The very first song on Renee Olstead’s 2004 CD is “Summertime”…and it’s no accident that it is the leadoff track on the recording.
“Summertime,” the beautiful, classic vocal from George Gershwin’s opera, “Porgy and Bess” is an American classic, and a favorite of women singers because it gives them a chance to show their vocal stuff. But that’s not the reason it is the first song on the CD.
Renee Olstead, who will be just twenty one in a few months, played the daughter on a popular sitcom, “Still Standing,” which ended its four-year run in 2006. The comedy of the show derived from the parents, who each week seemed to be making a renewed effort to be recognized as the worst parents in America.
In one episode, the father and mother were sitting in the living room, watching a program on television which was featuring some young musician, while the daughter (Renee) is in the kitchen cleaning the dinner dishes. For her own enjoyment, while working, she begins humming, then singing “Summertime” – not especially loudly, but quite beautifully.
Meanwhile the parents are marveling at the kid on TV. The mother says to the father, “What must it be like to have a kid in the house with that kind of talent?” And what the parents hear from the kitchen is not their daughter’s beautiful voice but noise that interferes with their TV watching. The mother yells to the daughter, demanding less noise, saying “We’re trying to watch TV in here.” All the while, the
daughter’s singing becomes more and more remarkable, but in exchange she gets her mother’s desire for “More washing and less noise.”
It was funny, of course. That’s why they call them situation comedies. But there was an edge to it, too, one that provides a “takeaway” for those of us in management.
Managers are human, and it seems to be part of human nature to be unappreciative and take for granted the people and things that surround us and that we are most familiar with. It probably doesn’t hurt anything if we go through life not appreciating things, although it does suck a lot of the fun out it.
But when we fail to appreciate people — for what they do and what they are capable of doing – that can cause a problem. In some cases it’s just our own personal issue that translates into a structural loneliness, where friendships and other relationships never last very long. But if we are managers, it can cause an expensive problem for the organization.
Few people are so self-contained, so driven, that they don’t care if they are appreciated or not. Being unappreciative gradually undermines their motivation, and, ultimately, their effectiveness. A manager who is oblivious to people’s efforts, contributions, and potential will find that his or her workers will eventually, even eagerly, seek out another employer.
Some of the saddest conversations that management consultants have with clients involve the sudden departure of a key employee. Managers often console themselves with the idea that the employee simply left because Company X, a competitor perhaps, offered more money. When we look into it together, though, it often turns out that the more money was offered because the new job carried more responsibilities and required more skills. And when the client says something like, “I never knew that Jenny could do that,” we have, unhappily, identified the problem.
Few managers set themselves a goal of under-appreciating their workers, but it can happen anyway, often as a by-product of simply being overwhelmed with other, seemingly higher priority issues that have to be dealt with every day.
As we stumble out of this recession, though, any carelessness on a manager’s part in recognizing performance and potential will be rewarded with a two-weeks- notice memo from just the workers you need to bring your business back to life.
Recognizing potential is as important as recognizing current performance, especially as the economy begins to expand again.
Managers should begin looking for potential by assigning new, small projects to workers and see how they react as well as how they perform.
How much instruction do they need to understand what needs to be done.
How much direction do they need? How good are they at enlisting help from other workers, if necessary? What kind of technical skills did they have to employ? The answers to these kinds of questions can yield pretty decent assessments of worker potential, even if the project is a simple one.
Not everyone has untapped potential, but most of us do. As managers, we have to get past our tendency to under-appreciate, and get the best out of the people that are already part of the team.
James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant, writes “Your Business” in The Herald each Sunday. He can be reached by sending e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.
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