MANAGEMENT
SPECIAL How to Harness Employees’ Emotional Energy
Fuel success by linking a company’s strategic goals to the reasons
people are proud to work there.
When
we at the Katzenbach Center ask a client’s
employees what it is that makes them proud to work there, we often marvel at
how consistent the answers are throughout an organization, regardless of level,
function, or team. These cultural anchors aren’t always immediately obvious to
outsiders, but if you take a bit of time to speak with individuals within an
organization, you will begin to uncover them.
Employees at a mission-based hospital network
may be driven by the knowledge that their work enables patients to live longer,
healthier lives. People working for a blue-chip company may take special pride
in being associated with a premium, globally recognized brand. Individuals
working at a startup may wear its related scrappiness as a badge of honor.
Workers at a factory may relish their part in its paternalistic role as
provider — of jobs, economic growth, and tax revenue.
This pride fuels “emotional energy,”
something critical to both our understanding of organizational culture and
employee engagement.
In a prior blog post, I discussed the fact that high scores on employee
engagement do not always mean that your culture is supporting your strategy;
and conversely, that low engagement scores do not necessarily mean that your
culture is “flawed” or “broken.” Essentially, culture evolution is not
synonymous with improving employee engagement. I did, however, mention one area
of overlap — that is, when you identify critical behaviors that drive
performance directly and harness sources of emotional energy,
thereby also driving engagement. Let’s look more at what this means.
Emotional energy drives employees to go above
and beyond, regardless of external incentives such as compensation and
benefits. Specific strengths that are sources of pride within a company feed
this emotional energy, which in turn drives people to work harder toward
bettering the organization. The sense of pride that comes from this achievement
further fuels emotional energy, motivating people to strive for even further
success. And so the cycle repeats.
In Why Pride
Matters More than Money: The Power of the World’s Greatest Motivational Force (Crown Business, 2003), Jon Katzenbach explains
that pride is an emotional high that follows success. Anticipation of future
successes serves as an intrinsic source of motivation, which is often more
powerful than formal incentives and rewards.
The
ability to harness these sources of pride becomes especially important during
periods of change and disruption. According to the Katzenbach Center’s Culture and
Change Survey, during large-scale change efforts,
companies that use employee pride/emotional commitment or the existing culture
as a source of strength are almost twice as likely to achieve sustainable
change as compared to companies that do not use these resources.
This is because absent attention,
transformation efforts can threaten sources of pride, and thus your
organization’s emotional energy. Think about a company that has always stood
for treating employees as family. A large, impersonal organizational
restructuring program could easily lead to the perception that employees are
now just head count to be moved around.
When these cultural touchstones are under
attack, employees become demoralized and can resist change. Counterproductive
behaviors arise, including paying lip service to efficiency targets and hiding
information in order to protect individual teams. It is then little wonder when
a couple years down the road, costs have crept back up, shadow organizations
have formed, and the company finds itself having to undergo yet another
restructuring.
It may be tempting to try to change these
sources of pride. During a cost-reduction effort, for example, it would be much
easier if employees suddenly took pride in being lean. Culture, however is
something that evolves over time and is difficult to change.
To
fully harness an organization’s emotional energy, it is imperative to link the
goals of the organization to the things that make people proud to work there.
Our approach to culture evolution at the Katzenbach Center relies on the idea
that you need to be purposeful and selective in how you tackle culture; we call
this approach getting to the “critical
few” behaviors. And, ultimately, if you have correctly
chosen those critical few behaviors upon which to focus, you will see people
behaving in ways that move the company forward while also feeling more invested
in its success.
For
example, at the hospital network mentioned above, the goals of an efficiency
program can be linked to an improved experience for patients — asking
employees to streamline processes in order to create a more seamless experience
is a lot more motivating than asking them to do the same in order to reduce
waste and improve the hospital’s bottom line. The right culture interventions
thus directly link to performance goals and improve employee
engagement via inspiration.
However, the link between sources of pride
and business goals must be genuine. This is not merely a communications
exercise in which one crafts a story about how cutting costs benefits
customers, and then moves on to cut frontline staff and impose rules on time
spent with each customer. Embedding a culture-led approach to transformation
requires thoughtful integration of cultural insights into the work itself
— in the identification, prioritization, and sequencing of transformation
activities.
There
are individuals within a company who, as authentic
informal leaders, already intuitively understand all of this.
These pride builders excel at harnessing intrinsic sources of motivation among
their teams in order to improve performance. They get to know their teams
personally, and help members to see the purpose and impact of their work, tying
this impact to the things that make these individuals tick.
Companies would do well to similarly uncover
their unique sources of emotional energy, and draw upon this rich resource in
order to drive both stellar business results and an engaged, motivated
workforce.
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