Blog — Dr. Maria Church Love-Based Leadership Speaker, Motivational Speaker, Best-Selling Author, Organizational Culture Expert

Did you know the majority of heart attacks occur around nine o’clock on Monday mornings?

One study showed that the most common factor in these heart attacks was that the victims were people whose work had become joyless striving. In other words, they could not find meaning in their work, and their lives had become so out of balance that, one Monday morning, their bodies said, “You are not going to work today. Zap.”1

I remember a discussion I had with the general manager of a regional division, discussing with him the importance of finding meaning in work for our employees and leaders. His response was, “I think meaning at work is over-rated.” Overrated? We spend the vast majority of our adult lives at work.

One of the primary purposes of a leader is to inspire vision and motivation in those he or she leads, and few things are more inspiring and motivating than meaningful work.If we don’t have meaning…what do we have?

We must know the “why” behind the things we do, or we are at unrest and certainly unmotivated.

As always, I welcome your input. What is the most meaningful aspect of your job and why?

With love,

Maria

1. J. A .Autrey, & S. Mitchell, Real power: Business lessons from the Tao Te Ching (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), p. 23.

I spoke at a professional organization state conference, SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) about the destructive nature of the f-word… FEAR in our organizations.

In my presentation, I incorporated some very important statistics from a survey conducted by SHRM at the national level. I revealed some serious challenges that our local and global organizations will likely face over the next ten years. Here are some of the highlights from that study:

Top 3 challenges are retaining and rewarding the best employees, developing the next generation of leaders, and creating a corporate culture that attracts the best employees
43% of HR professionals indicated that obtaining human capital (us) and optimizing human capital investments would be their biggest challenge
Most critical competencies include business acumen, organizational leadership, relationship management, and communication
Most effective tactics to rewarding employees include flexible work arrangements; creating an organizational culture where leadership demonstrates and emphasizes trust, open communication, and fairness; opportunities for career advancement; demonstrating commitment to employee development; and providing meaningful work with clear purpose in meeting organization objectives.

This is an eye-opening list as the focus is all about the people: developing the people, creating a culture that lifts up the people, and providing the environment for people to connect their head and heart. All of this points to the need to tap into their passion with meaning.

However, one seemingly small act of injecting fear into the culture can have the effect of killing innovation, loyalty, and growth in a split-second. Fear is tricky because it has been the corporate “go-to” strategy for years, and we learned and we were taught how to “lead” with fear. True, fear will motivate people in a direction. But, be aware that using fear as a motivational tool comes with a price. The price of using that nasty “f-word” fear is:

Robs people of potential
Barrier of individual and organizational performance
Affects individual and organizational quality of life
Shifts focus away from productivity and innovation to CYA (cover your assets)
Destroys trust and loyalty
Causes silence and uncertainty. Just because people are not saying anything does not mean they have nothing to say.
Kills long-term motivation and commitment
Increases stress
Grows resistance
Shuts down ability to think creatively, collaborate, and bring passion/meaning to the job
People check out (both literally and figuratively)

Is fear killing your organization? What would happen if you infused it with LOVE?

With love,

Maria

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