I think lot of folks I am over this election cycle. I have not participated in an election in my adult life where things were so polarized and nasty and from seat a lot of the issues people have with both major candidates is the issue that many employees have with their boss- an absence of trust.
As a recovering human resources and operating executive I candidly see this as the prevailing reason we are high centered on where we sit on the number of employees that see themselves as highly engaged in their relationship with their current employer.
They don’t believe that the organizational values that the organization talks about are the ones they practice or that they are personally aligned with those values.
We have seen a lot of cacophony about things like livable wages and access to health care that depending upon your vantage point you see progress or a creep towards socialism.
I hear from a lot of folks complaining that they have employee populations who are focused on the next fifty cents or dollar per hour rather than the “big picture” and what the organization is trying to achieve or the cost of an imposed wage standard on business expenses.
They are missing the point on two levels-
• Maslow’s Hierarchy, is as relevant today as it ever was. When you are in safety and survival mode you aren’t focusing on the big picture and how to become engaged. You are focused on basic issues like food and shelter. We saw an epic drama unfold on social media earlier this year with the young woman from Yelp writing an open letter to the CEO that she couldn’t survive in the Bay area on what she was making.
• Line of Sight, I tell my clients that line of sight may be the most important part of their compensation strategy. The importance of compensation strategy and performance management is to align efforts with outcomes. Employees need to see clearly how positive outcomes for the organization translate to positive outcomes for them and vice versa.
A colleague of mine, Bruce Kasanoff, wrote a post a while back that really captured my attention and spoke to this issue. He argued that the old adage of “teach people to fish, don’t give them a fish” doesn’t really work when people are hungry and scared and I think he is right.
Ron Willingham, author of Integrity Selling, as well as several other excellent books on sales and customer service explores this same theme in his Congruency model. He talks about how people typically operate on three levels; the intellectual, the emotional, and the visceral level. He points out that studies show when your emotions or visceral self is in conflict with your intellect logic loses the vast majority of the time.
Everything I have learned about compensation validates this as well. Once people feel essentially economically secure about their fundamental living expenses compensation is not a motivator for most people. What is very important is a sense of fairness and rationality. How does my employer make decisions about pay?
That is the fundamental issue that many women and other protected classes have with the pay gap between themselves and white males. In many cases it isn’t about survival, but rather equity.
The other issue I see mirrored daily in our society is our struggle with trust.
Stephen MR Covey in his brilliant book, The Speed of Trust, describes trust as operating at three levels; Deterrence or rule based, Knowledge or competency based, and finally and most importantly Identity- based.
I advise clients and colleagues that if you are only going to read one book on leadership read that one!
Our societal models are based on outdated thinking. Institutions have long wrapped themselves up in the virtual robes of being entitled to trust based on position. Monarchies were validated by the churches, who validated themselves as speaking with divine authority.
Frederick W. Taylor and his scientific management theory gave validation to the knowledge and competency leadership hierarchy. He argued most people were dumb, lazy, and fundamentally untrustworthy! They needed to be aggressively managed by white collar leaders.
You will look a long time to find competencies like emotional or social intelligence in Taylor’s model. The sad thing is that while we give lip service to soft skills if you look at most MBA curriculums they are still very knowledge or technically biased and many graduates feel entitled to a leadership role based exclusively on their academics.
As those of you who are familiar with me and my work know I am deeply committed to a few key concepts. Among them I include building your organization on a foundation of commitment rather than compliance and the concept of personal competency. This is validating and accepting that identity based trust is the real foundation of engaged employees.
There are a lot of other things that inherently embedded in those ideas, but they really represent the foundational pieces.
In the first is the idea that when people come together with a shared set of values and clarity about our purpose proactively and willingly the amount of energy they will bring to that effort increases exponentially.
The second is the idea that people are whole. They perform best when we give them both an opportunity and an expectation of being present.
You can’t create identity based trust without social and emotional intelligence, period!
Social gravity is the emerging concept of describing your value proposition in such a clear way and operating with such consistency that your stakeholders including customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, and communities are drawn to you. There is a community of interests that is clear and compelling.
Social gravity doesn’t look the same in every organization. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution we have really developed an infatuation with best practices to the point we want to use them almost like recipes.
When I see surveys that conclude that most leadership failures occur because of organizational fit, interpersonal dynamics and related human factors I have to say I find the perplexity of failure of technology to guarantee sustained success ironically amusing.
The answer is right there. It isn’t about processes it is about relationships. Processes can facilitate communications and tasks, but they can’t create relationships. That is a uniquely human dimension.
The two major candidates in this election are both caught up in the old model.
HRC is saying “trust me” I am really smart and well qualified. DJT is saying no trust me, I am a highly successful business man who is going to punish the establishment and take back what all those immigrants have taken from you. To an extent he especially is also playing the emotional and visceral card, fear and ignorance. She in turn points out his character flaws.
Both of them want us to base our decision on the first two levels of trust, legitimacy and competency.
For me the issue is one of identity based trust, do I find either to have the personal and professional integrity to be my President?
In this day an age of consumerism and social media the accountability to earn and sustain trust rests with leadership at all levels and platitudes and generic mission and value statements isn’t going to get it done.
The advantages of employee and customer engagement are clear and compelling and two key points-
• You will never have sustained customer engagement without employee engagement.
• The foundation of engagement is trust. You have to do the work.
Be clear with management at every level it is their responsibility to earn and sustain trust and give them the tools to do that. They are entirely learnable and reinforcable.
Emotional and social intelligence like identity based trust are foundational to cohesive and sustained organizational performance and high functioning cultures. It is time to buckle down and do the work…..