When we join a company, we really are entering into a relationship. Most of us learn to love or at least tolerate our company even with all its bumps and warts. Like personal relationships, we may even trade a little of what we want so we can get along and flourish together. But this particular relationship has increasingly become lopsided, unhealthy, and more … transactional. At least that’s what we tell our employees as we’re breaking up with them, right? It’s not personal, it’s just business.
Assessing The Problem
As a leadership and team performance coach, I’m basically a marriage counselor for this asymmetrical, unhealthy relationship. Leaders increasingly complain to me privately about how workers don’t seem to feel any loyalty to companies anymore, don’t seem as vested as they used to be, don’t seem to take any pride in their work anymore, or just punch in and punch out. These leaders seem to be missing their own role in the deterioration. They’ve been toying with their employees’ job security –– which resides at the second level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs just above food, water, sleep and oxygen –– for over a decade. Their stance has sent the message loudly and clearly that these companies and leaders don’t care about their employees in the slightest anymore. To be baffled about employees who respond to this by withholding their best ideas and performance represents an impressive level of cognitive dissonance.
Most of us would agree that if we were in a broken personal relationship, we’d try to fix things. When it was clear our partners weren’t listening, we might tune out for a while, going through the motions without any passion — quiet quitting, if you will. At some point we would finally leave the relationship in search of someone who would treat us better and care about us more. Why would we expect it to be different in a relationship with our company?
Building Better Relationships
Can you operate a company with transactional relationships to employees? Of course! Just like you can also be in a loveless, transactional personal relationship. If you don’t aspire for a mutually deeper relationship with employees, then you shouldn’t complain when top performers won’t stay or when you can only attract and hold on to the clock punchers. But if you want to build better relationships with your employees, which you should, there are five strategies you can follow. They are simple but not easy: some require significant shifts in leadership mindsets that influence the culture at the company. But, as Confucius said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step:
- Increase stability
. Our world is fast-paced and tumultuous. People are struggling to stay above water. Our companies face these same challenges, but leaders of high performing organizations smooth the waters for employees as much as possible. Can you make it stress-free? Doubtful. But you want the stress employees are feeling to be the energizing “We can do this! We can beat our competition!” kind. Not the “Will I still have a job tomorrow?” kind.
- Increase safety. Commit to hiring only people you intend to keep. Hire slowly and thoughtfully so you aren’t feeling pressured to trim the organization regularly. When people aren’t afraid for their jobs, they will perform better, and their brains start allowing the creative juices to flow to innovate for your company.
- Send loyalty down. Tell employees that you are going to buck the layoff trend. That you view layoffs as a failure of leadership and will do everything you can to avoid them. That anyone with a performance issue will get coaching because the goal is to cultivate people. And in the rare occurrence when individual separation is necessary, the company will strive to have that be a mutual agreement and will help the employee find new work. When you behave this way, you aren’t just building loyalty with that employee, you’re building it with every employee watching you treat that employee respectfully.
- Take engagement seriously. When employees are telling you things aren’t going well, listen. If you have a toxic leader in your midst and your employees are waving a white flag, coach that leader or walk them to the door. Don’t let them ruin the experience of working for your company or destroy the hard-earned trust you’re building. Only hire (or even better promote) people into leadership positions who see leadership as a responsibility, not a reward. Instill that as a value at your company.
- Have faith. So many leaders believe they have to command their way to high performing teams or get them by target-setting and incentivizing. But the majority of the secret sauce of high performing teams happens by creating environments where employees can flourish and be happy. Leaders need to have faith that well-treated employees will outperform well-incentivized employees every time. And if faith isn’t your thing, don’t worry. Science has backed this up since the 1950’s with study after study.
Caring is a Competitive Advantage
In this environment full of transactional working relationships, a company that truly cared about employees would have a competitive advantage if they could build a reputation around it. Whether you’re a leader or an individual contributor today, be honest: wouldn’t you like to work for a company that you knew hired carefully and saw layoffs as a failure of leadership to be avoided rather than an inevitable, regular cycle of business? Wouldn’t you give that company your all? Pour your most creative efforts into the job? Tell other talented people in your circle about the place? Wouldn’t you want to stay at a company that behaved this way?
Be that company.
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