A person divided cannot create
Q: Last week you addressed 3 questions about the clarity of one’s own purpose, so we can all show up in full to our work lives.
I get that personally, I really do. But at work, I’m the boss, and I need to steer the ship. Elections are great for governments, but companies aren’t democracies, they’re dictatorships. I have a mission to execute and it has nothing to do with my team’s thoughts about Black Lives Matter. Let me be clear, I believe in BLM. But that’s not the part of me I choose to bring to work every day, to meetings about product features, budgets, ship dates, or strategic planning.
I believe in equal rights, representation, diversity, inclusion, and I know it benefits us as a company to think about those things and have happy, engaged workers. But that’s what I have an HR director for. I’m worried these issues will consume everything else we are trying to do to thrive and survive in these tumultuous times.
If my employees want to spend their off hours marching or protesting, they might find me right alongside them. I just don’t want to get in a debate about it on Slack. More importantly, I don’t want them debating each other or creating a tense environment for workers who are apolitical.
How do I square this circle without turning off or demoralizing employees who I know care about these issues?
Dear Steerer,
I wish I could think of a specific story of how to square this circle. But all that pops to mind is a statistic.
How 87% of workers feel either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.” Engagement matters because it is “the strength of the mental and emotional connection employees feel toward their places of work.” While that statistic has been researched in different ways for many decades, it remains relatively unchanged. Despite the shift to entrepreneurship. Despite the influx of technology. Despite the leadership insights on why purpose, agency, and autonomy matter.
Maybe it gets that proverbial shrug because most leaders (maybe you?) think that what is being described is “over there.” That it applies to a worker that just needs to do their work as directed, at maybe a local paint store or sandwich shop. Someone who is perhaps uneducated or undereducated, and who generally lacks creativity. So, of course, they are “disengaged.”
But 87% is nearly everyone. It’s the people who do what they are directed to do. But it is also those told to live within the confines of a role, to stay in the box they were hired for.
Which is reflected in how you framed the question.
How you said “I get that personally, but” …How companies are not a democracy but a dictatorship. How personal stuff shouldn’t show up in the workplace. How debating each other on political stuff creates unnecessary tension.
You get it, but. As if it’s at all possible to have two discrete parts: professional and personal. As if it’s possible that we humans can be cleaved, divided, split into two.
YOU HIRED PEOPLE NOT COMPUTERS, RIGHT?
It’s funny to me how many leaders ask your question.
They want creativity, yet they ask people to stick to their knitting. They want learning, yet ask people to process only what is within the boundaries of their role. They want resilience in the system, but they ask people to leave behind all their active connectedness skills that allow them to catch each other, and fill the many gaps between roles. They hire and want and need complex thinking, but ask people to leave behind their inner turmoil.
They want all the upside of humanity, but with the ease of managing predictable computer systems. (Engaged people deliver 21% higher profits [Gallup]. Computers can only do what you direct them to do.)
A PERSON DIVIDED (CANNOT STAND)
Your question also reminds me of an obscure piece of research published in 2007 on what drives results in high change-markets.
The authors wrote:
“Traditional management theory views organizations as operating in predictable, deterministic ways. However this view is changing and organizations are increasingly being seen as dynamic, complex systems of relationships (my emphasis) that adapt to their environments. Such organizations require”… (and now you’ll see why I’m sharing it) … “a rich array of diverse people who are a key element for the frame-breaking learning that is needed to become and remain competitive.”
The research then showed how people can be led in 3 ways. One is to ask people to Assimilate: which is to submerge any difference. A dictatorship you called it. Another way is to Separate: i.e. women lead HR, or a Black person leads an ERG, etc. And third was to relate, a way to change the work based on who is doing the work.
CAPTAIN OR ADMIRAL?
Relating is a way to let people add what only they can.
- Instead of saying “I need to steer the ship,” you can let “who we are” change “how we work.” This might sound like heresy to you, but did you ever consider that you need not be the single steerer. You could, instead, enable others to use their Onlyness by signaling the horizon you all seek. And then all can use their creativity and ideas. Which, using your ship metaphor, might mean getting in canoes, or a high-speed catamaran, or a seaplane for that matter. Rather than be the captain of one hulking (maybe slow and certainly vulnerable) single vessel, why not be the admiral of a fleet of nimble craft all going towards your shared horizon?
- Instead of saying personal things need to stay “off hours,” you enable people to belong as themselves. Because in the end, and in spite of all the ads and slogans to the contrary, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. Change (aka innovation in business lingo) happens as networks of relationships form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible. Imagine if your people can say why they give a shit, then it’s not just hands or minds you engage but every bit of them.
You might have heard of the situation at Coinbase recently? At first, when I saw your note, I was thinking you were him. The CEO who wants to “disrupt” the banking space says it’s too disruptive for leaders to talk about race et al at work. “No politics” is a political stance. It keeps the status quo in place.
You may think you risk alienating good workers when they have to contend with others’ opinions or express their views not related to the job while at work. But the truth is, you risk losing other people who see that you’re unwilling to let them bring their full selves to the workplace every day.
Which is worse? People who silently harbor views and beliefs they are unable to express until resentment makes them burst? Or people who are willing to respectfully, fairly, appropriately share their views and beliefs with other employees, in a dialogue.
Maybe the problem you should be solving isn’t the fact that your employees have beliefs. Maybe the problem is giving them the tools to express them constructively and creatively, along with giving them (and yourself) the tools to listen and engage respectfully.
- Instead of seeing debate as tension, recognize the tension is already there. When half or more of your workforce has to hide a part of themselves every day, there’s tension. It’s the person who has to act loud to lead. It’s someone hiding who they love or how they love. Or the pain of someone knowing simply because of the way they look, they can be murdered by the state without consequence. That “tension” is there in every minute of every day, in every meeting and every interaction. You may not want to acknowledge that tension, but it remains, with or without your acknowledgment. The question isn’t whether tension is gone, but if you can lead a place where all your peeps can face the tension to contribute to their fullest capacity.
You asked if you can square the circle of wanting high performance without dealing with the fullness of people. Um, that’s a no.
If you want high performance, engage people. And not just “people” generically, but each of us, specifically. Onlyness. Don’t ask people to just do as they are told. Don’t ask them to stay in the box of their job. Ask them to show up, fully.
“You get this, but” needs to change to “you get this, and”. The only way out is through.
ACTIVATE PEOPLE AND THEIR IDEAS AND YOU GET A CULTURE OF INNOVATION
So many people sell us the crazy idea that teams are a dime a dozen and that with a hyper-focus on a single vision, you can deliver market results. I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand. Yes, that approach can, in certain circumstances deliver. It’ll deliver a one-hit-wonder, maybe making a founder and his VCs rich in the process.
And yet far more is possible.
We can have a culture of innovation, where work is not just the sum of our different parts, not just the sum of any contribution of our different talents and such. Activate a culture of innovation, and we do something with one another and for one another. It’s more than a sum, it creates exponential value.
Culture doesn’t exist within our walls or even in our job descriptions; it exists by the way we relate to each other. Starting with ourselves, grounded in our own purpose. When we understand who we are in our full depth and breadth and width. And how we stand shoulder to shoulder with those who share a common goal. To get to work.
