Leadership, Happiness, and Satisfaction

Every so often I check the statistics here to discover what search engine queries bring people to All Things Workplace. I figured that the keywords were going to be mostly "leadership" or "management".

Wrong.

"Job Satisfaction"..."Happiness at Work"..."Where Can I Find the Best Job?"..."Strengths and Weaknesses"..."How Can I Find A Job Where the Boss Listens to Me?"...those are the themes. Career issues--sometimes disguised as communications--turned up on a second page of searches.

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Make no mistake. People are searching for how to feel good at work. We want to do well...and we want to feel good in the process.

But these are leadership and management issues. What people are saying is: "We want to be in a place where the "orchestration of work" allows us to contribute our talent. There are times when we need direction and times when we need to improvise our own riffs."

Think about two variables

There's a relationship between how much people enjoy their jobs and how well they perform. That's not a mystery. But there is a dynamic you need to know about in order to manage yourself and others:

1. Some people have to feel good about their job and their workplace before they can get busy and perform at their max.

2. Others have to have to first achieve super results in order to feel good about their jobs.

It's a "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" phenomenon. I picked up on this during a stretch where I was diagnosing "performance issues" for a client.

My conclusion: Managers hadn't caught onto the validity of the two approaches to performance. Naturally, the "feel good first" people were perceived as weenie-like non-performers. However, they actually had a huge commitment to doing well. They just needed something else to help them be able to get there.

What was it? They wanted the managers to understand who they were and what made them tick. That went along way to having the "right feeling" about the job.

The second category of people wanted a scorecard. They weren't about to "feel" good until they checked off their tasks and accomplishments.

Target yourself and your people

1. Which approach most naturally fits you? Figure out what that means to the way you work and the way your work is managed. Then talk with your manager about your desire to excel and how you might use this natural preference to make that happen.

2. Managers: The next time you're in a meeting (or one-on-one), have an informal conversation about the two approaches. Let people talk about what comes first for them. You'll learn a lot about how to manage each person; and they'll get more of what they need in order to hit the top of the job satisfaction/high performance curve.

Punchline: First, know yourself and your own preference. Only then will you have a solid point of reference for understanding the distinctions of the people around you.

Comments

[Frode H]

Hi Steve.
This is a great way to find out what your readers are looking for, I have written many of my blog posts as a result of this. You write; "Let people talk about what comes first for them" - This is a great tool for any managers to get to know what get the employee up in the morning.

I must say that sometimes I would love to talk to some of the people behind the searches. As some of them might be about the lack of job happiness and so on.

I have a service at my blog, where people can ask me anything. I mostly get questions about what to do with difficult managers...In that way I get to answer some of them hopfully helping out.

And last I do agree people do really want to work at a rewarding place where they can feel appreciated. I liked the approach that Alexander Kjerulf has to google, where he types in; "My job is" in the search field resulting in the auto-suggestions based on what people are searching for... http://positivesharing.com/2009/06/my-job-is/

Recent blog post: How to Get Your Dream Job part 2 of 3

Recent blog post: How to Get Your Dream Job part 2 of 3

[Wally Bock]

I don't know if we differ on how we read the research or if we have an issue of choice of terms, but here goes. I think it's easy for people to hear "Some people have to feel good about their job and their workplace before they can get busy and perform at their max." as "make people happy and they will be more productive." From what I've read and experienced that doesn't work.

But it is true that people need to feel safe and appreciated at work and there are some, as you note, that can't perform at their best and most energetic until they are so. I've called that characteristic of a great working environment "Community."

[Steve Roesler]

Frode,

Isn't it fascinating to see what kind of issues cause people to seek solutions and advice online?

Indeed, it's a good source of inspiration. . .

[Steve Roesler]

Wally,

Nah, no difference in interpreting/reading the research. Actually, I think your wording--safe and appreciated--more accurately reflects the environment I was trying to describe.

Guess I'm in a touchy-feely mode today.

Now I'm thinking (finished feeling for the day): If we asked 100 people to define 'happiness', I wonder how many different definitions we'd get?"

I've always thought that a spirit of "joyfulness" was more indicative of internal peace while "happiness" seems to surface when people look for something outside of themselves for satisfaction. Thus, it's fleeting and doesn't much enhance the foundational human condition.

Back to copywriting before we attract the philosophy crowd...

[Beth Banning]

Hi Steve,

You posed a very interesting question: do you need to feel good before you are able to do your best or do you have to your best first before you feel good about your work?

I think it all boils down to one's motivation. Some people are driven by emotional pleasure i.e. feel good about their jobs whereas others are motivated by goals. I also think that it has to do something with age - this is just my opinion though. I think younger people are driven by success whereas older people (like me LOL) are more motivated by what they would feel after a certain task is performed.