This February brings one of my favorite things, the Olympics. Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics - it doesn't matter. I love them all. Every two years when the Olympic Games begin, my family has a party. We eat bagels, donuts, pineapple rings, anything we can think of in a ring shape to represent the Olympic Rings symbol. According to the International Olympic Committee, "The five rings represent the five continents. They are interlaced to show the universality of Olympism and the meeting of the athletes of the world during the Olympic Games. On the Olympic flag, the rings appear on a white background. Combined in this way, the six colors of the flag (blue, yellow, black, green, red and white) represent all nations."
Part of the reason I love the Olympics so much is the unity that they bring. For two weeks, athletes across the globe meet and compete. Cultural differences, political differences, social differences, they are all laid aside as the athletes focus on the Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher, Stronger".
The founder of the modern day Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin hoped the Olympics could encourage world unity. So, with the Olympics happening this winter, now is a great time to focus on unity in our workplace. Perhaps the spirit of the Olympics can make its way into our workplaces.
Jon Gordon, a bestselling author and keynote speaker, has the following to say about unity. "Unity happens when leaders are committed to and engaged in the process of building a united, winning team. It requires focus, time, and energy. Unity occurs when team members care more about the vision, purpose and health of the organization than they do their own personal agenda."
An important part of unity is having a vision for your company that everyone can get behind and support. A vision statement should be very concise and clear. It should include a list of goals and/or ideals that are important to your company. It can be one sentence long or several paragraphs. At Pay Plus Benefits, a few years ago, all the employees met at an offsite location and spent the day working on our goals and visions. We came up with the following vision statement. "We believe that the application of information is the most important factor to ensure the success of businesses today. Our passion is turning time consuming and inefficient business challenges into simple, accessible solutions. We do this by providing innovative data management software applications to deliver and administer human resource services." As an employee, I really like having a vision statement and it means all that much more, that I was an active participant in the creating of it. This leads to another important aspect of workplace unity, employee involvement.
Several years ago, I was asked to help come up with a new method of communication at our workplace. We had been toying with the idea of a "Stand Up" meeting for some time. I was asked to lead a group of three or four employees with the goal of researching Stand Up meetings, coming up with a plan, and then presenting our plan to the company. Rather than asking people I worked closely with in payroll and human resources, I asked people to join my team from other areas of our company. They came from Marketing, IT, and Finance. Each person was able to provide a different perspective to the problem we were asked to solve. They were also able to go back to their team members and explain what we were trying to accomplish and get feedback from them. By the time we presented our plan to the whole company, our likelihood of success was high because we had listened to everyone's feedback and comments and made sure to address all of them. Employee involvement is so important to workplace unity. When employees feel that their opinions matter and that, more importantly, they are heard, it has the power to change a workplace into a "united, winning team," like Jon Gordon described.
There are many other ways to help promote workplace unity. They can involve communication, understanding, and my favorite - company outings outside of work. Each year, Pay Plus Benefits hosts a company picnic in the summer and a dinner in December to celebrate the holidays. These social events are some of my favorite memories of my co-workers. We love reminiscing about the sing-along's we have participated in, the crazy white elephant parties, and more importantly, attending life events like weddings and seeing newborn babies. These life events can change co-workers into friends. And perhaps that is the key. Once co-workers are no longer thought of as co-workers, but instead teammates and friends, then unity in the workplace has a real chance.
In conclusion, I would like to end with a quote by Wilma Rudolph, a gold medalist in track and field from the USA. “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.”
Comments