Perception is the Difference
The iris reader in passport control was out of order at Heathrow Termonal One this weekend.
When I remarked on it to an official there (with care, as I had been delayed long enough), he smiled and said, ‘Well, it’s usually working 99% of the time’.
Since I’d only recently joined this scheme, designed to more quickly get you through the queues at passport control, I was disappointed.
I then reflected that 1% out of order for them was 100% out of order for me.
It’s about perception. What seemed a small outage for the people at Heathrow was my total experience, so, noticeable and a big thing for me!
In the work we do as managers, there are many issues we engage in with our people.
By its very nature, our perspective is very different from theirs - and here’s where we have to be careful and learn to be good managers.
Our insights into what is very important to them must be given extra focus, because otherwise we will miss things that make the biggest differences to them, small though they might appear to us in our role.
And this is as inherent a part of our job if we want to make a decent fist of management.
Because, frankly, most managers don’t understand that being interested in what’s important to their people, is most likely to be of high value to the team and organizational performance.
Can you see where the 1% view needs to be from the 100% angle?
Refining Employee Relationships - Getting To The Bottom Line
When we are managers, supervisors and leaders, we build workplace relationships - and we do it for a reason. We want to achieve successes and we need to do this through our people.
This really is the bottom line for the interactions we take our part in.
The purpose of relationship building in the workplace is pretty simple really. There is value for all sides of the equation and within that, it’s important to acknowledge that there is a bottom line.
As employees; indeed as business owners, managers and team leaders, we are all in it for something, because the most of us need the work we do.
When we attend work, we do so for some pretty basic reasons. We want shelter to keep us from the elements. We want to be fed and kept healthy. In modern societies we are very fortunate that these are pretty much covered off for most of us.
So we need more. The basics - the core rewards that work provides us with - are sufficient to provide the minimum we need. If that was all we went to work for, well, that’s it all pretty much sorted.
The more we need is the cerebral value that work provides for us. The stimulation of the work we do provides a healthiness that is not measured by outward disease. Our mental well-being is provided for by finding stimulating challenges that we enjoy and get personal satisfaction from.
Work is not about material reward alone.
When we manage others, we take that on as a stimulating challenge that gets our juices flowing, so we too are satisfied from the fulfillment that we get from the achievements we make.
Both sides achieving successes in their own personal challenges, are leveraged by organizations to ensure that results from the whole, go to meet and exceed the results that need to drop out for the financial bottom line.
If managers and their employees have personal goals they want to achieve and these are aligned with the needs of the bigger organization, then we are all in business pulling together.
The glue that binds us is the way we communicate together. And we communicate most effectively by having close working relationships that enable us to make the best outcomes possible, where everyone is a winner.
That bottom line for the relationships we build is the pleasure - the joy even - we get from achieving what we want from the work we do.
It isn’t just about financial reward. It isn’t about getting a company car that’s a bit bigger. It’s not about the pension pot we build.
Relationships enable us to work together towards a common goal. The purpose of the relationships we co-create, is the bottom line for all of us, which is very personal, yet always contributes to the outcome our employers expect of us too.
So we are all winners together.
