Well, the holidays are over and with many people returning to the workplace, either re-energised or thinking, ‘is this all there is to my work...and my life!’, some workers may feel a sense of disconnect with their jobs and companies.
Surveys of employee engagement often record engagement levels at around thirty percent, with almost twenty percent of employees actively disengaged! It's vital that leaders of businesses, small or large businesses, are able to recognise how their own behaviours and egos might be contributing factors.
Asked to describe an ideal team or organisational culture, most employees will use words like supportive, transparent, authentic, collaborative, and trusting, yet when asked to describe their company's actual culture, they will use words such as competitive, political, territorial, untrusting, and conflict averse.
If leaders know the culture they want, why do so many organisations struggle to create that environment?
Interpersonal conflicts are a fact of business whether they involve subordinates, peers, suppliers or boards of directors. Resolving those conflicts with a win-win mindset can unlock untold dividends in the form of a shared sense of purpose and commitment.
To take another perspective in developing the business and the people in your team, new data-driven capabilities are breaking down barriers between formerly siloed business units, flattening out management structures and streamlining production processes, prompting many firms to redraw leadership roles and responsibilities, according to information-technology executives, industry analysts and management consultants.
“Companies that transition from a more traditional business model to one built around technology and IT must adopt a management practice that can support this evolution,” says Dave Webb, global chief information officer of Equifax Inc.
They are broadening the use of so-called agile management techniques, known for shorter and more frequent development cycles that make use of customer data.
Rather than issue top-down, ego driven directives, these managers instead strive to help self-directed teams leverage digitally enabled data sources, collaboration and sharing tools, and tighter feedback loops, to “get things out the door faster,” Mr. Webb says.
Shifting the role of managers who oversee those units away from “dictating how things should be done,” to acting more like coaches who guide collaborative, multi-functional teams to “get the work done” on their own.
New collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack or Workplace by Facebook, place a new set of obligations on managers “to be connected and stay in contact.”
So, if you are returning to work from an enjoyable holiday with renewed enthusiasm and energy, what are you going to do differently to create a workplace that is.... supportive, transparent, authentic, collaborative, and trusting?
