MoekoURAWA

This is a response to an external blog about managers as leaders and how their actions affect the employees’ morale and motivation.

Dealing with authorities is not the best thing.

This blogpost by Justin Babet, the Founder and CEO of JobAdvisor.com.au discusses the problem of employee demotivation due to overly egoistic employer. He talks about how his friend, John was introduced by his manager as “my employee” in their customer meeting, with the deliberate intention for his manager to uplift the customer’s perception of himself. I agree with Babet’s argument that despite John being the employee of the business, the way his manager established his authority was dishonourable because he downplayed his employee to feeling belittled, disempowered and unvalued, thus making him a bad leader. Leaders ought not to position himself above his employees at all costs. Marginalising employees prompts a low performing teams and leaders that practise such behaviour initiates the establishment of unfavourable corporate culture.

Source: http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141105024311-258376-how-to-lose-friends-and-demotivate-people?trk=tod-posts-post1-psum |Comic strip portraying a perfect example of bad leader

I will be applying the learning outcomes from Class 19 with Professor Danielle van Jaarsveld and using David McClelland’s Theory of Needs to help me analysing the ways in which managers can motivate their employees to establish a strong corporate culture. Firstly, Theory of Needs dictates that people with different kind of needs are motivated differently.

In John’s case, I can assume that he is a “need for affiliation (n-Aff)” employee since he seeks to have good social and working relationship with the management team. Similarly, the quote…

When he told me this story, John asked, “am I being too sensitive?” And yeah, maybe you could make the argument he should toughen up.

…indicates the trait of a n-Aff employee – the tendency to avoid conflict so that he/she is accepted as part of a group. Managers of such employee should provide with collaborative working environment to gain their best workforce performance, and not suppress their confidence by isolating them into feeling unimportant. Moreover, during Class 19, Professor Danielle van Jaarsveld reiterated on the implicit yet powerful link between motivated employees and being an firm with sustainable competitive advantage. By having a group of highly motivated employees, managers not only can increase the efficiency and productivity of their output but more importantly, the firm can reduce its cost of absenteeism – become socially and economically sustainable.

So, when addressing a co-worker, instead of labelling them as “my employee”, I think managers should use language like “my best programmer” and “my go-to marketing assistant” to increase employee’s sense of belonging and motivation, while simultaneously developing trust and team cohesiveness within the workforce. I believe that the cultural harmony within an organisation can only come about if all staff (inc. John’s managers) respect and share the same values. The attitude John’s manager display does not help him or his business to achieve anything but incur cost of absenteeism.

Work Cited
Babet, Justin. “How To Lose Friends and Demotivate People.” World’s Largest Professional Network. Linkedin, 5 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.