Does Your Company Love Misery?
Patrick Lencioni teaches you how you can take charge of the situation and turn your office into a happy place
 
HERE’s a thought: Did you know that many professional athletes and entertainers are most likely to be miserable in their jobs? According to author and motivational speaker Patrick Lencioni, celebrities can still get depressed despite their money and the adulation they get from fans and media. Why? Because they could be feeling anonymous and irrelevant.

In his latest book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Lencioni identifies three things that cause job misery in the office:

Anonymity. “The feeling that employees get when they realise that their manager has little interest in them as human beings and that they know little about their lives, their aspirations and their interests.”



Irrelevance. “Takes roots when employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others. Every employee needs to know that the work they do impacts someone’s life — a customer, a co-worker, even a supervisor — in one way or another.”

Immeasurement. “The inability of employees to assess for themselves their contribution or success. Employees who have no means of measuring how well they are doing on a given day or in a given week, must rely on the subjective opinions of others, usually their managers’, to gauge their progress or contribution.”

According to Lencioni, the primary source of job misery and the potential cure for it resides in the hands of one individual: the direct manager. But he does give tips to employees who may want to take matters into their own hands. Here’s three ways to make your office a better place to work in:

Look for the sign. Does your manager even want to make a difference? Assess whether [your] manager is interested in and capable of addressing the three things that are required. If the answer is no, it may be time to look for a new job.

Help your manager. The second thing miserable employees need to do is help their managers understand what it is they need. If they have a strong relationship with their manager, they can come right out and say it (“You know, it would mean a lot to me if you knew more about who I am and what makes me tick.” Or, “Can you sit down and help me understand why this work I’m doing makes a difference to someone.”

Turn the tables. Finally, employees would do well for themselves if they turned the tables and started doing for their managers what they want for themselves. For instance, employees who take a greater interest in the life of their managers are bound to infect them with the same kind of human interest. Similarly, employees who take the time to tell their managers (in a non suck-up kind of way) about the impact they have on their job satisfaction, will likely inspire them to respond in kind.

So start making a difference.

The Three Signs of a Miserable Job is published by Wiley Publishing.

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