Dear SafetyXChange Members,

Last week we talked about how important it is to understand our "career anchor" or primary motivator before making career-changing decisions. We reviewed what Edgar Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the MIT-Sloan School of Management, calls the eight career anchors:

• Technical/Functional Competence
• General Managerial Competence
• Autonomy/Independence
• Security/Stability
• Entrepreneurial Creativity
• Service/Dedication to a Cause
• Pure Challenge
• Lifestyle

Let's finish our series by discussing how to find the anchors in the people you manage and use those anchors to improve performance.

How to Leverage Employee Motivators

"Career anchors," says Schein, "are a way to provide individuals a process for figuring out their career needs, a process for matching career needs with job elements, and a process for developing new skills for new work."

Once you've identified the fuel for your professional drive, you can use the assessments to determine the motivations of your team members. With this knowledge, an emotionally intelligent leader can adapt and adjust roles and responsibilities and maximize performance, engagement and satisfaction.

Even simple communication adjustments can appeal to an employee's core motivation. This allows for innovative approaches to organizational needs and goals. For example, an employee who displays a high inclination toward stability and security may feel reassured - and therefore be more productive - in a transparent environment, particularly if the organization is undergoing changes.

Or, somebody with entrepreneurial creativity may just be counting the days at his desk until opening his own shop. An astute manager who solicits new ideas and encourages independent projects from this employee may be able to keep the employee at his job and increase his value to both himself and the company.

The Role Map

Schein relates the career anchors to job/role planning. Organizations typically do a poor job of communicating how individual contributions meet the needs of the organization, he explains. When job descriptions are misleading, inaccurate or incomplete, employees can't assess whether their core motivators will be met or whether they can effectively perform their job functions.

Schein recommends designing a "role map" - a diagram with the employee in the center surrounded by upper management, subordinates, peers, customers and other "role senders" who have expectations of the employee. Creating a role map eliminates role ambiguity and not only helps trigger the anchor for the employee, but also clarifies their functions to the role senders.

"The role map has less to do with the responsibilities and more to do with meeting the needs of the role senders, especially the key stakeholders, such as your boss, peers and subordinates," says Schein.

The Practical Impact

Schein's analysis might sound like a lot of abstraction and speculation. What does any of this have to do with real life business?

To answer that question, I'd like to note that certain reports indicate that more than 7 in 10 managers will leave their jobs in the next six months. What accounts for this migration? It could be the result of new market opportunities and hiring activity, of course. But, according to a recent ExecuNet survey, it's due to deep-seated job dissatisfaction. In other words, there's a fundamental disconnect between the managers' current job and their career anchors.

The companies that recognize this and learn how to identify and tap into their managers' (and employees') career motivations are the ones that will not only survive but prosper from the wave of management turnover to come. That's a lesson worth taking to heart.

Wishing you motivational insight and career success!

Lauryn Franzoni
ExecuNet
www.execunet.com

SAXCIES PROFILE

WINNER OF THE HENSHAW AWARD FOR CORPORATE LEADERSHIP IN SAFETY:

Delta Air Lines

They love to fly safely and it shows Delta Air Lines Corporate EHS Director James E. Swartz receives the first ever Henshaw Award from Glenn Demby (left) and Catherine Jones (right) of Bongarde Media.

Criteria: Former OSHA Secretary John Henshaw is a visionary. To Henshaw, safety success is not measured simply by lost time injury rates and other statistics; it's measured by an intangible quality best described as commitment. Corporations, Henshaw believes, must embrace health and safety as part of the essential business mission and engage others to do the same.

SafetyXChange created a special Saxcie — the Henshaw Award — to recognize a company that best embodies this commitment. It's a special award — the only one that comes with a golden helmet.

Process: 22 companies from the US and Canada were nominated for the Henshaw Award. All of them had distinguished safety programs and records. Selecting five finalists was very hard. In addition to lending his name to the award, Secretary Henshaw served as presiding judge over the panel that selected the winner.

The Winner: Delta Air Lines.

Profile: It's fitting that an airline should receive the first Henshaw Award. After all, it's hard to imagine an industry where health and safety is more of a challenge than in the airline industry. For Delta, the chore is to protect not only 54,000 employees in 148 locations worldwide, but 200,000 passengers per day!

In these days of rising fuel prices and ever growing demands for productivity, it would be easy to relegate safety to a secondary priority. But Delta will have none of that. On the contrary, Delta has established itself as an airline health and safety leader. It's no wonder that last year Occupational Hazards magazine named Delta one of the "12 Safest Companies in America," the only airline ever to make this list.

Some of the things that make Delta a leader:

• Four of its sites have earned OSHA VPP Star status; five more are applying for VPP recognition;
• The job description for every Delta employee — from baggage handler to CEO — incorporates safety; and
• At Delta, health and safety are considered in all leadership performance reviews.

Although impressive, these things don't do justice to Delta's passion for safety. I know because I experienced that passion when I handed the Henshaw Award trophy to Mr. Swartz. I looked into his eyes and saw determination. I heard his voice tremble with pride when he delivered his acceptance speech.

And it was no act. When the ceremony was over, Mr. Swartz took me aside and made it clear that Delta didn't want to be merely a recipient of the Henshaw Award. Delta wanted to use its recognition to set an example and preach the message of safety to other companies.

In that moment, Mr. Swartz demonstrated the very quality of corporate leadership in safety that Secretary Henshaw and SafetyXChange set out to recognize when we created the Henshaw Award.

Congratulations, Delta!

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