Designing Service Excellence

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7

Leading Organizations as if PeopleMatter:

HumanistApproaches

Leadership Matters and People Matter

Leadership matters. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) famously demonstrated

empathy with his rank-and-le soldiery when he asserted that “an army

marches on its stomach.” An army needs to have its members at the utmost

state of readiness, whether physical, mental, or in terms of equipment. This

is especially so when the army is set to do battle (as was often the case for

the French army under the leadership of Napoleon). Soldiers whose diet is

decient are unlikely to be at peak tness to engage in combat.

Leadership matters, especially to employees. Astute leaders know that

employee well-being is an essential precondition to generating high levels

of motivation required to do their work tasks to any level of quality. Psycho-

logical capital (known as PsyCap), the development of positive human traits

in the workplace, is predicted to have a positive inuence on desired out-

comes such as increased performance.

1

Positive workplace environments are

acknowledged to contribute to employee condence, hope, optimism, happi-

ness, and emotional intelligence (making the acronym CHOSE).

2

The leader’s

tasks include ensuring that employees work in a positive environment.

3

Eventhe provision of on-site refectories or cafeterias may make a difference

in employee motivation. Singly and together we have worked in institutions

where on-site eating arrangements were poor. In one institution that we

know well the food service facility is tolerated by employees, as the location

is convenient and the food is cheap (albeit limited in cuisine). And, regard-

less of complaints to senior executives, the situation has not changed. This has

given rise to several knock-on effects. First, employees regard their senior

managers as insensitive and uncaring about their welfare and seek out other

examples from their daily work to conrm their grievances. Second, employ-

ees take longer lunch breaks, for example, to travel to nearby shopping

centers where the choice of eating places is diverse. Extending the conven-

tional lunch break period is regarded as a way to get back at their institution.

Third, employees unfavorably compare their own working conditions with