My post on Comfortable Misery seems to have struck a chord with a number of people. Chris Young connects the impact that comfortable misery has not only on the individual but also on the company that they work for. Chas points out that it pays to do work that you love and Gattosan asks us to look deeper for the underlying issues. Marianne points out that sometimes a miserable job is better than no job at all while John Cowan reminds me (and everyone else) that not all of us aspire to leadership.
Coming back to The Conference Board job satisfaction survey, and picking up on Chris Young’s point, it is clear that there is an impact of this misery on a whole range of business indicators. Lynn Franco from The Conference Board Consumer Research Center reinforces this: “Although a certain amount of dissatisfaction with one’s job is to be expected, the breadth of dissatisfaction is somewhat unsettling, since it carries over from what attracts employees to a job to what keeps them motivated and productive on the job.”
Unhappy employees are likely to create unhappy customers. Those customers will look for an experience or product that is more rewarding and so on. And to John Cowan’s point — sometimes our role as leaders is to ensure that our staff have challenging and satisfying work regardless of their leadership ambition.
But let’s not take the official figures at face value. Take my five question survey on comfortable misery.