Employees’ imaginations inspires their actions. When employees feel positive they will act positively. Leaders can create this positive situation by behaving with a clear set of desirable values such as honesty, care, trust, respect and empathy.
Think-Feel-Act
Employee’s behavior follows their imagination. We may not always notice that imagination precedes our actions, but it does. Sports coaches know this. They ask players to practice the game in their mind. “Imagine the follow through on your (golf) swing.”
We Choose Our Attitude
Every moment, everyday each employee chooses his or her attitude, whether to be productive or not, to be creative or not, to be cooperative or not, to be timely or tardy, to stay or to leave. And every employee chooses what fits into the company’s culture, the workplace expectations, or norms.
With the right company culture people imagine bringing more to the task, being more engaged, more responsible. In a poor culture, employees imagine being less engaged.
If People Can’t Satisfy Their Desires at Work, They May Disengage, or Even Worse!
Most employees want to have a good day, feel productive, be recognized for their achievements, and go home looking forward to returning to work the next day. If the work culture does not allow this, employees will be frustrated.
Frustrated employees withdraw their energy, creativity, and responsibility. Some will resign. Others will become actively resentful, or passive-aggressive, withholding information essential to the organization’s success. In a hostile work environment, a person may even retaliate by sabotaging operations, or in extreme cases becoming homicidal.
Engagement Is Very Profitable
You can assess the cost of low employee morale and motivation by watching the increasing productivity in a developing culture. As a culture develops, productivity increases anywhere between 10 and 100 percent. This gain represents the lost productivity of companies with a poor culture. Nationally this loss is huge, in the $trillions annually.
Developing a company culture where people see themselves as excited, caring, engaged, and valued team players, is an easy, low-cost way for leaders to make major jumps in company performance, stepping well ahead of the competition. To do this see 25 Actions to Build Your Culture
cc 131 — © Barry Phegan, Ph.D.