8. Build a Workplace on a Foundation of Respect
Even the most casual observer can see that people work very well in an atmosphere of high camaraderie, where there is a genuine “nice-ness” to the work environment. People also seem to thrive and succeed in an atmosphere that fosters respect for the person. Moreover, humans need to “belong,” and the need to satisfy individual social needs has gravitated to the workplace. Consciously or unconsciously, employees now place a great deal of importance on how the workplace makes them feel about themselves as they go about their daily tasks. Indeed, there is a high expectation of the value of social networking in the workplace. So, it logically follows that the quality of a workplace’s social network plays a large role in workplace synergy and therefore, productivity. In fact, when you go to work these days, you are not just going to work. In many ways, you are visiting your “extended family,” you are going to your club, and a high-quality social network in the workplace is critical to keep employees engaged. With so much tied to the workplace, a respectful environment where employees honor one another—and are respected in return—is crucial to fostering productive, engaged employees.
Where do you think employees will look for an example of how to treat each other? Well, a respectful tone for employee-to-employee relations is set by leadership and management. That’s who employees look to for behavioral role models. By acting respectfully to the people who work for the company, the leadership and management plant the seed of expectation for employees to treat others well. If you don’t think that’s true, ask yourself if the opposite has been true any place you have worked. I’d bet each and every one of us can come up with half a dozen examples. When your leader or manager is disrespectful or abusive, she is sending a loud message that it’s okay for you to treat others that way, too. And believe me—for good or ill—that message is picked up in the workplace, just as quickly as it was picked up in your grade school playground, high school gym class, or college dorm.
Another risk of not giving and demanding respect is that an organization can become politicized—that is, split into differing camps. The great danger of a politicized work environment is the same danger any culture faces in a politicized environment, whether that culture is a workplace culture or a national culture. You are destined for decline when ideas and initiatives are not judged on their merits but on the personal allegiances of people within the organization.
Historically, it’s obvious how this has damaged nation states, going back to the declining Holy Roman Empire in 500AD. As much as we like to give ourselves credit, human nature hasn’t changed all that much since then. In highly politicized environments, if awards, positions, and resources are not awarded on the basis of merit, a number of things will happen, all of them bad. First, you are not likely to achieve success and positive outcomes, because bad ideas are allowed to flourish and drain resources, while sapping morale. Second, when employees see that good ideas and initiatives are left in the dust, while the ideas of the boss’s golf buddies are promoted, even though they clearly lack merit, people get demoralized. They not only stop being productive, but they stop putting forth bright ideas, because they know the fate of those ideas won’t be decided on merit. Third, those employees—defeated and demoralized—act with resentment to the organization, even to the point of sabotaging its success. Next, they start looking elsewhere for work, leaving the company to wallow in an increasingly toxic, buddy-backslapping system that spirals ever downward. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen. Employees revert to a survival mentality, where the only way to succeed is to crawl over the back of the person ahead of them. They develop a distrust of the organization (“How could this supposedly great company allow this to happen!?”). They develop a distrust of each other and—worst of all—they become individuals rather than members of a team.
Back in my dot-com days, I saw a prime example of this. The company I was working with had rolled up 12 other software companies, with the intent of digitizing purchase order systems and optimizing the supply chain. By the time anyone looked up long enough to count what was in the till, the amalgamated dot-com company was underwater. One of the companies we had acquired had a supposedly hotshot CEO, and he got up in front of everyone—around 1,200 employees, all told—and said he was a turnaround specialist who was going to save the ship. Problem is, the only people he trusted to save the ship—without exception—were the lieutenants that were already on his team before his company was acquired. Everyone was eager to trust this fellow, and he had the goodwill of everyone in that meeting. But he couldn’t have handled it more poorly. He took away most of the power from an able middle management team, treated everyone who wasn’t from his tribe as though they were stupid children, and stopped returning phone calls. It wasn’t long before he’d lost the faith of the other employees, and everything he or his team did was suspect. Everything. Good or bad. People grew so full of contempt for his disregard and lack of communication, they ended up in some cases actively working against the actions that would ensure the company’s survival and their very jobs!
Why?
Well, let me break this argument down a bit more, so I can define the causes of the problem more specifically and show the various ways to give and demand respect, because that is the key to understanding the dot-com story I just related.
I am from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I spent my childhood there. When I was growing up as part of a large Italian family, I could walk to the homes of closest relatives, including my aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents. This experience wasn’t necessary unique to our community with Italian heritage (though I take great pride in knowing without a doubt that we of all cultures ate the best food!). Seriously, this was a common cultural phenomenon when I was growing up as a child in the 1940s and 50s. All the immigrant families created tight social networks. It was a family tradition that relatives dropped by each other’s homes during the week. We gathered for church on Sundays, and after church we would have a family meal that turned into a weekly family social. We teased each other, we gave each other advice, we argued, we commiserated. We had a close and robust family network.
The family next to us was German, and they engaged in the same behavior with their extended family. The family on the other side of us was Irish, and they too engaged each other this way. But today, I’m somewhat sad to admit, these classic nuclear families just don’t exist. I have heard it said that in the United States the closest relative, not living under the same roof, lives, on average, 120 miles away.
The breakdown of the family social fabric and nuclear family structure that I experienced as a child did not somehow vacate the emotional need that the family structure provided. In fact, in Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, the third most-demanding need is the social need to belong to something, to be able to act not just as an individual, but as part of a group.
What social institution do you think has replaced the family social fabric and nuclear family structure? It’s the workplace. The workplace has re-created and replaced the social networks many baby boomers experienced as children. Instead of going to a family gathering or a club, we go to work. That’s where our club meets everyday. Workmates are our extended family, and—in addition to the family activities that we still engage in with our blood relatives, often over the phone or the Internet—we engage with our extended “family” at work in much the same way we used to engage with our extended family 40 or 50 years ago. We seek advice, we commiserate, we support each other, we play, we argue—and we trust each other.
With that in mind, leaders and managers of today’s organizations need to recognize this dynamic. Even more than that, they have to demonstrate a keen understanding of the role the workplace plays in the social fabric of their employees and their families. Leaders and managers need to show respect for that reality, and show respect for individuals in the workplace because of that reality.
I am not saying that the workplace has to be like a social club. After all, work has to be done; tasks must be accomplished without too many social distractions. But leaders and managers have to acknowledge that the workplace is not just a place where work gets done, and their policies must reflect that acknowledgement. Properly implemented, policies of a mindful leader or manager can take advantage of this reality and improve productivity as a result. How? By building a human and physical infrastructure that has high social value. By building an infrastructure for work as a social activity.
Indeed, the workplace must be seen as a crucible for social networking.
If you are not following me to this point, let me say that building an infrastructure for work as a social activity isn’t a matter of arranging the work cubicles in an open interlocking pattern or having bean-bag chairs around the coffee area. Though your approach may end up including open cubicles and beanbag chairs, creating a human infrastructure for work as a social activity requires far more than those steps. It’s a matter of fostering an emotional environment where leaders and managers contribute to a high-quality social network. To do that, leaders and managers need to demand of themselves and of their employees the creation of a social atmosphere where people lift each other up. (Do you think the CEO rescue hotshot was prepared to act this way in saving the dot-com? Nope. Never crossed his mind.)
Moreover, leaders and managers need to oversee these efforts protectively, just as a strong paternal figure oversees a large family. That can be as simple as putting basic rules of interaction in place: Be respectful of people you disagree with. Be caring. Find paths to turn disagreements and arguments into positive outcomes by working toward clearly communicated common goals. Ask employees to discover the purity and genuineness of each other’s intentions, even in conflicting situations. Indeed, the leader or manager should try to create synergies that wouldn’t otherwise exist to propel the company forward, and finally to create and equitably distribute tangible and intangible awards to recognize high performance.
A question that may naturally occur at this point is: How does leadership act to give permission to their employees to act civilly and positively toward each other? Well, one thing I know for sure is that you don’t stop answering your phone. Or freezing people out. In his book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters states that this kind of work environment can be achieved through “management by walking around.” This means that the manager must create a personal relationship with the employees. He’s got to come out of his ivory tower on a regular basis, to meet and talk with the people who work there.
This isn’t accomplished through cold and dictatorial memos or broadcasts, but through the creation and strengthening of social networks. It’s often just a matter of listening. Or asking, “What are you doing, and how is it going?” Or of the leader or manager asking, “What can I do to make this place a better place to work? What can I do to foster your productivity?”
A few years ago, I was brought in by a division head at American Express who was aware of my work at SAS Institute. He asked me what American Express could do to foster better communication and a feeling of teamwork among the employees. They were also interested in making the employees feel as though they were part of a family, under the correct assumption that this would drive up productivity. In my engagement, the first thing I addressed was American Express’s desire to move a particular metric about employee’s negative impression of management from 15 percent to 0 percent in one year. I told them that they might be able to do that, but it would likely spring back, as dramatic “movements of the needle” in one year usually aren’t sustainable. I suggested trying to move it 5 percent the first year, and another 5 percent the second year, and so on. And what policies did I recommend that they use?
Doughnuts. That’s right, I suggested that they use doughnuts in a regularly scheduled employee-management meeting.
The doughnuts weren’t a reward per se, or an incentive. But they would provide an opportunity for the management to listen to their employees. The management might not take all (or any) of the employees’ suggestions to heart. Some might work; some might not. Some employees may not be aware of the long-term strategic implications of some of their suggestions in the overarching scheme of American Express’s future plans. But it’s the act of listening that engenders a positive link from the employees to the management. The act of listening is a way of showing respect, or openly and publicly stating: Hey, we care about you, and we give permission for you to care about and listen to each other, just as we are caring about and listening to you. (I refer to this as the $15,000 doughnut dozen, because that’s how much American Express could have saved if they’d just bought the doughnuts from around the corner, opened their ears to their employees, and skipped hiring me!)
Even with the doughnuts, and the management by walking around, other things must be consistent through these activities and methods of outreach: An authentic and sincere vibe from leaders and managers that the employees’ opinions and workplace environment matters to them and to the company; that the leaders and managers treat employees decently, as adults, and expect the same in return; that leaders and management respect the contribution of team players; and that leaders freely distribute atta boys and atta girls where they are earned and deserved are all important contributors. Sometimes this means listening. Sometimes this means speaking loudly. But it always means being human, honest, sincere, and available.
The next crucial activity of a leader or manager is to ensure that every person who comes into the team is critical to camaraderie, and that the removal of every team member who is moved out of the team results in the potential for increased camaraderie, as well. In that sense, the leader or manager has to be sensitive to what would disrupt the social dynamic of the team, and balance the team members accordingly. This certainly means that leaders and managers must be quick to act when recognizing and removing people who are toxic. The toxic effect of bad employees obviously has a negative effect on social networks and team dynamics. But when a leader or manager knowingly leaves a toxic person on a team, he is also signaling that he doesn’t care about the team, that the team can tough it out; like it or lump it. Ignoring that sort of problem is nothing short of a measure of disrespect.
To finish out this chapter, I have to preface this chapter’s last anecdote by saying how blessed I was to work for a flame-out dot-com. In my short time there, I picked up so much material for this book, far disproportionate to the material I picked up at SAS Institute in my 19 years there. That said, there was this fellow who joined us at the dot-com, and he was brought in to unify the sales effort across 12 acquired companies. He was immediately suspect, in my opinion, because he was good friends with a powerful member of our board. So, right away, I recognized that this was possibly a political appointment and perhaps, just perhaps, not based on the merit of the man. But he had a killer resume, with an international banking and data background, and I initially gave him the benefit of the doubt, as I do for most people.
But signs of his toxicity popped up immediately. He made it clear that he thought he was smarter than everyone else there. Now, I recognize that some people are smarter than others, but the smartest people I know are the least likely to assert themselves in this way; they just let the brilliance shine through on an event-by-event basis, until everyone sooner or later recognizes that they are dealing with someone special. This fellow’s braggart behavior was Strike Two in my book.
This fellow also made no bones about telling people he was in it for the money and that he didn’t really care whether the company did well or not. He was just going to hang on until the IPO and scram. Strike Three.
But it only got worse. And he had no strikes left!
This fellow was a polarizer who thought that progress was made by pitting people against one another, in some brutal form of a Darwinism of ideas. People who were “with him” (recognized his brilliance) were celebrated; they could do no wrong, and they were given vast latitude to stretch and break rules. People who were against him (people who questioned his decisions) were dismissed and ignored, if not actively and publicly talked down. This guy was the classic toxic boss. People widely developed a dislike for him, as it became increasingly clear he wasn’t going to decide anything on the merits of an idea, but on the personal relationship he had with his chosen team of favorites and sycophants. Many veteran employees—seasoned corporate players and responsible adults—told me that they’d never seen a more toxic and politicized work environment. And still this toxic fellow plugged on.
The problem didn’t stop with this fellow’s management style and its ensuing ineffectiveness. He contaminated the workplace with disrespect. But the inaction of leadership to manage this guy was just as much an act of disrespect for the employees as the toxic man himself. The leadership, whose jobs and initiatives were funded or defunded at the ultimate discretion of the board, was fearful of going against a board member’s favored choice for VP of sales.
Well, that lasted until management couldn’t deny that this man was so toxic, coupled with a mass movement (the wisdom of the crowds of people who really were getting something done) to get rid of this guy, and he was finally fired. So vainglorious was this man that as part of his departure he insisted on writing a farewell e-mail to all 1,200 employees of the company to say that his “decision to depart was not taken lightly.” But everyone knew he was fired, and they snickered when reading the e-mail. That feeling of triumph and relief alone among the employees probably got the dot-com to last another six months beyond its natural lifetime. It generated a feeling of mutual respect, it showed that the employees’ opinions were valued and acted on, even to the point of firing a so-called hotshot senior executive who the “wise crowds” saw early on as nothing more than a windbag.