More Wealth AND More Freedom
(Note – the information is well cited and pulled from my Masters thesis on Corporate Health)
Teamwork really does make the dream-work
Building a strong, Super-Bowl ready team is considered more difficult now than any other time in history. This has been evident to me by the parabolic rise in phone calls I get from clients that they have staff issues. What’s more, whether it is un-skilled team members or a lack of numbers, this lack of resources puts a whole lot of stress on management; especially if you want to keep the business performing.
A truly staff-driven practice sounds impossible to most owners. The classic leader believes there is a massive downgrade when they pass on key, core responsibilities to their team members. Yet, in every large company in the world, the consumer and even most of the staff never meet or work with the owner, CEO, or a major shareholder. In fact, if the CEO of Apple has to go down to the front desk to remind the receptionist of something, she’s definitely getting fired and may just burst into flames.
My goal with any company or client I work with is to leave the owner/worker life behind them. It’s not only difficult, it’s radically ineffective and an inexplicably poor long-term plan. If you are not staff-driven, you’re not experiencing exponential growth.
When my clients have made this shift in approach to training and building culture, it is not uncommon to see a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of collections while radically lessening the stress and strain on the owner – which is always supposed to be the goal of business. An owner should experience greater and greater growth and wealth, while experiencing more freedom and having less involvement in the minutia over time. If not, as they say, “You own a job – you don’t own a business.”
2 bellwether focal points of great team leadership:
1. JOB SATISFACTION and ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR
Job satisfaction
Several of the variables related to satisfaction impact employee motivation. Motivation is a combination of internal drive that moves a worker to act and external factors that influence them to take action (Locke & Latham, 2002). THIS MEANS YOU MUST HIRE RIGHT.
Organizational citizenship behavior
Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is the Holy Grail, the top award, the Heisman Trophy of effective leadership. When you create it, your team members exhibit an ownership of the mission, promote excellence in the workplace, go above and beyond the call of duty, take pride in their work, exhibit sportsmanship and altruism, and do not need a boss to keep them focused on the task at hand. With OCB, they wear the company T-shirt on the weekends, and when they cut themselves, they bleed the corporate colors.
This type of OCB behavior is so highly valued that there have been numerous studies done to determine the most effective way of creating it. What the examiners tend to find is that nothing matches job satisfaction when it comes to producing OCB.
2. HIRE RIGHT
Find the personalities for the job
All of these traits that lead to job satisfaction and OCB can be tested, which means all of them can be hired. Personality trait assessments have been shown to be directly connected to motivation and performance. The individual difference theory points out that some element of job satisfaction and OCB are inherited traits that give people a tendency to like or dislike whatever it is that they do (Ilies & Judge, 2003).
In support of this are four personality traits that give people a predisposition to be
satisfied with their work, more committed to their job, and ultimately better at their life in general. These traits are: emotional stability, self-esteem, self-efficacy (the perceived ability to master their environment), and internal locus of control the perceived ability to control their environment) (Judge, Locke, and Durham, 1997). These people tend to have high self-esteem, are pleased with their work, and feel like they have a grip on their lives and careers.
Another example includes what are called the “Big 5 traits” – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and stability, predispose employees to motivation. Conscientiousness best predicts work and academic performance along with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Stability is most affiliated with salary and setting high goals. Extraversion is the most connected with promotions.
Never say it can’t be done and avoid blaming your staff for always falling short of your expectations. Rather, utilize the right hiring, on-boarding, training, and support practices and build a dream team. You rarely see the dream without the team.
Have fun saving the world
Dr. Ben
References
Aamodt, M. (2013) Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach, Seventh Edition. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ilies, R., & Judge, T. A. (2003). On the heritability of job satisfaction: The mediating role of personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 750–759.
Judge, T. A., Locke, E. A., & Durham, C. C. (1997). The dispositional causes of job satisfaction: A core evaluations approach. Research in Organizational Behavior, 19(1), 151–188.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.
