Leaders know how to make others thrive!

Leaders who give their employees the chance to learn and grow, have employees who thrive—and so does their organization.  ~Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath

I've always been attracted to the word and the idea of thriving.  It goes beyond contentment and satisfaction.  There’s momentum behind it; there’s energy inside it.  So when I saw the article by Spreitzer and Porath, I wanted to learn more; and something caught me by surprise.

Through extensive research into factors involved in sustainable individual and organization performance a new word was discovered to better describe what they learned: thriving.  A thriving workforce is one in which employees are not just satisfied and productive, but they are engaged in creating the future, both the company’s and their own.  “They have a bit of an edge—they are highly energized—but they know how to avoid burnout.”

Now here’s the surprise, at least for me.  They identified two key components of thriving—vitality and learning.  Vitality is the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited; these employees will spark energy in themselves and others.  They realize that the work they do makes a difference, in other words, it’s vital.  Learning is the growth that comes through gaining new knowledge and skills.  It can give someone a technical advantage and status as an expert.  Now, here’s the kicker—these qualities must work in concert.  One without the other is unlikely to be sustainable and may even damage performance!

Why?  How?  Learning creates momentum for a time.  Something I’ve experienced personally, time and again, which is why I intentionally engage in formal learning every five to ten years.  However, without passion, learning can lead to burnout.  An employee might be asking, “So what will I do with what I’ve learned?”  “Why should I stay at my current job?”  On the flipside, vitality without learning can be deadening.  When the work you do, even though it may make a difference, doesn’t give you opportunities to learn and grow, it becomes simply the same thing over and over again.

We clearly live in a day when the 40-year employee is a thing of the past. Consequently, I frequently hear clients hesitate to invest in learning for employees because they fear that the employee will take that learning to another organization and they will have then lost their investment.  Well, if you rely solely on learning you’ve created short-term momentum.  If you want that employee (and their learning!) to stay at your organization then that learning needs to be coupled with vitality.  Their work becomes rewarding not just because they’ve learned how to do it well (or even really, really well); they also have a clear sense of where they are going individually and in what direction the organization is headed.  They realize that what they do on a daily basis makes a difference; it’s vital.

It’s the secret combination to unlock sustainable performance: learning coupled with vitality.  Get the combination wrong (i.e., leave one out) and your investment could actually create damage and reduce performance.  Get the combination right, and the possibilities are limitless.

Article by Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Roth, “Creating Sustainable Performance,” was published in the January-February 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.