Achieving a balance between fostering employee development, managing workload, and maintaining motivation is a challenge that everyone struggles with. Deciding how much to focus on developing individuals, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, versus how much to challenge them with difficult tasks, is a complex process—almost like requiring its own “process control” software.
In this regard, Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi offers a model within his “Flow Theory” that aligns well with the principle of “simplicity is best.” Essentially, his approach encapsulates what many managers believe they already know and apply. This idea is also reflected in Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model: provide guidance, enhance skills and capabilities, assign additional tasks without letting them become bored, challenge them to some extent, encourage attempts, offer support, provide supplementary information—and repeat the cycle to keep employees in the “flow.” Csikszentmihalyi’s approach to keeping employees in this optimal state of engagement is summarized in the visual below.
Overloading employees with excessive tasks while they lack sufficient knowledge or skills not only leads to anxiety, self-doubt, and stress but also hinders the timely and accurate completion of tasks. This, in turn, can place managers in difficult situations.
On the other hand, spending work hours solely on training, orientation, and theoretical learning without translating these into productive outcomes can lead employees to boredom, distraction, and a lack of opportunities to reinforce what they’ve learned. This risks wasting the time and effort spent on training.
From these insights, three key conclusions can be drawn:
- Challenging employees is meaningful only when they are “in the flow” or close to it in the relevant context.
- If informed and skilled employees are not assigned challenging tasks, their detachment from the “flow,” the job, and the organization becomes inevitable.
- Managers need to carefully monitor their employees’ situations and establish a “process control” mechanism to keep them in the “flow.”
Blanchard’s Situational Leadership method has been particularly helpful to me in this regard for many years, and I believe it can be beneficial for everyone.
Wishing you days where you remain in the “flow” and help your people to do the same.