Psychology Simplified: Creating Want To’s and Not Have To’s! Part 2 by Gerry Neale

 

An Employer’s “Want To” Can Become Employees’ “Have To’s” in the same instant, if great care is not taken! If a business truly wants to succeed, it is self-evident it needs a ‘success’ culture amongst its staff. And that success is far more likely to come - and to come quickly, if it is sought by staff who feel they are working with the grain, and not against it.

The cynical employer might say, ‘Look here, who is in charge here? Who is the owner of this business? Someone has to provide the leadership! If I want this done, done it should be!’

Mercifully such attitudes in management are less easy to find. And it is not leadership that is at fault: it is just certain types of leadership. Also, if you are reading this, then I can assume that you are already looking for better ways than Lording it over your staff!

One feature often missed about employees is that most yearn for that feeling of wanting to come to work. They want to feel good about the job they do and the employer they work for. They know too well that inner sense of wretchedness linked to turning up to work for someone they don’t want to work for and doing what they don’t want to do.

Now, of course, there can be personality clashes involved that can be at the heart of this. There can be personal problems at play too.

Yet, surely, any employer in the 21^st Century does not deserve his business to succeed if he turns his back on sources of information like this.   

It is my belief that one can be a truly gruff and up-front boss and yet still be respected and even loved by ones workforce. If manifestly one is fair, just and faces reality head on, the respect follows. Many who have been employed for years know they would not want to bear the burden of running a business themselves. Yet they will respond immediately and proportionately the more they feel they are treated as stakeholders in the business and its future.

Years ago, I was involved in a non-executive capacity with a friend in a business dealing with breaking down messy and corrosive substances. In certain respects he was difficult to work for and capable of making his own and other’s life difficult. His prudence was legendary. He bargained hard but fairly. He expected full commitment from the staff yet gave it to them as completely..

Any costly or minor mistake by one of them, invariably drew the remark from the Boss, “I shall never get my Rolls Royce now!” Yet it was no jest!

The time came when, prudent though he was, he felt he could realize a life’s ambition to own such a car. He shared the thought and the doubt with the staff, hardly any of whom voiced dissent. However such was his prudence that when a minor recession suddenly hit, he hesitated.

Even though the business was insulated from the worst of it, the Rolls Royce was to be put on hold. Remarkably, the staff would not have it! They wanted to work for a company where the Chairman had such a car! So the car was acquired.

But the story did not stop there. With the Rolls Royce bought, the proud Chairman would drive it to the factory and then purposely park it in the most obstructive place possible, even in the gateway itself.

It was a certainty that in no time any one of the staff would need it moved. It could be the yardman in the filthiest overalls, who would come in swearing uninhibitedly at the Chairman in person. The response was that the car keys were lobbed to him coupled with reciprocal abuse at the yardman, threatening all manner of sanctions if the seats were dirtied!

It was their car! Not just the Chairman’s! And they all got to drive the Company’s flagship!

Were there disputes? Of course! Was there discontent occasionally? Yes! But the lesson for me was to see how, even in appalling working conditions with little to redeem them, employees could be treated in ways where they were respected and trusted. They did of course dream of a very different life. Yet they did want to come to work and manifestly took pride in the business..

 

When it boils down it, most people are pretty clued up. Whether they are employers or employees, they know that it is human nature to prefer to do what we want to do, not what we have to do.

Business success for its participants is not and should not be only about money, important though that is.

The trick is clearly not to look for complex solutions, but to apply simple psychology. If shown reasonable respect – and, yes, affection too: and if encouraged with realism shared, I am in no doubt about the result. Our Have to’s may not be eradicated entirely, but they are substantially reduced and diluted by additional Want To’s generated by empathetic leadership.