Don’t leave your human at home
Human beings are messy.
If only we could fast forward to a world that was operated entirely by robots then life would be easier. Easier that is, until AI becomes self-aware and decides that the best course of action is to obliterate all human life on the planet and then we have to build subterranean underground alliances to defeat the robot empire and well, someone has to be in charge and manage the troops and oh wait, we’re back to human beings being messy. Hmmm.
Well, we can cut out the apocalyptical scare mongering that science fiction gives us and deal with the issue head on. The issue of being human in the workplace.
Basically, we want more of it, and I’m going to tell you why.
Human beings while unique, share something in common.
We are all insecure.
Some may be better at hiding it than others, but it’s there in all of us.
We feel and attempt to manage our insecurities day in and day out. At work, we are doing our best to pretend it isn’t there. We read self-help books and listen to podcasts to make us better (imposter syndrome anyone?), because insecurity at work, that’s a weakness isn’t it? A failing on your part.
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash
But hang on a second, this is all that fluffy personal stuff. This has nothing to do with my business or how my people do their job. Work is work – however people feel about themselves, right?
Insecurity has everything to do with how you do your job, and how your people do their jobs, and that is why you need to understand it.
Have a think about the following scenarios – do any of these resonate with you?
· There’s someone at work who is starting to encroach a little bit on the work I’ve been doing. I’m not having that… perhaps I’ll not be so forthcoming with giving them access to my information in the future. Then they can go and steal someone else’s job.
· Dave made a snarky comment about me in the accounts meeting last week and I felt a bit undermined. I didn’t mind telling my mate Amardeep afterwards that Dave made a bucket load of mistakes in his presentation at that meeting. He’s such a joke.
· I don’t always want to come across as the naysayer so this decision that the team are currently making – it’s a terrible idea - I think I’ll keep schtum.
Whether it’s tribalism, gossiping, group think… little by little these decisions that we are making that are entirely based on our insecurities are chipping away at your organisational culture and creating a drain on efficiencies, communication, transparency, engagement, creativity and objective decision making, all of which ultimately hit your bottom line.
People aren’t sharing information in a timely manner – bottom line takes a hit.
People don’t speak up about issues – bottom line takes a hit.
Your people feel judged or second guessed – bottom line takes a hit.
People don’t speak up with an idea or to challenge a bad situation – bottom line takes a hit.
We all know that to achieve a large goal, the trick is to take small, actionable steps to get there. The reverse is also true. These small, almost unperceivable behaviours will add up to make a huge impact on your organisation.
Managing other peoples’ insecurities.
We cope with our insecurities at work as best we can yet it may be that we spend even more time managing the insecurities of other people. How many times have you:
Invited someone to a meeting who doesn’t really need to be there because if you didn’t they would feel slighted?
Done a piece of work again that a colleague has done for you because you didn’t want to tell them what they gave you wasn’t up to muster?
Put an ! or an 😊 in an email to make the tone more friendly when what you really wanted to do is print out the email and staple it to that persons forehead?
Checked the order of people in a group email and maybe put certain names at the top of the list so that they didn’t feel like an afterthought?
(I have to confess, I have done that last one so many times in my corporate life!).
We bring a lifetime of experiences to the workplace, all framed in our own world view couched in how we perceive ourselves and the world around us and are constantly checking how we and everyone else fits into that world.
We can’t help it – we are human.
So to say that we should ignore all of that in the workplace, that we should leave that human and all their baggage at home, is an impossible task. We would spend our time better pushing water uphill.
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They don’t teach you this!
When we are at school, or college or just doing life generally, nobody tells you about this kind of stuff. Nobody tells you that when you start working with other people just how much of our time we are going to be spending managing our insecurities and the insecurities of other people. We know what the job looks like. We understand the tasks we need to complete. We can read about the habits we need to be highly successful but nobody helpfully takes us to one side to explain that alongside doing all of those things, there’s this extra layer where we spend a lot of energy just managing other peoples’ insecurities.
The longer we spend working, the more time we spend doing this – time we don’t even notice because it has become so normalised in our daily activities.
You may think that you have this covered. You care about your people, you have great relationships with your entire team. You always give praise and reward good work, people enjoy working for you, you genuinely want your people to be happy… and yet underneath all of the sincerity of appreciation, of the importance of relationships, these deeper human issues are ignored because they are difficult, complicated and personal. None of your business.
Do you ignore any other issue that has such an impact on your bottom line?
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Denying your vulnerabilities is to deny yourself.
Where on earth do you start unpicking all of this?
This is where being vulnerable plays such an important part.
Not everyone is comfortable with this. For some, breaking down those walls and showing people your vulnerable, insecure self is a terrifying thought, so it’s not for everyone. But for those who can, this is where you start to create a space for people to build trust with each other. (A term you may have heard about that encompasses this, is psychological safety and you can read more about it here.)
I’ve been in many workplaces where this simply wasn’t an option, so for some, this may be the first time in their working adult life they’ve seen a space like this. In these spaces people grow intellectually in a way that tells them it’s OK to be flawed around our peers. That it’s a good thing to start letting go of a few insecurities around these people. When we do this, we release – liberate – a tremendous amount of energy back into the workplace. We are uncovering assets that had previously been covered up by layers of emotional clutter.
Of course, this doesn’t just happen by throwing a bunch of people in a room together and telling them they need to “share” with each other. When attempting to connect humans on a more human level we need to take more care than that. Care and time. There are no cure-alls, and nothing is effortless and this is perhaps why they can create such a competitive advantage for those organisations who choose to take this route. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it! (Access a free resource to help start developing your culture of trust).
Ultimately we are helping individuals, teams and organisations to create trustworthy environments, freeing those human beings up to engage and connect with one another more fully, more authentically and to ultimately contribute their hearts, minds and talents to something worthy of their energy.
If you want to cultivate a culture of trust, the foundation of all successful teams, and help your people understand and take ownership of their uniqueness, book in a discovery call with Lucy.