Morale – emotional condition with respect to cheerfulness … attitude, mood, spirit, humor, temperament or disposition.
I’ve coached dozens of executives and managers, and one common question I am asked that seems to transcend industry and organizational level is; “How do I improve the morale of my team?” In most cases, both symptom and root cause remain eerily consistent. My answer to the practicing manager also remains the same across the board.
“Morale = Results x Shared Experience”
Let’s take on the variables in that order then. If results are poor, if we aren’t successful, if we are not ‘hitting our numbers’, morale doesn’t stand a chance. As management or leadership practitioners we are responsible for two things in relation to our people. The first is that they perform, and the second that they feel good about it. The enterprise pays us to achieve results, make no mistake. The only way to do that in a 21st century information economy is with a self-directed work group. If you have to ‘joy stick’ the performance of everyone within your team, there won’t be enough of you to go around. But performance comes first. The first step to morale then is helping them perform … to enable them to achieve and surpass expectations. There is no shortcut, but popular thought seems to reverse the order. I’ve heard countless managers passionately lament, “If I can just get them to buy in, I know they can give me the results I need.” I am not discounting buy-in when I tell you that it’s out of order. Only when someone is performing, or at least see’s the path to performance, will they or can they truly buy in. Professional happiness is starts with performance, not the other way around. We can’t find true happiness when we are failing.
“Morale = Results x Shared Experience”
Once the team is achieving it’s targeted objectives, now only “shared experience” can give us the collective happiness we’re looking for to sustain long-term, self-directed performance. Shared experience doesn’t just mean superficial interpersonal communication either. The occasional “How is your son’s soccer team doing?” isn’t going to do any harm, but it won’t provide a significant shared lens for viewing the world either. That’s what I’m going to suggest to improve morale once you’re getting the results you want, a shared perspective of the world is what I mean by shared experience – an experience that can be a future point of reference for you both. What specifically do I prescribe?
Do something different – you can’t help but get better:
- Follow this link to a free Forte report – http://www.theforteinstitute.com/SurveyRequest/Start.aspx?CompID=19835&SurveyID=247&First=Steve. Take five minutes to complete it – and then share the link to ask your people to do the same – to discover something meaningful about their personal communication patterns.
- Now share what you learned – shared experience means just that, that you have had the same experience and that you get the data out. Pass the profiles around to discover something about one another. Share the data … share the experience!
-Don Brown
don@donbrown.org
Don Brown dedicates his career to ‘helping people with people’ in leadership, sales and customer service. Bilingual and experienced at the executive and line-level alike, you see the results of his work across dozens of industries, including brewing, automotive, airline, banking and medical equipment.
Speaking, writing, coaching and selling to the best – Ford Motor Company, Anheuser-Busch, United Airlines, Harley-Davidson, Jaguar Cars, Hilton Hotels and many, many more – Don takes great pride in long-standing customer relationships (some running well over twenty years).
