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Let’s start this post by a question; what do you think is the single highest driver of employees in the workplace?
There could be many answers to this question, each one of us has his/her own magical potion that drives him/her to shine, to produce, and to engage.
The most famous driver, the one that I hear a lot of times whenever I am in a discussion about motivation and engagement, is money. I cannot even recall how many times I heard managers repeating phrases similar to ‘What do they want? – referring to their employees - they are having good pay checks, good bonuses, what do they need more? why are they not motivated?’
If you are reading this form Saudi, there is a huge possibility that you are familiar with such arguments.
However, many researches showed that money is not, and actually cannot be, the highest motivator, there is even a complete theory that puts money as a possible path to dissatisfaction (google ‘Frederick Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory’). Now, according to the worldwide study conducted by Towers Watson, as mentioned by Tony Schwartz (see here), the single highest driver of engagement to employees is feeling that their managers are truly interested in their wellbeing. The surprise is that less than 40% of employees felt engaged!! I can bet that a higher percentage would yield from the same study if conducted only in Saudi!
So why employees are not feeling that their managers are interested in their wellbeing? Schwartz returns this to what he calls “the lack of fluency in the language of positive emotions.” Most managers know how to stress targets and how to huff and puff about deadlines. Being harsh and negative seems to be within reach of their communication language. While on the other hand, using positive feedback usually feels awkward and gawky.
That is why employees in less engaging workplaces look emotionally drained, out of touch, and the pay check is what mostly occupying their minds. Due to the lack of positive feedbacks, they don’t know how do they fit in the big picture, they keep wondering if their work makes any difference and how, and in such environments, there are usually huge gaps between the different levels in the organization. In another interesting study by Marcial Losada (also mentioned in Schwartz’s article), he found that in high performing teams, the expression of positive feedback outweighs that of negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6 to 1, while in low performing teams, the ratio is 0.36 to 1 (meaning, about three negative feedbacks to one positive).
So … Ask yourself, what kind of manager are you? Can you fluently give positive feedback compared to negative ones? What kind of organization are you building or being part of? Are you promoting positivity and engaging your staff instead of driving them away mentally and emotionally?
