“No one wants to work anymore!” This is a common phrase I hear from managers and business leaders who are fed up. These managers and executives are tired of trying all of the carrots and sticks that used to work in hiring, training, and motivating their employees only to see them fail. I get it. When you look at the work world through the same lens you’ve been wearing for decades, it would seem that way. Employment rates are down, still not having recovered from the ‘Great Resignation’. Those who remain in the workforce are viewed as exhausting toddlers, always asking why and never taking ‘because I said so’ as enough. As a leader, at any level in the organization, it can feel like you have two full time jobs. One to do the work, and one to explain why we do the work. So, beat down and frustrated we assume, they just don’t want to work. But is it that? Or is it just that they don’t want to follow you? Learn the how I first learned this (before I had the data to back me up) on YouTube.
People want to work
We know people want to work. Unemployment rates have fluctuated through recessive periods but in recent years average out to about 4.2% which is roughly the same as the early 2000s, before 2005. We also know that many of those people who left the workforce started businesses of their own. New businesses created between 2017 and 2019 hovered right around 3.5M each year. In more recent years we’re up to about 5.5M. So people, want to work, just not the same way they used to.
The truth is, people want to work, they just don’t want to follow anymore. Even as recently as 10-15 years ago people were eager for a mentor, someone who would take them under their wing and show them what to do and how. Now, people want to make their own contributions, in their own way. They don’t want the old mentor insisting on trust and pointing to how things have always been done as the rule. People want to make their mark at work, and have enough bandwidth to make a mark at home too. So, you can still achieve great things with your employees, you’ll just have to use a different lens.
If they don’t want to follow, what do they want?
People do want to work. They want to do work to they care about and do it with people they care about. They want to do that work with a high degree of autonomy. All of that to say, people want to feel connection in their work. Connection both to what they’re doing and who they’re doing it with. When you as a leader can strongly engage your team, you’ll have a group who is energized and excited for the work they do and they’ll move heaven and earth for those they work with.
This isn’t my opinion, we see this time and again in data. Some of the most respected data on what drives employee engagement are Gallup employee surveys. Their results are respected and utilized the world over. The questions in that survey that have the biggest impact on employee engagement speak to connection. Three of the top five most impactful questions in the Q12 speak directly to connection and autonomy.
- At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? This question digs into how your work connects to you uniquely as a person.
- Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person? This question asks directly about your connection to others.
- At work, do your opinions seem to count? This question gets to the autonomy and involvement of the employee in change, decisions, and expectations.
Without a leader, that work can’t get done
So people want to do work that is important to them, with people they care about. They want to be autonomous in that work and they do not want to follow. Strong leadership is the only way to get that important and connected work done. Without a leader there is no one to prioritize the work, assigning it to the most qualified person and fending off asks that detract from the priorities. And without a leader there is no one to connect with each individual on the team. No one to help each person see how important their role is. No one to act as the conductor, highlighting and then softening voices until we get the most beautiful harmony. Without a leader you don’t have the clarity and vision needed to complete that important work that the team connected so strongly with.
At the heart of it, leaders organize and communicate. That is the job, and it’s a crucial one. As a leader you get to connect each individual on your team to the vision with their unique contribution. So you can help that talented and quiet claims adjuster share their unique way of showing compassion to an injured worker which could change how your whole team views their initial contacts. With time, you have reduced days off work for injured workers, and happier customers with lower premiums. That is the power of leading with what is most important to people.
Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com
What does it take to lead people who don’t want to follow?
We want engaged, empowered employees who get results and our teams want connections to work and people without having to follow. How do we get there? We focus on building the three most critical aspects of leadership.
Be a leader they connect to
People want connection and that starts with you as their leader. Those Gallup engagement questions I referenced in the Q12, every question on that survey is 70% influenced by the direct manager. That means that no matter what else is going on at work or who else is pouring into or taking from their lives, your team’s engagement is 70% impacted by you. That is a lot of power, use it well. Get curious about them, find out what drives them and what they value. Find out what they see as their biggest talents and look for ways to use those talents in their work. Your job is communication and organization, use your top priorities to build those connections with your team. That way they’ll see you, not as the boss who they have to follow, but as another critical member of the team they want to connect with.
Clients find that they start to see the connections come to life, when they first connect with themselves. In coaching you first understand your talents and how your specific strengths equip you to lead. There are always strengths that catch clients off guard because they always considered them a weakness. One client beat himself up for taking on too much, controlling everything, and wanting to have a hand in every project. When we discovered his top strength was Arranger it made perfect sense. He built respect for that talent, and learned to use it to lead rather than control, through coaching. Leading himself that way allowed him to show more understanding and respect for one specific member of his team who clearly had a talent for creating harmony. The two talents conflicted at the surface but could bridge gaps for both of them when my client started leading through it.
Clarify the vision
To feel connected to the work, your team needs to know where it’s going. No one feels intrinsically connected to phishing tests, making sales calls, and following customer service scripts. You have to connect it for them. You have to communicate the vision of the organization and connect it to the work that they do. Help your employees see, they aren’t sending phishing emails, they are protecting the integrity of customer data. They aren’t just making insurance sales calls, they are offering an opportunity for protection in what could be the most devastating moment of their lives.
This is like the story of the three masons. You may have heard the story before, if not head to YouTube to see the full version. Whether you know the masons by heart or this is the first time you’ve heard it, look at it through the lens of their leaders. One supervisor never explained why the mason did anything. He just managed the tasks. The next connected with the mason and helped him see what it would do for him personally to lay the bricks. The third painted the most beautiful vision of why the mason does what he does. He is erecting a cathedral that will not only earn him money for his family but will be a beacon of hope for generations to come. That is the power of connecting to the company vision.
Connect the values
Once you’ve connected with your team, and you’ve given them a clear view of where and why you’re going, you have to tie the two together. This is one area that I’ll hop up on my soap box about. This is where leaders quit trying and get burnt out. You realize the company values fiscal responsibility. But you connected with Susie and she feels under valued and wants a 15% raise. Now you panic because they conflict. You assume that you weren’t born to be a leader because connecting those two doesn’t just naturally click. Well, this isn’t natural. Connecting the vision of an organization to the personal values of an individual is not natural. But it is absolutely something that you can do.
It takes mastery of communication. Mastering communication with your employees means never having to think twice about how to motivate them. That’s because you tie what they are doing to the vision of the organization as effortlessly as tieing the two laces of your shoe. Mastering communication means those big scary announcements you used to tremble at the thought of sharing feel smaller and manageable. That’s because you’ve laid the foundation of where the company is going and why. Now you’re just adding the bricks to build up each step in how you’ll get there. When you master communication, everything feels ordered and predictable. That is the very reason we spend more than half of our time in coaching focused on mastering it. So you can have that calm connection with your team that allows them to have the autonomy they want, while giving you the influence you need.
People don’t want to follow you, and if you can get past that, you’ll win.
I typically don’t share stats. That is because specific numbers fluctuate but principles and human nature do not. People want to feel valued for their contribution and that is why you see the shift in the workforce in general. What you don’t see represented in the numbers is how many middle managers have left or been forced out of their roles.
Is it harder to lead people now than it was 20 years ago, you bet. All that means is that the elite group of exceptional leaders that rise to the top will be the richest cream of the crop. When you build your leadership skills now, you become that valuable leader who can, as one client put it, ‘work sorcery’, with your words. You can be ready for every opportunity that comes your way, and start creating your own. Let’s talk about how.