Less than a Minute Life Lesson-2407 Character and Competency

People Management Lessons from Stirrer, Coffee and Sugar

Now days whenever we order a cup of coffee or a tea we are given a pack of sugar and a stirrer. Let’s imagine a situation where we add the sugar to the coffee but don’t stir it. What will happen, if you drink that coffee? You might not feel the taste and you can see the undissolved sugar at the bottom of the cup.

Imagine a situation where, you brought your coffee added and stirred the sugar, but you were called for an important discussion, after some time, you came back and realised that you didn’t have your coffee, some of us might not drink, some of us might gulp it without bothering about the taste in order to be avoid food wastage.  In this situation though the sugar is added but cold coffee doesn’t give us the preferred taste.

Now what is the relationship between stirrer, coffee and Sugar?

·         Sugar: Employee

·         Stirrer: Motivation

·         Coffee: Company

Every employee has some skill/ Talent/ability to learn etc. seeing some of these traits, we would have hired them, but due to certain reasons we don’t use this Sugar effectively as a result of which we don’t get results.

The purpose of the stirrer was to dissolve the sugar with the coffee, so that we use the coffee to its fullest potential, but unfortunately since we didn’t stir we neither drink the coffee nor enjoy the taste of the coffee.

Similarly, when we don’t motivate the employee we are neither helping him/her to grow or helping the company to benefit out of the employees’ performance. The best result of the sugar can be achieved by proper stirring, similarly the best result of an employee can be achieved by constant motivation.

Sometimes the manager’s do motivate but if they are not used effectively, they might not feel they are important and they just work to meet the expectations.

These employees are like that stirred sugar but not used to its potential and Such organisations are like the cold coffee mentioned above.

When we keep motivating an employee based on his /her needs, we help him/her to connect with their purpose and slowly improve their willingness and ability to perform.

At this juncture some of you might have a question in your mind, what will happen if I don’t have a stirrer? i.e. enough of support/resources to motivate the team.

Just ask for yourself, what will you do, if you don’t have a stirrer in your hand while you drink a coffee? Some of us might rotate the mug for a while and ensure the coffee doesn’t become too cold and still enjoy your coffee. Similarly, when there is lack of support/resources from the organisation, it is the leader who stirs the team with his personal touch.

We need to ask ourselves how companies like Alibaba, google and many new generation companies stirred the employees and retained them. Sometimes it is the vision of the company and the future an employee sees in the company that motivates the employee to perform.

Manager’s /Leaders remember you hold the stirrer in your hand and your team members are waiting to be stirred, if you want to enjoy the taste of your employees’ performance, you need to keep stirring

Keep Learning, keep Motivating

M.L.Narendra Kumar