When people think of strategies to motivate, engage, and retain employees, promoting employee satisfaction is probably a no-brainer. But what about employee dissatisfaction? Is it possible that dissatisfaction could be a motivator?
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It’s an argument that John Baldoni puts forward in an article for SmartBrief.
Dissatisfaction Can Build Drive
Baldoni argues that dissatisfaction can drive people to push themselves to achieve their goals and likens it to natural selection: Those who are satisfied with what they already have don’t have the drive to go after more. “If humans were satisfied with one good meal or one good sexual encounter,” he writes, “the human race would not have survived.”
This doesn’t mean that managers should strive to cultivate a culture of dissatisfaction. That is obviously likely to backfire. The key is to channel any existing dissatisfaction into a drive to turn things around and achieve goals.
Channeling Dissatisfaction Productively
In his article, Baldoni offers three strategies for leveraging the ability for dissatisfaction to drive higher levels of performance.
First, accept the fact that your employees will be dissatisfied from time to time—that’s human nature. Instead of attempting to avoid dissatisfaction (which is, after all, an impossibility), seek to identify when dissatisfaction is occurring.
Then, Baldoni suggests, channel that dissatisfaction in some productive way. For instance, if an employee is feeling stuck in his or her career and is not fully engaged with his or her work, he suggests he or she: “consider acquiring new skills to improve your current lot, or embark in a new direction.”
Managers and training and development professionals can play an important role in helping employees to identify productive ways of moving beyond dissatisfaction to productive performance.
And, finally, he suggests: “stoke it.” Most goals take some time to achieve. And, along the way, there are likely to be some setbacks. It’s important, therefore, to continually use that sense of dissatisfaction to prompt renewed effort toward achieving the goal, whatever it may be.
Take the Best and Leave the Rest
Again, we certainly don’t advocate needlessly sowing the seeds of dissatisfaction among your ranks. But it’s rare to find a workplace that is completely devoid of any dissatisfaction. And when it does exist in your company or your department, the ability to channel it into positive results can be a game-changer.
Instead of attempting to avoid, or ignore, dissatisfaction in the workplace, look for opportunities to channel that dissatisfaction in productive ways.