You may be wondering why organisational health is important.
From a personal perspective
I have been investigating organisations (for years), individuals who make up these organisations and now organisational health. I respond to the concept of organisational health from the personal perspective, with a leadership overlay. That is, why do I do this? It's because my mantra has always been “it starts with me (you) and leadership is for everyone and all the time”.
Organisational health and the individual
Our recent Alumni newsletter explored the idea of organisations and organisational health, but let’s start with you and me.
What is the link from individual to organisational health?
And how can the individual impact positively on organisational health?
Observation
Many months ago I was having a mentoring conversation with one of Affectus’ mentees. We were talking about how he felt at work and how he felt about work.
The conversation went included questions like:
- How do you know that “work” listened to you?
- Did they listen to you?
- What will assist you in getting to the next stage in your process of leading on this matter?
- Has this changed your feelings towards your workplace?
The conversation the mentoring session prior to this had been:
- Why are you working for them?
- Do your values align with your workplace values?
Conversation value
Both these mentoring sessions were valuable to the mentee and me. Why? Because it assisted in understanding more about the impact of the individual on organisational health and vice versa.
The value of the conversation was that the mentee during the first conversation was clear that either he had missed the goals, vision and values of the organisation or that there were none.
Understanding these options would have assisted him to be less reactive about his feelings about the workplace. As well as being more proactive and display personal leadership. And that would then have a positive impact on the organisation and organisational health.
Outcome
The first conversation allowed him to step back into the workplace and ask some questions of his line-manager about goals, vision and value. Leadership conversations then ensued about organisational communication and autonomy.
This simple “what are we all about and what are we achieving” brought forth important thinking and discussions. Those discussions allowed my mentee to feel significantly more connected to the workplace and the goals. Why? Because the goals were there and the vision was there; the communication just hadn’t been.
Further down the path, it allowed the mentee then to think through:
- What is my value?
- Does the workplace fully understand the value I bring to the business?
It was clear that his value was not being demonstrated to the organisation. The autonomy and goal-kicking he was doing were not well observed. His leadership allowed him to bring this to the attention of the managers.
At Affectus, we consider organisational health very important. We understand the impact it has on the organisation and the individual. And we also know that the leadership required to undertake these conversations is considerable.
We encourage you to think about how healthy is your organisation? And what can you do to improve the current state?
We can all bring organisational health onto the agenda.