Why Employee Empowerment is Important in the Workplace

Posted on 2012/11/26 by Jason Hensel

I’ve always said I’m at my most productive and innovative at work when I’m given autonomy. That feeling of empowerment and trust from management motivates me to help the company succeed because it’s all on my shoulders.

Now there is some research from the University of Illinois that shows autonomy plays a major role in increasing “employee commitment to continuous improvement initiatives.”

“Continuous improvement initiatives are typically bundled with employee empowerment techniques,” said Gopesh Anand, a business professor at Illinois. “We always hear, ‘If you empower employees, they will take care of the improvements.’ But what happens repeatedly is that this employee empowerment is management-driven, and it does not work.”

“It’s a paradox–employee empowerment being forced upon employees by management,” said Dilip Chhajed, a business professor at Illinois and director of the technology management program in the College of Business. “What usually ends up happening is that employees feel they are being forced into doing something that they may not even see as being very useful.”

The research offers three points on how to enhance employee commitment to improvement at work.

The day-to-day work environment needs to be perceived by employees as autonomous.
As continuous improvement involves making changes to the very practices that frontline employees use in their day-to-day work, trust in leadership is critical.
A higher degree of trust in leadership further leads to proactive behaviors by frontline employees, encouraging them to use the autonomy in their day-to-day jobs to seek out and make systematic improvements to work practices.

“Many times, employees end up working on continuous improvement projects simply because the CEO is telling them to participate in the initiative,” Anand said. “But they aren’t really sold on this idea of making an effort to improve their workplace and work practices.”

“Workers need to have a sense of control over their work environment,” said Luis Delfin, a graduate student who co-wrote the research. “They need to be able to decide how and what to do in their day-to-day work. And that’s actually what motivates them to improve. Their buy-in becomes even stronger when leadership provides them the support to do this.”

However, employees shouldn’t think of improvements as extra work.

“Employees can’t think of it as, ‘This is something being brought down upon us by upper management,’ ” Anand said. “If they do, it becomes extra work that they’re not compensated for.”

“The big one for employees is, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ” Chhajed said. “Management is trying to make things more efficient, so what does that mean for my job, my work hours? That’s why employees need to trust that management is looking out for their best interests. If they don’t have that trust, then even autonomy is not going to help as much. Trust is huge, because you don’t want the perception that management is coercing employees to do this.”

Also, management shouldn’t be the main instigator of change.

“There should be some top-down direction in terms of where the initiative should go and what are we in business for,” Anand said. “But there needs to be balance between the top-down goals and the bottom-up improvements.

“It’s like building a bridge from both sides,” Delfin said. “Upper management usually has the vision, but at the same time they’re not the experts on how things get done on the ground. So you need to have frontline employees who have some freedom because you are trying to get all of this to meet in the middle. That means that the leaders in management need to act more like coaches, and less like dictators. You need a cooperative environment where leaders are guiding and coaching, and employees are participating.”

Are you given a lot of autonomy at your job? Or does management dictate your every move and decision?

(Story materials from the University of Illinois. Image via Flickr: Ryan / Creative Commons.)

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Micro-Management is My Kryptonite

Posted on 2012/11/202012/11/19 by Jason Hensel

Inc.com recently ran a story titled “10 Leadership Practices to Stop Today,” by Paul Spiegelman. It’s a great piece, and I agree with all 10 recommendations, especially No. 1: “Out: Micro-management, or the need to control every aspect of your company. In: Empowerment, the ability to give your people some rope–even rope to make mistakes without blame.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m a writer, someone who makes his scratch in the creative arts, but micro-management is the Kryptonite to my creativity and productivity. Whenever I’m being micro-managed, I feel less empowered, less trusted, and more like a slave.

In fact, researchers from Harvard Business School and Rice University did a study last year and found that “workers perform just fine when managers don’t keep close tabs on them, and that workers are more likely to be fearful of experimenting when their managers micromanage; as a result, the employees learn less and performance suffers,” as reported by Kimberly Weisul for CBS News.

The struggle for me is knowing how to handle micro-management. Sure, I play along and let managers know everything I’m doing down to the last detail. But I can only allow myself to do that for so long before I become either depressed or angry. Neither of those are good for my health or career.

What does one do? How have you handled micro-managing in your career? How can a lower-level employee convince leadership that a lack of autonomy is stifling creativity, productivity, and a healthy mental state?

(Image via Flickr: ZaCky / Creative Commons)

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Why Ask Why?

Posted on 2012/11/052012/11/06 by Jason Hensel

I once had a boss that said we should always ask why three times. I never took up the recommendation to her face, but the advice has stuck with me for many years.

When you ask why questions, as opposed to how questions, you open people up to a more abstract way of thinking.

“‘Why’ questions make people think more in terms of the big picture, more in terms of intentions and goals, whereas more concrete ‘how’ questions are focused on something very specific, something right in front of you, basically,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Jesse Preston.

Preston, along with two other researchers, recently conducted a study to test abstract thinking’s influence on political beliefs. They used the Islamic community center and mosque in New York because it’s a strong polarizing issue.

The first study showed that after viewing a plane fly into the World Trade Center, conservatives and liberals held opposing views of the mosque at ground zero.

The second study, however, had participants answer three why questions or three how questions in a row on an unrelated subject before offering their views about the mosque.

Preston says the why questions (not the how questions) brought liberals and conservatives closer together.

“We observed that liberals and conservatives became more moderate in their attitudes,” Preston said. “After this very brief task that just put them in this abstract mindset, they were more willing to consider the point of view of the opposition.

“We tend to think that liberals and conservatives are on opposite sides of the spectrum from each other and there’s no way we can get them to compromise, but this suggests that we can find ways of compromising,” Preston continued. “It doesn’t mean people are going to completely change their attitudes, because these are based on pervasive beliefs and world views. But it does mean that you can get people to come together on issues where it’s really important or perhaps where compromise is necessary.”

Asking why questions isn’t limited to politics. It can be used in the workplace, too, granted that you have a supervisor who is open to other viewpoints. The best ones are open and will have good answers for all three of your why questions.

And if they don’t, continue asking why.

BONUS: Here’s a clip from Lucky Louie showing that by asking why one can really get to the true reason behind something.

(Story quotes from the University of Illinois. Image via Flickr: Brendio / Creative Commons.)

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Being in Service to Others

Posted on 2012/10/092012/10/12 by Jason Hensel

Why? by Bart Everson

There’s been a lot of talk at this conference I’m attending about being in service to others. That helping others is the path to happiness and contentment.

I agree with that, and I do try to be of service as much as possible. Lately, though, I feel like I’m being in service just to make others look good. I have a problem with that, because it’s selfish.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and gaining experience, but I’ve been noticing this selfish behavior a lot more. It’s especially prevalent in the workplace. I know a lot of folks are trying to get ahead, get that big promotion, cash that big paycheck. I don’t care about any of that, so when I’m asked to do things for someone so he or she can get all those things, I feel disgusted. At the person and with myself for helping.

In the future, I’m going to start asking why a lot more. That way, I can figure out the real reason something is asked of me. Will that be annoying? Yes, but maybe in the end, the person doing the asking may realize how selfish some requests are and stop the behavior.

(Image via Flickr: Bart Everson / Creative Commons)

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Shakespeare and Lehrer

Posted on 2012/08/082012/08/08 by Jason Hensel

I’ll begin by declaring that I make no excuses for Jonah Lehrer’s actions nor justify his behavior. Frankly, I’m disappointed by what has happened. What I’m proposing here, though, is a clue to why things transpired as they did.

As a fan of his writing for many years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview him twice for the publication for which I work. It was me that prodded my organization to hire him to speak at our annual conference. After three years of pushing for him as a keynote speaker, he finally gave a well-received address to our association’s members in July. It was his last major speaking engagement before his fall from grace.

If you’re reading this and you have no idea who Jonah Lehrer is or what he did, then let me recap. He’s a neuroscientist and popular science writer with three books (two of them best sellers) under his belt, a heavy speaking engagement slate, and a New Yorker staff writer. Well, he was. He was all of these things until he admitted to misquoting Bob Dylan in his recent book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. He resigned from the New Yorker, and now all his books are being thoroughly fact-checked for any other misquotes or fabrications.

Fact-checkers will determine in the coming weeks how far Lehrer has to climb out of his hole. In the meantime, I’d like to address the last chapter in Imagine, and the clues it offers as to what may have been going on in Lehrer’s mind as he wrote the book. I’m not a psychologist or doctor or anything of the sort. This is pure speculation, but something to consider when talking about Lehrer’s proposed sins.

In “The Shakespeare Paradox,” Lehrer begins by telling how Shakespeare was a genius at using others’ works and knitting them together to create is own “original” plays.

But Shakespeare didn’t just read these texts and imitate their best parts. He made them his own, seamlessly blending them together in his plays. Sometimes, this literary approach got Shakespeare into trouble. His peers repeatedly accused him of plagiarism, and he was often guilty, at least by contemporary standards. What these allegations failed to take into account, however, was that Shakespeare was pioneering a new creative method in which every conceivable source informed his art. For Shakespeare, the act of creation was inseparable from the act of connection.

Could it be that Lehrer was purposely misquoting Dylan in order to connect his ideas and his ideas to his audience? Four hundred years from now, will we be declaring Lehrer a genius, as we declare Shakespeare is?

It’s argued that the biggest difference is Shakespeare dealt in fiction. Plagiarism, though, doesn’t differentiate. I’m sure some of those playwrights and authors would love a slither of Shakespeare’s fame attached to them.

Lehrer, later in the chapter, discusses how copyrights and their continuous extensions stifle creativity.

The problem with these extensions is that they discourage innovation, preventing people from remixing and remaking old forms…And that his why we should always think of young William Shakespeare stealing from Marlowe and Holinshed and Kyd. (If Shakespeare were writing today, his plays would be the subject of endless lawsuits.) It doesn’t matter if it’s a hip-hop album made up of remixes and music samples or an engineer tweaking a gadget in a San Jose garage: we have to make sure that people can be inspired by the work of others, that the commons remains a rich source of creativity.

Lehrer is a huge Dylan fan. Was Dylan’s creative process of using others’ tunes to craft his own music an inspiration to Lehrer? Is the role of remixing (accomplished with quotes, too) a way of making something more clear, a way of bringing forth a universal truth?

So many questions, I know. As mentioned, I’m a fan of Lehrer, and this situation has me questioning him, his research, and the role of the writer in today’s society. Perhaps Lehrer’s book title inspired him.

…although the imagination is inspired by the everyday world–by its flaws and beauties–we are able to see beyond our sources, to imagine things that exist only in the mind. We notice an incompleteness and we can complete it; the cracks in things become a source of light. (From the “Coda” section)

If Lehrer misquoted/remixed Dylan (or maybe other sources), if he added lines to complete a thought to help us understand our minds a little better, is that a bad thing? Do you care if it’s truth or fiction if it helps you become a better person?

What I’m ultimately asking is: What’s the big deal? I can hear a lot of you gasping and saying, “Oh my, what gall!” Does Michael Moynihan’s discovery of the Dylan misquotes change the overall message of the book? The answer is no. Does knowing Shakespeare stole from others diminish your appreciation of his plays? Once again, the answer is no. Should Lehrer had been more upfront about how he created his work? Personally, I say yes, but as we’ve seen over time, artists and writers rarely acknowledge who or from what they’re cribbing. Before we draw and quarter these creators, perhaps we should all stop for a moment and examine the stories we tell ourselves in order to live a little more fully day after day. By doing so, we’ll soon find that we’re not that much different from Shakespeare, or Jonah Lehrer.

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GOOD Job Looking for a Partner

Posted on 2012/04/25 by Jason Hensel

I subscribe to The Daily GOOD, an e-newsletter sent by GOOD magazine that highlights something positive someone is doing around the world. I’ve learned about a lot of great projects and ideas by reading it, some that I even pass on to my features editor for possible profiles in our magazine.

I’ve also learned that GOOD magazine hasn’t fulfilled its L.A. features editor position in a long time. Every now and then there’s a house ad in the e-newsletter that says “GOOD is Hiring!” I click on it to see what’s available (to co-workers or bosses reading this, I’m not looking actively for a new job, just checking out the landscape). The L.A.-based features editor position is always there, looking like the last person asked to dance.

Perhaps GOOD has fulfilled the position and just hasn’t taken down the posting, which if so, isn’t very nice to people who keep submitting resumes for it. Or maybe the magazine just can’t find the perfect candidate, which I think in L.A. shouldn’t be that hard to do. I don’t know the full story; it’s just strange to me the same job is always listed, especially for a great magazine like GOOD.

It’s also strange that they’re limiting the pool of applicants to only L.A.-based editors. I’m sure there are a ton of great applicants that could do the job working from home. Yes, I know all about the benefits of casual conversation in the workplace and its role in innovation. GOOD magazine, though, pushes forward-thinking ideas, and a flexible work arrangement is one of the best workplace ideas around, especially in terms of environmental sustainability, physical and mental health, and compensation.

As I said, I don’t know the full story. If you’re in L.A., though, and looking for an editorial job, there’s one waiting for you. Don’t leave it hanging.

(Photo via Flickr: Luce Beaulieu / Creative Commons)

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Employees Are Your Best Customers

Posted on 2012/04/132012/04/13 by Jason Hensel

At every job I’ve had, I’ve heard phrases such as “the customer is always right,” or “think of the value to the customer.” While those sentiments are good, I never hear anything about a product or decision being valuable to an employee. It’s as if business leaders are too focused on keeping customers happy that they forget about employees. And that’s crazy, because employees are your best customers.

The main reason a business treats its customers well is because they will be happy and spread the word to their friends and family about how great the business is. Couldn’t the same be said for your employees? Treat them well, contribute to their happiness, and they’ll extend that feeling in dealing with customers.

It makes so much sense that I’m confused as to why it’s not addressed more. If you’re leader, please do everyone a favor and the next time you want to ask something like “What is the customer value?” please pause and actually ask “What is the value for the customer and the employee?” Running a successful business is a two-way street, and more often than not most leaders have a one-track mind.

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Nay-sayers Be Nay-saying

Posted on 2011/11/282011/11/28 by Jason Hensel

I’m usually a positive person. I like to think that I’m really open-minded and flexible. But lately, I’ve been experiencing a case of the nay-says, for myself and in my relationships with others.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this has started. Perhaps it’s because I experience a lot of nay-saying from others, and it’s just rubbed off on me. How many times must your ideas be nay-sayed before you just preemptively nay-say them yourself?

It’s debilitating. It creates a negative cycle that’s difficult to escape. I guess I can take comfort in the fact that I’m noticing it, but that doesn’t make it go away when it’s delivered from others.

After a quick Google search, I found several articles about how to deal with nay-sayers. Basically, I should stay away from them. But when you can’t, what do you do? Don’t let it get to you? Tried that; still trying that.

I think the best thing to do is to remain positive, offer positive rebuttals to the nay-sayers. It’s a fierce struggle, but if you stick with it, your positive attitude will prevail.

For example, when offering up something new at work, the conversation could go like this:

Positive You: I found a great thing that we can add to our system that will increase productivity, streamline our workflow and it’s free.

Nay-sayer: It doesn’t fit our strategy, and it won’t make us any money.

Positive You: This would be a great time, then, to discuss our strategy, especially if it’s one that doesn’t allow for greater productivity with free products.

Granted, the nay-sayer could counter with even more nay-saying. Just keep lobbing positive laser beams at that person. Eventually, you’ll win.

Or go down in a blaze of glory. There I go again, nay-saying myself.

(Photo via Flickr: Ahd Photography / Creative Commons)

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Your Face May Keep You from Getting Hired

Posted on 2011/11/15 by Jason Hensel

Have a big scar on your face? Maybe a huge mole? You might want to figure a way to cover up that mark if you’re seeking a job. A new study shows that marks (stigmas) on faces are huge distractions to interviewers, causing them to remember the stigma more than content.

“When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, it’s important to remember what they are saying,” Rice University Professor of Psychology Mikki Hebl said. “Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them.”

The research conclusions came from two studies. The first involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while tracking their eye activity. They had to recall candidate information after the interview.

“When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth,” said Juan Madera, a University of Houston professor and co-author of the study. “We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate’s interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant.”

Face-to-face interviews were held during the second study. Thirty-eight full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for current or past staff positions, interviewed candidates who had a facial birthmark.

Even with their workplace experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera says. The stigma’s effects were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting.

“It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma,” Madera said.

“The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview,” Hebl said. “There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further, showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.”

Well, now, even more proof that looks do matter. What, then, is a good solution?

(Photo via Flickr: Bart Everson / Creative Commons)

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Good Credit Scores and Rudeness

Posted on 2011/11/08 by Jason Hensel

One of the most ridiculous parts of the job hiring process is letting a company conduct a credit check to determine if you are financially responsible. Yes, I can see how this might be a good process for a job at a bank, for example. But just because you have a good or bad credit score shouldn’t qualify or disqualify you for most jobs.

Now, there’s some research to back up my belief. In fact, people who have good credit scores are more likely rude.

In a study to be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers from Louisiana State University, Texas Tech University and Northern Illinois University focused on links between credit ratings and personalities.

“With regards to personality and credit–it makes sense that conscientiousness is related to good credit, but what was really interesting was that agreeableness was negatively related to your credit score,” said Jeremy Bernerth, assistant professor in LSU’s E. J. Ourso College of Business Rucks Department of Management. “That suggests easy-going individuals actually have worse credit scores than disagreeable and rude individuals. This suggests that agreeable individuals might get themselves in trouble by co-signing loans for friends or family or taking out additional credit cards at the suggestion of store clerks.”

The researchers also found that there’s no correlation between poor scores and bad behavior on the job.

“It was telling that poor credit scores were not correlated to theft and other deviant types of work behaviors,” said Bernerth. “Most companies attempt to justify the use of credit scores because they think such employees will end up stealing, but our research suggests that might not be the case.”

I shared this study with an HR professional. She suggested that those who score poorly could also be more naive, which is something you don’t want in the workplace.

Interesting. Would you rather have a nice and naive or disagreeable and rude employee working for or with you?

(Photo via Flickr: Richard Lemarchand / Creative Commons)

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Social Media Preferred Over Salary

Posted on 2011/11/042011/11/04 by Jason Hensel

There’s some good news from the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report. In it, 40 percent of college students or young professionals say they would take lower paying jobs if companies offered more flexible social media policies.

This shows, to me, that people are getting away from the idea that money buys happiness. We’re becoming a society that values time more than how fat a wallet can get.

Findings include:

Half of those surveyed would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smart phone or mobile device.
More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
At least one in four said the absence of remote access would influence their job decisions, such as leaving companies sooner rather than later, slacking off, or declining job offers outright.
Three out of 10 feel that once they begin working, it will be their right–more than a privilege–to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

For years, I’ve gone on record several times where I work that I’d take a pay cut if management would allow me more freedom in my workday. It’s a losing argument, though, because it means managers have to give up some control. They would have to focus mainly on results.

The result of a controlling mindset, though, could be a disengaged, unproductive workforce. That is, if people actually want to work for a company like that anymore. And it’s beginning to a lot look like people don’t.

How important is social media access and workplace flexibility to you? Or are you just happy to have a job (if you have one)?

(Photo via Flickr: Kalyan Chakravarthy / Creative Commons)

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