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“I just want to make more money!”
We’ve all said it, haven’t we? I believe that everyone goes to work wanting to do their best, yet with Gallup’s reported 87% disengagement of the workforce, something isn’t going right. And the research indicates the main culprits are managers. The problem is that managers don’t know what to do to turn that around. In this episode of the Manager Mojo podcast I have a frank discussion, asking managers to examine their true motives and decide — do they just want to make more money, or are they committed to the success of their team. If you want to be the leader others want to follow (and still be able to make more money), you must listen to this episode.
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Is it all about making Money?
Today’s topic is based on this question, would you like to make more money? Now, the answer to that question is always 100%, “Well yeah, of course I want to make more money.” And yet, I think we overlook a really key point in management whenever we start talking about money.
What would you say if you heard this statement? All you ever do is whine. All you ever do is complain. What would you think when you heard that statement? I’ll bet you’re already thinking, “Well I hear it all day, every day. I don’t make enough money or I don’t have enough time or I don’t have enough resources.” We hear people complain every single day of our lives and money is no different. Nobody ever feels like they make too much. I’ve never heard anybody say, “Hey boss I’m making too much money can you reduce my pay?” I just don’t think that happens.
But, here’s what I really want us to think about today from a management perspective. I want you to think in terms of who’s asking this statement, “Hey all I ever hear you do is whine.” And I know you’re thinking about your employees right now, but that’s not what this topic is about. This topic is about you. It’s about you as a manager, you as a leader. What I want you to examine is — would your own employees really believe that all you do is ever whine? Do they ever hear you say anything that’s positive or is everything they hear from you negative?
I have to tell you that most managers I’ve had bad experiences with had such a negative energy that nothing was ever good enough. It was always complain, complain, complain. It didn’t matter how much money they were making or how much you were producing. There was always that black cloud hanging over them like, “Yeah it was good, but what are you going to do next?” And that kind of mentality, I believe, drives people absolutely crazy whenever they have to report to those managers. I know it drove me crazy.
So what I want you to do is a self-assessment. I want you to really analyze yourself. Do you focus more on yourself than you focus on your team? I believe that the vast majority of managers are focused only on themselves. It’s human nature for us to focus just on ourselves. After all, we can only control ourselves and we have this mind game going on inside our own head that nobody can hear except us. So we really and truly are self-centered. We can’t be anything else. We can’t get outside of our own head. We have to focus on ourselves.
So the question is, how do we project that? Are we actually taking that self-talk that’s going inside our own head and putting it on somebody else? Would your people say that you’re quick to point out something they’re doing wrong but they rarely hear anything positive from you? I would ask you to consider do you talk about the weaknesses that you see all around you, or do you talk about the strengths that you see around you? Be honest with yourself. Are you one of those people that truly are doing that? And I think this comes really from an honest place a lot of times inside of ourselves. Because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to improve ourselves as a manager, as a person, as a leader.
We want to make more money. We want to get promoted. We want to do well. We want to meet our team goals, and so we hold ourselves to a really high standard. That’s what got you into management in the first place. But the problem with that is that gets you there but it won’t keep you there. If you continue to simply focus on yourself, focus on the things you need to improve in yourself, and you’re not changing that mindset and changing that focus—what’s going to happen is that your outward actions to your team are going to reflect what’s going on inside your own brain. What we have to do is learn how to change this discussion. We have to learn how to think about it in a different way so that we get away from the things that most people want us to focus on. If you look at company goals, they’re nearly always related towards some type of growth. There’s an acquisition, there’s the need to get more business, there’s the desire to take care of the customer. All of those things are good and that’s the very nature of our businesses. The business should always be focused on the customer. But, the human brain cannot help but focus on themselves instead of somebody else. And in my view, that’s where a real opportunity for us to grow as a manager and as a leader lies.
We have to learn how to take that focus on the goals and turn our focus, not just directly on the goals, but focus on our people. We have to focus on how we can make each person better. And I’m not talking about sitting over them with a thumb and hammering them saying, “You did that wrong. You did that wrong. You did that wrong.” That’s not what I’m talking about at all. What I’m talking about is learning how to change your focus from yourself and your problems to focus on your team and their success. You should really be looking at each person and asking yourself honestly about each person on your team, are you really committed to their success?
Being committed means that you think about their success first. You have to think about what can make each team member a success. Then you have to think about how to help them grow their strengths and exercise the abilities they’re already good at in such a way that they will grow as both a person and have success in the job. But so many managers don’t do that. Their priorities are wrong. Their priorities are on busyness, meetings and doing stuff that really and truly never changes the focal point and turns it to individuals.
I just can’t tell you enough how often this happens and I’ll demonstrate it with a story in just a moment. But, I’m not suggesting that you don’t want to focus on your goals. You have to be focused on your goals. That’s your job. Your job is to get results as a manager. But your goals have to be congruent, or another way of saying it is that your goals have to match what the goals are for your people as well as the goals for the company. You can’t separate the two. You have to link the two.
So what you’ve got to do is create good personal relationships with every single team member in order to encourage them to do their best. If you don’t have a personal relationship, how in the world can you actually do anything that would motivate the person? By default, you’d demotivate them instead of motivate them.
So what I want you to start thinking about is how to get your goals matched up in such a way that you’ve turned the focus away from you and your problems, issues and areas of growth to look at your people and help them grow. How can you help them succeed and become the very best person they can be?
Instead let me tell you what most of us do. Every single manager on the planet knows that they should have regular one-on-one’s with their people. But let me ask you, how often do you postpone a one-on-one because you think something else is a higher priority? How long do you go in between meaningful conversations with each member of your team? I would suggest that people go far too long. Even the best-intentioned people who say, “I’m going to have a one-on-one with each team member every month,” don’t do it. They just simply say, “Steve I want to do one-on-ones, but I don’t have time.” The problem is not that you don’t have time. Every single one of us have the exact same amount of time every single day. The problem is that your priorities are not set in such a way that you’re valuing the other person and the other person’s success more than your own success, more than your own schedule and more than your own busyness. So why would you possibly reschedule a one-on-one with a team member whenever you should be focused on their success? That’s their time to grow and understand what they need to do to get better.
What happens is that we delay it, delay it, delay it. And then the worst thing happens. I coach people all the time and I’m very blessed to help people grow in their career. It’s one of the things that I love the best about what I do, getting to talk with them about strategies they can use to grow as people as well as professionals.
I’m coaching one client who shared with me that they were really just beside themselves. Let me give you an idea about this person. They are highly educated, highly motivated, incredibly talented, having every capability you’d ever want in an employee. They have drive, they have talent, they have motivation. They want to succeed and they’re committed to doing their best every single day. Wouldn’t you love to have that kind of employee? I know all of us would.
This individual shared with me that their manager had postponed their one-on-one five times in the last six weeks. Five times! I said, “How many one-on-one’s have you had in the last four months?” Only one in four months, and the last five have been moved. I was shocked. Apparently the one-on-one happened last week. And when the one-on-one occurred, this manager goes to this incredibly highly-motivated, highly educated, skilled, trained, ambitious, dedicated employee—has not had a one-on-one in forever and proceeds to tell this individual for an hour, the entire hour, everything that they thought they were doing wrong and that they had seen no success of any kind. And I was just dumbfounded because this to me is almost ridiculous. It borders on the ridiculous that any manager who has postponed one-on-ones five times has the gall to even sit down and tell somebody what they think they’re doing wrong when they’ve had no interaction.
Yet this goes on in business every single day. It’s wrong. It shouldn’t happen. But it does happen because there’s no accountability. There’s nobody looking at this manager saying, “Let me see whether or not you’ve done your one-on-ones. Tell me what your successes are with your people.”
A great leader doesn’t care that people make mistakes. Mistakes are a part of the growth of business. A great leader wants to know what are our accomplishments are. How are we meeting our goals? How are we moving forward? Are there any obstacles that are keeping our people from achieving success? A manager, a great leader, could care less that mistakes happen and that everything’s not perfect. Who cares? Life is not perfect. What people should be focused on is the growth of the individual, and I’m telling you today, that you simply cannot be focused on the individual when you never have conversations. You should never go more than three or four days without having a conversation and I mean a celebration of what your employee has done over the last two or three days. You should be celebrating, in my opinion, every single day. There’s stuff that people do every single day when they go to work that should be celebrated. Don’t tell me you can’t find something good that somebody is doing. You’re not looking if you don’t see something. Nobody wants to go to work and spend 8-12 hours a day at a job and think that their boss never sees any of the good stuff that they do. How awful is that?
If you’re having trouble understanding this concept, think about in terms of children and your child. Would you go three, four days and never exhibit any kind of affection or concern for your children? Would you? I would suggest you wouldn’t. You would want to ask about their day. You would want to interact with them. You want to make sure that they’re eating, that they were doing the things that would make them grow into productive adults.
So why should it be different when we become adults and we go to work and spend the vast majority of our day working at a job that we took because we thought we would love it. You’re telling me that I don’t do anything at all that is good? I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. And it comes back to this focus, in my opinion, when all you do is focus on what you see as something negative in other people. You’re only worried about your own paycheck. You’re only worried about how you can make more money and you’re affecting every member of your team.
This is a tough topic but it’s one that has to be discussed. The Gallup organization continues to do research year after year about disengagement in the workplace. Worldwide disengagement has never been worse than it is right now. Worldwide, 87% of workers report that they’re disengaged at work. This means that they believe that their boss really doesn’t care about them. It’s that simple. You have to show you care, and not by criticizing everything you see. You weren’t hired to be a hall monitor of a team. You were hired as a manager, as a leader to lead people to victory, to lead them to success. So what are you doing criticizing all the time? It takes no effort, no energy, no focus to criticize somebody. Anybody can do that!
But what does take energy, focus, effort, planning and commitment is to build people up instead of tear them down. Anyone can tear somebody down. It takes a great person, a great manager, a great leader to build them up. I’m challenging you today to change the mindset. Make sure you’re not guilty of your people saying, “Hey, all my boss ever does is criticize.” If they’re saying that about you, you aren’t leading. And I want you to be the very best leader you can be, the best person you can be. I want your people to love you, to respect you, to trust you. You’re never going to build the trust and respect you want and need for your team to be a success unless you’re building up instead of tearing down.
I hope you’ll take these words to heart and that you will have great success in your career. It’s not all about the money and it’s certainly not about just your goals.
