Enthusiasm as a style of management

Few are the days when we approach a piece of work with excitement, or look forward to what's going to happen at work. The atmosphere seems drably the same, the faces the usual ones, and the workplace seems all too familiar and lacking in a sense of purpose.

In the midst of the sameness that afflicts us daily how do we regenerate the novelty and the spark that was celebrated when our first acclaimed piece of work was recognised? That was the event that made us proud and made the others happy for the accomplishment. If it could be achieved we would find the key to our contentment and the organisation's advancement. Striving to create such a fruitful environment would appear to be a tough job for management.

Yet it is not beyond any manager to make the organisation just such a place where people relish to come and work and give of their best. You just have to recognise that the most infectious mood in the workplace is enthusiasm. Ask yourself how you greet your employee when you pass her in the corridor or at the lunch counter. Is it with a smile and a nod? Good. Is it a hello, how are you doing, and a wider smile? Better.  Do you stop, and ask about a recent personal or work-related matter and say something encouraging? Even better. Do you sweep the person along with conversation, inquiring and suggesting, and spend a few minutes in active discussion, and let the person go with an enthusiastic comment on the promise of the work she's doing? And follow it up by sending a few lines of comment from your e-mail later on? Best of all.

What does it take to create the feeling an employee is contributing, and that the organisation has discovered the talent in the person and wishes to nourish it? It is the attitude of the manager that forms the essence of the employee's core sense of the organisation. That person signifies all that's positive and negative in the organisation. That is the person who most matters in the daily life, and the frustrations, or the sense of self-worth, of the employee.  Being apathetic about an employee, or not knowing about her work or recent contributions, and what the problems are, is tantamount to dismissing the employee from the manager's work horizon. And that is the starting point of alienation.

On the other hand the enthusiastic manager who takes trouble to sit down and learn about the work that is being done, and offers reasoned critique and gives pointers, is already creating the environment in which an employee feels "at home" while at work. Now add to that a genuinely welcoming greeting each day, laced with a bit of humour, and you have the ingredients for a satisfying place to work. For, as a colleague said, "It's hard to find a good manager, but that is the key to not being frustrated in your job."