Engagement – What about Encouragement?

Increasingly, organisations are beginning to wise up to the idea that change management is one thing. Let’s improve the structure, the strategy or the system, or all these things in tandem. But unless the people can ‘perform’ all their labour is in vain.

 And frankly, people performing begins at the top. As the great Quality guru, Crosby, once put it: ‘Good ideas and solid concepts have a great deal of difficulty being understood by those who earn their living by doing it some other way.’ Those at the top can be the most averse to realistically appraising themselves. But if they don’t, as sure as night follows days, neither will their staff!

 Furthermore, given the importance of people to our long-term success, it really does pay off to consider recruitment, retention and reward in depth, and go on considering it. Paraphrasing Sun Tzu, Krause observes: ‘Leaders who complain about morale of their employees evidently do not realise that employee’s morale is a mirror of confidence in their leadership’ Phew! Heavy stuff.

 I am sometimes asked what is the single most important quality in an employee. That’s difficult to answer with total certainty, but I like this story.

 The Devil realised he was never going to win in his battle against God, so he decided to throw in the towel. To this end he held a car boot sale in order to flog off all his tools and assets.

 The day came – it had been well advertised – and various colleagues and peers turned up looking for bargains. And, boy! were there some bargains.

 There was this sharp, shiny, pointy spear – pride – that could shatter anyone’s armour. Very expensive, but a tasty piece of equipment.

 Alongside this there was a multi-pronged mace – very menacing – that had a curious magnetic property, drawing things to it and destroying them at the same time. This was envy – really cool. Very expensive.

 All in all, the Devil had some fantastic, high tech equipment – stuff that could really get in you and mess you up. All very expensive. His colleagues were standing there drooling over it, wondering which pieces they could afford to buy.

 But in the centre of the collection was a large, nondescript, blunt, lustreless piece of metallic tubing – its only possible use was as leverage.

 Beelzebub said, ‘How much is that old piece of junk?’

 The Devil smiled and quoted a price. There was a gasp all round – the price he asked was worth more than all the other pieces put together.

 ‘That’s outrageous!’ said Beelzebub, ‘that’s just a piece of junk’.

 ‘That,’ said the Devil, ‘is Discouragement. Without it none of the other tools work. When I want to tempt someone I always start with Discouragement. Buy it and you’ll see.’

 Ever seen the effects of discouragement on members of staff?  It’s far worse than lack of skill.

 So I guess as managers we must work on encouragement – in the structure, strategy, and systems and in everything we do. May be then we can sustain that enthusiasm that is oh-so vital.