Every day or two I read an article about the great resignation, quiet quitting, or return to office mandates. The underlying sentiment of so many of these articles is that leaders need to find ways to stop employees from slowly disengaging from the workplace. But is the goal really to just keep people around? Or should we really be focused on creating work environments where employees can truly thrive? Because of the focus on “recovery” from the pandemic, many organizations are still in disaster mode, trying to avoid risk rather than trying to help employees truly thrive at work.
Thriving is defined as employees’ (1) feeling of vitality and (2) feeling that they are learning and growing (Spreitzer et al., 2005). When someone is thriving, they feel vitality, zest, and excitement when they are doing their work. They like it. At the same time, they feel that they are developing their knowledge, skills, and abilities through their work. They are growing as a person. These two feelings together make employees want to engage with their work and have innumerable personal and work-related benefits. Thriving reduces negative workplace outcomes like health concerns, burnout, absenteeism, and turnover (Porath et al., 2012). Thriving also has positively impacts adaptive outcomes like job satisfaction, life satisfaction, job engagement, organizational commitment, career adaptability, and attitude toward self-development (Spreitzer et al., 2005).
Importantly, thriving is a temporary state, meaning that you – as a leader – can change the extent to which your team members are thriving by altering the extent to which they feel vitality and/or the extent to which they feel they are learning. It might seem hard to impact someone else’s vitality, but you can start with conversations with team members about what excites them, makes them feel jazzed, or when they feel at their best. If they can’t think of things at work that make them thrilled, they can extrapolate from things in their personal life that bring them joy. Then, look for clever ways to increase that experience at work. Learning is more straightforward by simply asking team members what skills they are developing or would like to develop in the workplace.
Here are a few conversation starters to get you going:
(Learning)
What skills are you consistently using at work?
What skills do you have that you are not currently using but you would like to use more of?
What are you currently learning/ developing that excites you?
What skills/ knowledge do you want to focus on for the upcoming year?
(Vitality)
What makes you feel most excited and motivated at work?
How can we incorporate more of that into your work life?
What would you do outside of work just for fun that energizes you?
How can we create similar opportunities for you in your work life?
At the Center for Leadership, we are a crew of fun-loving learners, so we came up with a few ideas to increase learning and vitality to get you started.
Learning:
Create a list of LinkedIn Learning or Skill Soft Courses that your team members could consider to help them learn new skills. I can suggest taking my courses (which are all about leading in a diverse and inclusive way) but you can also consider courses that are relevant to the type of work you do. Because these platforms offer such a wide variety of courses, it could be helpful for leaders to offer a few options of courses that they see as relevant to get team members started. Offer funding to attend a conference to learn new skills. Leaving campus (or the office) to engage in learning can be very motivating for some people who are interested in travel and getting out of the routine day-to-day. For people who don’t want to travel, many conferences now offer virtual options for attendance.
Provide greater feedback and decision-making autonomy so that people know how they are performing and can learn to increase their decision-making capabilities.
Vitality:
Reduce bias, discrimination, and exclusionary behaviors (read more about this: https://www.colorado.edu/lead/2024/01/28/case-you-missed-middle-school-how-exclude-people-7-easy-steps) because it is hard to feel zest at work when facing or observing workplace incivility.
Focus on purpose and how one’s contribution to the workplace is important for achieving a meaningful organizational mission. Spelling out how one is contributing to something positive is a great way to increase motivation.
Try some good old-fashioned fun. Order in lunch together, go bowling, start a book club, build human connection. Feeling a sense of belonging and connection to one’s team members makes work a more enjoyable experience for everyone.
Based on the forthcoming chapter: Johnson, S. K., Murphy, S. E., Brown, R., & Westmoreland, K. (2024). Filling the leadership gap: Helping your employees thrive bolsters leadership success. In Thriving as a Leader: Evidence-Based Strategies for Leadership Development. Susanne Braun, Tiffany Hansbrough, Robert G. Lord, Olga Epitropaki, Rosalie J. Hall, & Gregory A. Ruark, Eds. Routledge Leadership: Research and Practice.
References
Porath, C. L., Gibson, C. B., & Spreitzer, G. M. (2022). To thrive or not to thrive: Pathways for sustaining thriving at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 42, 100176.
Spreitzer, G., Sutcliffe, K., Dutton, J., Sonenshein, S., & Grant, A. M. (2005). A socially embedded model of thriving at work. Organization Science, 16(5), 537-549.