Jobs @ Career Consulting Limited

Return to career-consulting-limited.com
Managing
People
Managing Your Career
CV Examples
Coaching
Cover Letter Examples
Pre-Employment Tests


Your Self-Image in the Workplace


When communication breaks down in your office or factory and workers lack motivation, what are the roots of the problem?

On a study tour of a Fortune 500 food company, Peter Grazier, an international consultant specialializing in employee involvement, stopped to chat with an elderly machine operator.

Within minutes, the operator began discussing a solution for quickly clearing bulk food material from a clogged hopper - apparently a frequent problem. The visitor asked him if he had ever told this idea to his supervisor.

"Nobody ever asks for these kind of ideas around here," shrugged the worker, who would be retiring in another few months after 42 years of service.

Grazier writes that he felt the plant manager, who was standing behind him, wishing he could sink through the floor!

How many other ideas would this employee be leaving behind him? Why was the communication environment between management and worker in this food manufacturing plant apparently as sterile as the physical environment had to be?

Of course, we could talk at length about employers or managers who fail to encourage upward communication.

We could contrast these with others who go out of their way to not only to recognize the achievements of their employees or subordinates, but also to instill in them a real sense of importance and self-worth. (In another Grazier "story", he came across a janitor sweeping a hospital hallway and asked him what his job was. The instant response was "customer satisfaction.")

The influence that a positive, reassuring, work environment - one that cultivates self-dignity and encourages contribution - might have had on our food machine operator is obvious.

I would like to suggest, however, that there just might have been other factors contributing to his reticence - factors that have little to do with working conditions in the factory.

It may be a long shot, but it's at least remotely possible that in order to understand our operator's reluctance to share information, his unwillingness to involve himself more than he had to - we might have to look farther than at his work life alone.

We might have to look, in fact, at his earlier life, at what he was doing even before he began to work. We might even have to go back to an earlier stage, as far back as his youth, or even earlier.

Perhaps he might have acted rather differently had he been blessed with a self-confidence not dependant on external circumstances, with an unshakeable sense of self-esteem. And perhaps his self-esteem had been shattered many years before.

A friend who is an experienced educator once made an interesting confession to me.

I should emphasize that his many years of teaching experience is not in the type of school one reads about so often in the American media - places where chaos and violence reign supreme - but in institutions where the young students are refined and serious, and hail from the best homes.

"Usually, a small child arrives for his first day of school with an excellent self-image," he said.

"And very often, that's the end of the story!"

Azriel Winnett is creator of Hodu.com - Your Communication Skills Portal. This popular free website helps you improve your communication and relationship skills in your business or professional life, in the family unit and on the social scene. New articles added almost daily.


MORE RESOURCES:

Careers  City of Phoenix (.gov)



Working for ICE  ice.gov

Careers  University of Northern Colorado

Careers at FEMA  FEMA.gov


Careers  City of Ontario, California (.gov)


Careers | Home  USDA (.gov)

Jobs  Multnomah County



Careers and Jobs at CRS  Catholic Relief Services





Careers - MDOT  Maryland.gov

Work at Fairfield  Fairfield University

Careers  Baxter

Employment  Colby College


Careers  Johnson & Johnson



Employment Opportunities | Game Commission  Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (.gov)

Careers at Touro  Touro University

Careers at USCIS  USCIS (.gov)


Careers at TWU  Texas Woman's University



Work at Butler  Butler University

Water Services Careers  City of Phoenix (.gov)

Job Search Results  UnitedHealth Group Careers

Jobs  City of Rochester (.gov)

Employment | Department of Corrections  Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (.gov)

Work With Us  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (.gov)

Career Opportunities  Gilead Sciences


Careers at Willamette  Willamette University


Jobs Report  NFIB


IOM career gateways  International Organization for Migration



Careers  Washington State University

Careers  BASF

Careers at the IOC  Olympics.com

Jobs at Liberty University  Liberty University



Student internships at J&J  Johnson & Johnson Careers



Careers | Human Resources  Seattle University




Work for the City of St. Louis  City of St. Louis, MO (.gov)


Careers  WV Department of Education


Careers  The Ocean Cleanup

Job Seekers  Illinois Human Resources



Careers  CrowdStrike

UF Health Careers  UF Health Careers


Careers at Union  Union College


KPMG Careers  KPMG








Careers  Euromonitor



Job Opportunities  Bellevue School District


Current opportunities  Turner & Townsend






Job application FAQs  Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services

Work at UI Health Care | University of Iowa Health Care  University of Iowa Health Care Medical Center





Need More Information?
Site Home | Site Map | Links | Contact Us | Privacy Policy
© Career Consulting Limited.com 2011

tumblr visit counter