Are You Having a Good Day?
If you ask most people “Are you having a good day?” they will have some method, no matter how arbitrary or factual, to provide an answer that they are in fact having a good, mediocre or bad day.
If you ask employees at most companies “Are you having a good day?” they have some method either based on their mood, productivity or the people around them or their boss’s mood to provide an answer about whether they are having as good, mediocre or bad day.
But if you ask groups of employees at most companies “Are WE having a good day?” most of the time they don’t have a method to answer the question. Their answers at best may be arbitrary.
Why is that? We all know the difference between good days and bad days. Most of us have worked at our company for a number of years. What’s the problem?
Would NASCAR racing be as exciting if instead of all of the cars racing side by side, they went around the track individually and competed for the fastest time…but the times were never announced? Of course not.
Imagine watching the Super Bowl on television but the plays shown were only those between the 20-yard lines, so none of the scoring plays were known by the fans…would you watch? Do you know who won? Would you care?
We are wired to keep score. We get report cards with scores and tests with scores starting in Kindergarten. We play games to win, not just to play.
But when we don’t share performance of the organization with our employees, then they can’t answer the questions…
– How are we doing?
– Are we having a good day?
If a person can’t answer those questions, soon they won’t care about the questions or the answers because they are frustration points for them.
We want people to care, to keep score, to know how they are doing, to perform, to improve. So we have to share the knowledge with them so that they can answer the questions.
If they don’t know that we are having a bad day there is no chance that they will take corrective action.
If they do know that we are having a bad day there is a good chance that they will take corrective action. Give them the knowledge and tools to answer to answer the questions and soon you will see a change.
Post the scores, after all there is a reason that there are scoreboards at spectator sports events, they are there to inform and add to the level of excitement for the fans.
Are you having a good day?
Dave Baney is the founder and CEO of 55 Questions, LLC and author of “The 3×5 Coach: A Practical Guide to Coaching Your Team for Greater Results and Happier People”, which is now available in Paperback or a Kindle version at https://tinyurl.com/y8ecykfy
At 55 Questions, we work with successful top executives with a driving ambition to crush their competition. We help CEOs and Entrepreneurs improve alignment, communication and accountability throughout their organization. www.55Questions.com
Follow Dave on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davebaney55questions/