When Happiness Is Not Enough: Balancing Pleasure And Achievement In Your Life by Chris Skellett

Author:Chris Skellett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: When Happiness is Not Enough
Publisher: Exisle Publishing
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘You don’t win people’s hearts ... you connect with their hearts’

Peter came to see me as the leader of a sales and marketing team from a top manufacturing company. He was passionate about the business, but was disappointed in his staff’s lack of enthusiasm and ‘buy-in’ to the organisation’s goals. Despite offering salary incentives, performance bonuses and rewards for successfully meeting sales targets, he felt that they were only there for themselves. He had somehow failed to engage his team in his vision of how far the business could grow and to see their own part in the plan.

Peter felt that his staff never went the extra mile. They only performed to a standard that worked for them, and they seemed mercenary, rather than loyal.

We went on to consider the concept of loyalty in more detail. We noted that often people have very logical relationships in business, either as customers or as employees. They look for the cheapest price or the best salaries. But customer loyalty, or staff loyalty, is what motivates people to continue to buy from you, or work for you, even though the conditions might be better elsewhere. It’s not logical to buy from you, or to work for you, but people still do.

Customer loyalty and staff loyalty only arise when people connect with an organisation. When people let their hearts rule their heads. Unless you can inspire your staff, the relationship stays purely functional and logical. A loyal workforce, however, feels like family. The commitment is based on a sense of togetherness, rather than a sense of usefulness or personal gain. Simply put, we just like to connect with the person whom we work for or the person from whom we buy.

Peter thought long and hard about this insight, and went away a better leader as a result. The incentives didn’t seem to matter so much. Who he was as a person suddenly seemed a more important factor and provided the platform for staff ‘buy-in’ that he was looking for.

The leader’s personal vision needs to become ‘the team’s vision’, which everyone commits to and feels a sense of engagement with. It needs to have a ‘heart to heart’ quality about it; in other words, a pleasure focus. It becomes ‘a pleasure to serve’ under a leader who shows these qualities.

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