The Basic Parameter of a High Performance Team - 70% of managers Ignore It

Have you ever wondered what is the percentage of managers deemed incompetent at their jobs by their colleagues and employees, as researched by industrial psychologists? Managers are the most powerful and influential people in organizations and the business environments around the world and their staff regards 70% of them as incompetent. This estimate varies with company culture and country of operation, between 60% and 90%. There is good news for the people working in aerospace or traveling by air. Dr. Milliken investigated a large aerospace company and discovered that only half of the managers were incompetent at their jobs. Is this good news?

Every book on management provides important insights into planning, organizing, directing and controlling, all the common elements of managerial competence. All these are important aspects that drive the good operation of an organization. Still, the question remains – what is causing people to name management as incompetent?

According to the world-renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung, we have different innate personalities, present at birth. We make decisions either using our feelings or our reason, based on either intuited or sensed information. The great majority of people rely 50% on emotions and 50% of reason and use 30% intuited and 70% sensed information. Although we are born in one of these dimensions, it is our responsibility to grow the others as well.
The reason-based skills of a successful manager – i.e. planning, organizing, directing, controlling – cover only half of the equation. Team members and employees call managers incompetent when they fail to meet their emotional needs. The most basic of these needs are feeling authentically appreciated and feeling included, as being part of the team.

Appreciation is the only tool with which you can empower and motivate yourself and others. Appreciation is a combination of thankfulness, admiration and approval. Appreciation has incredible effects on your personal health as well as on your team’s operation.
When you are feeling appreciation, the body’s systems become coherent, the heart and the brain synchronize and you maximize the energy levels available. You begin to see and acknowledge the positive things you have in your life and it gets you easier through difficult times. Dr. Dean Ornish from the University of California Medical School said that appreciation is the only known factor in medicine with a great positive impact on the quality of life, drastically reducing the incidence of disease and the probability of premature death. Appreciation goes beyond genetics.

Appreciation – The Basic Dimension of a High Performance Team
Appreciation is the basic and the most important tool managers have available to motivate people to perform better. Recently researchers analyzed 1 million employees, from 450 companies and studied their direct correlation with productivity, profitability, employee retention and customer loyalty. The results? Every single individual wants honesty, appreciation and being included in the team. After investigating over 1000 highly technical teams, Dr. Charles Pellerin, NASA Former Director of Astrophysics and Project Manager named lack of appreciation the number one reason why people don’t perform better. The root cause of low performance and motivation is people’s desire for management to meet their emotional needs, and the most basic of these needs is them feeling authentically appreciated.
During the summer of 2000, United Airlines’ pilots went on a strike causing infernal delays. In an unofficial interview about the cause of the strike, pilots declared that it wasn’t really about the money, it was about a lack of trust with management and feeling unappreciated.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that employees name appreciation as what they want most at work. People have this need of being appreciated and once they receive it, their performance, efficiency, motivation and self-esteem automatically increase. 60% of the employees recognize that they would give more and would do more if they would only be appreciated for their contributions.
Appreciation is not something that only employees at the base of the hierarchy want. Departing CEOs of Fortune 500 companies cited lack of appreciation as the primary reason for leaving their jobs. Although highly technical teams are very skeptical about this, people have to have their emotional needs met in order to perform better, no matter where they are on the hierarchical staircase.
As John F. Kennedy noted, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” Appreciation is a powerful fuel for us as well as for the company or organization.

Dragos Bratasanu
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