Are Your Employees Assets or Liabilities?
One of your greatest assets is one that's often overlooked. I'm talking about your personnel. Not just their training or professional experience but something even more intricate – their emotional tone.
Every person is in a particular "emotional state" or tone at any given time. Although they may change tones for short periods, people are chronically at a specific level. Like a musical scale, these emotional tones can be high or low – with each emotional tone having an inherent set of predictable and observable personality characteristics. We refer to this as the Tone Scale.
At the higher or more upbeat tones like enthusiasm or cheerfulness, people are more honest, communicate better, produce more and take a more positive view of life and are therefore an asset. As they descend the scale, they become more unproductive, negative and dishonest and are a liability.
The overall tone level of your business is determined by the combined tones of your individual employees. Furthermore, their tones can be raised or lowered temporarily by what's occurring around them and even by the tone level of the people communicating to them. To see this in action, let's look at how the tone of a manager can affect the productivity and emotions of his staff.
Imagine an executive who needs his employees to make an important quota by the end of the week. On the last day, they still have a ways to go and he tells his manager it's vital to finish before closing time.
An enthusiastic supervisor would most likely see this as a challenge and devise a solution. He'd treat his staff as team members and they would work together to make it. Given a realistic quota, they would probably be successful.
On the other hand, if the manager were a chronically angry person, his operating basis might be to browbeat the staff into making the quota. When the executive walks into the office, he shouldn't be surprised to be greeted by resentful silence and very little production.
Of course your best route to success is hiring people who are high toned in the first place. But that is a topic we’ll cover in a later newsletter. For right now, let’s say you take a look around your business and you have some employees who are in the lower emotional tones. How can you turn these employees into better assets for your business?
L. Ron Hubbard, who discovered the Tone Scale, answered this question in his book How to Live Though an Executive. He wrote, “A management can instantly improve the tone of any organization and thus its efficiency by hooking up and keeping wide open all communication lines.”
How can an executive or manager improve his communication lines to his staff? This can be done through daily inspections.
L. Ron Hubbard also wrote, “Daily inspections are a morale factor in that it shows someone is interested and gives an acknowledgement whether voiced or not. It makes the work of the staff seem more valuable to them. They seldom realize how valuable their work actually is.”
Here is a simple exercise you can do to apply the above: Go around your organization and inspect the areas. Sincerely show an interest in each of your employee’s work. This exercise could include talking to some customers or clients if possible and being interested in them as well. I'd like to hear about the results of your inspections. Feel free to contact me.
Rohn Walker
President
International Executive Technology
Note: The Tone Scale is so important that we produced a DVD – Emotions in the Workplace – to help executives learn to recognize the tones and how to use the Tone Scale. The film provides a fast and practical introduction that can increase your success and make your office a less stressful, happier and more productive place to work. For more information click here.
If you would like to learn more about the book How to Live Though an Executive, click here.
© 2011 International Executive Technology. All Rights Reserved. Quoted material by L. Ron Hubbard: © 1971, 1989 L. Ron Hubbard Library. Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard.