This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Create a Positive Work Environment, with Dan Shapiro, Director, Harvard International Negotiation Program
Research suggests that organizations that embrace and cultivate positive emotions tend to be more creative, the people in them tend to be more creative and happier ultimately. More productive at the end of the day.
Respect Your Talent’s’ 5 Core Emotional Concerns
From the leadership down, these core concerns are critical to address.
One, what is being done in your organization to help people feel appreciated? And yeah, you have the Employee of the Month kinds of things; that’s a piece of it, but to me that’s not the heart of it. When I have a grudge against my colleague and we’re in the midst of a project and that colleague’s driving me crazy, do we have the skills, the tools, and in a sense permission, the embracing from the top levels to really work to try and understand and appreciate where we’re each coming from. It starts at the top, it goes down, but it can work both ways.
Second, do people at all levels of the organization feel some degree of autonomy, some freedom to be able to do and feel and think as they’d like in the organization. And an organization that’s too restrictive, the people are going to start to feel some sense of potential resentment toward the top.
Core concern number three, from the top level down, to what degree do people feel affiliation, that sense of connection to the organization. Am I going to just this abstract place that I call work or am I going to a place that feels somewhat like a family away from home; you know, a quasi-family. Something that feels comfortable and nurturing to my needs. And how do you build that internal affiliation?
The fourth of our core concerns is status. Do people at all levels of your hierarchy, within your organization, do they feel respected for their experience, for the expertise they bring? If you acknowledge them you get the positive emotions; you get people who want to come and work that extra hour without even perhaps the stamp saying that they worked the extra hour.
And then the fifth of our core concerns is role. What kind of role are the people playing within your organization? Are they happy with those roles? Are they meaningful? How do you bring them in to the conversation to try and create an organization where their roles feel more meaningful, where they’re more satisfied at work? So in fact, they don’t just go to work but they want to come to work. When they go home they don’t just go home, they feel proud to talk with their friends, their family, and others about the work that they did.