CISCA BUSINESS LIBRARY (continued from page 50) “Instead of ‘knowing and telling,’ which can cause progress-limiting dependence, leaders should work with employees as coaches, or even allow them to experiment on their own,” Hess instructs. “I recommend following Intuit’s example by consciously choosing to bury the ‘modern-day Caesar’— the kind of boss who gives thumbs up or down on all decisions. In India, this policy allowed young Intuit innovators to conduct an experiment on helping farmers get the best price for their products — even though management initially wasn’t interested in the idea. The result: 1.6 million Indian farmers now use the successful program these innovators developed.” Your work environment must be an emotionally positive one. Positive emotional work environments are no longer negotiable. They’re a requirement. Positive emotions are associated with openness to new ideas, better problem solving, openness to disconfirming
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information, less rigid thinking, resilience, creativity, collaboration, better recall of neutral or positive stimuli, and mitigation of ego defenses. (Negative emotions inhibit all of these things.) So a positive emotional state is essential to developing employees who are motivated, productive learners. “If you still feel that building a positive workplace environment is too ‘soft’ to suck up your organization’s limited time and energy, consider that none other than the U.S. Army has recently begun an initiative to promote positive psychology,” Hess says. “The training includes learning about emotions and their effects on the body and mind, learning how to manage emotions, reducing the frequency of negative emotions, and increasing the frequency of positive emotions. It’s directed toward producing soldiers and leaders who can adapt to new and challenging situations and uncertainty—that is, learn. “Your people may not be tested on a literal battlefield, but these skills will
WINTER 2015 | Acoustical INTERIOR CONSTRUCTION
still be crucial in helping you maintain a competitive advantage as your organization navigates the cutthroat landscape of the global marketplace,” he adds. High employee emotional engagement is a necessity. It stands to reason that if employees don’t have an emotional investment in your company and their futures in it, they won’t be motivated to learn. But how do you transform “engagement” from a meaningless buzzword to a reality? Hess says the research of Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan and their Self-Determination Theory shows us it comes down to meeting employees’ needs for autonomy, effectiveness, and relatedness. And these needs are most likely to be met when individuals feel respected, trusted, and cared for, and feel that they can trust the organization and its leaders. “These concepts are easiest to understand when you look at them in action, and UPS is one of the best