Catalysts include setting clear goals, allowing autonomy, providing sufficient resources and time, helping with the work, openly learning from problems and successes, and allowing a free exchange of ideas.
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Their opposites, inhibitors, include failing to provide support and actively interfering with the work. Because of their impact on progress, catalysts and inhibitors affect inner work life. But they also have a more immediate impact: When people realise that they have clear and meaningful goals, sufficient resources, helpful colleagues, and so on, they get an instant boost to their emotions, their motivation to do a great job, and their perceptions of the work and the organisation.
Nourishers are acts of interpersonal support, such as respect and recognition, encouragement, emotional comfort, and opportunities for affiliation. Toxins, their opposites, include disrespect, discouragement, disregard for emotions, and interpersonal conflict. For good and for ill, nourishers and toxins affect inner work life directly and immediately.
Catalysts and nourishers — and their opposites — can alter the meaningfulness of work by shifting people’s perceptions of their jobs and even themselves. For instance, when a manager makes sure that people have the resources they need, it signals to them that what they are doing is important.
When managers recognise people for their work, it signals that they are important to the organisation. In this way, catalysts and nourishers can lend greater meaning to the work — and amplify the operation of the progress principle.
The managerial actions that constitute catalysts and nourishers are not particularly mysterious. But our diary study reminded us how often they are ignored or forgotten. Even some of the more attentive managers in the companies we studied did not consistently provide catalysts and nourishers.
For example, a supply-chain specialist named Michael was, generally, an excellent sub-team manager. But he was occasionally so overwhelmed that he became toxic toward his people.
When a supplier failed to complete a ‘hot’ order on time and Michael’s team had to resort to air shipping to meet the customer’s deadline, he realised that the profit margin on the sale would be blown. In irritation, he lashed out at his subordinates, demeaning the solid work they had done and disregarding their own frustration with the supplier. In his diary, he admitted as much.
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Even when managers don’t have their backs against the wall, developing long-term strategy and launching new initiatives can often seem more important than making sure that subordinates have what they need to make steady progress and feel supported. But as we saw in our research, even the best strategy will fail if managers ignore the people executing it.
