performers from everyone else: they stay focused on the result. They think about how their work can have the greatest impact on the result. This is an example of think time in action.
My executive clients bemoan the fact that they “can’t get anything done” during the business day, and in fact, “the real work begins after 5:30.” Their schedules are filled with meetings, calls, email and putting out fires.
One study revealed that CEOs average only 6 hours a week working alone. Think about this: the day-to-day “stuff” dwarfs the strategic elements of the job.