“I really don’t care how they feel…”
Well you damn well better! How many times have you heard someone in a leadership role say something like this? They are all about the numbers, the bottom-line, throughput, the outcomes. They do not care about the human toll, the feelings, the Gen-Z mentality that says they did not sign up to be psychologically abused and will be opting out. The leaders that say, “you should develop by trial and fire”. That believe that you should add additional load to make someone a better employee. From what rule of thumb textbook did you all get that from?
Seriously?
A MILLENNIAL would like to know.
In my nearly two-decade soiree with CORPORATE AMERICA, from hands-on boots-on-the-ground brick and mortars all the way up to the spin-in-your chair work from home oasis, never have I ever seen that applying more pressure created greatness. What it creates, my dear reader, is stress. What generally happens to things that are under stress?
Stress causes fractures. Fractures lead to…there…there ya go, I’ll let you find it.
There’s this really sick thing that has developed in leadership that is beyond the pressure cooker piece. It’s the part where you have stopped caring about the people that get the work done. You will pour into processes and procedures but the second that you don’t hit a metric all hell breaks loose. You will flip every procedure on it’s head, push out a rash of revision work, tell 3000+ people that they have to read it, learn it, absorb it in a micro-window of time, and then stammer backward with your hand to your chest, feeling those pangs, not understanding why everyone didn’t fall into place and get the things done. Your perfect plan to correct the obvious root cause had a flaw.
You didn’t consider the people that the change would most effect.
“I really don’t care how they feel…”
Remember that statement at the start of this article?
When we only check on the engine but we don’t check on the driver the entire vehicle will fall apart. You can have the best made car for the for the Formula1 race but if you don’t have that driver, the one that knows how to control it, who has the feel, who has the eye, can make those curves, see around corners…if that guy is not in the driver’s seat or he is but he isn’t feeling well, you updated the user manual one too many times and now he can’t keep account of all of the changes, and you’ve taken out this part that he used to maneuver…again, I’ll let you see where the story heads if YOU continue to not care about how your employees feel.
What I’m talking about is not a round-table talk about feelings on a Monday where we talk about Susie’s childhood, share war stories, and a box of tissues. You don’t have to absorb everyone’s trauma and walk on egg shells singing kumbaya. What you do need to do is key in to the things that will effect your staff if the processes and expectations that you set into place do not involve them, do not concern them, and do not ensure the CARE of them and their well-being.
It’s psychological whiplash at it’s most basic level.