The Workplace Engagement Solution

by David Harder

  A number of brilliant behavioral scientists and academics contributed to the model for that program, which forms a foundation for all the services we deliver today. We have now led thousands of individuals to use their own values to design a great relationship with their work. And for every participant, the definition of that relationship is unique.

  About a year after we launched Inspired Work, one of the nation’s largest banks became a client. After decades of success and stability, the CEO was looking for ways to generate more value for the shareholders. The plan backfired. During the next five years, waves of employees were laid off as the bank struggled to survive. They offered outplacement for those who wanted in finding another job, and they offered Inspired Work to those who wanted a new life. It was an amazing experience because they were individuals who came from the old world of “jobs for life” with the courage to elevate this event into a turning point. Many of them came in wearing blue suits and stickpins with the bank’s logo. In 1996, the bank merged with another financial institution and disappeared. Our graduates moved forward with unexpectedly diverse choices from art leadership, farm ownership, education, and new jobs in emerging industries, and yes, some returned to banking.

  One of them was a young man who had become a senior finance executive. He was the first member of his family to go to college. In fact, he had earned an MBA from an Ivy League school. He told us of growing up in a family of migrant workers, doing well in school, and getting a scholarship. But his passion had never been to climb a corporate ladder and make a great deal of money. At one point he whispered to me, “All I ever wanted to do was to grow things.” That weekend he designed a whole new life. Today, he is a wealthy farmer growing premium lettuce for gourmet restaurants across the western seaboard.

  Another gentleman had come into the program with his wife. He had been with the bank for almost 30 years. Now in his 50s, he panicked about finding another job as a middle-aged man. However, on the second day of the program, his demeanor had changed so completely that I asked what was going on with him. He responded, “I would like to make an announcement to the room.” He continued by telling everyone he had always been in love with the world of art and that now he had decided he would “devote the rest of his life to the art community.” Years later, I would open up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and find his obituary. It read, “John Morgan, Leader in the Los Angeles Art Community.” He had gone on to open a charity, bringing art education to inner city schools. He raised millions for art museums and he opened up a successful gallery. Later, his wife would share that, for 18 years, “he always left for work with a smile on his face.”

  I have always been passionate about helping people find new lives and renewed purpose. Some readers might assume that my agenda is to get people to leave their jobs, but that is not the case at all. The vast majority of people want to be inspired and happy in their work. The majority of them find what they are looking for right where they are by simply relating to their circumstances differently. They develop a profound sense of internal drive. It is those who cannot find pleasure and passion in their work who need to leave. Our employers almost always find that those who are most unhappy and disruptive are often those who will never be satisfied. They are in the wrong environment or the wrong role, or both, and they need to go!

  In 1990, we were also witnessing a landmark change in the attitudes of America’s workers. With the promise of stability shattered, disloyalty was rampant and the press railed on about the inequity of millions of workers being displaced as the coffers of the investment bankers grew exponentially. Human resources professionals complained about the “broken employment contract” and many of us continued to fixate on the losses while a larger wave grew on the horizon. The technology wave would hit our shores and advance so quickly that it would wipe out work as we knew it, and our culture wasn’t to blame this time. Still, after almost 300 years, a grieving period seemed in order.

  As our early program participants defined and pursued new lives, many of them made a disquieting remark about the great and convulsive change they had just weathered. “I’m glad that’s over,” they would say. But little did we know that the wave of technology coming towards had only just begun. A few examples:

  • Today, a smart phone can monitor a patient’s health, predict heart attacks, and directly notify her physician. This technology alone blasts thousands of jobs into the past.

  • iPhone cameras are now so sophisticated and produce such superior photographs that an entire class of professional photographers have become obsolete.

  • Five years of technological advancement have ended virtually every cashier working on toll roads.

  • The last time I used a travel agent was 1998.

  • The rate-of-change produced such a need for mentors that an entire coaching industry sprung up overnight. These coaches tell potential clients something like, “If you’re nuts, see a therapist. But, if you’re healthy, I will help you become more successful without the stigma of working with a psychologist.” Many psychologists are only now realizing what these upstarts did to their profession.

  As a consumer, picture this: You’ve wanted that new BMW convertible for quite some time. You get a promotion and a bonus. Your first thought is to order your brand new car. You visit BMW’s web-site and key in all of the options, the color, and the interior; you get to customize this car to fit all your unique design preferences. You click send and the dealership down the block prints out your beautiful new convertible. There is no big factory. There is no shipping. The dealership has no inventory. Does this sound like a pipe dream? In fact, 3D printing has reached such an advanced degree of sophistication that defense contractors are now tooling up to build entire fighter jets without assembly lines.

  How will change like this impact our world?

  If you are working in a traditional manufacturing setting, it is time to reeducate and reinvent—right now. In the next decade, China will lose the factors that have made it the world’s chief manufacturing center and 3D printing is at a tipping point. Most of our leaders don’t know it, but the technology has moved well beyond a novelty phase and it is about to go mainstream. GE is ramping up its production of jet engines, medical devices, and home appliance parts using 3D printing, and thousands of other organizations are following suit. Though the direct costs of using 3D technology are often higher, when we add flexibility and remove the need for inventory storage, shipping, and labor, the costs are substantially lower.

  I offer up this scenario to portray how much all of us need to learn how to change ourselves. For years, our programs at Inspired Work have given people an active opportunity to change their lives with the endgame being a fulfilled and remarkably effective relationship with their work. So many walk into our programs and tell us, “I can’t change. I will be the one person that won’t get it.” And yet, they walk out the door with new lives. Many of them walk away from crumbling and obsolete platforms.

  It’s time for us to retire our fixation on what we have lost and instead replace our fear of change with an enthusiasm for growth. The new engagement is about learning how to change our focus and behavior rapidly, to let go more quickly, and to anticipate the many roles coming from our future. So when we ask “How the bleep did we get here?” that’s how the bleep we got here.

  Sadly, huge swaths of the current workforce continue to pine for a return to the past, and this fixation distracts them from the frightening truth that they need to reinvent and transform themselves. But, what if they don’t know how? As greater portions of the old workplace disappear, much of America’s workforce is standing like frightened deer in the glow of their smartphones. Without meaningful solutions, their pursuit of distraction and numbness only grows. This cultural craving to pursue the safe route, to find predictability somewhere, to get through life with a secure paycheck is obscuring the greatest opportunities for all that we have ever seen before—opportunities to grow with enthusiasm, to celebrate th
e remarkable change and advancement we are witnessing. We now have the opportunity to jump in and see where the next wave takes us.

  This pursuit, my friends, leads to all of us becoming greater, more multi-dimensional human beings. We must stop reacting to the bigger waves by swimming faster, and instead learn how to ride them skillfully. Of course we will continue to experience a sense of awkwardness and some fumbling. That’s okay. But as we become skilled in riding the waves, we will find ourselves looking directly into a transformed world. In this new paradigm, mediocre employers will lose their footing. The wise will harness the energy of their brightest workers. The most visionary employers will not only recognize the profit benefits from teaching people how to change, they will help the world make a critical detour from having workers cast to the sidelines as we go. The mentors we develop will not only help our organizations become category leaders, they will become beacons to our community.

  For those who learn how to use change as an asset and a resource, the years ahead will be an era where we get to live not just one work life, but rather a variety of lives. We will grow in such unexpected ways that we will become far more interested—and interesting. We will find ourselves creating solutions to all the challenges of this new world around us.

  How do I know this is true? Simple. This is how my tribe lives.

  So how about we snap out of this trance?

  2

  A Change of Heart

  The global workforce would do well to adopt a new outlook on how we view and respond to change. Given that we are barely keeping up today, consider that emerging technologies in artificial intelligence, life extension, virtual reality, and robotics will continue to redefine how we live, work, and interact with each other. Near-term innovations alone will pave the way for entirely new realities that determine what it means to be productive. And this is just the next wave in an endless sea of future change.

  In the face of shorter change cycles, we need organizations that not only help talent embrace new perspectives and life skills, but require them to learn and embrace these new essentials. We will need organizations to walk the talk in fostering empathy, collective support, and unification in savvy and strategic ways. The question is, how will we do that in the midst of what appears to so many to be unnerving and tumultuous chaos?

  We begin by adopting new mindsets. We need mindsets that can deal with sudden changes and the shoot-from-the-hip responses that too often have kept many workers and organizations stuck in time as the world transforms around them. The old norms are no longer enough. The typical decision-making protocols and reactions must be examined and replaced with actions that are designed to make the best use of each moment. When we expand this challenge to an organizational level, we find out why many of the more progressive organizations do a better job of fostering strong talent in the new environment while the others reach to the past for answers that never satisfy.

  Change engenders discomfort always and intense fear frequently. If we are to become artful and skillful in staying ahead of change, it is time to end our resistance to developing what has often been dismissively called “soft skills.” In static or stagnant environments, these skills were not viewed as critical. But now, they represent the vitally important skills that enable us to connect with others. This is something we desperately need now. We need these skills to move forward, to get the right information, to find the right help, to build effective support systems, to access high-quality learning and mentorship. Let us explore further what we mean by this.

  The Filters of Disengagement

  All of us have been trained since birth to wipe out change by using several different filters. We find these filters used often in the workplace to resist change, but they also undermine morale and greater transparency. Effective change requires that we recognize these filters exist in all of us and learn to become aware of them when they are in play. The reactions are often so commonplace and routine that many people assume no one notices the mechanisms involved. Let us start by recognizing and understanding what actually happens when we manage to stop the process of personal change in its tracks.

  My core program on work engagement routinely provokes personal change in the compressed period of just two days or 48 hours. This is actually quite remarkable in comparison to other common approaches. In the early days of delivering the programs, a minority of participants would predictably attack our philosophies, which contributed to stress for the facilitators and other participants. But once I defined the filters behind these reactions, we began pointing them out at the beginning of the program, to present them and, thus, get them largely out of our way. For the most part, the outbursts stopped entirely. In our leadership and engagement programs, we also teach people to recognize and manage these “killer filters” so that they are better able to deal with personal and organizational change. So what are these filters? Let’s review them here.

  Cynicism

  Cynicism, most often associated with distrust and pessimism, causes us to question our motivations, undermines our best intentions, and talks us out of taking any action. Cynicism is similar to contrarianism, which is where we always argue the opposite position, even to the most positive mission, vision, and purpose. In the workplace, cynicism shows up in messages like the following:

  “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “We don’t have the time or money to change.”

  “I don’t have the time to learn something new; I’m barely keeping ahead of the work as it is.”

  In the career development space, it can show up similarly: “I could never make a living doing that.”

  Contempt

  We call this one the “assassination filter.” When someone is particularly frightened by change or transparency, they often use a distilled version of cynicism to in order to kill progress and change on-the-spot. It is more intense and drastic.

  The Oxford Living Dictionaries’ definition of contempt makes the point: “The feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn: he showed his contempt for his job by doing it very badly.” I often tell leaders that if someone comes after you with contempt, they are more than just fearful; they are terrified.

  A few years ago, poet and performance artist Gary Turk created a video called “Look Up,”1 which quickly went viral. It shows two alternate scenarios. In one version, a young man who is fixated on his cell phone misses the life he was meant to have. In the other version, he “looks up” and meets the love of his life. They marry and raise a family, and he holds her hand in old age as she passes away. Turk’s performance piece is a rather eloquent message about what we lose when we “check out” with our technology. To be clear, I don’t interpret his video as an attack on technology. Indeed, many are also using it to connect in meaningful ways with others. It is directed towards those of us who become so consumed by technology that we lose out on meaningful human interaction.

  Clearly, Mr. Turk’s message sparked much contempt when you see some of the reactions:

  “I don’t know who I find more galling—Gary Turk, who wrote this one-dimensional preachy fluff, or the millions of sheep sharing it on social media.”

  “Thanks Helen! Every time I read it, I just want to rip it apart line by line—I’m glad someone else has the energy to do so.”

  When an entire team falls into cynicism about a change process, often the most domineering member of that team steps forward with a contemptuous point of view. This is the very indication that we need to educate, comfort, and establish clear messages about our commitment to the change initiative. This also represents a time to point out what people stand to benefit if they get past the filter. People are not motivated much by demands and orders. People tend to get angry when they see their potential but can’t find the means to fulfill it. When we give them the insights in how to fulfill their expectations, they do move forward.

  Aimlessness

  More than 80 percent of America’s work
ers don’t like what they do for a living, which means the majority of our workforce is in a state of aimlessness or just going through the motions. They respond to performance commands with contempt. They avoid change because they haven’t even defined what they need in their current state, nor are their companies inclined currently to help them define what they really want to do. I have encountered many organizations in which the subtext in the culture is, “If we help them to define what they want to do with their lives, they will leave.” How can we possibly produce engagement with this dreadful outlook? Socrates once said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” As we take a closer look at skilled self-inquiry, we begin to realize that becoming aware of these filters also helps us understand the negative impact they have on our individual lives and organizations.

  The widespread state of aimlessness is an extension of the malaise that comes from the crash of the Industrial Revolution, as discussed in Chapter 1, but it is also an example of the recruitment pitch we established during that era. We promised people predictability and survival, and many settled for that pursuit. Often, the practice of self-inquiry can be painful because if we “sold out” for predictability and survival, we must face the impact of that decision on our lives and overall well-being. It is no longer enough to simply demand that people “wake up” and show enthusiasm for pushing the organizational vision. We need to get them to define their own highly personalized vision, their own sense of meaning and purpose, and their own compelling definition of what it means to be happy with their work. Until we do this, to varying degrees, we will have drones that drudge along, day after day and year after year.

  Resignation