One of the core contributory factors to a company’s success is the happiness and wellbeing of its workers. However, as Tom Preston of Thomas Preston & Associates writes, this obvious consideration is too often overlooked.
Most of us with professional responsibility manage people in some capacity. Perhaps people report to you; perhaps you need to influence those around you; perhaps you need to manage your peers. Most of us have to manage our bosses.
Think for a moment of all the people that you manage. Think of all the relationships that you have that require you to manage yourself or others to bring out the best in them. Think for a moment about how you like to be managed.
Do you consider how it might feel for those around you to be managed or led by you? Do you know what drives the people closest to you to do what they do? Do you offer respect, recognition and support as well as expect that behaviour in others?
Perhaps you are involved in hiring people? Attracting, retaining and developing executive talent is a critical task for organisations. The vast majority of senior staff do not just want to work, they also want to enjoy their lives to the full, both within and outside their work environment.
Time, therefore, has equivalent value to money, and there are other factors which are also important. All of us want to balance our professional and personal lives. We also want the freedom to exercise our judgement over when our professional responsibilities need to take precedence over our personal interests and vice-versa.
People tend to be more productive when these aspects of their lives are balanced. Yet the higher a professional rises within an organisation, the more difficult he or she will find it to develop and maintain such harmony. Executive coaching is a critical tool with which to even our weight and position on the seesaw, thereby attracting and retaining the best talent.
We are all in search of that perfect balance in our lives. In fact, all we have to do to achieve this is to make that philosophical shift from where we are now to where we want to be.
What is happiness?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "happy" as "lucky, fortunate; contented with one’s lot; glad or pleased". These few words describe a complex state of mind born from a confluence of events and emotions. But in reality, happiness is subjective. It is primarily guided by circumstance, expectation and the comparison of our emotional situation to that of others.
We feel happy when we know that we are appreciated for who we are, or what we have done.
We reach a level of comfortable – even blissful – contentment when we are acknowledged by our peers to be successful in our personal and professional lives.
We are supremely happy when we feel loved, and when we give love in return. Reaching a financial objective can bring happiness, especially if it sets us apart from our peer group. For example, we feel happy when we can buy a bigger house or a more expensive car.
For most of us, ultimate happiness and contentment is when we are surrounded by the people we truly care about. In an ideal world we would all be affluent and successful, with a wonderful romantic relationship and a number of close friends. We would be respected and appreciated in our work environment and enjoy our family to the full.
But real life is not like that for all of us, all of the time. Organisations play an increasingly familial role, providing a greater number of the components of happiness that in the past would have come from extended family, close-knit communities, or even religion.
It is not money as such, but financial security that for most of us plays a crucial role in contentment. Countless stories exist of people who have won lotteries and as a consequence became rich and miserable overnight. However, it is difficult to have peace of mind without financial security, even if we know that we will never be as rich as big lottery winners.
In today’s developed world, the majority of us are superficially better off than our grandparents. Britain’s economy is twice the size it was 30 years ago, yet recent government research suggests that we are no happier.
In the US, incomes have trebled since 1945, but the proportion of people claiming to be happy has fallen. Another contemporary study in the City of London claimed that 80% of respondents to a survey on job satisfaction disliked their jobs so much that they would leave them if they could.
The evidence that economic growth alone does not lead to happiness led Lord Layard, professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, to conclude that measures to shorten the working week can be justified – simply because they make people happy.
However, we live in a highly competitive world where corporate and professional performance is judged by the ability to achieve continuous improvements in productivity, a greater return on capital and the creation of shareholder value. In this atmosphere, senior executives are unlikely to be able to take advantage of a shorter working week.
Money forms a comparatively small component of our perception of happiness, yet this creates an opportunity and a challenge for employers. They need to reconcile the conflict between greater performance, higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance – but without extra cost. There is an investment to be made here in executive coaching that can and will bring considerable returns.
Gruesome work environment
Traditionally, investment banks offer notoriously gruesome work environments. They tend to be pressurised, competitive, political, money machines. When the money stops flowing, the axe starts falling. The hours and travel schedules are known to be some of the worst any professional can expect to endure.
If investment bankers were, for example, commercial airline pilots these working conditions would be illegal. However, the trade-off has always been the financial reward. Employees endure the endless hours and the impossibly tough regime because they have the potential to earn multi-million dollar annual bonuses. Compensation packages are sometimes equivalent to the GDP of small countries. They also find themselves in a position to wield considerable personal power.
Entrants to investment banks throw themselves into their work and dream of the day when they will have earned enough to throw off the corporate yoke and embark on a more civilised life. But more often than not they burn out in the process. Talent frequently leaves at the first opportunity, and shareholders suffer as pay packages bulge in order to attract and retain talent. The irony is that this is not what that same talent wants.
The fact is that if they enjoy their work environment, talented people will be more productive and will work for less money. If they have a sense of belonging, they will feel respected and believe that their efforts are appreciated from on high. Money becomes a less motivating factor if they work in teams that accept mutual responsibility and interdependence, and that also permit an acceptable balance between their private lives and the demands of their careers.
When talented people work better and for less money, the returns to stakeholders are dramatically improved. Shareholder value is increased, clients get better results, and these employees have a much more harmonious work environment.
It is a truism that being around happy people makes you happy. The ultimate management tool is self-discipline born of a sense of group responsibility. This is backed up by examples provided by visionary leadership.
Few managers would deny that this is the perfect solution to harmony in the workplace, but the hard part is how to create such beneficial circumstances. What we need to investigate is what makes people so discontented with their jobs and therefore harder to manage.
Lack of communication
It continues to surprise me how so many people can work in close proximity without having the slightest clue as to what they expect from each other.
They have no idea how they might be able to help, motivate or inspire each other. Few organisations spend time on proactively managing these critical team elements.
Many companies think they are doing all that is necessary when they set targets, hold off-site meetings and training sessions and send employees to conferences. But they spend remarkably little time communicating with the people within their organisation, helping them to manage colleagues and clients – or making sure that their senior staff know how to communicate effectively.
One overriding factor that makes people unhappy at work is if they cannot see the ‘big picture’. They do not know how each of them fits into it and where their individual responsibility lies.
They resent not being consulted. When they receive regular personal feedback about what they do and how well they are performing, they feel so much more valued. This is absolutely not the same as an annual review of an employee which is carried out much more for the company’s benefit than their own.
Too many companies treat their employees like mushrooms. They keep them in the dark and feed them on bullsh*t. What they need to do is to treat them like adults and communicate with them accordingly.
Employees dislike feeling powerless and lacking control over their professional destiny. In other words, executives at every level want to be treated as responsible and capable adults. They need to be helped to understand corporate objectives. But at the same time care needs be taken to make absolutely certain that they understand the exact role they are required to play within those objectives.
Invest in people
Companies spend immense sums of money communicating with their shareholders about their products and service – and even more communicating with their clients. Sadly, remarkably few do the same with their key assets – the people who work for them.
Why is it that a corporate hospitality event costing thousands is considered to be money better spent than the same sum invested in executive development?
While advertising and marketing budgets are necessarily large and important to the prosperity of many companies, would it not be wise to spend just 10% of those budgets each year making certain that all the employees understand the firm’s aims and goals? Surely they would then all be able to pull in the same direction at the same time, and with real commitment to the job?
When the brief is made clear, executive coaching of individuals or teams can help corporations set clear expectations, communicate messages across the organisation and provide a valued work environment.
Large companies have vast budgets and expect to make enormous profits. Executive coaching takes up only a fraction of these to result in long-term returns that show up on the balance sheet to the benefit of shareholders. However, the real bonus comes from revitalised and contented staff sure of their role and aware of how much they are valued.
I know from experience that such investments make a bigger contribution to a company’s long-term success than almost any three-week national advertising campaign.
When I hold group coaching sessions with middle and lower managers I always begin by asking them: "Why does this company exist?" Depending on what the company does, they reply with answers such as: "To print newspapers" or "To provide financial services".
I then point out that this is what the company does. But the reason that it exists is simply to make an acceptable return on capital for its shareholders. Few middle or junior managers, and a frighteningly small number of senior people, give that reply immediately. Most only come up with the answer after significant prompting.
Rule of fear
Can the chairman of a global investment bank really believe that the people working below him are more productive, better at handling clients, and therefore more likely to produce profits, when they work 16 hours a day and have virtually no personal life? They are so tied to their desks that they take little or no exercise, and viciously compete with their colleagues for fear that the axe will falls on them.
In such an atmosphere, the truly talented move on as soon as a better offer comes along. This endless process ensnares banks and similar companies in a salary spiral aimed at recruiting and retaining talent. The problem is that this practice ultimately reduces the return to shareholders and makes talent retention more difficult and expensive – the precise opposite to what the chairman is trying to achieve.
In a complex economic climate and amid vastly increased competition, it is essential for businesses to invest in their employees. They need to encourage and acknowledge their abilities, enhance their job satisfaction by providing a good working culture, and be aware of their overall needs as individuals.
This investment needs to be in both technical training and soft-skill development. Better leadership and the ability to motivate others result in higher productivity, an enhanced atmosphere in the workplace, a raised sense of collective responsibility, and a corporate culture that nurtures and retains talent at reasonable cost.
It also results in lower stress levels and better employee health. It is a long-established fact that fewer sick days are taken by people who are happy in their work and have a greater sense of community.
I believe in the philosophy of making money, but I also believe that more money will be made, both in the short and long term, only by investing in the ‘people’ factor. It is through this investment that organisations will achieve sustainable improvements for their stakeholders.
Coach yourself to success by Tom Preston, published by Management Books 2000.
