Whether it is a lack of commitment to the company, difficulties in recruiting talent, or employees that desire a change in leadership strategies, tapping into these sleeping powers transform an organization into a real powerhouse.
We know, for instance, that heterogeneous teams are instrumental in achieving greater levels of creativity. Yet, is there a tipping point when heterogeneity becomes instability? Forced diversity may lead to a decrease of interpersonal trust among employees and between workforce and management. A phenomenon that we frequently observe during mergers and acquisitions.
Lower levels of trust lead to significant drops in motivation and performance in the workforce. In fact, we recently found that trust in leaders is the number one aspect of employees level of motivation. Leadership can only excel if their actions are coupled with trust.
To put this into numbers: 71% of an employee's motivation is explained purely by a leader's behavior. This does not include any indirect effects such as human resource strategies, team building events, or monetary rewards. The 71% are exclusively due to the day-to-day interactions the employee has with his or her leader.
A high double-digit increase in employee motivation translates into higher sales, stronger collaborations between team members, high performance teams, and employees that are willing and able to go beyond their official job roles and drive their team and the organization significantly forward.
Two aspects that stand out from our survey of 639 employees: Empathy and Team Building. Empathetic skills and the ability to create strong teams that embody cooperation and provide a safe space in which trial-and-error are part of the culture are instrumental in creating better relationships and results. Teams and organizations that believe and live these two values enjoy impressive upticks in employee and organizational performance.
Creating stronger, more competitive organizations and utilizing the human capital to its fullest is a Win-Win. Employees, management, and the company all simultaneously benefit from these highly effective leadership and human resource measures.
Understanding the strengths and identifying the areas of improvement are essential for a company to flourish and translate human capital into financial strength.