Posted by Work is a part of almost every adult life. It provides our income, enables us to travel, eat and build. It also enables us to lead productive lives.
The end game of nearly all work is to provide some contribution to the surrounding community in exchange for recognition, inclusion and the finances needed to access services and products that will enrich our own lives.
However, work comes at a cost, especially in the competitive world of digital marketing. It taxes our time, our resources and often our most precious assets – our physical and mental health.
For many team members, productive labor can feel like a burden. We perceive it as a drain on our lives and an interruption to our other pursuits.
It requires high creativity levels, which can exhaust your marketing team and leave them weaker rather than stronger. But it does not always have to be that way.
Much of our satisfaction in life comes not from the things we do but form the attitudes we adopt toward those things.
Poor attitudes toward our work can leave us drained and can impact other aspects of our lives negatively. Conversely, adopting time-tested attitudes to work, which increases productivity and cohesion, can lead to positive workplace outcomes.
Positive outcomes will also trickle down and improve almost every other area of our lives.
Here are some of those workplace attitudes and ethics for marketing team leaders, along with a few practical ways you can incorporate them into your team’s working life.
They are strategies for marketing managers and their teams designed to increase rather than diminish staff well-being.
Cultivate Diligence
Think conscientiousness, punctuality, reliability, time management. Diligence fosters self-worth and gains the admiration of others – two critical factors to holistic well-being.
From habits as simple as turning up to work on time to perfecting our career skills, diligence requires patience and taking the long view.
Nobody appreciates an unconscientious worker. But we are all tempted to take shortcuts, break commitments and lean toward unreliability at times. The outcome is usually increased anxiety associated with guilt and a low self-assessment.
In the world of work and play, conscientiousness is a marker of success. It is the ability to play by the rules and even enjoys it. It requires goal setting, good time management and reliability. These things can be taught, but they are not fully appreciated until they are experienced.
Things you can do to encourage team diligence
Do not weigh team members down with unnecessary busy-work. Only fill 60% of their day with commitments. Leave room for correction, adaptation and rest. The other 40% will quickly fill itself with the unexpected.
These characteristics in the workplace tend to garner the approval of others. Lifting our sense of self-worth leads to setting bigger long-term goals and improved adaptation to the world around us.
Reward Cooperation
Cooperation means more than just being a team player. Like diligence, it requires a commitment to playing by the rules. But it also requires a willingness to shelve our immediate self-interest for the sake of group unity and group ambition.
Cooperation means contributing to others and accommodating the contributions of others for the sake of shared goals.
Technology has made it easier for teams to collaborate and cooperate in real-time with conferencing software and other digital tools.
People’s sense of belonging is an aspect of positive mental health. It tends to lead to interpersonal skill development that enhances our competence and, therefore, our self of well-being.
Our spirits are lifted when our contributions are appreciated, but even more, through cooperation, we sharpen our own interpersonal and career skill set.
Developing a co-operative mindset
Take deliberate steps to include others’ thoughts, opinions, and ideas into joint staff and inter-departmental projects.
Do not be afraid of including the voices of others – as though your voice would somehow be diminished.
“You have one mouth and two ears: Listen twice as much as you speak.”
The ability to work with people of different temperaments, cultures and backgrounds can improve our overall sense of purpose within a community and reduce personal stress and work-fatigue. It reduces conflict as people strengthen one another to be more involved and engaged.
Encourage a Generous Work Ethic: Paying it Forward
Our culture applauds sacrifice. We admire others’ willingness to forego their own comfort and advancement for the sake of those around them.
Placing others first appears counterintuitive in the pursuit of getting ahead of ourselves. But the fact is that people who commit to the service of others report feeling highly motivated and satisfied, so moving up the corporate ladder does not.
But the benefits go beyond positive feelings. Providing for others with no thought of material return also brings together people who might not come across one another socially day-to-day but who can bond over shared interests and a shared commitment to a cause.
Simple ways to pay it forward
As a culture, we have always honoured the concept of service and sacrifice. If your schedule permits it, consider taking on one or two extra tasks a week in order to alleviate team pressures. Encourage them to do the same – but lead by example, not a directive.
Look for opportunities within your team to be generous. Is there a task you could take from one of your team members and do yourself? Is there an opportunity to provide team members with an additional break throughout the day?
Most people who sacrifice their time in the service of others get a feeling of satisfaction by giving back to their team or simply knowing they have helped someone out.
Forming these connections strengthens communities and lessens feelings of loneliness and isolation. Kindness, as part of our work ethic, tends to make us more productive in our own regular workplace and less dependent on the opinions and estimations of others for our self-worth.
Develop Task-Focus
Today’s world is so filled with distractions that it is becoming harder than ever actually to get one thing done well.
The internet, social media platforms, multimedia entertainment, and communications are continually pulling our focus in multiple directions.
Multi-tasking may be exciting, but it is also stressful.
Is it any surprise that we hear about more and more workplace stress and ill health? We have substituted expertise for diversity when it comes to developing our skills. We are expected to multitask all day long – often on completely unrelated fronts rather than remain focused on a single project, thought or goal.
Focus not only develops expertise but is also a deeply rooted aspect of all work-related productivity. Lack of it is also a cause of a good deal of workplace misery and lowered job satisfaction.
How to regain team focus
Rather than abandon the technology that tends to throw us off course, we need to align our technology with humanity.
Ensure the technology you use within your team contributes to their productivity and avoid any distractions that are not mission-critical.
As a balance, allocate time each week to be distracted, browse your favorite apps and enjoy some undirected social play, hobby or other interest to captivate your attention.
There are numerous time management, scheduling, and other productivity tools to help you maintain a healthy balance between work and personal life.
It does not have to be an all-or-nothing affair. Set yourself parameters that allow your team to have distraction-free focus while working, followed by the reward of open-ended digital “play-time”.
Consider using digital tools that minimise distraction. Help manage staff time using time tracking tools as well as task-focused tools that remove distractions and simply core work processes.
Encourage Team Responsibility
In a research article published by the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, the authors noticed that work environments that nurtured and maintained personal responsibility lead to increased positive emotions, improved relationships and acted as a buffer against negative experience, including workplace anxiety and stress.
Simple steps to increase personal responsibility
Do not wait for people to point out mistakes you know you have made. Acknowledge them and correct them quickly and quietly. This sets the standard among all team members.
Be willing to share your spectacular failures, as well as your awesome success, with the team. Be clear and honest in your mind about which of your organization’s aspects are truly your responsibility and which are not.
Do not be tricked into taking responsibility for things you are not responsible for. While it might seem noble and humble, it tends to lead toward resentment and stress.
Taking responsibility for our actions – both the good and the bad – is a critical aspect of overall mental and physical health. It rewards those who live by it with a sense of accomplishment and builds moral character.
We all need work, and by and large, we all want to be engaged in productive labor that contributes to our society.
However, to be genuinely beneficial, it must also contribute to our well-being. Nothing is gained by a disaffected, resentful and unhappy workforce.
But where there is a willingness to develop those workplace attributes that have proven to bring about the most workplace satisfaction, we not only improve our working lives but enjoy a greater sense of purpose and holistic well-being.
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