Sarah is a senior manager of a large company and she prides herself of making an effort each day to say good morning to all of her staff, greeting them and asking them individually how they are. She really felt that she had a great connection and relationship with everyone.

She was taken back one day, when after asking Mary how she was today, Mary spent the next 20 minutes telling her all that is happening in her world. Sarah stood there listening, wondering why Mary was telling her this, what she was meant to do with this information and how she was going to be late for a meeting.

She thought, I’m not equipped to handle this. I’m not a therapist. Why can’t people just come to work, do their job and sort out their life in their own time?

Sarah’s conversation with Mary played on her mind for a while. She kept coming back to the fact that she was not equipped to know how to help her.

She started to ask herself when did asking “How are you?’ become a meaningless exchange with zero connection. She realised that the person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person responding doesn’t tell the truth.

She wondered if it was her responsibility to care of the wellbeing of her staff. To be more humane in regards to what is happening in and outside the workplace.

Like Sarah, when I was a CFO, I could not understand why people could not be more like me.

Why could not they just come to work, do their daily activities and then go home. Why was it that some days they excelled beyond expectation and other day’s they may have been there physically though mentally and emotionally, who knows where they were.

And unfortunately when you look around most workplaces, the majority of managers have this same attitude………….. constantly asking themselves “Why does it have to be so hard to engage and motivate staff?”

All whilst at the same time, their employees are saying “why don’t they get me? Why Don’t they understand that what they expect from me, is unrealistic?”

The funny thing is, that as a CFO, I accepted that in every workplace there were and will always be disengaged employees. It was not until years later, when I co-founded the Chaston Centre and became a Beyond Loss Expert that I started to look at the cause and not just the symptom.

And today, it is with pleasure that I share my solution on how to solve the age old problem of increasing productivity whilst at the same time increasing employee wellbeing and morale.

Here is the link to my recent “People Profits Connection” presentation at the Author’s Showcase in the NSW State Library.