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Organizational Development Musings

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In a recent team building class for a federal agency, the participants got into a heated debate about government workers who are complacent or unmotivated. First we had the usual debate about whether a leader can motivate someone or not, coming to the usual conclusion that an employee must motivate herself; but a leader can create the conditions for that to happen. Then we got into a more interesting discussion about the stereotypes surrounding government workers and their work ethic, the difficulty in firing them, and whether the government attracts people who are already unmotivated, or makes them that way after years of working in a certain environment.  Some people said that lazy people who want job security go to work for the government.  Others said that years of working in the same job with little change and no focus on career movement make people burned out and so once…