March 7, 2020 by Kathy Scott, PhD, and Bridget Sarikas
Do you ever feel trapped in a groundhog-day scenario at work, doing the same things over and over again and getting suboptimal results? Do you find yourself checking out mentally or playing the blame game? Are you being paid in migraines and do your employees have one foot out the door?
Leadership is not for the faint of heart! We encounter a lot of stupid in the workplace that comes from outdated leadership practices, toxic cultures, structures that obstruct, near-sighted strategies and a general lack of responsiveness. The whole world has changed, but we just keep on doing the same old things.
In other words, stupid has gone viral in our workplaces – rapidly disseminating through our organizations at rates that seem impossible to stop. In a 2019 survey conducted by Achievers, only 20.8% of the workplace considered themselves fully engaged while 16.3% considered themselves fully disengaged (and we see results much worse than this). Research demonstrates that work engagement is a very good predictor of employee, team and organizational outcomes – outcomes such as task and team performance, financial results, creativity, innovation and collaboration. This growing trend of disengagement, therefore, should get our full attention.
Both leaders and employees are confronted with daily challenges that they are poorly equipped to handle, not having the necessary personal skills and job resources to deal with them. It is not uncommon for us to hear blanket statements about how “culture” is to blame, yet culture remains undefined and therefore impossible to change. We also hear how it is the leader’s fault at any one level in the organization – be it the top, first line or middle – depending on who we are talking to.
We can do better than this! It’s important to draw on our prior experiences, and it’s equally as important to draw on science and learn new ways that challenge the status quo and better prepare the way for our teams with a focus on healthy living, leading and learning: #LeadersPrepareTheWay.
Titter Time: You can make a difference
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
–Dalai Lama
And now it’s your turn.
If you were King or Queen for the Day and had one wish for yourself or your organization – a wish that would energize your team to achieve something big -- what would it be? We want to hear from you!