Work

"For constructivists, the moral response is a caring response. ... The only good opinion is a humanistic one, one that shows an immense respect for the world and the people in it and for those you are going to affect." — Mary Field Belenky, et. al., Women's Ways of Knowing.

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In the seminal 1974 oral history Working: People Talk about What They Do All Day and How They Feel about What They Do, author Studs Terkel's core conclusions foretold of the fundamental variables now touted as engagement "drivers." Compared now to 21st century definitions of engagement, Terkel presciently describes workers' desires as a "search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life other than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."

Core to satisfaction at work, beyond a paycheck, is meaningfulness of work. This includes consciously choosing pathways to challenge complacency and mediocrity. Despite systematic constraints that cause floundering, the responsibility in revealing meaning and unlocking passion, or escaping the common place, resides in each employee. Meaning is always a personal quest and derived by diving into growth and regulating self in relationship to tasks and contexts.

However, the organizational chart does exist, so leaders are responsible for "driving" the processes and mitigating road blocks to help construct meaning within ourselves, our respective departments, units, and among the company of fellow travelers. Managers, supervisors, directors, and executives who serve others possess substantial influence in creating effective contexts and tasks which fuel worker passion and engagement.

Thus, formal leaders also possess a greater share of engagement responsibility, yet they often emblazon the scaffolding of their "construction" sites with the dubious motto "Manage to Avoid." This architecture of disengagement manages to breed indifference. Alternatively, the depth of design in making a difference resides in personal answers to two questions:

Am I allowed space to flourish? Are my talents appreciated?

Responses to these questions imply joint responsibility, but for each person to progressively add value, we must also ask general organizational questions, such as "Am I provided the opportunity to make a difference and to bring my greatest assets? Are the values I bring valued by the company I keep? And more specific questions: Am I provided sufficient development and autonomy to make decisions, ask hard questions to fuel my initiative without threat, suspicion, or dismissal? Does the company or organization have purposeful and real, meaningful growth and development concretely built into my schedule and annual performance plan?"

Consumed by deadlines, attending to daily appreciation, acknowledgement, and recognition (valuations) may appear as superfluous considerations to some, but remains a necessary part of facile multi-tasking in the most engaged cultures. Yet, too often, the work day is overladen with tasks in which the employee fulfills the job description without earning the benefit of discretionary time. No time appears to be available to think beyond the immediate demands.

The "above and beyond" initiative engagement attracts can be easily ignored. Perhaps this is why many managers will argue during an annual performance review, "It's unrealistic to believe that you have earned a top rating." Actually, the standards are not so high; ironically, they are not high enough. For instance, an employee's efforts may have resulted in millions of dollars of recurring profits or savings. The employee may be recognized at a luncheon for the contribution but sometimes not a single high level executive is in attendance or takes the time to personally congratulate the person.

Or conversely, a team carries out an impossibly complex project without proper prep time nor resources. Against long odds, the outcome is moderately successful but more publically and privately criticized for its failings. Rather than leaders coaching and guiding the team members through regrouping and improvements, blame is ascribed. Some team members are pulled off the project rather than providing new or reinvigorating roles within the team to create greater collective opportunity and success.

Managers protect fragile distortions of what excellence means when they suggest that high marks are unattainable. For instance, in year-end evaluations, many of us have heard some form of this declaration, "If everyone earns a four out of four, there's no more to achieve!" Professing that only one or two employees are "Outstanding," thus maintaining a normal curve of mediocrity, is far easier than actually facing the obvious: that is, the failure to legitimately coach and dedicate ample time to help everyone excel and attain what is an outstanding level for them. What's missing is not a team member's skills and acumen, which should have been properly identified during hiring, but managerial accountability.

In the end, disengaged supervisors are likely not honest enough to talk to their disengaged employees, or equally destructive, not honest enough to acknowledge engaged employees, who by omission are being taught to be disengaged or mediocre. "Work," when managers ignore the obvious, lacks open, systematic means of fully attending to and understanding the interconnectivity of the person's direction, goal, participation, and fit within the company and its mission.

Above Board or Under Cover

And employees, perhaps after prior experiences of being disenfranchised or ignored, intrinsically feel unable to discuss their ambitions, concerns, or growth opportunities with their supervisors. Similarly, the opportunity for input or participation in decision-making are noticeably sparse. New leaders may lament, "I'm constrained by and limited to ...," yet the truths are found in how we, in ourselves and in others, cultivate a universe of creative and questioning minds. We should not find ourselves captive to the ordinary. Time must expand to attend to neglected engagement needs.

While later in this book, the television show The Walking Dead is used as a workplace metaphor, another popular series, Undercover Boss, has generated a telling mixture of pertinent business lessons. The most important lesson is the actual ability to slip undercover (and not be recognized) reveals the real problem of disconnectedness that cripples awareness, not being aware of employee concerns about problems they perceive to be at hand or their stories: "It shouldn't take an undercover executive or a reality TV production crew to shine a spotlight on outstanding employees." Problems, from lack of appreciation to substandard customer service, are not reported nor accountability measures addressed as a result of the lack of employee or manager apathy. This may be compounded or produced by fear associated with patterns of retribution upon those who blow the whistle on questionable practices or overlooked needs. Therefore, we need to function above cover to aspire toward more:

• Satisfaction. Do what you can to put employees at ease and eliminate fear, gossip, manipulation, intimidation. Meeting basic needs requires moving beyond self and includes keeping promises and assuring fairness.

• Empowerment. Your role requires you to be an organizational coach. Step back, observe and adjust your approach by honestly including others. Remember, a great process is not the goal; a happy customer is, and happy customers are an effect of empowered, well equipped, and appropriately acknowledged and deployed employees.

• Appreciation. Colleagues thrive when acknowledgement for work product is genuine, appeals to individual preferences, and is pervasive and systematic (including discovering and recognizing outstanding people who made a difference). Acknowledgement is reciprocal.

• Listening. Leave your office, go the where the work is. Seek to understand employees' work experience viewpoints and follow-up with tangible, palpable actions after receiving feedback. But that listening must be other-centric, with clear intent to advance service, mission, and others, not self.

• Empathy. Leaders work harder to understand the personal stories of people carrying out the work; in so doing, they need to equitably extend the benefits and options that they enjoy to all, for example, extending the luxury of flex-time in order for all to responsibly cope with personal needs.

If we find, of our own volition, sanctity and comfort in complacency, then we should not find cause to complain about a regimented and monotonous work day, about salary, nor worry about fissures in workplace engagement. Our actions and inactions have helped shape and create the routine, the hum-drum. Predating the positive psychology teachings of today, James Allen suggested at the turn of the 20th century, "We gather in the sweet and bitter fruits of our own planting," so if the box in which we find ourselves is confining, too limiting, or too damaging to our well-being, the only healthy choice is to pursue engagement by breaking out. As good begets good, selfishness begets self, leaders (we) should be consciously and continuously helping each other to break through or break out. Hypocrisy and cynicism, therefore overall disengagement, feeds on leaders who succumb to choosing self over service or universal good.

This "sort of dying," status quo trap is usually constructed not from organizational rules but from worker and supervisor acquiescence to complacency. The trap is almost always accompanied by management's unresolved or ignored feedback, sometimes accompanied by control, ulterior motives, or sheer impoverished management skills. While some ambiguity is natural in dynamic organizations and some uncertainly is present while spurring innovation, unambiguous and recurrent communication connecting individuals' meaning and purpose to institutional mission is constantly needed to maintain energy and push past impasse or conflict. Unfortunately, the by-product of complacency and undue compliance is worker frustration, meaninglessness, and disconnection.

A Reality or a Fantasy of Our Own Creation

But this trap is an illusion, akin to the symbolism captured in the 64 year-old mouse, Mr. Jingles, from Steven King's The Green Mile? A central theme of the work is redemption. In one crucial scene, King' protagonist, prison guard Paul Edgecombe, consoles Eduard Delacroix, a distraught death row inmate as his execution date nears. The guards are entertained by Eduard's pet mouse, whose performances never cease to amuse. He worries about the fate of his cherished pet. To ease the prisoner's mind, Edgecombe fabricates the imaginary "Mouseville" and assures Eduard that his mouse would be a prime candidate for becoming a marquis performer in this imaginary mouse circus.

A fitting place to work and fitting into the workplace is not a fairytale, nor should it be a circus game where the participants run a mysterious obstacle course to win a prize or curry favor. Some leaders find solace in perpetuating control through misdirection, smoke and mirrors, micromanagement, or running employees through unnecessary myths and mazes. At worst, some leaders act like Edgecombe's fellow guard, the sadistic Percy Wetmore, who seated by nepotism, taunts Delacroix by stating that Mouseville does not exist.

Deep down, Delacroix admits the cards are stacked against him, but he would rather believe that the escape from confinement is perhaps as safe as the harbor promised for his mouse. Mr. Jingles is long-lived because someone cares enough to breathe more life into him.

Leaders can be more forthright and much more creative than spinning white lies to assuage worker dissatisfaction. Leaders need to be more deliberate and deliberative in cultivating others, building cultures where workers collaborate with each other to create joy at work, find fun in work, and shepherd learning and growth. We can have joy, fun, and grow at work without sacrificing excellence. In fact, without joy and fun, we cannot grow.

What the engagement research tells us is that we have not fared particularly well in understanding what fun and joy represent. We are better at perpetuating an illusion that we have adequately met workers' needs than we are at examining "why" we have not fully met the worker. And perhaps because it takes as much effort as any other critical part of a business plan, M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, reminds us that all of us foster disillusion when "settling for the maintenance of a miserable status quo in preference to the tremendous amount of effort they realize will be required to work their way out of their particular traps."

We know, in fact, what a great company looks like and basic acts required to escape traps of an ineffective workplace. The "hows" to valuing others are not mysterious. General engagement strategies and practices have been ardently discussed for years, just as the effects of manipulation and dehumanizing abuses have revealed themselves for centuries. The first step is possessing sufficient fortitude, will, and commitment to respond to the needs. Even if a metric is not available or a measurement is not a viable option, the priorities of how we cultivate value and productivity in, with, and among others is far from a Mouseville fantasy.

Breadth of commitment tells us quite a lot about both our dominant behaviors and ourselves. Our responses tells us about resolve and integrity.

The politically expedient tact is to protect self and maintain image (particularly adopted by managers) than attend to others. The "tell" of the illusion is that the manager's image is unrelated to realizing the company's mission. The worst managers are most uncomfortable with the reality that fun and joy are probably among the best known cultural attributes and reliable measures of workplace engagement and excellence. As we explore engagement, employees are either obviously enjoying or not enjoying their work. The excitement of the culture reveals all. How we get to fun and enjoyment is the harder part.

The wherewithal to implement engagement strategies to harvest more pleasure in work rests on the shoulders of all leaders at every intersection, but particularly through the vision, tone, and commitment exhibited by management and upper leadership. One can hardly expect front-line employees to transcend complacency, status quo, mediocrity, or half-hearted performance if the scaffolding erected by management for greater accomplishment is missing, rickety, elusive, illusionary, or unscalable. As critic Robert Snow, aptly writes about the plot line in Terry Gilliam's dystopic film, Brazil, "No sooner does he move into his laughably tiny office that he's sent down a never-ending rabbit hole of euphemism, betrayal and torture, all because he tried to burst free from the status quo." Of course, indifference by anyone is a conscious choice to disconnect, but sometimes, to great corporate misfortune, we are led there.

Heart Attack

On the other hand, celebrating and fostering our collective abilities to help overcome inertia and welcome initiative, are critical to success. Intrinsic to change is maximizing each employee's awareness of his or her importance. Identifying and utilizing each person's significant value are the key catalysts for self-improvement and reshaping work ethic. In engagement, we always return to highlighting productive interactions, and what we do should be valuing and making a difference in our co-workers' lives.

Simply, we have a moral obligation and the accompanying conscious choice to transcend the common place. The research findings from Jim Collins' Good to Great suggest core ground rules that align well to engagement practices:

• "If we have to ask the question 'Why should we try to make [our work] great,' ... we're probably in the wrong line of work."

• "Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it [including self] the greatest it can be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done."

• "We cannot manufacture passion or 'motivate' people to feel passionate."

Ultimately, our effectiveness, our progress, our business culture, and our engagement are products of the expectations, good and bad, embedded in our values. In performance and in each interaction, we should endeavor to stimulate and value those who dare move beyond the job description. Further, we should recognize the legitimacy of equals. Humility secedes power in order to acknowledge others' lives, willingness, and potential contributions.

Perhaps the foremost challenge is loosening the restraints in which we think we are confined. In leadership, rationalization and justification can breed neglect and constrict service from the heart. We see the world, not as it is, but as we have been conditioned to see it. The more we move beyond a fixed mindset of how "work" is bound by distorted or imposed norms, the easier we can begin to tap into more meaningful reserves about who our coworkers are, what really works, and what work really is.