This and That:

• Following is an excerpt from a Harvard Business Review article entitled: “Engaging Your Employees is Good, but Don’t Stop There” (by Eric Garton and Michael C. Mankins, December 9, 2015).  I thought it was a great reminder of what our teachers need (from us) in order to work at her/his highest level as both an instructional expert and contributor to your school community.  If this excerpt makes you want to read more about the “what” you can do to encourage more Inspired Employees, just click on the hot link above for the full article!

Genius, as Thomas A. Edison famously declared, may be 1%  inspiration and 99% perspiration. But building a company employees truly love reverses the equation: it’s almost all inspiration, and sweat has only a little to do with it. This is the unexpected conclusion of new research from Bain & Company, conducted in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Here’s the background. Many commentators talk glibly about employee “engagement,” as if that concept were all-encompassing and easy to define. But we have always found it helpful to break the idea into its component parts.

The foundational elements—call them employee satisfaction—are fundamentals such as having a safe work environment and the tools necessary to do the job. Abraham Maslow taught us that we can’t concern ourselves with higher goals until we have the necessities of life, including security. So it is in the workplace: first things first.

Next come the elements of true engagement, such as the feeling that you’re part of an extraordinary team, that you’re learning and growing, and that you can make a real impact. And then, at the top—perhaps the equivalent of Maslow’s self-actualization—is the feeling that you derive meaning and purpose from the company’s mission. That’s inspiration.

Most of us know how important inspiration can be in everyday life. In the workplace, as one pundit put it, employees react differently when they encounter a wall. Satisfied employees hold a meeting to discuss what to do about walls. Engaged employees begin looking around for ladders to scale the wall. Inspired employees break right through it.

Reminders:

• We will be having an all admin Leadership meeting at 3:15 on January 4, our first day back from the break.  Additionally, there will be a New Administrator meeting beginning at 2:00 on this day as well.