It's the most compelling, preoccupying question we measure ourselves by every day, and it has very little to do with money. I'm talking about "worth" as in self-worth and "value," as in the degree to which we feel valued by others and valuable in the world. Nothing more powerfully influences our behavior and our effectiveness at work.
Because organizations pay so little attention to how people are feeling in the workplace, and because we ourselves are so often unaware of what we're feeling, we often fail to recognize the effect that our emotions have on us, and on others.
We all experience challenges to our value at work every day -- demanding and critical bosses, difficult clients and customers, tough assignments, tight deadlines, failure to achieve our goals, or the feeling that we're being excluded, singled out, overlooked, or not fully appreciated.
Think of each of these as a trigger: an event, a behavior, or a circumstance that prompts negative emotions -- and more specifically, the experience of fight or flight.
We don't have to worry anymore about being attacked by real lions and tigers, but we're still vulnerable to threats to our sense of self worth. When we respond in fight or flight, we're less able to think clearly, less flexible, less resilient, and more impulsive and reactive.
It's a reverse value proposition: the more we feel threatened, the more energy we spend defending, restoring, and asserting our value, and the less energy we have available to create value.
Difficult as they are to calculate, the costs to engagement, productivity, and performance are immense. There may be no more alienating and energy-draining experience at work than feeling diminished and devalued.
When we worked at a large, well-known hospital, for example, the nurses told us that the single biggest challenge to their satisfaction and effectiveness was the feeling of not being valued by the doctors. Turnover was a huge problem, even though the nurses loved their work with patients.
When we asked the doctors to describe their biggest challenge, they were unanimous. It was the feeling of not being appreciated by the hospital's administrators. The origin of the corrosive culture was clear. The president of the hospital, a former surgeon, was well known for his explosive temper and his abusive behavior with both doctors and nurses.
Our core emotional need is to feel valued. Some years ago, the researcher James Gilligan was called into a prison to try to help out with an inmate who kept assaulting guards, even after he was placed in solitary confinement 24 hours a day.
"What do you want so badly," Gilligan asked the inmate, "that you are willing to give up everything else in order to get it?"
"Pride, dignity, and self esteem," the inmate replied, instantly. "And I'm willing to kill any motherf----- in that cell block to get it. If you ain't got pride, you ain't got nothing."
Plainly, that's extreme, but as Daniel Goleman has written. "Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are ... almost as powerful as those to our very survival."
Researchers have found that the highest rises in cortisol levels -- the most extreme fight or flight response -- are prompted by "threats to one's social self, or threat to one's social acceptance, esteem, and status."
Just think about the difference between hearing a compliment and a criticism. Which are you more inclined to believe? What do you dwell on longer?
The researcher John Gottman has found that among married couples, it takes at least five positive comments to offset one negative one.
The first move when you've been triggered is the simplest: take a deep breath and exhale slowly. So long as your body is flooded with stress hormones, you literally can't think straight, so it's best not to react at all.
At The Energy Project, we call this the Golden Rule of Triggers: Whatever you feel compelled to do, don't.
As soon as you're calm enough, ask yourself, "How am I feeling my value is at risk here?" You'll make a fascinating discovery. It's not what the other person said that triggered you; it's how you interpreted it.
The less you can make it about your value, the more control you'll have over how you respond.
When leaders themselves are insecure, the most obvious symptoms are self-aggrandizement, high need for control, poor listening skills and impatience, all of which only make those who work for them feel devalued.
The more genuinely you hold the value of someone you manage -- even at moments when you must share a concern -- the more focus and positive energy that person will bring to the task at hand.
Turn your awareness on yourself. It's a powerful first step.
Want to see how well you're managing the energy of those you lead? Take The Energy Audit for Leaders.
Follow Tony Schwartz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TonySchwartz
Average employees could learn a salient lesson from the brown-noser who always seems to get completely undeserved raises and promotions. That individual's message to management is always positive. They have found what pleases the boss and provide it on a regular basis.
When I was a department head for a large corporation my small staff of 8 and I decided to try an experiment. We were not a profit center or even very visible and were therefore overlooked on a regular basis. Collectively and with malice aforethought we became serious brown-nosers. We compared notes and analyzed various senior management's styles and apparent goals, then we set out to make them happen.
Over the next half year our department was brought into the budgeting process and expanded to take over duties which were being performed badly by other departments. After two years, every one of the original 8 employees had been promoted or received significant pay increases.
Conclusion: If you can't get any respect, make some of your own. Management never figured out they had been "hoodwinked" in a very positive way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhUkA6fi204
Due to chronic asthma/allergy issues and a mood disorder, I can't really handle working more than fifty hours a week-which is too bad.
Right now I am gratefully using the county health system...it's clunky, inefficient, and unable to prescribe a number of things-including the extra inhaled steroids I've been using for extended attacks under a private physician's direction. Since I don't have a legal alternative, I plan to order the supplemental asthma med online.
All this is to say that my lack of access to treatment and the immense stress of never having enough money to ensure disaster won't strike rather encourages me to think my society views me as pretty disposable. Maybe I'll be less disposable when I finally have chipped out a degree-but I have to work at least full-time, so I can only do that at a snail's pace.
But I think a lot of us may end up being disposed of, just like everything else. It's just a culture of disposability, after all. Chuck it in a dumpster and forget about it.
No, not true, less than nothing.
If I, and those like me, do not provide profit to someone, we are considered a detriment to society in general and should die quickly (and preferably quietly, easier to ignore) and "decrease the surplus population", before taxes go up, or the deficit increases.
At so many jobs, micromanagement and abuse is standardized and codified into the management style. To respond as you advise would put the employee at risk almost immediately. Employees working these jobs often literally do not have the option of taking a deep breath without someone showing up and asking they why they aren't on task. The stress level is beyond imagining. Honestly I don't get the sense you understand that, so I feel kind of outside this conversation.
My last two corporate jobs required quantification of EVERYTHING I did (including using the restroom) and constant on-task behavior. Metrics were expected to improve into infinity. Employees had to move up within two years or get out, but there was almost nothing to move up TO, so the turnover was constant--obviously by intent.
I worked for a famous multinational insurance corporation that used a 'potty code' on the computer at each workstation. If you were caught in the rest room but hadn't punched 'potty code' you could be fired. We were allotted 3 minutes per day in potty code, and we had regular contests to see which team could get the lowest time--in other words, urinate the least. In five years I exceeded 3 minutes once--by 3 seconds--and was called on it.
It just bugs me to read these kinds of articles and they never seem to fit my own actual lived experience OR the experience of 9 out of 10 people I know. Then when I point that out online, someone like you is always is nice enough to pop in and say, "No Pam, it's you. The problem is all you." Like, totally gaslight what I just said and make me the crazy person when really the situation is crazy.
What's important it seems is to make whatever is wrong the fault of the worker. Boss treating you like crap? Reframe the situation! See the positive! Underpaid? Get a better job! Work for Satan? Get a job with the little guy! Can't get health insurance with the little guy? Work for Satan! Work harder. Work more. Smile. Smile harder. Smile more.
PS It's all your fault. Repeat as necessary.
Namaste, Mo
www.linkedin.com/in/moniquedicarlo