The value of a computer, for instance, lies not in its material constituents but in its design, in the thinking and knowledge it embodies—and in the quantity of human effort it makes unnecessary. Microchips are made out of sand; their value is a function of the intelligence encoded within them. A copper wire can carry forty-eight telephone conversations; a single fiber-optic cable can carry more than eight thousand conversations; yet fiber-optic cables are cheaper, more efficient, and much less energy consuming to produce than copper.
Each year since 1979 the United States has produced more with less energy than the year before. The worldwide drop in the price of raw materials is a consequence of the ascendancy of mind in our economic life.
The mind always has been our basic tool of survival. But for most of our history, this fact was not understood. Today it is obvious to (almost) the whole world.
Challenges
In an economy in which knowledge, information, creativity—and their translation into innovation—are transparently the source of wealth and of competitive advantage, there are distinct challenges both to individuals and to organizations.
To individuals, whether as employees or as self-employed professionals, the challenges include:
To acquire appropriate knowledge and skills, and to commit oneself to a lifetime of continuous learning, which the rapid growth of knowledge makes mandatory.
To work effectively with other human beings, which includes skill in written and oral communication, the ability to participate in nonadversarial relationships, understanding of how to build consensus through give and take, and willingness to assume leadership and motivate coworkers when necessary.
To manage and respond appropriately to change.
To cultivate the ability to think for oneself, without which innovativeness is impossible.
Such challenges entail the need to bring a high level of consciousness to one’s working life, to its demands in terms of knowledge and skills—and also its opportunities, the possibilities for growth and self-development it offers. A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
In dealing with other people, there is the need for that level of self-respect that underlies respect for others; freedom from gratuitous fear, envy, or hostility; expectation of being dealt with fairly and decently; and the conviction that one can have genuine values to contribute. Again we are led to the importance of self-esteem.
As an example, consider how poor self-esteem might show up in communication. People with troubled self-esteem often belittle their ideas, even while expressing them. They can turn fact into opinion, confusingly, by starting sentences with “I think” or “I feel.” They apologize before presenting a new idea. They make self-deprecating remarks. They laugh to release nervous energy, thus laughing at inappropriate times. They suddenly freeze in confusion and uncertainty because they anticipate disagreement and “rejection.” They make statements that sound like questions by raising the tone of the voice at the end of a sentence. Not all communication problems are the result of inadequate education; sometimes the cause is a self-concept that generates self-sabotage.
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A commitment to lifelong learning is a natural expression of the practice of living consciously.
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Or consider the issue of benevolence, goodwill, and the ability to interact with others constructively, which relate to a positive sense of self. Men and women of healthy self-esteem do not seek to prove their worth by making others wrong. They do not approach relationships with gratuitous belligerence. It is self-doubt and insecurity that see all encounters—with staff, superiors, subordinates, customers, clients—as overt or covert war.
Cooperative endeavors rest on the willingness of participants to be accountable, which is a corollary of the practice of self-responsibility. Such endeavors rest on the willingness of people to keep their promises, honor their commitments, think about the consequences of their actions to others, and manifest reliability and trustworthiness, which are all expressions of the practice of personal integrity.
If more is offered to individuals than ever before in our history, in opportunities for fulfillment, achievement, and self-expression, more is asked of them in terms of psychological development.
Self-esteem is far from being the only asset one needs, of course—let there be no mistake about this—but without it the individual is severely impaired and is in effect at a competitive disadvantage.
To organizations, the challenges include:
To respond to the need for a constant stream of innovation by cultivating a discipline of innovation and entrepreneurship into the mission, strategies, policies, practices, and reward system of the organization.
To go beyond paying lip service to “the importance of the individual” by designing a culture in which initiative, creativity, self-responsibility, and contribution are fostered and rewarded.
To recognize the relationship between self-esteem and performance and to think through and implement policies that support self-esteem. This demands recognizing and responding to the individual’s need for a sane, intelligible, noncontradictory environment that a mind can make sense of; for learning and growth; for achievement; for being listened to and respected; for being allowed to make (responsible) mistakes.
Since, in the 1990s and beyond, the demand for such mind workers will be greater than the supply, they will be in a position to demand such treatment and to favor the companies that offer it, thus giving these companies an economic advantage. When prospective employees ask themselves, “Is this an organization where I can learn, grow, develop myself, enjoy my work?” they are implicitly asking, whether they identify it or not, “Is this a place that supports my self-esteem—or does violence to it?”
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The successful organization of the future will be an organization geared to self-esteem.
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It is said that the successful organization of the future will be above all a learning organization. It can equally be said that it will be an organization geared to self-esteem.
Bringing Out the Best in People
Leaders do not usually ask themselves, “How can we create a self-esteem-supporting culture in our organization?” But the best (the most conscious) of them do ask, “What can we do to stimulate innovation and creativity? How can we make this the kind of place that will attract the best people? And what can we do to earn their continuing loyalty?”
These questions are all different, and yet the answers to them are largely the same or at least significantly overlap. It would be impossible to have an organization that nurtured innovation and creativity and yet did not nurture self-esteem in some important ways. It would be impossible to have an organization that nurtured self-esteem, rationally understood, and yet did not stimulate innovation, creativity, excitement, and loyalty.
An example: Some businesses are experimenting with tying pay raises to the acquisition of new knowledge and skills; employees are paid to learn, paid to master new areas of expertise. The assumption is that the more knowledgeable and skilled they are, the greater the contribution to the company they will be able to make. But will not a growth in competence very likely lead to an increase in the experience of self-efficacy?
From the point of view of the individual, it is obvious that work can be a vehicle for raising self-esteem. The six pillars all have clear application here. When we bring a high level of consciousness, responsibility, and so on to our tasks, self-esteem is strengthened—just as, when we avoid them, self-esteem is weakened.
When I am invited by companies to teach how self-esteem principles and technology can be utilized to stimulate higher performance, I often work with the sentence-completion technique, asking participants in the program to write six to ten endings every day, over a period of some weeks, for sentence stems such as the following:
If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my work today—
If I brin
g 5 percent more self-acceptance to my daily activities—
If I operate 5 percent more self-responsibly today—
If I operate 5 percent more self-assertively today—
If I operate 5 percent more purposefully today—
If I bring 5 percent more integrity to my work today—
Stems such as these and dozens of others like them invariably stimulate a direct experience of what the practice of the six pillars means, not only for self-esteem, but also for productivity and interpersonal effectiveness.
In this section I want to focus on self-esteem from the perspective of the organization—the kind of policies and practices that either undermine or support the self-efficacy and self-respect of people.
An organization whose people operate at a high level of consciousness, self-acceptance (and acceptance of others), self-responsibility, self-assertiveness (and respect for the assertiveness of others), purposefulness, and personal integrity would be an organization of extraordinarily empowered human beings. These traits are supported in an organization to the extent that the following conditions are met:
1. People feel safe: secure that they will not be ridiculed, demeaned, humiliated, or punished for openness and honesty or for admitting “I made a mistake” or for saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”
2. People feel accepted: treated with courtesy, listened to, invited to express thoughts and feelings, dealt with as individuals whose dignity is important.
3. People feel challenged: given assignments that excite, inspire, and test and stretch their abilities.
4. People feel recognized: acknowledged for individual talents and achievements and rewarded monetarily and nonmonetarily for extraordinary contributions.
5. People receive constructive feedback: they hear how to improve performance in nondemeaning ways that stress positives rather than negatives and that build on their strengths.
6. People see that innovation is expected of them: their opinions are solicited, their brainstorming is invited, and they see that the development of new and usable ideas is desired of them and welcomed.
7. People are given easy access to information: not only are they given the information (and resources) they need to do their job properly, they are given information about the wider context in which they work—the goals and progress of the company—so that they can understand how their activities relate to the organization’s overall mission.
8. People are given authority appropriate to what they are accountable for: they are encouraged to take initiative, make decisions, exercise judgment.
9. People are given clear-cut and noncontradictory rules and guidelines: they are provided with a structure their intelligence can grasp and count on and they know what is expected of them.
10. People are encouraged to solve as many of their own problems as possible: they are expected to resolve issues close to the action rather than pass responsibility for solutions to higher-ups, and they are empowered to do so.
11. People see that their rewards for successes are far greater than any penalties for failures: in too many companies, where the penalties for mistakes are much greater than the rewards for success, people are afraid to take risks or express themselves.
12. People are encouraged and rewarded for learning: they are encouraged to participate in internal and external courses and programs that will expand their knowledge and skills.
13. People experience congruence between an organization’s mission statement and professed philosophy, on the one hand, and the behavior of leaders and managers, on the other: they see integrity exemplified and they feel motivated to match what they see.
14. People experience being treated fairly and justly: they feel the workplace is a rational universe they can trust.
15. People are able to believe in and take pride in the value of what they produce: they perceive the result of their efforts as genuinely useful, they perceive their work as worth doing.
To the extent that these conditions are operative in an organization, it will be a place in which high-self-esteem people will want to work. It will also be one in which people of more modest self-esteem will find their self-esteem raised.
What Managers Can Do
When I sat with a group of managers once, outlining the above set of conditions, one of them remarked, “You talk about self-esteem, but what you have described are conditions that stimulate active and creative employee participation—that stimulate innovation.” Precisely.
For executives who want to build a high-self-esteem organization I would structure a different but inevitably overlapping list of proposals:
1. Work on your own self-esteem: commit yourself to raising the level of consciousness, responsibility, and integrity you bring to your work and your dealings with people—staff, subordinates, associates, higher-ups, customers, and suppliers.
2. When you talk with your people, be present to the experience: make eye contact, listen actively, offer appropriate feedback, give the speaker the experience of being heard.
3. Be empathic: let the speaker know that you understand his or her feelings as well as statements, which is a way of giving the speaker an experience of visibility.
4. Regardless of who you are speaking to, maintain a tone of respect: do not permit yourself a condescending, superior, sarcastic, or blaming tone.
5. Keep encounters regarding work task-centered, not ego-centered: never permit a dispute to deteriorate into a conflict of personalities; the focus needs to be on reality—“What is the situation?” “What does the work require?” “What needs to be done?”
6. Give your people opportunities to practice self-responsibility: give them space to take the initiative, volunteer ideas, attempt new tasks, expand their range.
7. Speak to your people’s understanding: give the reasons for rules and guidelines (when they are not self-evident), explain why you cannot accommodate certain requests; don’t merely hand down orders from on high.
8. If you make a mistake in your dealings with someone, are unfair or short-tempered, admit it and apologize: do not imagine (like some autocratic parents) that it would demean your dignity or position to admit taking an action you regret.
9. Invite your people to give you feedback on the kind of boss you are: I agree with someone who once said that “you are the kind of manager your people say you are,” so check it out and let your people see that you are open to learning and self-correction, and set an example of nondefensiveness.
10. Let your people see that it’s safe to make a mistake or say “I don’t know, but I will find out”: to evoke fear of error or ignorance is to invite deception, inhibition, and an end to creativity.
11. Let your people see that it’s safe to disagree with you: convey respect for differences of opinion and do not punish dissent.
12. Describe undesirable behavior without blaming: let someone know if his or her behavior is unacceptable, point out its consequences, communicate what kind of behavior you want instead, and omit character assassination.
13. Let your people see that you talk honestly about your feelings: if you are hurt or angry or offended, say so with honesty and dignity (and give everyone a lesson in the strength of self-acceptance).
14. If someone does superior work or makes an excellent decision, invite him or her to explore how and why it happened: do not limit yourself simply to praise; by asking appropriate questions, help raise the person’s consciousness about what made the achievement possible and thereby increase the likelihood that others like it will occur in the future.
15. If someone does unacceptable work or makes a bad decision, practice the same principle as above: do not limit yourself to corrective feedback; invite an exploration of what made the error possible, thus raising the level of consciousness and minimizing the likelihood of a repetition.
16. Give clear and unequivocal performance standards: let people understand your nonnegotiable expectations regarding the quality of work.
17. Praise in public and correct in private: acknowledge achievements in the hearing of as many people as possible while letting a person absorb corrections in the safety of privacy.
18. Let your praise be realistic: like parents who make compliments meaningless by praising extravagantly for trivia, you can make your positive acknowledgments devoid of force if they are overblown and not calibrated to the reality of what has been accomplished.
19. When the behavior of someone creates a problem, ask him or her to propose a solution: whenever possible, avoid handing down solutions but give the problem to the responsible party, thereby encouraging self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, and intensified awareness.
20. Convey in every way possible that you are not interested in blaming, you are interested in solutions, and exemplify this policy personally: when we look for solutions, we grow in self-esteem; when we blame (or alibi), we weaken self-esteem.
21. Give your people the resources, information, and authority to do what you have asked them to do: remember that there can be no responsibility without power, and nothing so undermines morale as assigning the first without giving the second.
22. Remember that a great manager or leader is not one who comes up with brilliant solutions but who sees to it that his people come up with brilliant solutions: a manager, at his or her best, is a coach, not a problem solver for admiring children.
23. Take personal responsibility for creating a culture of self-esteem: no matter what “self-esteem training” they might be given, subordinates are unlikely to sustain the kind of behavior I am recommending if they do not see it exemplified by the higher-ups.
24. Work at changing aspects of the organization’s culture that undermine self-esteem: traditional procedures, originating in an older model of management, may stifle not only self-esteem but also any creativity or innovation (such as requiring that all significant decisions be passed up a chain of command, thus leaving those close to the action disempowered and paralyzed).
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem Page 29