In the modern business society, there is an extremely important factor in management, that is, the "goodwill of employees". Western management master Peter Drucker once said that the essence of management is to maximize the stimulation and release of the goodwill of others.
Everyone thinks carefully about the word "management" and interprets it separately as "management" and "reason". Among them, the content of "management" includes but is not limited to assigning tasks to employees, passing on goals and ensuring that people and posts match, etc., which is more inclined to practical work; while "reason" is to straighten out the relationship between employees and the company, with goals, with managers and with themselves, and to stimulate goodwill, which is a psychological factor.
So in the actual management work, how to stimulate the goodwill of employees? The following points are raised in Replicable Leadership 2:
01 Employees grow for life in order to achieve a win-win situation
Releasing the goodwill of employees is to eliminate the stiff fixed thinking of employees and cultivate their growth thinking.
This is similar to breaking the obstacles to the development of talents, providing salaries that match the value of employees is a more down-to-earth and more direct way to stimulate employees' self-motivation and willingness to struggle, and it is an indispensable and irreplaceable way.
Fixed-minded employees are the "ant nests" within the enterprise, and managers must pay enough attention.
For example, an employee eats a vegetarian meal in his or her post, when a monk strikes a clock one day, or because he doesn't like someone, so he gets in the way when he works with him. The existence of such employees in any enterprise or institution will be an obstacle to unity within the collective.
The mentality of people with growth mindset is always positive, they do not care about the gains and losses of one time and one place, but pay more attention to the factors that promote self-growth.
In addition, they have a long-term vision, can see the space and possibilities for progress in the unknown future, and are willing to fight for it and work hard for it. People with growth mindset rarely take the initiative to compare with others, they will recognize themselves inward, truly achieve "three provinces and my body", find the shortcomings and deficiencies and quickly correct them, and can deeply realize that there is still a huge room for progress in the future.
Therefore, it can be noted that most of the successful people who have achieved great success and are loved by the world have the same virtue: humility.
Ignoring the ridicule of others and insisting on self is a very powerful embodiment of personality and psychology, and it is also the embodiment of a growth personality. Because in their minds, self-growth has no limits, and the current height is only the starting point for the next peak.
Therefore, the core of managers to release the goodwill of employees is to exercise employees' growth thinking, so that they will bear in mind the view of "lifelong growth" and apply it to practice.
Everyone has heard of the word "iron rice bowl", and once, it was a dream of many people to have a job like an "iron rice bowl". However, with the development of the times and the changes in the market, this "rice bowl" is no longer generally sought after by society, and the biggest reason is that it damages the interests of enterprises and organizations, and employees themselves have lost the mentality and possibility of growth.
When a person gets the "iron rice bowl", his self-motivation and work enthusiasm are difficult to be guaranteed, and the same salary is obtained for a day of hard work and a day of leisurely mixing, and naturally no one is willing to choose to struggle. In the long run, the growth of employees cannot be discussed, and the interests and development of enterprises cannot be discussed.
In fact, the most valuable thing that the enterprise can bring to employees is to let him appreciate in value, so that he has a stronger market competitiveness, and this growth process is the most important for employees. Therefore, one of the most basic assumptions of leadership is that the company and employees should have a win-win relationship of common growth.
It is true that exploiting employees can earn money, but this method is tantamount to killing chickens and eggs, and it is extremely immoral. The fact that employees have not grown actually means that the company has not developed, and it may fail if it encounters some wind and rain.
Therefore, enterprises should continue to release the goodwill of employees, cultivate their growth thinking and lifelong growth mentality, drive their own development with the energy of employees, and support the growth of employees with the resources of the enterprise, so as to build a development cycle that is promoted by both sides.
02 Rigid system will only curb the goodwill of employees
Many rules and regulations, corporate culture, at the beginning of the establishment of the remarkable effect, but eventually make employees step by step lose the motivation to work and self-motivated and other goodwill. The original intention of the system is to solve the problem, but when the system becomes rigid, it in turn becomes an obstacle to the development of the company.
The biggest harm of the rigid system to the development of the enterprise is that it curbs the goodwill of employees and encourages the malicious intentions of employees such as passive sabotage. Due to the limited growth space and development path, many capable and ambitious employees will choose to leave under the oppression of the rigid system.
It is worth noting that a rigid system will lead to "bad money expelling good money". A company from the beginning of the growth to a certain scale, along the way will inevitably encounter a variety of problems and unreasonable, as an effective solution, the company's rules and regulations will be more and more.
With the increasing number of systems and rules, some of the truly talented, capable, and pursuing people in the company have chosen to leave, because the ubiquitous rules and regulations limit their growth and performance.
Many times, we propose rules that target specific cases, only to evolve into the result of imposing a system on all employees because of individual cases.
Too many rigid systems will lead to employees not having access to truly valuable production information and materials, and these are the elements that are meaningful and helpful for employees' self-growth. From the dilemma (growth pressure) that everyone faces, the answer that managers should get is: release the kindness of employees and grow with employees. The kindness here refers to the self-motivation and desire of employees to struggle.
Therefore, the key to management is the leadership of the company's leaders, to ensure that the company system does not become rigid and rigid, so that it restricts the behavior and goodwill of employees.
At the same time, managers should balance the relationship between the company's system and the self-growth of excellent employees, let them see the goal of hard work, and let them enjoy the fruits of struggle.
03 Excellent employees are not evaluated, but grown
A common way of judging in the market is to refer to performance appraisal, score an employee through multiple quantitative indicators, and divide employees into good and bad levels with monthly or quarterly results, ignoring the possibility of employees' own growth.
In the eyes of some employees, since the score is the final criterion for determining good or bad, getting a high score becomes their goal of pursuit, such as pleasing the leader, doing what the leader likes, or deliberately highlighting themselves in some specific work.
If all employees are focused on the score, not on work or their own growth, then where is the way out for the long-term development of the company?
Netflix has a particularly intriguing criterion, that is, departmental funds or personal bonuses will be paid in full, and no evaluation standards will ever be set.
According to the consensus of most organizations in the market, for example, to give an employee an annual salary of $1 million, it will generally use performance as an appraisal indicator, and be issued in the form of "appraisal + commission", which will play a role in motivating employees. But in Netflix, as long as employees do not leave, the annual salary of $1 million will definitely be able to give employees.
Many people can't understand this, and even wonder: what if employees don't work hard when they get money? In fact, they seriously underestimate a good meme, that is, the self-motivation and pursuit of a good talent.
Netflix abandons the "assessment + commission" method and directly gives high salaries, which directly eliminates the calculation and comparison of employees in salary appraisal, and also avoids the tribal effects that may occur due to uneven interests from the root.
In the eyes of Netflix, compared with the score in the KPI, they are more concerned about releasing the goodwill of employees, maximizing everyone's subjective willingness to struggle and self-motivation, so that every employee recruited by the company is full of talents.
Excellent employees are not tested, but grown. Now what we have to do is to rethink the performance appraisal system, break all kinds of rigid rules that bind thinking and behavior, and give employees a larger and longer-term self-growth space and time, so as to maximize the release of employees' goodwill, not only so that they can get work efficiency and work quality improvement in the short term, but also gain more possibilities in the long term.
It can be said that the essence of "releasing the kindness of employees" is to promote the growth of employees, even if it is placed in the first place of the manager's work.
Source | This article is excerpted from CITIC Publishing Group's Replicable Leadership 2