Exploring and Addressing the Causes of Job Misery
Anonymity
It is immensely more difficult to decide to leave an organization or a team (or a family for that matter) when you feel that others on the team know and understand you as an individual. And the person who can have the greatest influence by taking a personal interest in anyone on the job is the manager. Yes, even more than a CEO or an executive three levels higher in the food chain, a direct supervisor needs to take a genuine, personal interest in an employee in order to increase that employee's engagement and satisfaction.
What exactly does it mean to take a personal interest in someone? I've heard management training people advise supervisors to listen to the music that their employees listen to and watch the television shows that they watch. Though I suppose that could be helpful in some situations, it doesn't seem to be a terribly useful first step.
First, it could come across as disingenuous and silly when a fifty-year-old plant manager starts talking about listening to hip hop and watching MTV (which, for the record, I don't watch). Employees can smell a false attempt at “employee bonding” from a mile away. The other problem with cultural mirroring (if there is such a thing) is that it is general and stereotypical in nature and often reinforces to employees that they are seen as somewhat generic.
A better way to remove any sense of anonymity or invisibility from employees' situation at work is simply to get to know them. Take time to sit down with each of them and ask them what's going on in their lives. Some managers reflexively avoid this because they've been taught that it is illegal to ask that kind of question during job interviews. Somehow they forget that what may be illegal when selecting a candidate is actually a basic form of human kindness once someone has been hired.
But it can't be fake. When I say that a manager needs to take an interest in an employee, I'm talking about taking a genuine interest. To manage another human being effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind, and how you can contribute to them becoming a better person.
And taking a personal interest in an employee is not a one-time thing either, something to be checked off on a list of to-dos. It needs to be reinforced and demonstrated again and again. It's one thing to know that an employee's daughter likes dancing. It's quite another to ask how Friday's dance recital went. And it's fine to know that a subordinate lives with his parents. It's another thing entirely to know their names and ask about them when they're sick.
Okay, if any of this sounds hokey, consider whether you have appreciated it when your manager took an interest, a real one, in you and your life. And if you're rolling your eyes at this point, wondering what any of this has to do with software development or factory line assembly or accounting, put up with me as I remind you that no one gets out of bed in the morning to program software or assemble furniture or do whatever it is that accountants do. They get out of bed to live their lives, and their work tasks are only a part of their lives. People want to be managed as people, not as mere workers.
If you're still not convinced that this makes sense or that it applies to you, this would be a good time to consider resigning your position as a manager and finding a role as an individual contributor. But if you're on board, there are two more fundamental dragons that need to be slain.
Irrelevance
People wonder why so many athletes, rock stars, and actors live such erratic, unsatisfied lives. It's easy to point to drugs and alcohol and materialism as the culprits, but I think those are mere symptoms of the root cause: a subtle fear of irrelevance.
I mention this because it's hard to fathom how someone who earns more money than most people can count by doing something they love, and who gets constant attention and adulation from admiring fans, can be unhappy. And how a nurse in a home for the elderly, or a receptionist at a church, or a high-school volleyball coach can be happy in spite of the fact they make a fraction of what a rock star or athlete makes. I think the answer has everything to do with being needed. Having an impact on the lives of others.
Human beings need to be needed, and they need to be reminded of this pretty much every day. They need to know that they are helping others, not merely serving themselves.
When people lose sight of their impact on other people's lives, or worse yet, when they come to the realization that they have no impact at all, they begin to die emotionally. The fact is, God didn't create people to serve themselves. Everyone ultimately wants and needs to help others, and when they cannot, misery ensues.
Some will say that rock stars and athletes and actors do indeed have an impact on other people's lives, and I would agree that they certainly can. However, they often lose sight of that impact or fail to take advantage of their opportunity to do so. They see their jobs as a series of self-involved activities with no clear connection to the daily lives of others.
All employees, whether they are rock stars, software engineers, or teachers, must answer two questions in order to establish relevance in their jobs. And it is the manager's responsibility to help them do this.
Who?
The first question people have to answer is, “Who am I helping?” The most obvious place to start looking is among customers. For flight attendants, fast-food cashiers, teachers, priests, doctors, waiters, and salespeople, this is an easy choice. But for many employees outside the service businesses, from the CEO to the accounting clerk to the head of IT, interaction with customers is a relatively rare occurrence.
For those people, the answer is often “internal customers,” other employees or departments within the organization. Some may hear this and say “everyone within our company should be serving customers,” and I would agree. But that doesn't mean that customers are the primary people whose lives everyone can count on affecting on a daily basis, or that people are going to derive satisfaction from having an impact on someone they rarely if ever encounter.
For a CEO, the answer to the question of “whose life do you impact” will certainly include “the executive team.” For the accountants, it will probably be the head of finance, or whatever department within the company they support. And for many—brace yourself—the answer will often be their boss.
That's right. Seemingly contrary to everything we've learned having to do with servant leadership (a concept I love, by the way), sometimes managers must help their employees understand that their work has a meaningful impact on them. This is a hard concept to swallow because it conjures up images of self-serving supervisors sending their employees on personal errands and keeping them at their beck and call. And so managers often downplay the very real impact that their employees' work has on their own satisfaction and career development.
And this is its own tragedy because, unless they already believe that their manager is a cretin, employees get a great deal of satisfaction and energy when their supervisor thanks them for what they've done and explains to them what a difference they've made for them personally.
Think about this one again. It is our fear of coming across as self-serving that prevents us from giving our employees the satisfaction of knowing that they've helped us. Ironically, the result is that they feel that we are taking them for granted.
Managers would be much better off being frank with employees. “The report you put together for my presentation to the executive team was terrific. They were all impressed, and wanted me to tell you that you did a nice job. And I want to tell you that you've made me, and the entire department, stand out in the eyes of the CEO. Thanks.” That's a far cry from “You made me look like a champ today, and I won't forget the little people like you when I become rich and famous.” And it's certainly better than the generic, “You did a great job.”
When managers pretend that they don't appreciate the impact of their people's work on their own career and job satisfaction—even when they do it out of humility!—they deprive people of the feeling that they've made a difference.
How?
The next question that managers need to help employees answer is “how am I helping?” And the answer to this question is not always obvious.
When a room service attendant at the Embassy Suites next to the airport brings breakfast to a guest, he's not just delivering food. He's helping a weary traveler feel a little better about having to be on the road, which can have a significant impact on their outlook on life that day.
And when a clerk in the billing department at a doctor's office helps a patient find a receipt for an appointment six months earlier, she's not merely providing them with information. She's giving them peace of mind so that they can be a little less stressed about managing their family's health care, something that causes its own health problems.
Some managers will wince at all this. They'll say, “Come on, the room service guy is carrying breakfast and the billing clerk is doing paperwork.” Which leads us to the central point here. If managers cannot see beyond what their employees are doing and help them understand who they are helping and how they are making a difference, then those jobs are bound to be miserable.
Keep in mind that employees at Southwest Airlines are doing largely the same job as employees at any other large airline, and yet there are far fewer miserable jobs at Southwest. And high school kids at In-N-Out Burger and Chick-fil-A are doing largely the same job that kids at any other fast-food restaurant are doing, and yet there are a lot fewer miserable jobs at In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A.
The difference is not the job itself. It is the management. And one of the most important things that managers must do is help employees see why their work matters to someone. Even if this sounds touchy-feely to some, it is a fundamental part of human nature.
Immeasurement
First, let me say that immeasurement isn't a word you'll find in the dictionary. I've used it to describe this, the third cause of job misery, because there was no real synonym for it. Immeasurement essentially is an employee's lack of a clear means of assessing his or her progress or success on the job. This creates ambiguity and a feeling of dependence on a manager to subjectively judge the employee's daily or weekly or monthly achievement.
The problem is, great employees don't want their success to depend on the subjective views or opinions of another human being. That's because this often forces them to engage in politics and posturing, which is distasteful for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the loss of control over one's destiny. Employees who can measure their own progress or contribution are going to develop a greater sense of personal responsibility and engagement than those who cannot.
The key to establishing effective measures for a job lies in identifying those areas that an employee can directly influence, and then ensuring that the specific measurements are connected to the person or people they are meant to serve. This point is worth repeating. Failing to link measurement to relevance is illogical and creates confusion among employees, who are left wondering why they aren't measuring the most important parts of their jobs.
Too often, an executive will try to rally employees by giving them some macro objective (for example, hitting a corporate revenue number, cutting company expenses, or driving up the stock price).
The problem here is that most employees have no direct impact on these things, certainly not on a daily basis. When they realize that there is no clear, observable link between their daily job responsibilities and the metric they are going to be measured against, they lose interest and feel unable to control their own destiny. And while many managers will then be tempted to accuse them of being lazy or ignoring the well-being of the company, those managers are failing to understand that what their employees are looking for is a measure that is more closely tied to their actual jobs.
That's why so many salespeople enjoy their jobs. They don't depend on others to tell them whether they've succeeded or failed. At the end of the day—or better yet, the quarter—a salesperson knows the score and feels responsible for it.
Sports is another arena where measurables are clear (though anonymity and irrelevance are often problems). Imagine a basketball game where no score is kept, but where a winner is chosen based on the subjective criteria of judges. Sound miserable?
Or consider a pitcher coming off the mound with no statistical evidence of his own performance, but dependent on the gut feel of his coach. Unfortunately, that is all too common in the way many employees are managed and assessed.
Unlike sports, business measurements need not be completely quantitative to be effective. In many cases, trying to overquantify measurables by assigning strictly numerical metrics makes them irrelevant because the metric is artificial. The most effective and appropriate measurements are often behavioral in nature and might simply call for an informal survey of customers, or even merely an observation of behavior that indicates satisfaction.
Ironically, a measurable need not be tied to compensation to be effective. In fact, psychological research would indicate that connecting it to pay can sometimes actually decrease incentive. Whether or not that is true in a given situation, the point is that people want measurables so that they can get an intrinsic sense of accomplishment. Great athletes don't get excited about scoring goals or running for touchdowns because they know it will impact their contracts—though they're certainly not going to turn the money down. They do it because they love to compete.
Cynics may disagree with this. They might point to salespeople and accuse them of being coin-operated, motivated primarily by money. In reality, most great salespeople are motivated primarily by winning, by achieving a goal. Yes, that goal is tied to compensation, but the money itself is gravy. That's why so many salespeople get involved in other competitive pursuits, athletic or otherwise. They love to compete and to win, whether the reward is financial or not.