No one works for you except you. That’s true whether you are the CEO or a shop-floor supervisor. It’s true whether you culture calls people employees, associates or team members.
Mother Theresa is not on your payroll. While great sacrifice and compassion were hallmarks of her work in the slums of Calcutta, she got something of value for herself as a result of the work.
WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) is always in the equation. The answers to that questions are as varied as there are people helping you achieve the vision. WIIFM is not selfishness, it is reality – the way humans are wired. People engage with a leader to help achieve a vision because they get something out of it for themselves. That something is a different mix of tangibles and intangibles as unique as there are individuals on the team.
Increasing shareholder return is a non-starter in terms of motivating people who are not shareholders.
In these times of high unemployment some leaders deceive themselves into thinking, “my people are just happy to have a job.” That mentality has a shelf life that is just about over and the people in the business who sit on that shelf are not likely the best performers. Understand, the unemployment rate for educated professionals and skilled trades people hovers around 4.5 – 5% even in what we are still calling a bad economy.
The golden rule in the employment relationship was long thought to be the one with the gold makes the rules. That remains true yet the best leaders understand that the agreement between employer and employed must be mutually beneficial, and the battle for talent rewrites the rules. Effective leaders, top floor to shop floor are committed to helping others get what they want in exchange for the blood, sweat and tears that go into helping the team and business get where it is going.
Competitive salary and benefits are baseline price-of-admission elements, the starting point. The answer to the WIIFM question is the reason the best, most productive people are on your team. If you can’t answer that question accurately, specific to each of these people, you have some work to do. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
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Professional Outsider
