How to Recover Up to $17 Billion in Productivity and Help 50% of Workers

Okay, the headline applies to the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area in Southern Ontario, Canada, but I’ll bet the per capita numbers are probably about the same in your local area. A new report from CivicAction, “an independent and nimble developer of broad civic leadership creating collaborative solutions to unresolved regional challenges,” reports that nearly 50% of workers in the GTHA have experience mental health issues, and that the projected productivity loss over the next decade could amount to $17 billion.

Among the main causes reported in the report are: Income inequality, Job insecurity, Racial discrimination, Family care demands, and Housing conditions and affordability. Big, systemic issues, to be sure, and issues that need systemic approaches that recognize the inherent complexity of the contextualizing circumstances. Not surprisingly, the report highlights a medicalized, mental health support approach. It talks about physician-related stigma, access to Employee and Family Assistance Programs, and psychological/psychiatric counselling. In other words, irrespective of the root causes, a person who is feeling the effects of whatever the overwhelming stressers in their life might be, should be considered only as an individual, one who should be supported to overcome what is considered only their problem..

What’s wrong with this picture? Systemic, causal issues do not lend themselves effectively to individual solutions.

The biggest contributor, by the way, to workplace emotional distress (almost listed as an afterthought in the infographic and media reportage) is workplace culture. That’s right: 60% of the workers surveyed report “that emotional / interpersonal issues are the top source of workplace stress; the top … issue identified is the culture of the workplace” (emphasis mine).

This is potentially good news. Never mind, “potentially”—this is VERY good news. What it means is that a substantial solution to the seeming epidemic of mental health issues that workers experience every day in almost every workplace does not require solving job insecurity, eliminating racial discrimination, addressing family care demands, and remediating housing conditions and affordability. Those would be wonderful, to be sure. But, addressing the number one cause of workplace distress can be accomplished in the workplaces themselves, and for very little money.

In fact, many of the changes that would effect a remarkable transformation of workplace culture can be accomplished for almost NO MONEY AT ALL, aside from a little education, a little coaching, and a bunch of practice. By transitioning to a culture based on Appreciative Management Practices, the distress that half the workforce experiences can be greatly reduced. The savings in Employee Support Programs, not to mention eliminating the lost productivity, and gaining the ancillary benefits of improved motivation, higher work quality, and enabling considerable innovation more than justifies the minimal investment of almost no money at all.

For a taste of what could be possible, it just so happens that I’m teaching a seminar in June on behalf of the HRPA, open to everyone (with a class size limited to 20) called “The Human Side of Contemporary Leadership” that covers exactly this. Here are a couple of comments from people who have attended the same program (offered by a different organization):

• “Mark is an illuminating speaker, provocative presenter and incisive coach. His ability to make sense of organizational behaviour from an individual point of view to a larger dynamic corporate entity is remarkable. His thoughts on the workplace and people within it are relevant, timely, humanistic and creative. He allows one to reimagine a workplace environment where workers thrive and ultimately drive success at a time when 20th century business models no longer make sense.”
• “Mark taught a one-day session in our 2016 Leadership Program. His approach to the material was well-balanced between theory and practice providing insightful approaches on how to cultivate the best in people. Mark is a complete professional in his approach to teaching but manages to be very accessible by incorporating his own flair and personality into the session, resulting in a very engaging learning environment.”

Interested in helping to recover up to $17B in productivity and helping 50% of workers? Sign up and register here.

Recognition Rewards and the Compliance Culture

It’s an exercise I use in leadership facilitation to illustrate the difference between organizational cultures of commitment and compliance. Imagine you’ve been invited to meet the one person in the world you’ve always dreamed of meeting. More than that, you’ve been asked to pick that person up at the airport, chauffeur them to the corporate office, host them for the day, and have dinner with them in the evening. A full day, one-on-one with your all-time hero(ine)! On the morning of that fateful day, you wake up extra early, get yourself ready with the perfect outfit, and head out to the airport. On the way… BOOM!… you have a car breakdown. What do you do? Because you are not going to spoil the day, you would likely ditch your vehicle, call a cab, meet your celebrity on schedule and have an outstanding day. A week later, since you did such a fine job with the celebrity, your boss invites you to do the same thing again but with the one person you would least like to spend even five minutes with. On the day, you hope your alarm clock fails (it doesn’t), you don’t bother to even do your hair, and on the way to the airport, car breaks down again. Do you call a cab? Do you flag down a passing motorist? No, you call in: “Sorry boss. Car broke down. Can’t make it.”

The first instance is about commitment; the second, compliance.

It’s the commitment culture to which great leaders strive. It’s that special environment in which people feel valued and appreciated, where anything is possible because everyone pitches in to make those alternative futures indeed become possible. In a commitment culture, mutual recognition and appreciation are baked in to such an extent that they are simply the ways in which individuals treat each other every day. On the other hand, in a culture of compliance, external mechanisms are required to ensure that people are compliant with what the enterprise demands of them. Unlike a commitment culture in which intrinsic motivation provides the primary impetus, compliance culture necessitates sometimes elaborate systems of carrots and sticks - extrinsic motivators - that attempt to align individuals’ actions with what are often imagined abstractions of mission-oriented behaviours.

Which brings us to recognition rewards. In some corporate cultures, it has become common practice to award tangible acknowledgement of contributions above and beyond the call of duty, as it were. Someone who works long hours on a high-profile project is given a cash bonus, or significant-valued gift card, or a company-paid night on the town with their spouse or other important-person-in-their-life. It is a way of acknowledging the extra value that the person contributed – often on their own time – to the success of something that is important to the company. What could be wrong with that?

Too often, in my experience, such recognition rewards are artefacts of an organization that has developed a highly task-oriented, compliance culture. Relationship and people-orientation has become so foreign that simple and authentic gratitude is beyond the capability of most people. Because the organization’s members are systemically incapable of expressing sincere gratitude, the recognition reward becomes a routinized, corporate surrogate for recognition of a job well done. In a dysfunctional, unhealthy culture, bribery is a proxy for true appreciation.

In the larger context, recognition rewards highlight the difference between compliance and commitment. In a culture of commitment, this bribery-recognition would not be necessary (although additional, creative forms of augmented compensation are certainly appreciated, even in a commitment culture). In a culture of compliance, such carrot-and-stick encouragement mechanisms are essential to enforcing the requisite conformity to management-dictated behaviours. In a culture of commitment, literally anything is possible.

An Opportunity to Engage With Me as Coach

Have you ever considered engaging the guidance of a professional coach?

Let me reframe the question: Are you feeling a connection with any of the following intentions as they might pertain to either personal or professional aspects of your life:

• What do I want to achieve? 
• What do I really want in my life right now? 
• How can I bring myself to face this tough decision and move onward? 
• How can I be an even more effective leader in my organization? 
• How can I better integrate my professional and personal lives to be able to live more authentically as “me?”
• How can I change the way I work (or what I do as an occupation) to be more in tune with my life’s purpose?
• What is my life’s purpose? 
• How can I feel more complete in what I do as a professional? As a parent? As a person? 

Or, to frame all of this more succinctly:

How can I achieve more awareness and more fulfillment throughout all aspects of my life via a guided process of learning, reflection, and focused conversation? 

I have the opportunity of a couple of openings in my coaching practice for new clients. We can engage our coaching conversations in person, over the phone, or through technology like Skype. After an initial foundational and discovery session (usually about two hours), subsequent coaching sessions typically run, on average, about 45 minutes to an hour. You should expect that our coaching arrangement would run for at least six sessions post-discovery, either weekly, twice-a-month, or monthly, depending on your schedule and needs.

For those who have worked with me in other contexts – as consultant, academic mentor, or facilitator – the coaching relationship is a different kind of engagement. Coaching is based on the fundamental affirmation that the client is creative, resourceful, and whole, and is closely connected to Appreciative Practices (in a consulting context) and Positive Psychology (in a therapeutic context). Most of all, coaching is centred in developing one's individual potential, enabling more productive and meaningful relationships throughout all aspects of one's life.

I invite you to connect with me – be it now or in the future – whenever you find yourself drawn to enabling and creating change that will lead you to your hoped-for aspirations and desired results.

Update (17 Jan 2012): If you're still wondering, "What can a coach do for you?" Harvard Business Review answers that very question!

"Personal Value Proposition?" Not so fast

The HBR Blog has a post that suggests,

"Executives set value propositions for their products — the target market segments, the benefits they provide, and their prices. It's why a target customer should buy the product.But value propositions go beyond just products. Your personal value proposition (PVP) is at the heart of your career strategy. It's the foundation for everything in a job search and career progression — targeting potential employers, attracting the help of others, and explaining why you're the one to pick. It's why to hire you, not someone else.

On the surface, it seems to make good sense. After all, knowing the unique value one can provide to a potential employer or organization that may wish to engage her/him is an important aspect of both understanding oneself and getting hired.

However...

As I describe in my popular keynote, "Take me to Your Leaders: Collaborative leadership and trust," the models we create and the language we use are not only descriptive, they are generative. In other words, they generate the institutions that in turn generate our society and the world in which we live.

With articles like this one posted on the HBR blog, I have to step back and question whether the use of corporate/business vocabulary, metaphors, and clichés like "personal value proposition" are appropriate for human connections and interactions in our contemporary context. When we adopt this sort of framing, we contribute to the subtle but systemic dehumanizing effects that characterize corporate colonizing of the life-world. It's not surprising that a corporatist/managerialist institution like HBR would promote business language in the context of personal development and realizing what one can provide that is of value.

Nonetheless, I think it is incumbent on those of us who actively promote a more humanistic, relationship-based construction of society - a construction of society that is more consistent with the complex reality of the contemporary UCaPP world - to mindfully transform the discourse. Exchange of value is but one of the five valence relationships (that is, Economic Valence). There are four others - Socio-psychological, Knowledge, Identity, and Ecological - that we should all strive to "build" without giving dominant preference to any one of them. A healthy organization based on healthy relationships strives to balance the valence relationships, in order to make not only better decisions, but more holistic, balanced, effective decisions.To do so means transforming the language we use throughout our daily interactions, especially in workplaces.

Will the Real David Weinberger Please Stand Up?

David raises an interesting question about identity over at Joho the Blog:

Identity isn't a continuum with anonymity at one end and documented, certified, authenticated ID on the other. It probably never was and it certainly isn't online. There's a third vertex: Pseudonymity. Pseudonyms online are not midway between anonymity and ID. They're different in kind, but enough on the same plane that any discussion of anonymity and ID that does not include pseudonyms is likely to go wrong.

It's hard to find an exact analog to this in the real world. [How about costume parties? MF] Social roles aren't really the same as pseudonyms. But that means that we have to be extra special careful to include pseudonyms in our thinking so we don't port inappropriate real world schema into the new virtual world, especially since the porting is being done top down by the traditional fear-based organizations (big corps and governments).

Here's my response:

What David is really asking about (or rather, what I hear him asking about) is the construction of identity. I think that we as a society have become so dependent on the visual and tangible that we mistake construction of identity with visual familiarity. The visual aspect is manifest in everything from the North American/European obsession with body image to the parental fear over our young children trusting familiar strangers in parks. The tangible aspect is revealed in the choice of language - "virtual" used in reference to that which exists in cyberspace, in dichotomous opposition to "real," referring to that which exists in physical space.

David's strawman identity continuum reflects this erroneous dichotomy (i.e., virtual::real mapped onto anonymous::certified-grade-a) which is, I think, an artefact of the former dominance of the visual in modern society. In the UCaPP environment of our contemporary world, the dominant sensation is tactile, not visual (tactile as distinct from tangible); complex networks of relationships are key to the construction of identity.

The problem with social roles (in traditional role theory) is that they tend to be defined as discrete, fragmentary and contingent. Not so when they are considered as complex patterns of effects in relationships (this was the underlying premise of my master's thesis on Role*). In this context, I would understand each instance of pseudonymity as one (among many) emergent identities in the context of a complex environment of relationships, that does not correspond with either a visual, or a nominative (and possibly others already defined by regulatory or legislative agencies, for instance) identity.

I agree wholeheartedly that identity schema porting done by fear-based organizations is problematic in the extreme. The type of derivative identity construction from a set of digiSelves haphazardly gathered against a ground of paranoia and fear gives us the error-filled TSA watchlists, and cases of immoral and illegal detentions and renditions. Sadly, the type of complexity thinking required to solve this conundrum seems to be mutually exclusive with BAH (bureaucratic, administrative, hierarchical) organizations in general, and authoritarian organizations in particular.

[Technorati tags: david weinberger | identity | rolestar]

Role* Research - The Serious Stuff

Several people have recently asked me about the more, shall we say, theoretical work that underlies Role*. They are referring to my recently completed thesis. I have prepared a thesis synopsis [pdf] that summarizes in five pages what I took nearly 170 pages to derive. It includes the key elements from the literature, my derivation and situation of the particular aspects of the method, a description of the empirical research methodology, and a summary of the findings.

If, after reading the synopsis, you have a serious interest in the full work, please write to me describing your interest, and we'll see how I can help.


[Technorati tags: rolestar | thesis]

"I Only Paint Fakes," and Offended People

Like many of you, I've ended up on a few listservs that are not so troublesome or voluminous that it merits the effort to unsubscribe, but they are only of peripheral interest. Mostly, it happens when I attend a meeting or seminar during which they pass a sign-up sheet for announcements of future events. Mostly, as it turns out, future events do not seem as interesting as the one that got me to loan out my name.

And so the emails roll in to the inbox, and out to the deleted mail file.

Today, a notice came on one particular list that is run by a professor at my institution about two former(?) students who were recently written up in minor news outlets. One of them, Diane Zorn, is engaged in a particularly interesting line of research concerning academics who suffer from what she calls, "The Imposter Phenomenon." As she describes it, the Imposter Phenomenon is

"an internal experience of intellectual phoniness common among high-achieving people". She has found that IP can affect anyone from PhD candidates preparing for their comprehensives to established and tenured professors. "At one workshop a professor who was two years away from retirement told me that he still lived in fear of being revealed as a fraud," said Zorn.

I can relate to this phenomenon, but from a different ground. In my research on Role*, I describe the experience of what I call the "exo-self":

Exo-self is a shorthand for the apparent receptacle of extrinsic motivation. Through my years in corporate life, the social norms of my milieu necessitated external trappings, including demonstrations of affluence, hierarchical status, credentials and accreditations, as sources of personal value and validation. All of these are proxies for the ways in which others might regard me in the social contexts of work/life. That regard became so important to my sense of self that the proxy replaced any internal sense of worth, value or validation. I mistook these proxies as my self; the agglomeration of the proxies thus comprised my exo-self.

...My value instead was reflected in the trappings that adorn the exo-self; the trappings themselves awarded or acquired as a direct result of the external evaluations – sales wins, for example – over which I had relatively little direct influence (despite the prevailing fiction that underlies the salesman’s job), and even less control.

In general, the exo-self reflects not the capabilities or intrinsic worth of the individuals in question, but rather the dominant socio-cultural assessment of how well the individual plays her/his assigned and expected role in society at large, and the particular subculture within that society with which the individual chooses to associate.

I would thus identify Zorn's Imposter Phenomenon with the tensions that exist within an individual among the oppression of assuming her/his exo-self, their unique role* motivating aspects, and the specific roles in which they feel they must perform.

As interesting as is Zorn's work (not to mention the cool connection I can make with my own stuff), that's not the point of this post. The notice of Zorn's article came on the listserv, as I mentioned. One of the people on the list responded by saying, "academics and scholars feel like frauds because THEY ARE. I know it keeps me grounded knowing this simple truth." And then he referred to himself as "the fraud."

I read this statement in two ways. First, I saw it as a satirical commentary on the nature of the roles we all don in the course of our individual professions. Second, I read it as a reminder that we should not take ourselves seriously. Our work, our students, our commitments to each other - those aspects we should absolutely take seriously. Ourselves, never, as that leads to arrogance and the sort of haughty, ivory-towerish detachment of which many academics are accused. Truly great people realize this. Picasso was once apparently asked how many paintings he had created. He responded that the number was around 2000. When told that there were at least 5000 of his paintings for sale in the U.S. alone, he shrugged and said, "I only paint fakes."

The moderator of the list was not so sanguine at the attempted satirical commentary that reveals an important truth. She labelled the comment as "abusive" and said that she would "not tolerate it." The person who posted the comment was not only removed from the list, but a special email was sent to the rest of the list notifying all of the banishment that would undoubtedly prove to have a chilling effect on future commentary. It is within the prerogative of a list moderator to include and exclude whatever s/he would like. However, in this case the moderator is an avowed feminist (and thus nominally interested in promoting non-dominant discourse), and a professor in an institution renowned for encouraging dissenting voices and social justice.

Unfortunately, a sense of humour and an appreciation of the importance of satire to "speak truth to power" doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for her department.

Update: The person was reinstated, as he objected to a "one-strike-you're-out" rule as being unfair. The moderator, however, still deemed the comment objectionable, as she read it as disrespectful to the "vulnerability of intellectual exploration and expression." Given the tremendous privilege that academics enjoy, my reaction to this comment was certainly a raised eyebrow.

[Technorati tags: diane zorn | imposter phenomenon | rolestar | exo-self | satire | chill]

RoleStar at CSTD

Yesterday, I had been invited to do a poster session at the annual conference of CSTD, a professional association for workplace learning and performance practitioners. For those of you not in the academic world, think back to the sixth or seventh grade, when you had to submit your school project on a sheet of bristol board, stand up in front of the class and present it. Afterwards, it was pinned up on the wall - if you were good enough, you got a gold star.

Academic poster sessions are the same thing - without the gold star. In this case, we were asked to prepare a 99-second pitch about our research. Here's how I condensed my 161-page thesis into about 90 seconds:

What motivates you? What really engages you in whatever it is that you do? Oh, I’m not talking about money, or power, or responsibility, or being involved in decision making – these are all external, environmental factors that, while important, don’t get to the heart of your intrinsic motivation. My research shows that what you do is not as important to your sense of engagement with your work as how you go about doing it, in terms of the interpersonal dynamics and interactions that you create in your immediate environment. By employing a composite qualitative methodology that incorporates heuristic inquiry, grounded theory and a feminist approach to interviewing, I have developed the theory, and practice, of enabling most people to discover their unique motivating, and demotivating, aspects. In doing so, I reverse the conventional notion of role, from being a mere enactment of behaviours, to becoming an empowering resource. My name is Mark Federman, and my project is called, “Rolestar – Discovering the passion in your work and your life.”

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

I prepared a 10-page handout that includes a one-page overview of RoleStar and the Discovery Conversation, the fairy tale that describes the theory in a way that even a child can understand, a synopsis of the thesis in a more academic tone, and an invitation letter that asks,

Is a role* discovery conversation for you? Are you facing an important career decision, or concerned about your career progress to date? Are you considering a new career at mid-life? Or, are you seeking a deeper understanding of what motivates and demotivates you, to figure out why you are sometimes totally engaged and passionate about what you do, and at other times, completely turned off and apathetic?
If you are seeking a brand new approach to career and life coaching, please contact me – perhaps I can help. You can reach me by email.

You can download the brochure for yourself right here [pdf].

Thanks to those who stopped by to chat, and especially to one of my regular readers.
[Technorati tags: rolestar | cstd | motivation | life coaching | career counselling]

Role* and Career Counselling Tests

I have the proverbial friend-of-a-friend who is contemplating a job change. The person is a long-time airline employee, who apparently worked as a reservations agent. This person knew the old-fashioned airline reservations system, complete with its arcane codes and complex database pathways inside out and backwards, able to work wonders for passengers with complex itineraries, challenging connections and unique needs.

Turns out that the person went to one of those career testing centres – the ones that test for aptitude and skill – with the hope of being given some guidance as to what would be the right career move to make. (Given the turmoil in airlines like Air Canada, and the challenges facing the industry in general, any move might indeed be the right move.) The testing showed that the person had an aptitude for the sort of logic that such a mentally-demanding job of juggling a reservations system would demand. From the testing, a number of possibilities that would capitalize on those learned skills were suggested.

What’s wrong with this rather simplistic, linear and deterministic picture? (Oops! Gave it away…)

Over the many years that the person has been an employee of the airline, the tasks of the job would have undoubtedly had an effect on the person’s cognitive abilities that would give preference to jobs that were analogous to reservations agent, at least with respect to skills. Hence, the “career testing” – usually skills and attributes based – would have given high marks for the sort of instrumental tasks that a job of, say, billing coder, would demand. This means that the person may be skilled for that job; it does not necessarily suggest that the person is suited for that job.

Suppose the person is motivated by such technical intricacies that a coding system demands. A job of billing coder, among many others, might well be a viable, satisfying alternative. If, on the other hand, the person is motivated by a type of “heroics” in response to confused or distraught passengers, the ability to work the magic of the reservation systems via the intricate codes is simply a means to an end, and would not be motivating in and of itself. Remember, by taking a “Role* view” of the employment world, it isn’t what you do that counts as much as the interactions and dynamics you create while doing it.

One of the risks of conventional career (job) counselling is that the client becomes “labelled” with an apparent skill aptitude relative to tasks. And in a sense, jobs are a collection of tasks. But roles and careers are made of much more than mere tasks. I could go so far as to say that the specific tasks of any white-collar worker (and many others, as well) are the least important aspects of one’s involvement in the workplace from the point of view of the person themselves. (The company is another matter altogether; to them, the workers are often no better than interchangeable parts in a corporate machine.) The danger of labelling is captured in McLuhan’s aphoristic warning: Love thy label as thy self. By “putting on” and wearing the assigned label, we run the risk of suppressing personal agency in favour of adopting tacitly-imposed behaviours.
[Technorati tags: rolestar | career counselling | job testing]

Motivation, Career Counselling and Life Coaching

This is an category archive index, with a static link on the right side.

Here are recent thoughts on intrinsic motivation, career counselling, life coaching, and finding the passion in your work and your life:

• New! RoleStar Research - The Serious Stuff - 2 December 2005


• RoleStar at CSTD - 9 November 2005


• Role* and Career Counselling Tests - 23 September 2005


• Role* and Creativity - 6 September 2005


• Life Coaching, Career Counselling and Role* (RoleStar) - 21 August 2005


• If Role* Was a Magazine - 21 August 2005


• And While We're Talking About Motivation - 14 Aug 2005


• The Method of Role* - 10 August 2005


• Enthusiastic Employees? Well... yes, but... - 1 August 2005


• Role* - Discovering the Passion in Your Work and Life - 23 July 2005

Is a role* discovery conversation for you? Are you facing an important career decision, or concerned about your career progress to date? Are you considering a new career at mid-life? Or, are you seeking a deeper understanding of what motivates and demotivates you, to figure out why you are sometimes totally engaged and passionate about what you do, and at other times, completely turned off and apathetic?

If you are interested in a brand new approach to career and life coaching, you can download a brochure [pdf] that describes the process, as well as its underlying theory, in detail. Afterwards, please contact me. (My email address is federman-at-sympatico-dot-ca. By the way, the discovery process works equally well face-to-face or over the telephone.)

[Technorati tags: motivation | career counselling | life coaching | rolestar | natural mode]

Role* and Creativity

A friend of my son is a film major at one of our universities here in Toronto, and was trying to deal with a creative block leading up to the beginning of school this year. He had come up with a half-dozen potential themes for his senior year project, and with a week to go before class starts, in his words, they all “sucked.”

From where I sit, only a couple of them actually sucked. But the problem was not that of the suckitude of the themes, but rather his inability to engage the aspects that particularly motivate him. And this isn’t particularly surprising, since he was not explicitly aware of the connection between what he thought motivated him, and what actually motivated him. In other words, he was unaware of his Role* motivating aspects.

Because I’ve known him for quite a few years, the Role* Discovery Conversation was probably a little quicker than most (most lasting between ninety minutes and two hours). Within a remarkably short time, we were able to identify not only the source of his dominant motivating aspects, but also the source of his creative block. In addition, he saw how to actualize his motivating aspects to create what might turn out to be a compelling documentary examining an important issue at the boundary between public policy and the struggles of ordinary families.

So it seems as if unblocking creativity is yet another application of Role*!
[Technorati tags: rolestar | creativity | creative block | writer's block]

Life Coaching, Career Counselling, and Role* (RoleStar)

I’ve been nosing around a number of websites run by self-styled life coaches, and they mostly seem to convey two common themes: “I will change your life, but won’t tell you anything except infomercial-grade stuff until you hire me”; and “basically, what I do is act as a nanny/mother/spouse and kick your butt to do what you know you should be doing anyway.”

I don’t do that sort of “coaching.”

Similarly, I don’t examine your traits and skills, and I don’t administer questionnaires that purport to determine your personality “type.” In fact, there is considerable evidence that once people are assigned to a label or a type according to some classification scheme, they tend to “love their label as their self,” to misquote McLuhan.

When applied to career coaching, it means that I won’t tell you what job you’re suited for, or where your aptitudes lie. And, if you think about it for a bit, you may share my observation that aptitude and trait-based job selection and placement dominates hiring practices today, and yet almost every survey and piece of research I’ve seen places job dissatisfaction rates between 40% and 60%. Drilling down to the reasons for the dissatisfaction and lack of engagement, the most frequent cause has little to do with what you do, but rather, the dynamics of the environment in which you do it.

What we know from McLuhan’s approach to understanding media is that this “environment” of which we speak is entirely constructed by the interactions, and effects that we create through those interactions. As I have found through my research, most people are unaware of these effects, and especially the patterns of these effects that occur throughout their lives. This, of course, is consistent with such patterns comprising an environmental ground, or context, within which we enact our various jobs and roles. Becoming aware of these patterns takes considerable awareness and introspection.

Introspection is often an elusive commodity, even when one is offered the time, space and opportunity for reflection. From my experience with my research participants, it seems that even when one focuses on aspects of one’s own life, connections among disparate parts of highly compartmentalized lives do not come easily. And, it is from the connections among disparate elements that meaning often emerges.

Case in point: In all instances, my participants did not realize the commonality of their role* aspects among work and non-work environments. Neither did they realize the commonality of their role* aspects among multiple jobs, roles, avocations, and situations, prior to participating in the role* conversation. Additionally, when I identified their individual recurring patterns and motivating/demotivating aspects, they were unanimously surprised, and agreed that these aspects did indeed have meaning and resonance in the context of their lives. One mid-career participant in particular found that explicating her role* aspects brought significant clarity and a sense of consistency to otherwise disparate and confusing facets of her life. This suggests the importance of the specific process and aspects of discovery that are enabled by the role* approach to sense- and meaning-making for a wide array of work/life situations.

During a more recent conversation with this participant, the idea was put to the test. She related the details of a meeting that left her feeling insecure, anxious and “superfluous.” On further probing, I discovered that the specific interactions that occurred during this meetings precluded her from enacting any of her role* motivating aspects. I pointed out to her that perhaps it was the absence of a viable expression of a major role* attribute that she was experiencing as anxiety and feeling superfluous. I offered her the suggestion that, being aware of this dynamic, she might try to find another expression of a role* aspect that could counter her negative and demotivating feelings. She subsequently reported that this indeed worked, and allowed her to make an unexpected contribution elsewhere, preventing her from spiralling into a lengthy period of depression, as was her previous pattern.

This suggests another possible use for having an awareness of role* aspects. Role* aspects can be deliberately actualized by individuals to counter the negative effects of job or role situations that are beyond the ability of a person to change. This is not to say that role* reveals some sort of universal or absolute truth about a person. Rather, role* seems to provide a useful and effective mechanism that can assist in achieving a measure of self-awareness and self-actualization. When this thought is applied to either life coaching or career counselling, it suggests that an awareness of your own role* aspects will help you break through your personal blockages, and become re-engaged with what you do. Additionally, it allows you to take control over the environmental dynamics, especially when you cannot control the circumstances themselves.

Isn’t that more useful than handing you a label, or kicking your butt?
[Technorati tags: rolestar | life coaching | career counselling | motivation]

If Role* Was a Magazine

Then it might look like this:


(Cover generated at flagrantdisregard)
[Technorati tags: rolestar | career counselling | life counselling]

And While We're Talking About Motivation

In that last post about the Starbucks employees forming a union, there is a repost of an article from 1993 on employee motivation, from a fellow who writes and lectures on education, parenting, and human resources issues. The article identifies the basic Tayloristic instinct in corporate America:

At least three of four American corporations rely on some sort of incentive program. Piecework pay for factory workers, stock options for top executives, banquets and plaques for Employees of the Month, commissions for salespeople -- the variations go on and on. The average company now resembles a television game show: "Tell our employees about the fabulous prizes we have for them if productivity improves!"

It goes on to describe why rewards and punishments are among the most ineffective ways of motivating individuals:

While rewards are effective at producing temporary compliance, they are strikingly ineffective at producing lasting changes in attitudes or behavior. The news gets worse. About two dozen studies from the field of social psychology conclusively show that people who expect to receive a reward do not perform as well as those who expect nothing. This result, which holds for all sorts of rewards, people and tasks, is most dramatic when creativity is involved...

Rewards punish. Even executives who understand that coercion and threats destroy motivation may fail to recognize that the same is true of rewards. Punishments and rewards are not really opposites. They are two sides of the same coin, and the coin does not buy very much. Like punishments, rewards are manipulative. "Do this and you'll get that" is not very different from "Do this or here's what will happen to you." The reward itself - a bonus, say - may be desired, but it is contingent on satisfying terms someone has imposed. Sooner or later, this sense of being controlled feels punitive. Rewarding people is similar to punishment for another reason. When people do not get the rewards they were hoping for, they feel punished. And the more desirable the reward, the more demoralizing it is to miss out.

Rewards rupture relations. Research and experience show that excellence depends on teamwork, both because of the exchange of ideas it fosters and the climate of social support it creates. But the scramble for rewards - particularly when they are made scarce, creating competition - destroys this valuable cooperation.

The article goes on to describe what management can do to foster motivated employees: "Choice means workers should participate in making decisions about what they do. Collaboration means they should be able to work together in effective teams. Content refers to the job's tasks. To do a good job, people need a good job to do." And while these are good things as far as they go, they really miss the point of that holy grail of managers and supervisors, namely intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation, like the name suggests, comes from within each person. If we think of the (Disney treatment of the) classic story of Pinnochio, the strings attached to the wooden puppet at the beginning of the story correspond to extrinsic motivation - managers collectively playing the role of puppet master Geppetto. Regardless of whether the incentives are explicit rewards or punishments, or more subtle forms of psychological influence including participation in work assignments or pep rallies that encourage corporate mission buy-in, employees' strings are still being pulled.

Unfortunately (at least for managers), understanding the conditions by which an individual is intrinsically motivated is a one-person-at-a-time undertaking. My role* research strongly suggests that intrinsic motivation indeeds involves relationships (as alluded to by Kohn), and perhaps explains why the reward/punishment model that "ruptures relations" also ultimately destroys motivation. It also explains why people can find engagement in the context of the most difficult workplace environments, and why favourable environments can become the most off-putting and soul-destroying. Understanding your intrinsic motivators does one other thing, as well. Role* gives everyone the personal power to actualize their intrinsic motivators, in spite of the specifics of the job or circumstance. Not only does an understanding of one's role* cut the marionette strings, role* helps the individual along the path to becoming a real girl or boy.

Just call me Jiminy Cricket!


[Technorati tags: motivation rolestar reward punishment management human resources organization development]

The Method of Role*

People are often surprised when I tell them that the process of a role* discovery conversation only takes about an hour-and-a-half to two hours. During that very short time, I facilitate a guided narrative using a combination of specific techniques that I developed, all based in well-grounded research that draws from approaches in heuristic inquiry, feminist theory, interpretive biography, and action research.

Using narrative – essentially telling stories from one’s life – is not unusual for those attempting to make sense of a personal history. Mary Jane Kehily [1] observes:

Narrative and self-narration, then, is more than the product of the individual writer or speakers; it is a highly constructed performance, drawing on a range of linguistic, literary and cultural repertoires, specially selected for a particular audience…

In self-narration a teller is socially displaying a language that speaks of and constructs identity and which is, simultaneously, creating and presenting a sense of self. However, the sense of self for public consumption may recreate a certain version of identity which is socially recognizable and socially validated…

Central to these constructions is the social context and, particularly, the role of audience. … In this respect, self-narration can be seen as an important activity in the process of identity construction and as a way of exploring how version and reconstructions of the past shape and construct the present in that key area of identity construction, the interrelationship of past and present…

Part of the challenge with narrative – even guided narrative – is the time it takes for an appropriate “narrator” to emerge from the complex individual that reveals the important, interesting and relevant aspects of self and identity. This usually takes time.

To accelerate the process while still being able to access “the good stuff,” I introduce the notion of figure and ground from my McLuhan analytics.

Figure-ground effects … illuminate social contexts of self-awareness. People often feel distinctive relative to their social context… Figure-ground principles thus connect self-awareness to interpersonal processes, an area in which the theory has not been widely applied. [2]

This idea of directing attention to a figure of self, cast against a ground of the social context, suggests a mechanism for guiding the conversation with role* discovery participants. In normal conversation, if one were to ask about an otherwise undistinguished incident, or to describe a typical day at the office, for instance, a person would likely relate the story as they experienced it, looking out through their own eyes, as it were. While relating the story in this way, the person would be aware of (recalling) the things, people and incidents around them, but would not usually be explicitly aware of their reactions in relation to those things, people and incidents, particularly for the mundane, banal or routine. If, however, they were asked to focus specifically on what “they are seeing,” as opposed to “what they saw”; to become aware of their feelings at the moment, and the immediate reaction of others to their actions, there is a shift in attention. It is the intensification of attention, and noticing what is usually not noticed, that are crucial to the approach.

As the participant relives the experience in the present, their experience of self is brought to figure, as Snow and Duvall suggest. It is akin to “looking at yourself, looking at yourself in the mirror” that one sometimes experiences when using a “three-way mirror” in a tailoring shop. This simple and subtle calling of the self to figure focus may intensify the awareness-making experience of self-narrative, and provide an effective and expeditious mechanism to discover insights that would reveal the person’s behaviours, and their effects on relationships, interactions and interpersonal dynamics, as perceived from the standpoint of the individual – in other words, their role*.

There is much more, of course, to the entire process of discovering one’s personal motivators, and understanding what engages each of us in what we do, irrespective of the specific job or task. By the way, that’s one thing that sets role* apart from conventional approaches to career and life counselling. I can’t necessarily help you find out what job you’re suited for. I will help you discover your role*, help you become aware of the role effects that engage you, and show you how to actualize that engagement to find passion in almost everything you do - both in the workplace and elsewhere.

Here are the sources I referenced in this post:
[1] Kehily, M.J. (1995). Self-narration, autobiography and identity construction. Gender and Education, 7(1), 23-31.
[2] Snow, C.J. & Duval, T.S (2004). When the self stands out: Figure–ground effects on self-focused attention. Self and Identity, 3(4), 355-363.

[Technorati tags: rolestar lifecoaching careercoaching motivation self narrative figure ground]

Enthusiastic Employees? Well... yes, but...

I saw this mini-excerpt in the Globe Careers section last week. It’s from a new book called, The Enthusiastic Employee: How companies benefit from giving employees what they want, by David Sirota, Louis Mischkind, and Michael Meltzer. The basic idea of the book is pretty simple and straight-forward: Enthusiastic employees “are willing to go the extra mile, persist when there are setbacks, participate in continuous learning, identify with the organization, volunteer – and always act in the best interests of their company to enhance its stature as a good place to work and with which to do business.” The three authors have done research “proving” that companies with enthusiastic employees perform better in the usual sorts of objective measures of business performance, including stock market performance. Further, they found that, “just 14 per cent of these companies demonstrated enthusiastic work forces – that is, more than 75 per cent were positive about their employer – and 16 per cent had employees who are downright angry.” No surprises on either of these fronts.

So what’s to be done? According to the authors, improve management:

Employers do all sorts of things to deflate that natural state of enthusiasm, from failing to show appreciation and concern for their employees to being too quick to respond to adverse business conditions with employee layoffs. Employees, in other words, are treated as faceless, disposable objects – despite so many companies' avowals in their mission statements that "employees are our most important asset." Employees are also too often treated as irresponsible -- like children or criminals -- perceived as wanting to do as little work as possible for as much money as possible. No wonder enthusiasm wanes.

But it doesn't have to be that way. To acquire and sustain enthusiastic employees, managers must pay attention to three primary goals that matter the most to the great majority of employees: Achievement – being proud of one's work and employer; Camaraderie – having an opportunity to have positive, productive relationships at work; and Equity – feeling treated justly in relation to the basic conditions of employment, such as pay benefits and job security.

Such simple steps, that it’s surprising that more companies don’t do them.

Simple, and wrong.

Not wrong in the sense that managers shouldn’t do these things. But wrong in the sense of incomplete. The researchers set out to prove a hypothesis about managers being responsible for their employees’ enthusiasm, and prove it they did (thus justifying their consulting business), thereby missing what is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of “enthusiastic” – or even passionate – employees. That important aspect is role* (“role star”), which is the key for each of us, and our managers, to understand our individualized intrinsic motivators, and how to turn ‘em on (or, in social science academese, actualize them).

As I’ve written previously, the role* construct acknowledges that we feel motivation by virtue of our interactions in the workplace (and elsewhere, too). Those interactions create “micro-environments” from which emerge a variety of effects. Simply put, the effects with which we most engage turn us on, motivate us, make us feel as if we’re doing something worthwhile, largely irrespective of what it is we’re doing. This creates the type of enthusiasm that Sirota, Mischkind and Meltzer are talking about. Similarly, my in-depth research with people who are at mid-career in large corporations, just starting out in a variety of entry-level jobs, and those in-between, strongly indicates that my concept of role* explains both enthusiastic engagement and depressed apathy among workers. It also explains seemingly paradoxical and contrary results in workplaces that should be both good and bad according to the book. And, most important of all, it puts the control for how a person feels about their workplace back into the hands of the worker.

Imagine that: A way for each of us to actively control our own sense of engagement and enthusiasm in the workplace, even if our managers don’t read the latest how-to book.
[Technorati tags: motivation careercoaching lifecoaching rolestar]

Role* - Discovering the Passion in Your Work and Life

A number of people have been wondering about my "serious" research, given that the McLuhan stuff is actually more of a sideline for me. I actually use the McLuhan awareness techniques (that I also teach academically and in corporate coaching/facilitating sessions) to think about, theorize and develop praxis for our individual and collective engagement with our workplaces, and the future (that is, a completely new conception) of corporations.

The first major piece began with thinking about McLuhan's observation/prediction that in the electric age, jobs "flip" into roles, and involvement in depth. And I asked myself, what the heck did he mean by this? While it's true that we all play many roles throughout our day - in the workplace, at home and elsewhere - often, many of these roles feel like... well, like jobs! This paradox led me to contemplate roles as a medium, considering not the role itself, but the effects (i.e. messages) we create in our immediate environment as we enact these roles. This, in turn, enabled me to flip around the way we often conceive of roles, and develop the notion of role* (pronounced, "role star").

Here's the general context and idea:

Given the state of stress in North American society, the explosion of self-help and quick-fix approaches that pervade both bookstore shelves and television screens is hardly surprising. The rigours and demands of organizational life add to the stress for the vast majority of people who increasingly are feeling frustrated, alienated and powerless. Aside from various versions of a parent-like admonishment to “suck it up,” little is offered in the way of developing deep personal insight to understand one’s own mechanisms of motivation and deriving satisfaction from one’s occupation. In the meantime, managers, limited by their ability to increase material rewards, are forced to rely on so-called motivational speakers, pseudo-inspirational posters, and faux team-building exercises that are reminiscent of summer camp activities. These are often nothing more than temporary distractions from an environment that actively induces sagging morale.

A response to pervasive problems of morale, motivation and satisfaction arises in the newly conceived notion of role*. It expands and enhances what many usually consider as roles played in the workplace – and elsewhere. Rather than something that can be encouraged – or even imposed – by managers, role* considers motivation from the standpoint of interactions and effects that each of us create throughout our immediate environment. As individuals become aware of the interpersonal dynamics that especially energize and engage them, they can begin to align their work with their characteristic drives. Moreover, they can learn how to take more control over their reactions to situations that may be beyond their ability to change, something that is vitally important in today’s accelerated workplace. For managers who assemble collaborative teams, making personnel choices according to complementary role* dynamics will find members that invigorate and stimulate each other, thereby increasing not only productivity, but overall satisfaction and engagement for all concerned.

Based on new field research conducted at the world-famous Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, the role* approach develops a framework for guided self-discovery, drawing from several diverse, but well-grounded, investigational techniques. These are combined in an original fashion to yield an innovative and remarkably rapid process through which the person can discover the nature of interactions that are particularly motivating and engaging, and those that cause apathy and despair. Each of us can actualize our own personal discovery of role* to take control of how we feel about what we do in all aspects of life.

Discovering role* means discovering your drive, your personal “wins,” and perhaps most importantly, your passion in everything you do.

I have recently begun a private practice in conducting role* discovery conversations with people beyond those who participated in my original research. Is a role* discovery conversation for you? Are you facing an important career decision, or concerned about your career progress to date? Are you considering a new career at mid-life? Or, are you seeking a deeper understanding of what motivates and demotivates you, to figure out why you are sometimes totally engaged and passionate about what you do, and at other times, completely turned off and apathetic. If you are interested in a brand new approach to career and life coaching, please contact me. (My email address is federman-at-sympatico-dot-ca. By the way, the discovery process works equally well face-to-face or over the telephone.)
[Technorati tags: motivation careercoaching lifecoaching rolestar]