Team building morale booster Southern California

Years ago, before I started my own business, I was working at a large company with many employees. My department had no department head, as it were; the position had been vacant for three years prior to my arrival, and the vice president of the entire organization had been serving as “acting” department head in the interim. Kind of a strange situation, if you asked me; however, at the time of my hiring I was coming from an even worse situation, and was thrilled with the opportunity to work at the new place regardless (although my hiring interview with the “acting” department head didn’t go so well – read here for that uncomfortable story).

For two years I worked at this company, effectively without a boss. Fortunately, I learned how to be a self-starter and make things happen – but it’s honestly weird to work at a big place, without having a department head. The “acting” department head had much more important things to worry about like running the company, and as such I was discouraged from bringing minutia to her attention. The result was a lot of individual freedom and decision making power, but ultimately, I had no one to advocate for me; no champion to tout my accomplishments, to fight for a raise or promotion, to mentor me and expand my professional growth opportunities. I was bummed.

One afternoon while working at my desk, an Email came through. It was an announcement from the CEO himself, sent to the entire staff – all 350 of us. “I am delighted to share that a new department head has been hired, and will start next week. Please join me in welcoming him!” There was the briefest of bios attached, but that was it.

I was stunned, and so were the rest of the people who worked in our department. Really? We’ve been working together without a department head for years, and this is how we’re told a new boss is coming? A perfunctory Email, sent to the entire firm? Clearly this hiring decision by the higher-ups hadn’t been made lightly, as they had ostensibly been searching for the right candidate for so long. Wouldn’t it have made sense to at least introduce the department to the candidate immediately after the hire, if not before? At the very least, couldn’t they have told just us, “hey guys, we’ve hired a department head, here’s everything you need to know and what’s going to change as far as how things are done around here. Any questions?”

But no, none of that happened. We were informed at the same time and in the same way as everybody else: a mass Email. Our team was totally demoralized.

Sure enough, the following week the new boss arrived, and…that was it. No formal introduction to his new team, no welcoming party, nothing. He just arrived, a new Email address and telephone extension was added to our lives, and we went merrily on our way. After nearly a week I took it upon myself to go over to his office and introduce myself, and at least meet him face to face. It was weird, for sure, but more than that it was just plain dispiriting.

Why am I telling you this story? Clearly it’s one of the most upsetting things to happen to me as an employee, which to this day fills me with resentment, anger and frustration whenever I think about it. But I also believe there’s certainly a lesson which can be gleaned from this, and I am hoping you and other “bosses” will take it to heart.

The main point I’d like to emphasize is this: the senior executives in this case, they had absolutely no idea how much their actions deflated the morale of their staff. None. Granted, it’s entirely possibly they just didn’t care – whereas senior staff and department heads are hard to find, hard to recruit and hard to retain, worker bees like my fellow coworkers and me are replaceable. This is a business, not a nursery school – get over it! Who cares if your fragile feelings are hurt? If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to work elsewhere.

That’s all well and good, but you want to know what happened next in this story? Morale tanked. Trust evaporated. Good people left. In short order, productivity fell, the quality of work declined, and revenue took a hit. I personally stayed on-board for a little while longer, but between you and me, I started dialing it in and looking for other jobs.

If you don’t think there’s a real, tangible effect of having a low-morale workplace, think again! As I was taught during my graduate studies in professional organizational leadership at Columbia University (and repeated over and over here on my blog), work is done by people – actual, flesh-and-blood human beings, who have real feelings. It stands to reason, then, that happy people will produce better work, whereas unhappy people will do just the opposite.

I don’t pretend to know what goes on inside the heads of executives, and my experience being “the boss” is limited to the past seven or so years I’ve run my own small business. However, something else we were taught at Columbia is the notion of “known knowns” and “known unknowns” (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld). Those at the top think they know the most about what’s going on, and as far as the Big Picture goes, they do; however, there are also realities happening on the ground, in the trenches amongst your workforce, which you may not be aware of. Resentments simmer, frustrations boil, anger lurks. This leads to morale issues, which in turn affect output, customer experience, and the bottom line.

Can this be avoided? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution here, unfortunately. Yes, structured team building activities and the like can help, but really it comes down to communication. What do you, the boss, not know? How are your decisions, your actions, affecting the morale of the troops? Is there a better approach than, “if you don’t like it, leave?” I like to think so. If you’re someone who is interested in retaining your top talent and running a smooth ship like I am, I would hope you think so, too!

For another useful article on morale boosting team bonding in Southern California, visit this page.