When was the last time a manager or coworker asked you “When are you at your best at work? When do you feel most alive?” If you’re like most people, the answer is “Never! No one’s ever asked me that before.”
We often ask this question when kicking off a strengths-based org development session, such as a Strengthscope debriefing or an Appreciative Inquiry Summit, and the reactions are telling. Silence. Nervous laughter. Confusion. Stalling with questions – When I’m at my best? Joking – “At 5pm when I’m going home!” Eventually though, the room grows quiet, and the furrowed brows relax as the participants write notes in response to the three prompts that make up the whole exercise:
- Think of a time when you were at your best at work.
- What were you doing? Include as much detail as you can remember.
- List three words that describe how you felt at that moment.
The tasks and situations they describe vary widely, but the “three words” predictably include confident, competent, happy, energized, fully-engaged, and alive – the very feelings and attitudes employers want to see and hear from their employees every day but that too often seem like the holy grail.
What’s the secret?
People working on projects and under conditions that they find intrinsically-motivating. As I write this, I can imagine supervisors and managers rolling their eyes envisioning total chaos if people “only work on what they want to.” I can even hear my mother’s voice in my head, “We all have to do things we don’t like to do. Now get busy!”
What decades of research by the Gallup organization and organizational psychology academics have shown, however, is that when people work on tasks under conditions that allow them to apply their strengths, they are several times more productive! So the point is not to coddle or cater to unmotivated employees but rather to create conditions that enable motivated employees to do their best work.
Where to begin?
So how exactly might an organization – or even a single department – go about shifting their current work structure from one based solely on functional roles to one that better leverages employees’ intrinsic motivation? It’s a process, of course, and the first step is to help employees identify their strengths. We spend so much time telling people where they “need to improve” that employees often don’t really know what lights them up. There are several instruments in the marketplace. StrengthsFinders, recently renamed CliftonStrengths is the most commonly used assessment in the United States. I prefer Strengthscope, an instrument developed in the UK and approved by the British Psychological Association, because it specifically identifies the types of work tasks and situations that a person finds intrinsically-motivating, not just what they’re good at.
Don’t have time or budget for a formal assessment? You could begin by just noticing when you see each team member light up and what’s going on when each person tends to disengage. If you’re comfortable with a more participative approach, consider starting with the question “When do you feel most alive at work?” If nothing else, you’ll gain new insight into your employees – and maybe even yourself! Then discuss as a team how you might organize your work to make these alive moments happen more often for everyone.
Good luck! Feel free to reach out with questions or comments – [email protected] or 512.387.2756.
