Four dimensions of job satisfaction
One way to look at job satisfaction is to use a model derived from our physical needs. We are not only vertebrates, mammals, but also predators; this is a major determinant of our lives from birth. It means that we need four basic things:
1. Territory: access to sufficient resources for us and our dependents to survive
2. Community: access to support, especially when raising the next generation
3. Change: for predators, movement enables us to spot our next meal
4. Meaning: we are born ‘unfinished’ and need a way to impose meaning on what our senses tell us
The expression of each of these four needs is frequently criticized as hampering effectiveness in the workplace. We complain about territoriality, or ‘turf wars’. We criticize ‘cliques’.
We may believe that ‘people resist change’ (no matter what), and that looking for meaning in work is a waste of valuable time and maybe even dangerously new-agey. As usual, it’s a question of balance.
Let’s look for the balance: for healthy territoriality and community spirit, and pragmatic approaches to change and to meaning.
Healthy territoriality
Our need for territory comes with our backbone—all vertebrates have it. My territory needs to be big enough—just—to supply me with the resources I need for survival.
At work, having a satisfactory territory means having access to the resources I need to do a good job. (Such satisfaction seems, by the way, to be fairly uncommon.) When thwarted, we tend to compensate by reverting to physical territoriality.
A visitor to a workplace can often ‘smell out’ territoriality. In places where great importance attaches to my seat in the cafeteria, my desk, my locker etc., you may surmise that employees are not satisfied with their access to the resources needed to do the job.
Territoriality is not only about physical resources but also, very much, about an inner conviction or feeling. When I begin to feel I can influence events (‘agency’, or ‘empowerment’), my inner sense of territory expands. A strong feeling of agency makes me less dependent on external circumstances.
As a leader, if you address the inner territory of your staff, you may be sure that they will bring to your notice any deficiencies in physical resources without either fear or exaggeration.
We are not only vertebrates, mammals, but also predators; this is a major determinant of our lives from birth.
So, empowerment is a path to consider if you’re coping with turf wars or apparently unreasonable demands for ‘more’.
Some potential actions for you to consider:
My own sense of agency: Leaders are regarded by others as powerful. Yet many feel so constrained by external demands that they see only one possible course of action. How are you?
Agree on clear responsibilities and success criteria: No-one should be in doubt, or misinterpret.
We are not only vertebrates, mammals, but also predators; this is a major determinant of our lives from birth.
Ensure transparency and accountability: Being clear about success and failure is not the same as rewarding and blaming.
Being clear about success and failure is not the same as rewarding and blaming.
It needs to be linked to personal development and support.
Establish clear processes: e.g., for sharing responsibility and defining success—also for budgets, planning, and making staffing and other personnel decisions.
Healthy community spirit
From herd instinct to team spirit
New-born humans are totally dependent on other people, to an extent unparalleled in the animal world. Our need for community is evident from minute one of our lives. We may speak derogatively of ‘the herd instinct’, but it is not only natural but essential for survival. The herd instinct tells us we need each other’s support, that no-one can live a life in total independence of other humans.
An insecure manager may try to split-up a well-functioning group simply because s/he feels like an outsider. The manager needs to learn the value of community for getting results—and the group may need to find less challenging ways of expressing their sense of community. It is possible to build a team with a sense of We without falling into the trap of defining everyone else as Them; but because the us-and-them spirit is so much simpler, many times the path to a healthy, productive team spirit is ignored.
We may speak derogatively of ‘the herd instinct’, but it is not only natural but essential for survival. The herd instinct tells us we need each other’s support
Being clear about success and failure is not the same as rewarding and blaming.
Diversity and inclusion
Another aspect of community is coping with, and deriving benefit from, diversity and inclusion. Just consider gender. Men and women, and all the people whose sense of identity defies such binary categories, bring different strengths to your teams.
We know that, on average, males have a stronger territorial need than women. If you want empirical confirmation of the research, observe the behaviour of teenage women and men on buses and trains—you’ll never again find a journey boring!
It is often asserted that women are more ‘social’ than men—once again, in general. If true, this offers a model for understanding otherwise odd facts of working life around the subject of promotion. Despite both rhetoric and action, there are still comparatively few women in higher management. But if promotion is interpreted as a means of expanding one’s territory in return for sacrificing community, it makes sense. The person promoted is no longer ‘one of the team’; and a woman who is promoted will find it harder to be accepted as a member of the community of managers.
If your staff seems to be more focused on out-performing each other than on co-operating for the best possible outcome, you may like to consider some ways to promote the sense of We.
Examine current incentives: Do you for instance still prioritize individual over team achievements? Do you encourage managers to find a balance between ‘Theory X’, ‘Theory Y’ and ‘Theory Z’ (McGregor, Ouchi) that best suits their teams, and to work towards more ‘Theory Y’?
Whole person: Make it culturally acceptable to bring to the table not only questions concerned with the work, but also questions concerning the functioning of the team, and the individual’s role. See for instance such methods as Fleck’s Synergy or Open Space. (Tift, Fleck, Owen)
Non-judgemental communication: Encourage and enable non-judgemental discussion about what is important (values and visions) as well as about facts and decision options. (Mehlmann, Parry, Ziegler)
Flatter organization: Hierarchy can be seen as a way to institutionalize territorial boundaries. A more productive approach to organisation is to begin creating communities. See for instance such approaches as Holacracy and Sociocracy.
Change
When people are exposed to extremely low levels of sensory input they quickly become disturbed—we quite literally need change, a physical need we have brought with us into our mental world. Boredom leads to physical as well as mental restlessness.
With this in mind, it may seem strange that so much is said and written about resistance to change, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ and so on. But what is really strange is that we humans are as flexible as we are. Changes may hit us with about as much logic or predictability as the weather, yet time and again we adapt (and forget that it even happened)— though we may grumble and, at work, demand to be left alone to get on with the job.
Meanwhile, the pace of change is accelerating. Leaders are coping with unprecedented levels of external change. The burden can be eased if as many staff as possible are helped ‘back’ to an attitude that change is the norm. Designing and implementing change needs to be in everyone’s job description, not the province of a few experts.
From this perspective, catering for productive change and innovation is not primarily a matter of planning, but of creating and maintaining a ‘reasonable balance between dissatisfaction and hope’, as noted by Warren Ziegler, Syracuse University, which in turn implies balancing creativity and stability: ensuring that the work environment feels safe enough and satisfying enough to take change initiatives, but not so safe and satisfactory that there is no perceived need for change.
Remember to include yourself in the equation: is your balance sufficiently satisfactory that you can handle initiatives from your employees?
Meaning
Is the search for meaning what differentiates humans from other animals? Viktor Frankl makes this claim, and maybe he is right, since we are born more ‘unfinished’ than most. Though who knows what goes on in the head of a dolphin?
Even pre-language beings begin life with a search for meaning, at least those born incomplete. At birth we have, unlike for instance insects, no idea how to interpret the constantly arriving, overwhelming quantity of sensory input. Our very first mental task is to find out what it all means. And with our transition to conversational beings, the search takes on a more abstract dimension.
If you find yourself expending too much energy on trying to persuade or coerce staff to get behind necessary changes, you may like to consider:
Decision-making needs at the very least to be transparent and at best to be consensual – which is not the same as consensus. (Endenburg)
Anticipation, foresight, futures studies: the more people who can be engaged in futures studies, the more likely it is that both opportunities and risks will be anticipated.
Many studies confirm the importance of meaning. Most of us would like to experience that our work has meaning. In the absence of any obvious meaning, we tend to invent one—or to make other people (children, parents, the boss, the destitute) carry the burden of our meaning, identifying as a parent, a philanthropist….
Industrial society invented the idea that employment as such might be the meaning of life—unthinkable even a couple of hundred years ago, when paid employment was regarded as a great misfortune to befall a free man.
If you sometimes doubt the meaning of your work, or believe that others do, you may like to consider the ‘why’ of it all:
How do you feel, on a scale? Do you find your work (and that of those you lead) totally meaningful, or meaningless, or something in between? How does that impact your own job satisfaction?
If this is the answer, what is the question? Imagine that the work you lead is the solution to a problem. Whose is the problem, and who benefits from the solution? Do you find these answers satisfying?
Extremes: It’s possible to hold ambitions and expectations that are either too high or too low. Unrealistically high ambitions lead inevitably not only to dissatisfaction (which can be good,since it can be a trigger for positive change), but if predominant can lead to a lack of energy or will to prioritize. Working with values, visions and anticipation can be a way to set ambitions and expectations at a useful level.
Inner Development Goals: If you are committed to the Sustainable Development Goals and/or to Corporate Social Responsibility, you may find it useful to review the Inner Development Goals and related material, to get a different perspective on ways forward. (IDGs, Cross-Cutting Skill Sets).The crux is to define the context of the study: not so broad as to be meaningless in practice, not so narrow as to exclude all new perspectives. (Ziegler, Inayatullah)
What’s the Verdict?
Why should we lead for job satisfaction?
It is possible to view this as a question of ethics (Harman, Österberg) or—at its most basic—as a question of human rights (e.g. NI direct). Irrespective of ethical or legal issues, however, there is ample evidence that a workplace with high job satisfaction performs better than one with lower satisfaction. A reasonable hypothesis is that this effect will be most noticeable in a workplace subject to high turbulence in a context of high complexity—conditions that are likely to become increasingly common, given the current global situation.
Is it possible to lead in such a way as to maximize job satisfaction—for all?
Leading for satisfaction is not about striving to make everyone happy all of the time. It is about maximizing the possibilities for each person to find satisfaction in doing their work. It also allows for some malcontents: in every organization there will always be the equivalent of the farmer who complained bitterly about a poor harvest in a year of drought, equally bitterly in a year of floods, and who, faced with a season of perfect weather and bumper harvests, complained that the market would be flooded with produce, thus depressing prices to a point where it was hardly worth the trouble of going to market.
And, can you have too much of a good thing?
Indeed, as should be clear from the above, ‘total’ job satisfaction can become too cosy, killing the will and energy to initiate or participate in change. However, don’t worry., it is not likely to happen. And if by chance it does – you know how to deal with it. Even the suggestion of reducing resources or breaking up teams should do the trick. Better yet, initiate conversations about ethics and meaning. There’s always scope for improvement.
Leading for satisfaction is not about striving to make everyone happy all of the time. It is about maximizing the possibilities for each person to find satisfaction in doing their work.
Territory, Community, Change, Meaning
Paying attention to these four elements in the leadership and management of teams can in itself bring about profound changes to the contexts they operate in, as well as deepening the attachment and commitment of employees to the organization. The intrinsic benefits fostered by such environments become compelling, and hard-to-replicate, encouraging greater employee productivity and retention through higher job satisfaction. And as a bonus: see your own job satisfaction grow.
