Today, there is an increasing appetite for improved performance by leaders and associates in workplaces. The reason is simple. The environment in which we are on a daily basis, delivering value, has become extremely challenging. Some organizations are even changing the nomenclature of their Human Resource Management to Human Performance Management. The new model puts greater emphasis on the deliverables of employees and the need to optimize them. Training and development activities are also being enhanced for betterment of performance and relationship of associates (no longer employees) with the organization and with each other.
Proponents of OKRs (organisation’s key results) are also coming forward to say that leaders should get teams to align and focus on organisation’s key results in their daily activities. They believe that this powerful, reliable and systemic pull will ensure greater performance as well as mutual accountability that can be accurately measured.
Let me adapt an aspect of Margaret Wheatley’s write-up and point out that the power of an organization to deliver optimal performance is obviously the capacity generated by relationships (between leadership, workforce, customers and other stakeholders). The organization’s real energy can only come into existence through (these) relationships. Power, according to Margaret Wheatley, is energy. It needs to flow through the organization for greater performance. It cannot be confined to hierarchy. Leaders and managers who relate through coercion, or in disregard of others, create negative energy. Those who are open to others and who see others in their fullness, create positive energy.
Robert Garvin and Michael Roberto in their research finding noted that “only persuasion of associates can guarantee improved performance”. The duo explained that even if organizations revamp strategy by shifting staff around, realigning incentives, rooting-out inefficiencies and reshuffling their processes, they may end-up not achieving their goals. They therefore, recommended a “Shaping Process” or “Persuasion Campaign”, leaders must design and run an effective persuasion campaign that enables associates to listen to, appreciate and fully imbibe adaptation messages and decisions. Old assumptions must be questioned and drastically improved ways of working, adopted. We must take deliberate but subtle steps to reassure employees and create improved contexts for actions. It is incumbent on the workplace to differentiate from ways that are not delivering satisfactorily.
The persuasion campaign must emphasize the recognition, appreciation and management of emotions. Desirable behavioral changes must also be reinforced. Professor David Burkus, an organizational psychologist prescribed empathetic leadership and engendering activities of positive teams as solutions to not too satisfactory employee turnover and marginal productivity: He said positive teams will checkmate needless mistakes and high errors in the workplace, fraudulent activities and “cutting corners”, absenteeism, stress and anxiety. He wants team leaders to foster real social connections at work between individual team members through increased engagements. This, he said will achieve enhanced productivity and reinforce the mentality that the team is more than the individual talented member. Team members must be encouraged to appreciate and work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Demonstrated empathy will guarantee team-wide resilience and build greater sensible individual members. These individuals will easily scale through tough and difficult times as well as generate sustainable accomplishments in spite of the challenging environment. His other solutions include: enhanced positive habits of team leaders that develop into team norms- Professor Burkus noted that team leaders’ actions “compound and make team members more positive and shape the workplace into where everyone can do their best work ever”. He concluded that positive working culture that can guarantee greater performance “does not come from perks, and benefits. It comes from one place and one place only, positive teams”.
New sciences for achieving higher performance are of course, based on systematic principles, not intuition or perception insight. Simon Sinek, the popular American author of the book “How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”, emphasized the effectiveness of “inspiration of employees”. Inspiration, he noted, is firmly grounded in the tenets of biology. When an employee is very well inspired, he produces more.
According to Simon Sinek, “people do what inspires them. They want to go home after their duties feeling fulfilled about their work. People follow those who lead, not because they have to but because they want to. Leaders must therefore lead to inspire their associates”. His treatise on the Golden Circle or the “what, how and why” of employees’ inspiration pointed out that to inspire, leaders must think, act and communicate to employees from inside out. In other words, we must achieve intrinsic or innate inspiration. They must be inspired to commit to organisations’ purpose. Employees (associates) must be inspired to such an extent that they are happy to get out of bed to go to work every day. Leaders must genuinely inspire commitment not manipulate the workforce.
Recently, Harvard Business School published an interesting discovery. The discovery is that strong cultures do not always ensure the success of organizations but “the presence of values and behaviours (components of culture) that encouraged openness and adaptability”. For instance, and according to Amy Edmondson’s finding, “teams in which members know they will not be penalized for errors report more errors, learn more and are more innovative and productive”.
Let me conclude with my take on empathetic leadership that achieves enhanced performance that is sustainable. Leaders of businesses must take humanity to workplaces. We must give up stereotypes in leadership styles and genuinely connect with associates not just enamoured with success. Let us build authentic, collaborative, creative and equitable workplaces.
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