Employee Performance Management Builds High Performing Teams

May 10, 2010
Jerry Lopper

Performance Management for Good Employee Attitude - Piotr Bizior

Managers who understand the concepts of Flow may bring dramatic improvements in production, quality, and job satisfaction to the workplace.

Use the results of positive psychology studies to build high performing teams by enhancing opportunities for flow in employee performance management processes. Positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD is well known for his research findings on flow, the experience of high performance with total absorption in an activity. Workplace performance management processes of goal setting and tracking, employee performance feedback, employee involvement, and workplace environment can influence and enhance the opportunities for employees to experience flow in work assignments.

A workplace which enhances the opportunities for employees to experience flow in their work will likely be highly productive, creative, highly satisfying to employees, and conducive to workplace success.

What is Flow?

Flow is the mental state of being in which a person is fully immersed in an activity with a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process. Csikszentmihalyi is the leading researcher of flow, a term he coined in his first book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial, 2008). For more information, see Personal and Professional Development Tip from Psychology Studies.

Benefits of Flow in a Work Environment

Writing on Positive Psychology Today, Kathryn Britton ("Flowing Together," September 7, 2008) states that "frequent experiences of flow at work lead to higher productivity, innovation, and employee development. Finding ways to increase the frequency of flow experiences can be one way for people to work together to increase the effectiveness of their workplaces, schools, families, and other social groups."

Workplace Conditions Encouraging Flow

Desirable as it is, flow is not an experience available on demand, to be called forth as needed for productivity or creativity. However, management can enhance the opportunities for employees to experience flow by design of the workplace and management processes.

Flow is characterized by activities which are simultaneously challenging but within the skill set of the employee. If an assignment is too easy, the employee will experience boredom; too challenging an assignment will foster employee anxiety. Fostering flow by matching assignment challenge to an employee's skill set requires continuing perceptive and creative management.

Flow is dynamic. An assignment providing the flow experience at one point in an employee's career will be boring as the employee gains greater skill. Maintaining an opportunity for employee flow in work assignments requires managers who are skillful and creative, understand the process and the conditions conducive to it, and are armed with workplace assignment flexibility.

As employees master work assignments, opportunities for flow will diminish until more challenging assignments are available. More challenging assignments necessarily require easy availability of skill building classes, workshops, and training.

Goal Clarity and Feedback

A characteristic condition of flow is clear goals at every step along a work assignment. Workplace opportunities will require that employees' assignments carry clear and specific goals, with frequent opportunities for feedback. Successful progress should ideally be inherent in the work process. Managers can take a lesson from video games in this regard. One reason video games are so enchanting, occupying gamers for extended periods is that success and failure are very clear at every step.

Opportunity to Concentrate

Flow is a state in which a participant is totally absorbed, in full concentration, and totally immersed in an activity. A workplace fostering flow must provide an environment in which employees can concentrate for long periods. Close-spaced cubicles, loudly ringing phones, idle chatter by nearby employees, and space that encourages people to stop and chat will be unlikely to foster flow. The challenge is to balance opportunities for extended periods of concentration with easy access for good communication.

Intrinsic Motivation

The flow-activity is intrinsically motivating. Finding opportunities for intrinsic motivation in work assignments can be enhanced when an employee's strengths are matched to the assignment. Employees utilizing their strengths in work assignments are productive, creative, and contribute high-quality work.

Measuring Flow Opportunities

Though it is an experience familiar to most people, it is often not a state of being associated with one's work as much as with hobbies and free-time pursuits. Aiding managers seeking to stimulate more flow opportunities in work environments, researcher Arnold Bakker has constructed an instrument that measures flow opportunity in the work environment. Bakker's paper, "The work-related flow inventory: Construction and initial validation of the WOLF" was initially published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, June 2008.

Building Flow into Employee Performance Management Processes

Enhancing employees' opportunities to experience the state of flow in work assignments offers the potential of improved performance, quality, creativity, productivity, and worker satisfaction. Managers who understand flow and have the ability to customize work assignments and environments to foster the experience have the potential to significantly improve workplace results.

For another novel approach to productivity improvement, see Wellness Incentives Process Tool Improves Workplace Productivity.