HAPPINESS IS A SKILL
Author: IDA COVI

In today’s business climate, corporate scandals, downsizing, mergers, bankruptcies major changes are extremely common. Companies are forced to implement changes in an effort to grow and survive. A knowledge-based economy and global transformations require swift adjustments. Local and national economic upheavals must be recognized and demands a fast response. In order to brace for growing competition and technological innovation necessitates the capability to make urgent adjustments so not to lose the leading edge and enhance market competitiveness. In the face of these issues, many employees fear losing their jobs while others are transferred to unfamiliar positions within their companies. Adding to the pressures that workers face are new managers, technology changes, benefit reductions and pension plans that perish overnight. If that were not enough, business management expects more of them: sophisticated technical knowledge and communication skills, demonstrable cooperation and teamwork, and consistent creativity and innovation. Management needs to know: “What new products and services can we design? Can we improve customer service and increase sales? Employees having to work longer and harder just to maintain their current economic status and little control over workplace events triggers increased tension, uncertainty, anger, and other forms of job stress. Confronted by challenges employees find themselves overwhelmed, lacking essential skills.

The competitive business environment presents new challenges and demands for everyone, from the Board of Directors, to the CEO to the janitors. All employees must learn to cope with change and job related stress. Simultaneously, management is left questioning how do we overcome employee resistance to change? The answers are more dependent on the individual rather than on the organization. Before a company can increase its efficiency or effectiveness, the personnel must understand how they influence the business.

The interplay among the individuals, their responsibilities, and the corporate culture determines a business’ viability. Who we are dictates how we perceive experiences and what we observe in others, and how well we work in teams and within the corporate structure. With this in mind, how can management produce higher levels of performance? How can it encourage people to change? How can employers ensure that the workforce channels its energy, knowledge, and determination toward a shared vision? These questions resulted in the creation of Synthesis, a corporate personal development program that is useful for organizations coping with organizational change. Synthesis recently relocated its headquarters to Little Rock from Arizona. Created for people of all ages, Synthesis enhances personal development and growth in the essential areas of reasoning and emotional and social growth. Employees gain inestimable awareness of their diverse qualities and abilities, gain the ability to integrate feelings, and increase their capacity for insight changing counterproductive behavior patterns, and improving an organization’s collaborative thinking, cooperation among colleagues, and communication as well as service to customers and clients.

Businesses today must continually implement changes to remain competitive and meet stockholder expectations. In an attempt to lead companies to sustaining a solid and financially secure foothold in the marketplace for the immediate and the future, managers are often unfairly perceived as taking unfair advantage of their employees. Change is and always has been an inevitable part of life. But for most people change and adversity is a difficult path to traverse, especially in our work settings where the challenges may abruptly alter the course of ones’ career and lifestyle.

For that reason, instead of fearing change and challenges, resisting them or hoping it won’t happen in your company, it’s far more strategic, effectual and successful to empower management and employees with the necessary skills. Strategically preparing your managers and employees will enable better organizational performance and a positive climate in your normal day-to-day responsibilities even if changes never come. Managers because of their responsibilities are subjected doubly—once as being employees themselves affected by the same reactions, resistances and stress but also in being the bearer of ‘bad news’ and having to deal with his or her staff’s concerns.

A common response by managers is to ignore the situation and treat things as ‘business as usual’. The outcome of this approach can be devastating. The manager is perceived by employees as not being a leader when employees need it most and as being out of touch with the realities that affect their lives and the company. While avoidance serves as a coping mechanism for the manager in the interim period, it destroys his or her credibility, trust, and confidence in the overall organization. All leading to deterioration in morale, effectiveness and productivity. Often this deterioration is irreversible.

Another ineffective method to change is managers that appear to seemingly deny the impact that the implementation has made on the employees. New managers are brought in, departments are consolidated or eliminated, new procedures are put into place, and co-workers are laid-off— many times without empathy and regard to the effect on people’s lives or the resulting emotions. Once again, this approach decrease’s the manager’s credibility and destroys any loyalty on the part of the employees toward the manager and the organization as a whole.

Managers as well as employees are affected by change. Their behaviors may be a coping mechanism, which allows them to feel in control and protects them from anyone getting too close or possibly hurting them or rejecting them. Unfortunately, for them, that is oftentimes what happens and may not be in the best interest of leading the organization and its employees toward successful growth. Today, it is by no means enough for managers just to have expertise in their field. They must be that, certainly, but also a great deal more. It is vital that they have the knowledge and skills to recognize how each person’s diverse qualities and personal skills strongly influence decision making, creativity, leadership, performance, and culture in an organization. Managers need to have the personal skills to deepen their understanding of self and their employees, and then he or she can become a powerful force in facilitating the organization’s growth, implementing change and in transforming the organizational climate.

Ida Covi is the Managing Director of Synthesis and author of ‘Journey of the Night’. Five years of intensive research—as well as Ms. Covi’s 20 year success in business, management and psychology form the basis of the program. To find out more about the program call 501-223-2200.







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Ida Covi is the Managing Director of Synthesis and author of ‘Journey of the Night’. Five years of intensive research—as well as Ms. Covi’s 20 year success in business, management and psychology form the basis of the program. To find out more about the program call 501-223-2200.

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