David J Paul Project Management Professional, Management Professor, Author and Small Business Manager
In this section, we’re going to ask you about how you handle someone who doesn’t seem to ‘fit in’. It’s a story about a friend of mine who went to work as a senior consultant for a large aerospace company. His supervisor was a young woman who had evidently learned that to succeed she needed to be ‘strong’. My buddy’s first assignment was to write specs for job processes. As part of that assignment he was asked to consult with program managers across the company and advise them on best practices and his own experiences. He LOVED that, and he told his supervisor that he felt energized and would happily work through lunch doing that consulting if only one of his other friends could do the ‘dreary’ work of documenting processes. “Look,” said the supervisor, “I don’t have time to deal with that touchy-feely stuff you are proposing”, (he had read my book) “just sit down here and write processes and don’t bother going out to visit the program managers.” My buddy said he could feel his energy leave his body and he literally stopped in his tracks, turned around (he’d been standing up in his supervisor’s office because he wasn’t invited to come in and sit down) and left. He reported later that he quit this good paying gig soon after that incident largely because he felt so disrespected, disregarded, and emotionally punished. So, now that you know a little bit about Caring at work, how would you have handled the situation if you were the supervisor? How could you have practically guaranteed superior performance from my friend? Here’s one way–consider tailoring your work goals to the abilities and strengths of the people who work for you. They will apply their top levels of energy toward a task they enjoy.
Caring and Work Goals
Most academics will agree that the two most dominant work goals are ‘interesting work’ and ‘good pay”, consistent across national, organizational, age, and gender boundaries. If you ask someone what they like to do and then deliberately take that away from them, you will guarantee a poor result. Consider creating work goals that are consistent with people’s strengths. These goals will vary by educational level, generally.
While most people report that security, interest, opportunity for advancement, appreciation, company management, intrinsic aspects of job, wages, supervision, social aspects of the job, working conditions, communication, hours, ease and benefits are key elements of work goals, most managers report that their work goals and needs were social, esteem, autonomy, and self-realization, and they reported the most satisfaction with security and pay. You can tailor your response to most employees by recognizing their jobs need to have sufficient resources for them to perform adequately, then adequate financial rewards, then doing challenging, self-enriching work, having pleasant coworkers, and having an undemanding job. This does not change materially over time in an individual’s career. You just need to ask them to come in and sit down and talk to you about what they want to do, both now and in the future.
Bigoness and Blakely reported on work goals from thirteen national groupings at two points in time, fourteen years apart, showing that importance rankings of ten work goals remained highly similar over the time span. Both samples listed job challenge, job freedom, good relations with one’s superior, and advancement opportunities as the four most important work goals.
Buckingham and Coffman (1999) report that the key elements they survey for job satisfaction include the following:
1. Overall Job satisfaction—rate from 1 to 5:
2. I know what is expected of me at work.
3. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
4. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
5. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
6. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
7. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
8. At work, my opinions seem to count.
9. The mission/purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
10. My associates (fellow employees) are committed to doing quality work.
11. I have a best friend at work.
12. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
13. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.
Note how this list is much more “caring centric” than the questionnaire results produced earlier from the Galllup studies. Coffman and Buckingham are moving the state of the art more toward engagement and caring. This caring at work is part of an overall spectrum of caring that includes life in general. Now that you are aware of how important Caring is at work, are you ready to engage your team?
The Cameron Group, Inc. 