What does your workpace focus on — connection or performance?
This article is 2nd in the series of introduction to connection and performance. To get a bit of backstory, please go to this link to read the 1st article!
When it comes to connection or performance, the workplace is definitely a place where people value performance over connection. Our typical idea of a workplace is where we go to do our job (that we hate) to earn money to survive. Some people love their work, some people hate it. But at the end of the day, many believe that we’re just supposed to perform at work.
“Leave your heart at home.”
“What’s the use of caring?”
“Hustle, don’t feel.”
However, recently there’s been increasing focus on employee engagement and the positive effects of it. It’s been on an uptrend for a while and has been at the top of work topics recently with the Covid-19 situation, where people are working from home. And mental health is beginning to be a staple part of our conversations at the workplace.
As workplace bullying, toxic cultures and employee welfare fall more under the spotlight, the recognition that taking care of employees has become increasingly a topic that we need to cover. From Netflix’s culture to Airbnb’s amazing kindness in retrenchment, from Walmart and Amazon’s abuse and neglect of their employees, stories of how businesses are treating their staff are now talked about more than ever before.
And when we talk about work, a major thing comes to play — performance. When it comes to the way we view businesses in the market, we often look at the “performance” of the company. We want to know the stock prices, we want to know their profit and loss, we want to know their quarterly earnings.
On a national level, we talk about gross domestic products, we talk about stock market performance, we talk about net income per capita. We are always looking at performance and how things are doing in terms of numbers and growth.
Whatever happened to connection?
We even look at employee engagement and satisfaction by numbers. We look at eNPS scores, turnover, productivity, surveys and all the bells and whistles to talk about people’s “satisfaction” with their company.
What is the value of measuring all the performance and metrics if it does not truly impact whether people feel engaged with the company? As time went on, people managed to make these performance metrics into yet another performance goal to hit and fail to address the reason why the measurement was created in the first place — to measure and emphasise on connection.
An amazing Simon Sinek video showcases this in an amazing talk he gave on measuring success. It talks about how the information is incomplete. When we measure things, it still gives us an incomplete picture. Connection is intangible and the numbers should serve only to help us delve in deeper. (Link at the end of this article)
So why is it incomplete?
It is because people focus on the performance measures, not on the connection with the people that creates the performance. We have focused so much energy on creating key performance indices and the results of surveys that we failed to recognise the human driver that creates it — connection.
Simon Sinek calls it trust, which is the highest form of connection. When we feel connected to our work, we engage and play in it, we enjoy the process of doing it. When we connect with our team, we are inspired and motivated to go into work and find it an ease to communicate and manage our colleagues, managers and subordinates.
Connection is what makes performance easy. Just like in a relationship, connection is what sparks the relationship and expectation of performance kills it. Focusing on the connection makes people care more. And when people care more, they start taking initiatives, giving feedback and care for their customers more.
Here comes the kicker — good leaders measure the connection with their staff with the support of performance metrics. In the book, The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker also talked about the 8 practices, which was focused on accountability. It is always about the responsibility in the decisions, plans and actions taken, while focusing on the ‘we’.
When we connect, we are accountable to the relationships we create. When we connect, we start looking at how we are part of the picture. When we connect, we take responsibility. When we focus on performance, we do the minimal to get by.
What we need is to address the needs and emotions of the people. It’s about having conversations about “what’s wrong” and genuinely caring to understand. It’s about taking responsibility for the decisions taken and having communication with the rest. That’s when it becomes trust.
That’s why office politics exists today. People more interested in the performance than the connection with the people in the company, connecting with the work and connecting with the customers. People who desire connect in performance-based organisations feel high and dry, and they feel like the work they do is meaningless.
If you feel that your company is not doing what’s right for the world, the clients or the employees, it’s because there’s a lacking in connection to begin with. If you feel that your initiatives are being squashed no matter how much you believe they are right for the company, there is a lacking in connection to begin with.
If you seek connection with your work and people you work with, while you are asked for performance, you will be impeded by office politics. Many companies reward people to behave like monkeys who do the bare minimum performance. And many are forced to conform keep their jobs. In fact, many are like you, not feeling the connection with the purpose, the work or the people, therefore being completely drained. This is why people are disengaged. This is why people are so disillusioned.
Do you feel disconnected at work? Are you seeking connection? Is performance demanded rather than being supported? We want to hear your voice. Join our Facebook Group to share your voice on the lack of connection at the workplace. To find out more about what The Office Matters is about, head on over to our website and sign up to our newsletter!
Thank you for reading! Here’s Simon Sinek’s video!
