One
Managers may dismiss the importance of employees’ work or ideas. Consider the case of Richard, a senior lab technician at a chemical company, who found meaning in helping his new-product development team solve complex technical problems. However, in team meetings over the course of a three-week period, Richard perceived that his team leader was ignoring his suggestions and those of his teammates.
As a result, he felt that his contributions were not meaningful, and his spirits flagged. When at last he believed that he was again making a substantive contribution to the success of the project, his mood improved dramatically:
I felt much better at today’s team meeting. I felt that my opinions and information were important to the project and that we have made some progress.
Two
They may destroy employees’ sense of ownership of their work. Frequent and abrupt reassignments often have this effect. This happened repeatedly to the members of a product development team in a giant consumer products company, as described by team member Bruce:
As I’ve been handing over some projects, I do realise that I don’t like to give them up. Especially when you have been with them from the start and are nearly to the end. You lose ownership. This happens to us way too often.
Related: Accommodating Your Boss’s Work Style
Three
Managers may send the message that the work employees are doing will never see the light of day. They can signal this — unintentionally — by shifting their priorities or changing their minds about how something should be done. We saw the latter in an Internet technology company after user-interface developer Burt had spent weeks designing seamless transitions for non-English-speaking users. Not surprisingly, Burt’s mood was seriously marred on the day he reported this incident:
Other options for the international [interfaces] were [given] to the team during a team meeting, which could render the work I am doing useless.
Four
They may neglect to inform employees about unexpected changes in a customer’s priorities. Often, this arises from poor customer management or inadequate communication within the company. For example, Stuart, a data transformation expert at an IT company, reported deep frustration and low motivation on the day he learned that weeks of the team’s hard work might have been for naught:
Found out that there is a strong possibility that the project may not be going forward, due to a shift in the client’s agenda. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that all the time and effort put into the project was a waste of our time.
