My wife forwarded me an awesome quote from Stephen R. Covey that went, “If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won’t require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.”
This struck a chord with me because I have often made a similar statement during recruitment drives around hiring candidates. My point was always, “Give me a candidate with the right attitude and the desire to learn, rather than a candidate who just has the skills.” Learning, after all, is a great motivator. From my experience, workers shouldn’t want a job just to clock some hours, pull in a paycheque, and go home. Sure, there are plenty that might fall into that mindset, but they’re not the ones who will become engaged employees or thrive in an environment of collaboration such as the one I choose to foster.
In other words, I want to work with employees that are excited by the possibilities of what we can accomplish together. That drive, that passion, energizes me and by extension it energizes their colleagues. A group of collaborators working together to resolve issues or deliver solutions is an amazing force. And when they have reached a level of cooperation that allows them to literally hum with “power” it becomes a force to be reckoned with. The team is able to motivate each other not just to keep going, keep building, but also to lend support and encouragement when a wall suddenly pops up in front of them.
It takes a lot of trust on the behalf of a Leader to help a team become self-motivating and self-sustaining, and it’s not one that comes easily to most. The fear of losing control is the biggest hindrance most Managers have in nurturing the right ember to get it to a full-blown fire. And yet, that’s what we want. A fire that burns from within to motivate employees into giving their best. No, not just giving their best, but WANTING to give their best.
I’ve heard the comments so many times over the years that you can almost feel a mantra being built up around it:
- “If I don’t track their hours, how do I know they’re actually working the amount of hours they’re supposed to?”
- “If I don’t see them at their desk or in the office, how do I know they’re actually working from home/remotely and not just goofing off?”
- “If I don’t tell them what to do, they’ll just work on the wrong priorities!”
I could go on, but why bother? I’m sure you can tell where I’m going with this. Fear of losing control brings on this huge lack of trust. If you meet with your team regularly enough, or even just communicate with them often enough (through whatever means, physical or electronic), then they should definitely know what’s important for you, your department, your business unit, your company. You hired them to do a job, and your job is to ensure they’re on the right path, but you have got to give them the leeway to actually DO their jobs.
Here are questions to ask yourself: What’s more important to you/ your Business Unit/ your Company? The number of hours employees are AT work, or the amount of work that gets delivered? One does not equal the other. If I force my employee to commute 3 hours a day because I can’t allow them to work remotely on “bad” days (traffic, weather, health), then how effective will they be in the office? How much of those hours sitting at their desk will they be able to deliver anything? Instead, how much more could they do if those 3 hours were used in an environment where they’re not feeling stressed about what they have to go through to get to the office? How much more could they accomplish?
In the end, what matters is the quality of your offering. If your employees are engaged and have the drive to work collaboratively, they can deliver some pretty amazing things. Your leadership and trust will keep them focused on their target. They will strive to deliver their best because they have a passion for it, not because they were micromanaged into accounting for their time and presence. To put it another way, as Dominic Covvey, a Professor of Health Informatics said to me last year during a lecture, “It doesn’t matter if you’re on time or on budget if you’re producing garbage.”
(Disclaimer: Mike Aragona has a Passion for Trust and Collaboration and an absolute hatred of traffic. He skipped the classes on “Management by Walking Around” but jumped right into “Let’s Be Great Together!” His thoughts and opinions are his alone and do not reflect any person or company associated with him, alive or dead.)