I ended my last post with this question, "Is it possible for employees and employers to care about each other and make commitments to each other now that the social contract [employees as primary stakeholders] is broken?"
I will address the commitment part of this question in my next post. Tonight I will share some thinking about caring.
Pages of research document the critical nature of the relationship between managers and their direct reports. I believe a caring relationship can and must be present to create successful organizations.
Consider research by Milton Mayeroff, philosopher. His book, "On Caring" has been reviewed as a philosophy of life that is practical, central and sensible for all human activities.
He explains that in order to care I must understand the other's needs and I must be able to respond properly to them. To care for another I must know who the other is, their powers and limitations, their needs and what is conducive to their growth. In order to do this I must know my own powers and limitations.
Even with the disturbance of the economy and the job market I believe managers can choose to create a caring relationship with their employees.
Please share your experiences of being in a caring relationship whether as manager or direct report. What made that a caring relationship?
As Kenny Moore would say, if you are tempted to write please give in to your temptation!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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4 comments:
Janice,
Like you, I believe that caring is a key component in the engagement equation. Trouble is, however, that the social contract is broken as you point out. The sad fact today is that employers don't care about their employees. Employers care about the 3 P's of Performance, Productivity and Profits, but the fourth P, People, is merely a means to an end...and disposable. What employers fail to realize is that P4 is a necessary ingredient in the other 3.
Terry
I think there’s some confusion here… and we may be asking (expecting?) too much from the marketplace and our jobs.
It helps to make a distinction between our “personal” and “public” lives.
Caring may be more the domain of the personal sphere. Looking for others to be responsible for my learning, development, emotional well being, relating along the lines of strengths and weaknesses is probably best done in our personal relationships: family, friends, etc. It smacks of “paternalism” when we seek it out in the workplace.
My “public” life is the domain of the workplace. I have skills and talents that I offer and get remunerated for. “Vendormindedness” is how the professionals refer to it. Think of yourself as a “vendor” – with services to offer. Your company is your client. You offer the service; they pay you. If they can find someone else to offer the same service or better – they’ll go there. As a vendor, you need to remain current and competitive. You allegiance is to your offerings – and you are solely responsible for staying current and compelling. Successful vendors are very willing to work for clients who aren’t personally “caring”, but have an unmet business need that they you can help meet with your services. That’s a successful match.
I would divorce a spouse who was not caring, but not a client. The world is messy and people are not always nice. You get to choose with lovers and spouses. But not with clients.
It’s refreshing if a boss is caring, but it’s not critical. In the end, it’s really not about them, it’s about me: who I am, what I have to offer and how I can contribute to the world – and earn a living in the process.
Kenny Moore
www.kennythemonk.com
Barry Phegan said...
Janice,
You say, “I believe a caring relationship can and must be present to create successful organizations.” I’d like to ask what you mean by “successful”, because many financially successful organizations, perhaps the vast majority, don’t seem to care about relationships.
As MacDonald’s corporate raider Mike Dean in “A Man of Affairs” tirades, “You sicken me. You pollyanna boys want to go around thinking the business world is honorable and reasonably decent . . . . Listen to me. There’s no more morality or ethics in industry than there is in that pack of barracudas out there…. I tell you the only limitation is the law. And everything else goes.”
Just as Alaskans have profited from extracting (depleting, destroying) the state’s natural resources, so can any company profit from extracting, depleting, or destroying its human resources. It is relatively easy to profit when you can externalize costs; be it cyanide into the waste water, CO2 in to the atmosphere, or stressed and depressed employees with layoffs, alcoholism, and divorces. As your article says “Employee Engagement, Who Cares?”
While I know from personal experience that caring and engagement of employees leads to both profits and satisfaction, I don’t see the evidence that fear, threats, and treating people as objects, cannot also create marketplace success. Far out on that curve, Stalin ruled with terror and killed millions, creating a powerful, wealthy, awesome Soviet state.
But perhaps you define success as I do, as including personal costs and benefits, the pleasure of looking forward to your work day, the deeply rewarding experience of being a valued, appreciated member of your work group, the excitement of bringing your creativity and full energy to the task at hand, the intellectual excitement of seeing yourself as part of the bigger system and enthusiastically improving it.
The current public rage against outlandish banker’s bonuses captures nicely this person-non-person divide. The financiers just don’t get it. In their barracudaland people are anchovies, winners take all. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. These barons don’t care or even notice that ordinary people pay the price with, alienation, unemployment, anxiety, violence and stress related diseases, and, that we all pay for pollution, natural resource depletion and global warming.
While the last hundred years shows a trajectory from a less humane to a more humane workplace, the understanding that this is both good for business and good for people is not yet part of the business culture. And it is certainly not part of the regulatory/legal field. Until it is, employee engagement will remain a hard sell and you will continue to ask, “Who Cares?”
Barry Phegan
Meridian Group, Sausalito
January 15, 2010 12:49 PM
The best managers know that, for most people, the line between a subordinate's personal and professional "self" is dotted at best. Pieces of each slip through to the other side almost daily. While managers first responsibility should always be to the business there is nothing that says that the professional drive to achieve business results must come at the sacrifice of compassion. A managers ability to "dangle the right carrot" in order to motivate and engage a direct report is directly related to his/her ability to get to know and get inside the head of that individual. That manager doesn't have to truly care about the person but if they don't their acting skills have to be Oscar-worthy. The linkage between engagement and business results has been studied and written about over and over again. If a company wants to succeed in the long run it needs to place caring individuals (or great actors) in leadership positions in the short-run.
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