Organizational Happiness

The staff is everything. Know your team. I like to call them “team” rather than “staff.” But their health and their happiness is paramount to the success of the organization. Everybody has to be on track, going the same direction. Working together as a team I liken it to a football team as a good analogy. You got different positions on the football team. You got the quarterback who's the star, the one they talk about most, he's a key position, but at the same time you have the kicker. You have a lineman, you have defense of guys, offensive line... You never hear them talk about much the offensive line. But without a good line, your quarterback’s not gonna be any good. And so I think, you know, with all these different positions, everybody has to be on the same page. Everybody shares a spotlight. Some get the spotlight naturally, some don't. Some are seen as more important than others. But they're not. If you don't have 11 guys on the field all playing together, then the team itself is not gonna function.

So in an organization, every single person is important. The people that clean the buildings or mow the yard are just as important as the people who are directing, marketing, whatever. You have to have that buy in and that team atmosphere from everybody, and it needs to be healthy because some organizations run on fear. That can work for a period of time but after a while, fear quits working. Same with coaching. I believe it's the same and coaching. And I coached Little League and stuff like that and I saw coaches and football parent coaches who would belittle the players or humiliate the players in front of the rest of the team and I just found that very detrimental in the long term. After a while you yell at them enough, they're gonna quit listening, you know? And so I think, as an organization you have to have all the parts working together, and you have to have people that feel like they're involved and that and that their part is important. No matter what position it is, they all need to feel it.

It can be difficult to gauge the overall happiness because a lot of times people put on a face in front of you. They're not being honest- they may act like everything is going good, but in the back, when they're talking to their coworkers there, mumbling and grumbling about things. So it's kind of hard is being in the executive in high level, but you got to get out and go talk to the people. I tried to make it a point to go meet with all the departments and just sit and talk and let them ask questions, bring up ideas. I thought it was really big for everybody to contribute ideas, no matter if it is their department or somebody else's department. If they have input and they have feel valued, then they're going to start working more mentally on how to come up with ideas and how to make changes if they feel like they're gonna be heard. You can't do all the ideas that are brought up. Sometimes their ideas don't work, or there's reasons that we can't do that. And you just have to explain to them these are the hurdles with your idea.. But either way, it really makes him feel valued, you know? And they should be valued. They are valued. I mean, they're your people. They see the stuff every day that you don't see. And so I would try to go down and set with the department's periodically and just listen and walk around. But they had to feel comfortable, and they have to feel like they can trust you. And so that's a big part of it- building a relationship with your team so that you understand who they are. You know what their goals in life are, what they're wanting to accomplish, even outside of the organization. And so, in order to get that honest feedback, you really have to have some type of relationship and trust.

Every everybody, especially every manager in an organization has to put the organization first. That's their job. Everything you do, you kind of weigh it off of that. But at the same time your team is the one getting the job done right? So you have to give them the tools that they need, the training they need. Understand what it is they need by listening.

You need to have a relationship with your team, but you don’t necessarily want to be besties.

You have to have a separation and respect for your team’s boundaries. I have had a lot of people that worked for me, and a lot of them became close friends. But at the same time, it could be difficult if you get too close to make decisions that are unbiased. You’re striving for the best interest of the organization at the end of the day, and so you want a relationship with them, but it's also difficult to be hanging out with them all the time on the weekends and stuff like that, because I really feel like you have to have some level of separation there. You’re still the boss. So you're still gonna have to make calls. That may be difficult or even sometimes you might even have to let people go.

When it’s 5 o’clock, or whatever time your team is done for the day, let them go home. There's times, obviously, in any organization where you're gonna have something come up, and you've got to talk after hours. But if you were to see me calling or texting, you know it's something that we need to handle right now, so that's gonna happen. But for the most part, I go home. I'll leave my stuff at work best I can, and I want them to leave their work at work. Go home and let them hav private lives and enjoy their family. Whatever it is, I don't want to be bothering him at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night or on the weekends.

I think it's a respect both ways. And sometimes, like I say, you got to call all hands on deck. Well, when there’s somebody that's been respected, they are more likely to get in there and buckle down and get it done, then somebody that's getting treated like that on a daily basis. Eventually, your production is just going to go down and they're gonna burn out. So if you're that employee and you don't feel like you have that level of confidence to be able to communicate to your supervisor, then it's a difficult position to be in but you HAVE to communicate. Some people tend to really error here and be a dictator and that’s not okay.

Organizational Happiness can correlate with the people in their positions - are they the right fit?

You have people that are called to the organization and people they're called through. Some people there are there for life, their position is their goal. That's where they wanna be. And then for some people, it's transitional. They're there for a period of time. You might even only be there for a period of time. I mean, we're all somewhere for a period of time. Nothing's really permanent. And so I think that it really comes back to understanding that specific person and what their goals are. And I think a lot of times employees may struggle to tell their manager that, you know, this is not my life dream. As a manager, you have to respect that, right? “I want to see you succeed, whether it's here or somewhere else” is what I always told people. If you're feeling like you're not supposed to be here anymore and you're just doing it for a paycheck, then you really should consider going somewhere else and doing what you love to do or what you want to do, because you're not doing anybody any favors.

And you can fill that spot with someone who really wants to be there.

There's givers and takers. You can sum people up in one of those two categories. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out which one they are. When I meet you and you're telling me a project you're doing or whatever, I'll start thinking, “How can I help you?” I don't start thinking, “Okay, how can I help you and get paid for it?”
”What's the angle for me?” But I'll start thinking about relationships who I know that might be able to help you with your project. And there's other people that when they meet you, they're sitting there thinking, What can I get from them?

Another huge thing that will help with overall happiness are good reviews.

Most reviews historically, that I've been around are just bull. Everybody puts excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Then they get a 4% raise and there's really no meat behind it. I've looked at other managers’ appraisals for years- everybody gets excellent or exceeds when I know everybody below them is not excellent and exceeding. But the problem is is that they get that review once a year and what goes in the review is what the manager can think of for the last six weeks or two months. Not actually the whole year. The way appraisals need to be done is, employees want to know what they’re being held accountable for. They want to know what their job is. “This is your job. This is how you're gonna be graded for it,” and there needs to be measurements of success in there for people that don’t have an easily trackable success trail. Take housekeeping. How do you measure that? That could be a little bit difficult, because there's not a measurable there. But for each and every individual they need to know what they're being held accountable for and know what they're being graded on, know what the responsibilities are. You need to establish that with them up front and say, “This is your job. This is what you're supposed to do.” It sounds simple, but so many people come to work and they don't get the training they need, they just get thrown into the mix, and then they don't really know what they're being held held accountable for. So those things need to be measurable for the individual, for their department and for the organization. “All the way from the top down, here's our goal. Here is our vision. Here's how we're gonna measure whether or not we're obtaining that goal and that vision as an organization. Here's your department. Here's what your department's responsible for. Here's how your department's gonna be graded.” And then EVERYONE knows. But then you hold them accountable to it. When you hold them accountable by those measurements, now, when you do that appraisal, you have something measurable to say, “Okay, you fell short in this area. Your attitude's great, but your production is low and it needs to be brought up.”

If they don't reach the expectation that you have for them, then you really have to ask yourself, “Why is it me? Is that my lack of training? Have I not taught them what they need? Do they need more training? Do they need different tools, or is it them?"

But you got to reiterate that with people from a macro level and all the way down to a micro level. But the organization has to know what their goals are, what the vision is. And you have to keep reminding them.

If you have any questions about this topic, please leave it in the comments below and I’ll be sure to answer them.

JC.