Are we having fun yet?
Have you ever been called to a mandatory meeting with no explanation? Have you ever been required to perform a task or work on a project without any sense of its purpose? Have you ever been forced to have fun at work?
I once worked at a university where fun was compulsory. Among other things, we were obligated to attend certain — uh — festive occasions and smile and laugh and appear to whoop it up. To be fair, some people actually seemed to enjoy themselves.
No one trusted those people.
Instead, most employees you would talk to were simply counting the minutes until they could get back to their offices. Toil was preferable to obligatory amusement.
I am not exaggerating. Because our university pooh-bahs were largely control freaks, we had to show up, be sure the university president saw us, and put in substantial time before slinking back to our offices. It was so ridiculous, on one occasion, the president accused me of being absent from an event where I had made a point of speaking to him for several minutes. Fortunately I could call witnesses.
To make matters worse, we always held these parties in our sweat-reeking gym because our control-freak overlords were nervous about the one thing they could not command. The weather. That’s right. No matter how beautiful it was outside, they were so risk adverse that we held mandatory parties in a giant windowless room rather than in our delightfully sun-warmed quad outside.
While we the employees of the control freaks, were ordered to attend — and attend we did — we were never told why. We were just told what, where, and when. We could surmise the reason, of course. These fake-fun extravaganzas enabled our bosses to overlook the general malaise that infected our culture and served as the evidence they needed to claim that we were a happy and functional bunch.
We were not a happy and functional bunch.
By the way, there is nothing wrong with employers staging entertaining and relaxing events to encourage their people to recharge, interact in new and positive ways, and build different kinds of relationships. Making them mandatory is counterproductive, though. In functional workplaces, most people voluntarily opt in because they trust their bosses and like their coworkers. If you have to force and enforce fun, you’re no fun at all.
Bosses Starts with What
The typical boss starts with telling you what to do and sometimes how to do it. They may even tell you who to work with, when, and where. Their communications are mostly diktats, conveying requirements and duties.
A leader, in contrast, explains the reasoning behind their instructions as thoroughly as possible. They and their people share a mutual understanding of why things need to be done, which results in a commitment to actually getting them done.
In short, leaders start with why. Not how. Not what. Not who, when, or where. Why.
In his classic book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, author Simon Sinek lays out this argument in detail. He maintains that leaders assure that their people understand the why before they consider the how and what.
The very best leaders inspire others to action but not by simply describing why a particular task must be done, what we might call the “retail why.” Great leaders assure their people understand both the retail why and the wholesale why. This second one is key to longterm engagement with your people, who both want and need a true understanding of their role in the grand scheme even if they don’t realize it. Great leaders convey constantly how their people’s efforts contribute not only to the task at hand but to the overall goals of the organization.
Warning: Great Leaders May Cause Dental Distress
How do great leaders perform this feat? The technique is so simple it will make your teeth hurt!
Great leaders are values-driven. They rely on their values to do the paradoxical: rooting them in place, driving them forward, and drawing them to a goal all at once. I explained this phenomenon in my essay entitled “Putting Values to Work.”
If values can do all that for leaders, they can do the same for their people and their organizations. Therefore, great leaders tap into shared values to inspire their people. Often these shared values are expressed in the organization’s mission, which is your collective why. So great leaders regularly rally their people around the mission to motivate them. They constantly convey to their people how their small-picture tasks contribute to the large-picture whole so that no one is unsure of their purpose. Everyone’s work has meaning, and they know and embrace the meaning of their work. Inspiration of this sort comes from within and is a more effective choice for leaders than external motivations such as exhortation, rewards, or mandates.
So, you may ask, what if a worker does not support the mission or does not share the cultural values of the workplace?
A leader may be able to persuade (never cajole or coerce) that worker to share in the organization’s values, but there are no guarantees. If a worker is not willing to come into alignment, then perhaps that person is not a good fit and should be encouraged to find a more suitable workplace.
A more important question, though, has to do with the leader themself. What if the leader does not understand or support the mission? What if their commitment to the organization’s values is superficial?
The answer if not the solution is readily at hand. That leader is no leader at all.
So, I ask you now. If you are a boss or aspire to be one, what is the mission of your business or organization? What are your values? What values do you purport to uphold as key to your job? Are your personal values in line? How do you know? Do you check yourself regularly to make sure your personal values, the values of your organization, and your actions are in line? If not, why not?
Or, maybe we should start with why ourselves. Let me ask. If you are not aligned with the mission and values of the organization you lead, why are you there at all?
How regularly do you start with why? How do know your values and actions align with the mission of your business?
To be a great leader, you must start with why, and I can help. Click below for your free consultation and gift.
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