Roger D’Aprix wrote The Credible Company: Communicating with Today’s Skeptical Workforce.
I think D’Aprix did an excellent job with this book. He stated, “one of the most cherished of leadership outcomes is a more engaged workforce” (p. 53).
D’Aprix summarized the work of Earl Gommersall from Texas Instruments in studies on participative management. There were 3 keys to full participative management: job mastery, predictability, and recognition for contributions. This study was conducted in manufacturing at Texas Instrument and D-Aprix summarized the need for recognized contributions this way:
If employees reached the point at which they felt that they were indeed loved — that is, they were recognized as highly valued members of the organization — the researchers found these same employees had a reciprocal need to love back. At this point they were at last willing to go the extra mile and actually participate wholeheartedly in their work. (p 44-45).
Perhaps Jerry Maguire needed to yell out show me the love rather than show me the money.
In this fine book D-aprix also looked at job responsibilities, performance feedback, individual needs, team objectives and results, visions, mission and strategy, and engagement.
He phrases these variables as 6 key questions:
- What’s my job?
- How am I doing?
- Does anyone care?
- How are we doing?
- What are our vision, mission, and values?
- How can I help?
Perhaps the bigger question is: Can all your employees give positive and constructive answers to these 6 questions?
I encourage you to read the book to learn how to inform skeptical employees during this time of turbulent change. I trust you can create a workplace culture where people will flourish in the pursuit of worthwhile goals.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.