Silver Lining of Dark Clouds

Here it is near the end of May and still rainy and cool here in Seattle. This dampens my mood, but it also reminds me how important it is to find a way to appreciate the rain rather than simply wish for sun.

The same could be said with regard to what we do for a living. How many of us claim we have the absolute perfect job? How many wake up each morning and commute to our workplace because there is no place we’d rather go?

I suspect few of us, but that doesn’t mean we hate what we do for a living. We may even enjoy it most of the time. I know I do.

My point is that we alone have the power to draw our attention to whatever it is we want. We can see our proverbial glass as half empty or half full. This is entirely within our power.

Given the state of our current economy, many people feel unappreciated in the workforce. They are working harder than ever, working two jobs, are underemployed, or unemployed altogether. This is a time when seeking to make lemonade seems impossible with these lemons.

Nevertheless, life is far too short to spend time lamenting what we don’t have when there is so much abundance to our lives. If only we could pause and take inventory with an appreciative eye for what we do have.

Consider this time of challenge as a wake-up call to determine what it is you really want out of your life. Is it money or the things and experiences money can buy? Look at all that you’ve acquired during the past year and assess whether they are worth the struggle you face in making your credit card payment each month.

Is the only solution a higher paying job? This is for each of us to answer on our own, of course, but I suspect it is not the case for all.

There are many examples of great companies that are launched during recessions. Perhaps this is a time when each of us should consider launching a new venture as well.

This doesn’t have to mean starting a new business, but it could. It might be learning a new skill, going back to school, pursuing a new hobby, or nurturing a neglected relationship. This could be a time for self-renewal: a time for reinventing yourself so that a recession doesn’t affect your resilience.

When I was in my early forties and out of work, I took time to rediscover who I was and what I really wanted out of my life. I took up the piano and creative writing. I went back to school and earned a master’s degree. I nurtured my relationships. And I changed my career to something that truly resonated with who I am.

This took a great deal of self-discipline and courage, but the pursuit of learning and focusing on what is important to me stays with me to this day.

In her book “Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life,” Winifred Gallagher explains that we should continually engage in activities that arrest our attention and satisfy our soul.

“We’re accustomed to thinking of productivity in terms of career, but if you’re living the focused life, your free time should be just as generative or even more so—particularly if you don’t especially enjoy your work,” says Gallagher. “By actively choosing endeavors that demand your total focus and skillfully using attention to make even inevitable rote chores more engaging, you can blur the distinction between work and play—a hallmark of a focused life.”

The focused life cannot be attained by engaging in passive experiences such as watching television, playing videogames or surfing the internet. It takes self-discipline and it takes mindfulness in everyday life.

Complaining about the clouds that get in the way of our growth is not a solution. In the same way plants and flowers can’t grow with only sun, we must appreciate the abundance in our lives and focus our attention on getting more of what we want.

And as much as we may struggle on these dark, dreary late spring days, we should be mindful of what is really important and make the most of our lives.

Mark Craemer            http://www.craemerconsulting.com

6 Tips for Employee Motivation

Despite the preponderance of best-selling books on dieting, smoking cessation and breaking other addictions, the truth about all motivation is that it is not about techniques, but about personal will. True motivation comes from deciding you are ready to take responsibility for managing yourself and doing something about it.

Similarly, in the work environment, motivating employees cannot come from management techniques, but from the employees themselves.

So the question should not be how can you motivate your employees, but how can you create the conditions where employees will motivate themselves? The answer is to foster an environment that enables them to assume responsibility and provide them with choice.

But let’s back up a bit. The age-old rewards or ultimatums for obtaining desired behavior has limitations. No matter whether it is in trying to get your six-year-old to practice the piano or seeking to make an employee more productive, carrot and stick approaches have proven not to be effective over the long run.

Psychologist Harry Harlow, in his pioneering work with rhesus monkeys, used the term “intrinsic motivation” to explain why monkeys solved problems without a tangible reward at stake. In the same way, he theorized that all children are intrinsically motivated to learn. As human beings, we are curious creatures and pursue knowledge and problem-solving out of our own pleasure in doing so.

Somehow many of us lose our intrinsic motivation by choosing career paths that are not aligned with who we are. Following a line of work based on others’ expectations or based on high financial rewards can backfire in providing us with a satisfying life. Money has, in fact, been demonstrated to actually undermine intrinsic motivation.

All of us need to take responsibility for our intrinsic motivation—both in our personal lives as well as our work lives. The motivation we have for doing anything is ultimately linked to this personal responsibility.

Author Ken Blanchard, in the “The One Minute Manager” series of books, talks about the need for every employee to determine whether direction and/or support is necessary and then make this clearly known to his or her boss. Only in this way, can a boss fully understand what is required to help the employee succeed. This is the employee’s responsibility and a key component to motivation in the workplace.

Self-motivation is at the heart of all responsibility, creativity, healthy behavior, and lasting change, according to psychologist Edward L. Deci.

In his book, “Why We Do What We Do: The Dynamics of Personal Autonomy,” Deci suggests that for intrinsic motivation to succeed in the workplace, it comes down to providing autonomy in place of control. A controlling atmosphere means employees will feel stifled and lack motivation to produce optimally. On the other hand, by giving an employee the choice on how to do his or her job, intrinsic motivation is more likely to occur.

As a manager, this requires taking an autonomy supportive position, which is a personal orientation you can choose to take toward other people, especially those in a one-down position. An example of a one-down position could be between a manager and employee or between a parent and child.

An autonomy supportive position requires being able to take another person’s perspective. You need to be able to grasp what it is like to be your employee, in your company, this particular community and this industry. This is a skill to be learned and it can require not only time, but also self-discipline to master.

Here are six tips to keep in mind to foster a favorable environment for employee motivation:

1. Demand personal responsibility. Make each employee accountable in their respective roles and expect them to communicate what is necessary to succeed.
2. Provide choice. Set objectives and let the employee decide how and what to do in order to reach these objectives.
   
3. Set autonomy-supportive limits. Ensure each employee understands why something is important and the parameters around it.
4. Set goals and evaluate performance. This helps maintain motivation because people behave when they expect they can attain goals.
   
5. Recognize and award everyone. Rather than pit individuals and workgroups against each other in a competition, recognize each group or individual for their most important accomplishment or improvement.
6. Overcome obstacles. Controlling personalities and lack of skills can be obstacles to autonomy-supportive behavior. Managers may require skills training and need to also see autonomy-supportive behavior coming from above.

Research by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci found that autonomy supportive managers have workers who were more trusting of the corporation, less concerned about pay and benefits, and displayed higher level of satisfaction and morale.

Further research found that people who are autonomy-oriented have higher self-esteem and are more self-actualized. People high on the autonomy orientation have more positive mental health and report more satisfied with their interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, through their behavior and expectations, people can influence their environments to provide them with more of what they need.

Employees need to feel competent and autonomous for intrinsic motivation to be maintained. And it is important to remember that it is only their perception of competence and autonomy that matters for intrinsic motivation.

This combination of employee responsibility and employer choice enables a healthy environment where intrinsic motivation can foster. And intrinsic motivation is the key to employee motivation.

Mark Craemer            http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Finding Flow in the Workplace

Nearly one-third of our waking lives are spent on the job, so it seems worthwhile to consider whether or not we can find happiness there. Some would argue work can never make us happy, otherwise it wouldn’t be called work.

Other people seem to enjoy their work immeasurably and not just professional athletes or celebrities. We can all think of people in our own workplace who seem to love what they do for a living. Why is that? And why don’t more of us find this sense of joy in our jobs?

The leading researcher on positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-SENT-me-high”), says the key is first ensuring the relevant elements are in place in order to produce a sense of flow. Flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is “completely focused motivation.” In flow emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand.

Much of daily life is caught up with a lack of focus and attention. This inattention makes us constantly bounce between the anxiety and pressures of our obligations and, during leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

Flow is present when people describe a feeling of effortless action in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes report of “being in the zone.” Flow is when we immerse ourselves into something and lose all sense of time.

We can certainly find happiness without being in flow. In fact, happiness is typically not reported during flow states, but only after the task is completed. That’s because to experience happiness, you must focus on your inner state, and this takes attention away from the task at hand where flow is found.

Happiness in general is vulnerable because it is dependent on favorable external stimulus; for example, time spent with another person or relaxing in a comfortable setting. The happiness that follows flow, however, is of our own making and can lead to increasing complexity and growth in our consciousness.

The key to finding flow in the workplace is to challenge oneself with tasks that require a high degree of skill and commitment. Finding flow means learning the joy of complete engagement.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow in the workplace requires:

• clear goals
• immediate and unambiguous feedback
• challenges that match the worker’s skills
• a sense of control
• few distractions
• intrinsic motivation
• feeling a part of something larger than the self

Employee engagement requires many of these same elements to be present. Employers need to ensure goals are clear, provide regular feedback, match challenges and skills, and remove distractions. Employees have responsibility as well and need to help cultivate the intrinsic motivation and feel a part of something larger than them selves. The sense of control, I believe, is a shared element between employer and employee.

Optimal experiences typically involve a fine balance between one’s ability to act and the available opportunities for action. In the workplace, this requires clear communication and a great deal of trust between employers and employees.

Flow is found directly between arousal on the one side and control on the other. In order to reach flow from a state of arousal, a little more skill may be necessary. And reaching flow from a control state may require a bit more challenges.

If challenges are too high, however, you can get frustrated, worried and anxious. If challenges are too low relative to one’s skills, you can become relaxed and bored. When both challenges and skills are perceived low, you may feel apathetic. On the other hand, when both challenges and skills are high, flow is most likely to occur.

“When a person’s entire being is stretched in the full functioning of body and mind,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “whatever one does becomes worth doing for its own sake; living becomes its own justification. In the harmonious focusing of physical and psychic energy, life finally comes into its own.”

What about you? Do you feel moments of flow in your work? If not, what are the specific missing elements and what can you do to help bring them into your work so flow is possible?

The question of how to find happiness in our jobs perhaps should be revised: how can we help create full engagement in our jobs so that we can feel happier in our lives?

Mark Craemer         http://www.craemerconsulting.com