To get work done or to worry about how your team is feeling?

Working in a group means we are taking a part in that group. Being a part of it means that we have a job desk, a lot of things to do. What to do in a certain range of time, goals you need to achieve, or fulfilling what your leader wants. To make sure all of them done well, it requires a very hard work, responsibility, and a good time management of yourself. We often found a lot of employees sometimes hard to enjoy their work because they feel pressured. The things they need to do are still too much but maybe the time aren’t enough. 

 

Let’s see an example. In your work time at the office, you are checking emails, typing files, calling colleagues, even sometime skip your lunch time because of the unfinished works. Work time finished, but your job does not. You go to home at noon, enjoying your 1-2 hours break. Suddenly there is a meeting you have to attend, then you go back home and it is already 5 or 6 pm. You realize your work isn’t done yet and thinking you don’t have a lot more things to do at night so you decide to work late. Go to sleep, woke up next day, and do the same things over again. a survey that polled 1,153 employees, 52% said that they work some of the time at their home because they haven't finished the works at the office.

Sucks, right? You might never confront this to your boss but you actually feel it, you think about it. You might feeling productive but look what you’ve done to yourself, you are forcing yourself.

But do you guys ever wonder, are the leaders themself care or even think about the feeling of the team? Does the leader know that employees most of the times have to force themself? Does the leader understand that his or her employees set their family or personal business aside because of the works they need to finish?

Many bosses (or even leaders) are thinking that the works that they give to their team have to be finished on time right before or on the deadline, without thinking that their workers are actually hard or even unable to do that because they have a lot of things beside the tasks you give them that they still need to do. The boss thinks that it is the workers’ responsibility to finish that no matter what.

But dear you, hey, workers, I  know how you feel, I know how does it feels to be forced to do something when you actually don’t want to. You waste so much time and energy in doing that. This energy shows up in procrastinating, inner disharmony, suppression activities, and even depression. Do you think you can do and finish all your works properly in such conditions like this? You may have the experience, knowledge, skill, and a long history of success. But if you do not feel like you are enjoying your work, it is all useless.

Our traditional view of management is task-based and mechanical. In that worldview, bosses or leaders don't think about such topics like "How are my teammates holding up? Are they stressed out? Are they feeling good about the future and about the energy on the team?"

In my opinion, leaders should change their way of thinking. The most important thing in a team or group work is not the works, jobs, or the tasks that should be finished on time, but the welfare of your workers and how they actually feel in doing that. Trust me, if the workers themself are not enjoying the jobs that you give, they won’t be productive enough, the result that they give are not the best because they are not doing the best, and you absolutely will not satisfied enough. Because the best result, are the works which are done with passion.

For years (or even until now), people are pretending that human energy is not a factor in a success of a team, while it is actually the main power for a team-success. No matter how hard and how complicated the job in a group work is, if they have an extra human energy, all the tasks can be finished right in the time just because the workers are enjoying what they do.

I think you all already know and understand that when you are doing something you love and believe in, you are fully engaged. Every part of you is into it, and you are feeling happy. An incredible amount of joy, creativity, and productivity is possible from this place.

Lets take a simple case. In this organization, there are many workers. Their boss give them a project, and the due date is really close yet the project is big enough. The workers are actually not enjoying doing this project because their boss is really ambitious and forcing them to fulfill what the boss wants. Now lets see when the employees are not feeling happy with their job, but what they have to do is too much, the boss is feeling ambitious then pushing the workers hardly to do their job. 

So now we can see that the question “To get work done or to worry about how your team is feeling?” is mostly the leader’s responsibility. Whether he still being stubborn and wants to keep focusing in how fast the work finished or thinking about the welfare and the positive energy in the team.

And dear you, the one who has the authority, leaders. The feeling and the energy of every single member in the team does matter! If you have an employee or co-worker who is struggling, have you considered how much responsibility you have in their performance? Don’t be ambitious, be realistic. Do not just think about the result at the end. Think about the progress that you and your team are going through. It can simply be started in yourself. Positive energy is contagious. Be positive, motivate your team, hold their back, trust them, make them know they can do it, then trust me, they really can do it well without you have to force them. Then the result you’ll see in your team are great performances, and a successful ends. 🙂