The Five Questions Everyone is Asking

Fred Smith, founder and CEO of Federal Express, leads a $30 billion company with over 250,000 people located in 220 countries. As a college student he was planning on going to law school. “But that became no longer an option when I had to go to Vietnam,” he explained. “I spent 13 months as a rifle-platoon leader and a company commander. The marines taught me more about the way people think and what they are looking for than I could have possibly learned in any academic setting. My leadership philosophy is a synthesis of the principles taught by the marines and every organization for the past 200 years,” he said.

So what is his leadership philosophy? “Getting discretionary effort out of people,” he says. “I don’t want my employees thinking about the minimum amount of effort they have to put in to keep from getting fired. I want them thinking about the best possible job they could do if everybody was giving 100% of their effort.”

Smith says the key to getting that effort is communication and feedback. He says that at Federal Express they feel it is important to answer five questions that, at one time or another, every employee will ask:

1. What is expected of me?
What am I supposed to be doing? On what basis will you measure me?

2. How am I doing?
Am I doing what you asked me to do? Are the results what you wanted?

3. How can I get ahead?
How can I be promoted? How can I grow?

4. Where do I get justice?
Where do I go if I am not treated properly, or when I think something has been done unfairly?

5. Is what I am doing important?
Workers need to understand that what they’re doing means something, that they are doing something significant.

All workers ask those five questions, and the answers are vital to how they function on the job. You and I have asked all five of those questions, too¾sometimes several at the same time.

When supervisors answer these five questions for their employees, good things happen. Research shows that employees become more committed and engaged in their jobs. And the results have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.

The Corporate Leadership Council, a global research organization, found that organizations that improve workforce commitment will see improvement in the level of discretionary effort of their workers, as well as a corresponding change in performance. Specifically, they say, employees who move from “strongly uncommitted” to “strongly committed demonstrate a 57% improvement in the level of discretionary effort exerted on the job. Consequently, this improvement in discretionary effort translates into a 20% improvement in performance levels, and those employees are 87% less likely to leave.

Providing answers to these questions that most employees are asking should not be difficult. But it does take a concerted effort on the part of supervisors to make sure we don’t get caught up in the “tyranny of the urgent” and neglect the important issues that matter most to our employees.