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February 9 - February 13, 2022
Brian began. “The first part of my theory I'm feeling pretty good about. Basically, a job is bound to be miserable if it doesn't involve measurement.”
“The second cause of misery at work is irrelevance, the feeling that what you do has no impact on the lives of others.”
Every human being that works has to know that what they do matters to another human being.
“Because you shouldn't have to be a different person at work. That's part of what makes people miserable, pretending to be something or someone they're not. And that means their boss needs to know who they are beyond the job description alone.
Employees often fail to find fulfillment in their work because they place too much emphasis on maximizing compensation or choosing the right career.
The problem, of course, is that departing employees rarely tell the whole story. By the time people decide to leave an organization, they have little incentive to tell their soon-to-be-former employer the truth—that they are leaving because their supervisor didn't really manage them, and without a good manager, their jobs eventually became miserable. What companies should be doing is asking a different question, and far sooner than an exit interview: What is making you even consider leaving in the first place?
In order to be the kind of leader who demonstrates genuine interest in employees and who can help people discover the relevance of their work, a person must have a level of personal confidence and emotional vulnerability.
It is immensely more difficult to decide to leave an organization or a team (or a family for that matter) when you feel that others on the team know and understand you as an individual. And the person who can have the greatest influence by taking a personal interest in anyone on the job is the manager.
A better way to remove any sense of anonymity or invisibility from employees' situation at work is simply to get to know them.
To manage another human being effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind, and how you can contribute to them becoming a better person.
Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.
“Who am I helping?”
sometimes managers must help their employees understand that their work has a meaningful impact on them.
It is our fear of coming across as self-serving that prevents us from giving our employees the satisfaction of knowing that they've helped us. Ironically, the result is that they feel that we are taking them for granted.
“how am I helping?”
If managers cannot see beyond what their employees are doing and help them understand who they are helping and how they are making a difference, then those jobs are bound to be miserable.
Immeasurement essentially is an employee's lack of a clear means of assessing his or her progress or success on the job.
The problem is, great employees don't want their success to depend on the subjective views or opinions of another human being.
Employees who can measure their own progress or contribution are going to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility and engagement than those who cannot.
The key to establishing effective measures for a job lies in identifying those areas that an employee can directly influence, and then ensuring that the specific measurements are connected to the person or people they are meant to serve.
Ironically, a measurable need not be tied to compensation to be effective. In fact, psychological research would indicate that connecting it to pay can sometimes actually decrease incentive.
people want measurables so that they can get an intrinsic sense of accomplishment.
