Are your motivations meshing?
What is your motivation?
I mean, what is it that makes you feel that you are doing a good job. And, is that view congruent with your employers perspective?
For example: let’s say that you do customer service in a call centre. You spend an hour on the phone with a customer who is incredibly frustrated. You spend the time to truly look into their problem. You treat them not just like a number, but like a person. You calm them down, resolve their issue, and earn their lifelong loyalty to the organization that you represent through your exemplary customer service. Not only have you done the company a solid, but you feel happy and fulfilled because you feel that you have made a real difference to someone.
Then…your supervisor comes up and bitches you out for 20 minutes because you have a quota to meet, damn it.
In your mind, your role is to provide the best service you can. In their mind, your role is to service a certain number of customers per day, hour, nanosecond, whatever, and that’s the end of it.
Your motivation may not match the motivation of your employer. The above is a fairly black and white situation. You have a quota to meet. That can be clearly, quantifiably communicated to you. But you may be faced with situations that are far more nebulous. It is a terrible, demoralizing feeling to act in a fashion that you believed was right, or worse, believed was above and beyond, and then catch shit for it.
Different organizations have different business models, missions, ideals. Some value exceptional service, some speed. Some value detail-orientedness, some moreso volume of output. Some want you to be active in company culture, some don’t care.
The trickiest thing can be that some organizations don’t know what their own motivators are. Worse yet, some may lie to themselves. People often have trouble being honest about traits that they aren’t proud of – the same goes for businesses. Know thyself, corporation. You may not want to say that al you care about is getting that one time sale, and getting it quickly. But if that’s truly what you want, you need to identify that, and clearly communicate that to your employees. Otherwise, there will be an omnipresent dissidence. This leads to pissed off employees, and that is good for no one.
If you have recognized a disconnect – a fundamental difference in what drives you and the drivers that are respected traits in your current workplace, what should you do?
Option 1: Suck it up. Let your personal values be buried, seethe with resentment and watch your soul wither and die every heart wrenching day.
I just said it was an option. I didn’t say it was a good option.
Option 2: Write a business case supporting your way of doing things.
Don’t be fooled – just because things are a certain way doesn’t mean that they are written in stone. Maybe things were done a certain way in a businesses infancy because that was the only way to get through start up and it just became a habit, maybe some overpriced consultant came in with some half witted overly simplistic marketing math that didn’t take customer retention into their equation, or maybe its just that it hasn’t occur ed to someone in charge that things should change. Think – if you are successful, you have probably guaranteed yourself a management position down the road. At the very least, if your ideas are implemented, then you will have an amazing anecdote to share in every job interview for the rest of your life.
Option 3: Quit. Quit doesn’t have to be a dirty word.
If you are in a place where your motivation isn’t being nurtured, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. You will not be working to your potential, and you will be causing long-term professional and personal harm.
Think of the sell you can present to an organization that does share your motivations. Take the fact that you recognized a negative, and make it into a positive.
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