I want to be Engaged: A Plea for Engagement and Teamwork

Diclaimer: I believe that no job, regardless of the task, deserves anything less than 100% of you. No one can be 100% of everything 100% of the time, but that is why you don’t work alone. That is why you are part of a team. Where your strengths end, your colleague’s begins and it continues with everyone you work with. I believe that (I revel in my naïveté). However, when your team is just as fed up as you are; when they no longer care whether what you need to do gets done or not because their measly benefits have been slowly taken away every year and you have nothing left to show for your 40-45 hours a week of work (not including the commute), you cannot help but be disengaged.

Ready for a Commitment: it is not a ring

I want to be engaged. I don’t need a ring on my finger. You don’t have to make me any promises of a Novo, Lucida, or any style of micro pavé anything from Tiffany's. I already have the house, the yard, the kid, the man; but I don’t have the position that motivates me to be engaged. I used to be so happy to work. I mean, hey I was getting free medical. I was young. I just needed to support my shoe habit, my clothes habit and to help mom with the bills. It was all good. I felt great to wake up in the morning. Many years later, my priorities have changed. I changed, unfortunately, the organization did not change with me.

I no longer wake up happy: I am happy to wake up and be alive and be with the people that I love, but when I enter the building, turn the knob and make my way the anger bubbles. I go through the motions, I no longer care – and that bothers me. Why should I work like this? I want to care again.

The Problem

When the disorganization asks you what is wrong, they ask with concern in their eyes how they can make your work life better, say they will change but then continue doing the very things that upsets the work force, what does it tell the staffers? Why should the staffers care about the things you promise or your business overall? After hearing that things will change all of the time and yet they never do, you can’t help but to become discouraged and absolutely disengaged. You have spent so many years making idle promises and idle threats (to people raised in the outer boroughs of New York City in the 80s no less) that at this point, you have the staffers wanting to collect the unemployment. Was that your goal again?

Align your goals!

I think that no one should work for technicians that don't have any real management background. Just because you can do the job, doesn't mean you know how to run a business. Either that or hire managers to run your business while you work it. M. Gerber (the E-Myth) wrote about it, there is also the Peter Principle and so many other theories that only knowing about management can teach you. Some things you pick up, some things are common sense, some things you have to take the time to learn; but it is those things that can really take your workers from ordinary to extraordinary. Don't you want extraordinary?

I really want to be extraordinary for an organization. I cannot have any less.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!