Page 176 - Anne Bruce - Building A HIgh Morale Workplace (2002)

156 Building a High Morale Workplace

Managers Must Believe in a Better Tomorrow

We build morale partly on the foundation of our belief in a better

tomorrow—the hope for a brighter, more rewarding future for
ourselves and our children. Today, employees still want to know
what life could be and they look to their leaders to move them
toward that answer and provide hope and inspiration.
When people believe in the possibilities, guess what? Things

get better. Poof! It’s automatic.
A great example of this can be seen in the uplifting movie
Phenomenon (1996), the story of an ordinary man transformed
by extraordinary events. The man is George Malley (played by
John Travolta). In the beginning of the movie, George is

knocked to the ground by a mysterious and blinding light. From
that moment, George shows amazing abilities: he can read and
understand volumes of books at record speed, he develops
instant fluency in other languages, and he learns the intricacies
of science and medicine without difficulty.
His prodigious abilities affect people from miles around and

boost the morale of the small community. Everyone, including
George, assumes that his extraordinary talents are surely the
result of some supernatural power or perhaps a spell placed on
him from outer space. Later when it’s revealed that George has

a terminal brain tumor that caused the bright flash of light that
changed his life, he makes a profound discovery.
George experiences an epiphany when he discovers that it
was he all along who performed the amazing feats. He simply
learned to maximize his natural potential.
Although it might be tempting to dismiss this movie as just

a piece of fiction, it should make us wonder about the potential
that lies within each of us. It should also make you as a manag-
er think about the potential in your employees and how to help
them develop it.

It’s your responsibility to hold hope, trust, and faith high for
your employees—to help create small and large epiphanies of
what life could be. That’s the spirit, that’s the challenge. Are
you ready for the expedition?