By Shawn Murphy

America’s work environments need resuscitation. According to Gallup, the last 10 consecutive months our work environments have been the lowest since the notorious research firm has kept track.

Measures of work environment can be found here. But do you really need Gallup’s research to tell you our work environments suck?

In my work with senior and middle-managers, the crappy work environment is topic numero uno when it comes to leadership development plans. Managers are exhausted by the tugs and jerks from left to right, changing story lines that make no strategic sense, and absence of logic behind the latest exhortations or slogans for growth and greatness.

But let’s step back for a moment. If you were to survey the organizational landscapes, you’d see most C-suite executives lining up to bow before shareholders. Shareholders don’t care about employees. Their focus is on their account balance. To be fair, it’s how the system was set up.

We need, however, more senior leaders to locate their senses and shift their gaze to employees.

This shift in gaze brings us back to Gallup. It seems that employees are bored by management’s inability to create a workplace that allows employees to unleash their talents, have an adult relationship with their boss, thrive in a trusting environment, and enjoy the work they day.

The pursuit for profits has marginalized too many employees’ knowledge, experiences, even ideas. Management’s myopia on profits has created a dysfunction that threatens business longevity. It certainly places on lid on profit, innovation, leadership.

With optimism hardly a nascent characteristic in many work environments, managers interested in turning crappy work environments into good places to work get the importance of focusing on people before profits.

The nuance isn’t complex.

Don’t focus on job satisfaction.

Focus on your relationship with your employees. Uncover their desires. Listen to their ideas. Show them you care. Forget about the grand gestures imbued in your words that things must change. Show don’t tell.

Through your actions of making the workplace better will job satisfaction improve.

There’s no anonymous giving. When you make progress in making the work environment better, be sure to discuss the causes. Be warned, however. It wasn’t your brilliance alone. It was your leadership insight and your employees’ actions that made things better.

As for those profits, it’s hard work minus financial sheet parlor tricks that make the difference. Or better said it’s people who make profit possible. The shift in the 21st century is to unleash your people’s talents then get out of their way.