Articles
What Makes Employees Mad - Part I | What Makes Employees Mad - Part III
Workplace Wrath: Using Anger to Build | All Praise to the Supervisor | Listen First
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions | The Emperor’s New Clothes - Providing Negative Feedback
Practicing Safe Stress

What Makes Employees Mad – Part II

Picture your employees holding two buckets of water, one in each hand. Label the first bucket “frustration” and the other “productivity.” Since both buckets are full, what happens if a supervisor attempts to pour the water from the productivity bucket into the frustration bucket? The water spills and hip boots are required!

Employees can be groped into one of four categories, depending upon their skill and motivation levels. When an employee is hired, are they motivated? If the Human resources Department did a good job of hiring, this new employee is eager to make a good impression. Is this employee efficient? No, they haven’t yet learned the ropes. This is Category ONE motivated but not efficient. After training, they progress to Category TWO, motivated and efficient, where they are the most valuable resource for the company.

After a while, some efficient employees descend into Category THREE. They lose their motivation but perform just enough to get by, not motivated but efficient. If they then plummet into Category FOUR, not motivated and not efficient, they are working themselves toward the day of liberation, being fired! In every company, there are employees who chose this category and must learn that lesson. These are not the people discussed today.

The key question is; why does an employee who is in the motivated and efficient category (Category (TWO) sometimes descend into the next category of doing just enough to get by? What causes that transition? I have witnessed companies where most of the employees fit into this “just getting by” category with only a few having the joy of job.

Can people be motivated? Any supervisor worth her salt would loudly exclaim with an emphatic “yes”! Most managers think that is why they pay supervisors – to keep the employees motivated. This belief sets up a power struggle; the supervisor forcing motivation on her employees, trying to cajole them to stay or return to Category TWO (motivated and efficient). The truth is no one can motivate anyone, not employees, not children, or even a spouse! All anyone can do is create the environment for motivation. Supervisors can do a great job of setting a motivating environment but it is for the employee to accept or reject.

Knowing that others have their own reasons to be motivated or not, life becomes less stressful for everyone, especially the supervisor. It allows him to put responsibility back on the shoulders of the employee for their own motivation (where it belongs) and limits the supervisor’s over-involvement. Simple, but how is this accomplished? By asking the employee, what is it about my supervisor style that keeps you from enjoying your work? By asking, you learn how you may be interfering with their best productivity.

If the objective is to empty the employee frustration bucket, then it is critical to listen to those concerns, for many times the frustration may be you! Discovering the contents of that fabled bucket is one thing; changing what you can about your style is the hard part. Some things you can change and some things are beyond your control but just the act of having a supervisor listen, pours out some of the water from the frustration bucket.

This concept exemplifies a powerful management principal. Whenever there is a problem, look at your own behavior first. Ask yourself, how am I affecting this employee? It is easy and natural to blame another but it takes broad shoulders to look inward. This principal is difficult and sometimes painful but it is a mirror for self-delusion, a detoxification for low morale, and a powerful method of emptying your employee’s bucket of frustration!