Employers need to do at least these two things, ask your employees what success looks like for them personally and secondly, tell them what success looks like for the company you lead, own, or manage. Rarely will the two be the same. If you correctly define what success is in the workplace and you help your employee's meet their definition for success you will marry the two ideals and both of you will get what you are looking for.
Success brings confidence, well-being, hope, leadership, value, meaning, and a host of other things necessary for the human psyche'. Civilizations to survive have to be successful. Businesses to be successful need to create new products and services. Governments to be successful need working Americans to provide tax dollars for roads, streets, water, and other infrastructure to be successful. What if the social security system becomes unsuccessful? If married couples aren't successful and parents lose the battle of raising their children to be adults? What if the pharmacist is unsuccessful filling your prescriptions accurately? What if your performance is at 99%? Is that success for your customers and your employees? Many people today are distressed, depressed, and trying to find purpose, meaning, and contentment. Busyness has not helped people reach what they deem to be success and checking off to-do list boxes hasn't produced the kind of results we are looking for. Instead it has produced stress, burnout, and quiet quitting on the job.
My contention is that contentment is success. Many people are complacent and few are content. I believe this is the definition for success as long as it doesn't lead to complacency or laziness. For contentment not to get to the laziness and just enough stage you must be willing to be held accountable to the definition of success your company and you spell out for one another. Contentment means I am okay with whatever job I am doing, what I have earned, purchased, or what my lot in life is. Contentment in our affluent nation is hard to attain but Jesus tells us contentment is great gain.
If you minimize success you minimize achievement, invention, improvement, and you decrease creativity, and risk. Success keeps us going forward. We all want to be successful but we often settle for mediocrity, it is easier. In addition, we allow that which is good to win out over that which is best. High employee turnover is mediocrity at its best. Employers would do well to have a conversation about success with each of their employees and to lay out what success looks like on the job and to listen to each employee and understand their personal definition for success. No Purpose - Know Mediocrity and Know Purpose - No Mediocrity. Success breeds desired results and desired results keep us content. Now you are in the Know instead of the No of Success!
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