Speed of doing business has undoubtedly been on the rise. With rising usage of social media, we the people have taken a lot in our stride… right from updating others about what we are up to, what we are against and many such things to responding to many things around us. Bosses in companies have naturally been up against a wall many a times. They have to deal with many stakeholders at the same time; right from the Board, the investors, the customers, the booties, the peers to the employees, the vendors, the competitors, the regulators and so on. And many things have to happen at the same time. Banters, banishes and yelling are seen often. Bosses want the results and they need them now! At times, these expectations are unrealistic, yet they want the results now. They aren’t fools; why do they do this?
It’s the manager’s insecurity that makes the person selfish and focus on one’s own deliverable without thinking about the means to achieve the ends; misuses the authority of the role assigned to him and yells at people. Does it help the manager achieve the results in short term or long term?
In many situations, we see that a manager invokes the emotion of fear in the minds of his team members and achieves the results. This works in the short term. Is this sustainable? Certainly not! The emotion of fear is not the chord which unites the hearts and minds of people on a sustained basis.
For an organization to be growing and successful in the long run, we need to build the culture of empowering people to own up the area of work assigned to them and the overall results that the organization is producing. This is easier said than done. It requires the leadership to be confident of itself and its people; it calls on the leaders to communicate a lot and co-create the solutions to the challenges being faced by the organization. It calls for rigorous execution of the ideas and living them each day. Then, the negative energies disappear and hence, the yelling and banters. People join hands together to own up the successes and failures; they join up to move forward.
Secondly, it is about the culture of recognition. Many organizations mistake this for a monthly, quarterly and annual ritual; some have come up with the idea of spot recognition because a large part of the organization has Gen Y and Gen Z who want quick results and love instant coffee and instant noodle. Alas! The idea of recognition is getting marginalized. We must not forget the fact that the culture of recognition is to engage the high-performing employees and in a way buying an insurance for the future. Many a times an employee who is producing outstanding results and winning many awards might not be engaged the most and is ready to jump the ship when he finds the calling of the heart elsewhere. A workplace which recognizes people, involves them in deciding what is worth-recognizing and why the recognition is valuable. And similarly, the poor performance needs to be identified and discussed with due care given to the dignity of the person who performs poorly. This is again about setting the culture right. And nobody sees the need of yelling at someone else!
Last but not the least, it is in the culture of execution in the organization. Many a times, bosses do not deep-dive and leave teams in auto-pilot mode until they falter repeatedly. That surely is a recipe for yelling and banters; bosses get impatient and yell Must.Deliver.Results.Now! Hence, it’s important that the organization sets right governance in place and right spirit of execution in action!
As the speed of doing business has been on the rise and the managers have become more and more impatient, we need to calm the nerves by our pro activeness in communicating both ways about the plans, actions, external happenings and thoughts. Most likely, we will not be yelled at!
