Managing Employee Morale, Motivation -- Why Managers Create Low Morale
by: bensimo
Total views: 160
Word Count: 543
Everyone
knows that the sports team with the highest morale wins. In fact, every manager wants high morale in
his/her group. So why do most managers
create low morale in their employees? In truth, given the societal, educational
and workplace related influences, it would be amazing if managers did not
create low morale and severely damage employee motivation.
From
birth, most of us are told what to do.
We receive a rather overwhelming number of orders, directions and
policies from those who believe we should follow their dictates; parents,
teachers, churches, government and finally bosses in the workplace. This is commonly referred to as the top-down
command and control management model.
Having been literally bombarded with this model, it is unsurprising that
the vast majority of managers adopt it as their own.
But
what of the people being managed with this model? Unfortunately for managers, no one likes to
take orders and all consider it to be demeaning, degrading and
disrespectful. In addition, they also feel
demeaned and degraded if no one listens carefully to their ideas and whatever
else they have to say. But the command
and control model implies that employees should listen to the leaders and that leaders
have no need to listen to employees. So
managers spend most of their time trying to figure out their next order and
rarely if ever take the time to listen to their people.
But
there are more negative effects on morale and workforce motivation associated
with the command and control model, specifically from not listening to
employees and not dialoguing with them over workplace problems. Without these, managers are denied a
firsthand view of problems from those living with them up close and personal
every day. Without these facts, orders
and directives from managers rarely address the real problems and more often
exacerbate them. This leads employees to
distrust and disrespect management and causes further reductions of morale and
workforce motivation.
And
there's more. Failure to listen and
dialog over perceived problems denies employees information which only the
manager has and which is necessary to being able to understand the true cause
of problems or the seriousness of them.
Lacking this information, employee expectations and criticisms are quite
often unrealistic, thus causing the manager to disrespect employees.
Thus,
low workforce morale, poorly motivated employees and greatly reduced employee
performance quite naturally result from using an authoritarian based command
and control model. Our educational
system is of little help. It is excellent
at teaching management of "things" like engineering, marketing, finances,
supply chain, and quality, but it rarely teaches the soft skills, the whats,
whys and how tos of managing people. The tools learned for managing "things"
actually reinforce the authoritarian, "just do as I say", approach to
managing people.
As
a manager, I spent 12 years stuck in this model, stuck with much lower morale
and performance than I believed was possible.
Fortunately, life provided me with two revelations which allowed me to
transform my methods and subsequently prove that a level of employee morale and
performance far beyond my wildest dreams does exist.
About the Author
Bennet Simonton, author of <a href="http://www.bensimonton.com">“Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”</a>, managed people for over 30 years and effected four successful turnarounds including a 1300 person unionized group. Ben now helps managers to become effective, mostly by phone, some being paying clients and some not paying except for travel expenses. His website is <a href="http://www.bensimonton.com">Leadership Skills - Become an Exceptional Manager of People</a>
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