Are Your Staff Anxious or Bored?
My daughter is learning to play the flute. It is a beautiful example of flow and motivation at work.
As musical instruments go, the flute is the best your child can learn. I am still emotionally scarred by my sister’s attempts to play the violin 30 years ago, and a friend of mine was foolish enough to buy his son a five-piece drum set; lord alone knows what he was thinking.
A flute is a (relatively) quiet and melodic instrument and a lot easier to cart about than a harp.
She Doesn’t Practice
I have spent a small fortune on flute lessons (not to mention the cost of the flute), but she doesn’t play much. This is odd because she enjoys it when she does, but the practice is a balancing act.
- If a tune is too easy and something that she can play well, she gets bored.
- Yet if the tune is too hard, she gets frustrated because she doesn’t believe she can do it.
For her to enjoy practising, a tune must be just right, difficult enough to be a challenge but not so tricky that she gives up.
It Isn’t Just Her
We all get bored with jobs that are too easy and anxious when we have tasks that are too hard.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi makes this point beautifully in his book Flow: The Psychology of Happiness
He argues that there is a place between boredom and anxiety where the challenge of the task matches the individual’s skill. That is the place he believes people achieve the state of flow or are in the zone. When people achieve flow, they are fully immersed and enjoy what they are doing.
Flow and Motivation
Watching my daughter, I’d guess that flow and motivation are intrinsically linked, which causes a music teacher endless problems:
- How do you match up the skill of the pupil to the difficulty of the piece?
- How wide is the “flow” channel”?
- How do you keep that balance as a pupil’s level of skill increases?
The Management Challenge
Teaching music with a defined syllabus and a precise skill set is one thing. It is different trying to balance skill and challenge when your staff are answering phones, moving pallets, or stacking shelves all day.
What would happen if a manager created an environment where flow and motivation exist? Adding challenge and accountability to the daily work but not so much people become scared.
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Read another opinion
Image by Anyaka
Hi James,
It seems to me that an amount of ‘tears’ are inevitable if we are striving to improve. Perhaps, we need to be more explicit with our staff (or children) that this is part of the process.
Although, I’m not sure how much this will help or sink but, at least, they will be informed and you will have a reference to point to on the journey when things get hard.
Adrian
You may very well be right Adrian
James,
I can totally relate. My son has been playing the violin for two years now. At first, it sounded like someone was skinning the cat alive. Now, he plays an absolutely amazing melody. I am so impressed. But… he does not enjoy it, for the two reasons you mention above: if the music is too easy, he is bored; if it’s too hard, he gets frustrated. But there’s also a third reason. His dad forced him to play violin when he just wanted to do general music.
I think that introduces another component, no? Doing the things we are forced to do… and feigning enjoyment for the sake of getting through it?
Sigh…
Annette :-)
Hello James
Your story reminds me of how my eldest fell in love with drumming and then out of it.
He fell in love with drumming and after a little while we brought him a drum kit for around £400. He loved playing with this for a little while. Then he plateaued and did not get any joy. So we hired a drum teacher for him.
At first all went well. The drum teacher was ‘gentle’ and helping my son to improve. Then somewhere along the line the drum teacher became more demanding. And continued to be more demanding. Being excellent at drumming mattered more than the joy of drumming. After several months of this – of being pressured and feeling inadequate – my son gave up. He fired his drum teacher via us and sold his drum kit. Since then he has never gone anywhere near drums. He is clear that the teacher turned drums from joy to pain.
All of which goes to support your viewpoint. The only extra I would add is that if you want the best from a human being then never ever invalidate the human being. When you make a human being feel small then you are doing violence, you are hurting another human being, you are crushing his dreams, his self-worth. No good can come of that. It occurs to me that many managers are not present to this. And as such have many walking-wounded on their teams and in their organisations.
maz
A very interesting twist to the story Maz, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but whether that person retreats from the “Invalidation” or reacts to it, you are right, no good will come of it.