Inner Olympics

Watching the Olympics is endlessly fascinating.  The despair and joy stir our emotions as we respond to the achievements of others.  Because all the athletes are better at their sports than virtually all of the rest of us.

What is admirable about these athletes is that they compete for gold in 2012; the previous ten years was about pursuing a dream.  It is called a dream because no one can predict whether or not they will be good enough, healthy enough, of the correct body proportions, without other obligations, and with sufficient financial support.  Olympic athletes do not compete for rewards, for all that the finals are portrayed that way.  These and the thousands of athletes who faded away compete for internal rewards.

As managers, we can get the best from our staff if we help them find their internal rewards in the work they do for our organizations.  One of the saddest examples of this in the negative was a fairly young woman who told me that she goes to work in a meaningless job for the pay cheque, and she passes this philosophy on to her children.  She took no joy from her work; her inner rewards came from surviving a serious illness – a decidedly limited scope for life-long personal growth.  A great positive example happened yesterday when I encountered an older man enthusiastically greeting customers coming into a hardware store.  His evident joy bathed customers, who asked him for directions just to interact with such a happy person. 

Part of a manager’s role is to develop staff.  Doing this well requires us to really understand staff members, not to assign goals we would like to people who find no personal engagement in what makes us feel good.   We have to develop the skill of assigning work and goals that suit each individual and that contribute to organizational goals.  Doing this well is one of our internal rewards.