Of inner compass and uncertainty

“Do what you think is right!”, said the HR leader. I had gone to him to seek his advice on a complex issue where there were multiple courses of action possible and all of them contained significant risk of failure. Somehow, this comment impacted me profoundly.  

I am not sure if I interpreted this comment in the way he intended it to be. May be, the that is exactly the way it should be. The impact of these conversations are often similar to what happens when we read a great book. The meaning often runs in parallel with or is even independent of what is written/spoken. These books (and conversations) create some sort of a ‘field’ that helps us to derive our own meaning.

I guess, the current uncertain environment made this comment emerge from the ‘back of the mind’ to the ‘day to day mind’! To me, what is great about this comment is that it helps in decision-making under uncertainty. 

To maintain integrity (in the sense of integration of thoughts, words and deeds), our actions should be in alignment with our values (what we consider as important, see ‘Of values and competencies’). In an uncertain situation, evaluating the various courses of action based on whether they are likely to work becomes even more difficult. 

So in such situations, one’s inner sense of right and wrong or the inner sense of fit or inner sense of beauty (one’s inner compass) becomes the only useful guiding force. If one hasn't paid enough attention to this inner compass, then one's actions might be driven primarily by fear, in uncertain situations. Use of this inner compass also ensures some sort of affirmation/intrinsic reward even if the course of action that one chose doesn’t succeed to the expected level or ‘pay off’ in the external sense!

This 'inner compass' is somewhat like a muscle. The more one uses it the stronger it gets. In a way, this creates a bit of a 'chicken and egg problem' and hence this involves some sort of 'leap of faith', with the word 'faith' being used in its original meaning of 'trust' (from Latin 'fides').'  While external validation has some relevance, the most important question is if one beats oneself up if the choice made using the inner compass does't succeed as expected. This brings to mind the following quote/story: "From the morning, I have been standing in front of a house begging. Only now I realized that it was my own house!".  

Note: It would be interesting to examine if the concept of 'inner compass' is applicable at the organization level also. To me, the 'inner compass' is applicable - for those organizations that have done successful 'soul-searching' efforts and haven't 'bartered away the soul' after that. In a way, the 'real values' of the organization (not necessarily the ones that are pasted on the walls) are the closest organization equivalent to the inner compass. One must differentiate between values and competencies. Something qualifies as a value only if it is so important (so core/so valuable) to the organization identity that it would be demonstrated even if it leads to a competitive disadvantage. Also, values are discovered (through a deep soul-searching process) and not designed. Competencies are about how to win whereas values are about how to live! 

Any comments/thoughts?

Of employee engagement and the 'survivor syndrome'

Employee engagement has been one of the key themes that we have been exploring in this blog (see Employee engagement and the story of the Sky Maiden, Passion for work and anasakti, The curious case of the object and subject of employee engagement, Appropriate measures for organizational commitment , The series on salary negotiations and psychological contract , Architects of meaning & Of owning and belonging for some of the examples). In this post, let’s look at employee engagement in the case of survivors of corporate restructuring/downsizing exercises(who often suffer from the so called ‘workplace survivor syndrome’ with symptoms like anxiety, depression, decrease in performance, poor morale and increased propensity to leave)  

At the heart of the survivor syndrome lies two emotions- guilt (“I didn't deserve to survive when my friends didn't”) and fear (“Next time, it could be my turn”). So, when it comes to employee engagement, the organization's best response is to help the survivors to deal with these emotions so that while the scars can't be erased, productivity can be restored to a great extent.

Guilt can be reduced by convincing the survivors that they deserved to survive (e.g. by following a transparent process for restructuring and for identifying the employees to be separated) and by ensuring that the employees who were separated have been well taken care of(e g. by providing a generous separation package & adequate transition support).

Fear can be addressed to some extent by publicly communicating (if possible) that the staff cuts have been completed and there is no such possibility in the foreseeable future. Providing the survivors the opportunity to receive psychological counseling/ stress management training with a focus on coping  strategies can also help. Of course, constant communication with the employees at all levels that addresses the stated and unstated concerns has to be continued. Another type of fear is regarding increased workloads and new skill sets required. This can be addressed through careful work planning and capability building. People managers can be trained to look for signs of stress in the employees and to manage the employees in a supportive manner. Of course, any tendency among the people manages to use the residual fear to drive productivity ('blackmailing' employees to work harder) should be curbed.

What is perhaps irreversible from the employee engagement point of view (especially for the next few years) is that the employer- employee relationship moves to a purely rational plane (whereas most definitions of employee engagement include the aspect of deep emotional connect that the employees have to the organization). This is because, layoffs are often perceived as a breach of the psychological contract. This would be more so in those organizations that have been communicating messages like ‘our company is one big family’ to the employees.

This would mean that, after the restructuring, companies would have to rely more heavily on rational means to retain and motivate employees (e.g. highly competitive salaries & performance-linked incentives, gain sharing schemes etc.) as well as investment in capability building to ensure 'employability'. Yes, the emotional connect can drive discretionary effort and lead to remarkable (business) results. But, organizations should engage the emotions of the employees only if they are willing to look at employee engagement as a relationship (and not as a tool) and are willing to reciprocate (in terms of going out of the way to care for the employees, beyond what the employment contract requires)!

In a way, the way out of the survivor syndrome is through a psychological transition process. So, actions that can facilitate the transition process like clearly explaining the need for restructuring and the process that would be followed, helping the employees to acknowledge and deal with their feelings of fear and guilt (as detailed above), clearly articulating the new vision for the organization and the possibilities it creates for the survivors and getting the survivors actively involved in rebuilding the organization and the social networks within the organization(that would have suffered because of the loss of social capital) are perhaps the highest leverage actions that organizations can focus on!

Remarkable Encounters – Part 2 : Fear

It is said that we discover some parts of ourselves only in the context of our interaction with others. Some of these interactions are so enriching that they leave us feeling more complete, integrated, alive and human. In this series of posts, we will look at the impressions from some of the remarkable encounters I have had. In the first post, we looked at my impressions from the encounter with a remarkable teacher (See Remarkable Encounters – Part 1 : Teacher). In this post, we will look at a constant companion to many of us – fear. Now, fear is not a (legal) person. But, the amount of time many of us spend with fear and the impact fear has on us would make fear more real than many humans in our lives. Hence, fear gate-crashes into this series!

‘Do you have an independent existence?’, I have often wondered. Because it is always ‘fear of something’ and not fear itself that is commonly mentioned. Yes, it can be a general sense of fearfulness, when we can’t identify a particular cause or when there are multiple causes.

Some people say that you are just a label, or an ‘umbrella term’, that we attach to a physiological reactions to danger triggered by the hormones generated by amygdala in the brain, and, that animals also can feel fear though they don’t bother to attach a label to it or talk about it. They just do the fight or flight response and resolve the fear! In humans, the danger can be psychological or ideological in addition to physical ones, with the first two being much more difficult to run away from! Only the innocent, the ignorant or the psychologically damaged are immune to fear!

In my journey with you over the last four decades, I have got to know you a lot better. It is funny that while you are real, you can be caused by both real and imaginary things. The unknown and the unpredictable usually outweigh the known and predictable as the causes. What is rational fear and what is irrational fear (phobia) is not always crystal clear because when and how much fear should be felt is often socially conditioned. You have many shades ranging from mild uneasiness to terror and horror. Fear can be conscious, sub-conscious or even unconscious with the unconscious ones being more difficult to surface and address. Fear can be developed through direct experience or vicariously. Some fears (e.g. fear of snakes and fear of heights) could even have been hardwired into humans during biological evolution. Fear is also powerful motivator (See The power of carrot and stick). Since fear can be conceptualized as chemical, biological, psychological, sociological or even moral reaction or any combination of them, the prescriptions to deal with fear vary widely!  

While you are inevitable, the response to you is a matter of choice at least in humans. You have a great ability to grow if we think too much about you or even when we try not to think about you. And you diminish if we can find something else to occupy the psychological space you occupy. Love is a great candidate to push you out and so are  enthusiasm and purpose. Yes, enthusiasm means ‘’being possessed/inspired by God’’ and love is also not too different! Religion can both take away some fears and create new fears. But spirituality does a better job of taking away fears than creating fears!

Fear is a clean emotion, a useful warning signal, and essential for survival as individuals and as a society. Quite a bit of the power of the state is derived from its ability invoke fear by the threat of punishment. Also, the fear of a common enemy has held together many states in the absence of a common purpose!. 

It is interesting that while humans are pain avoiding creatures, many of them will pay to experience fear, say by purchasing tickets for horror movies. May be, a minimum dose of fear is required! Yes, too much fear can be dysfunctional. Fear is a much more useful feeling that its cousin anxiety, which occurs as the result of threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable. Fear is one of the basic set of human emotions and  the ability to fear is one of the things that makes us human. It is the layers that we build on fear that causes most of the trouble.

The list of things that can evoke fear is practically endless – from death to public speaking and everything in between including polar opposites like intimacy & loneliness, success &   failure and freedom & restriction. But the most debilitating fear is the fear of fear, because (being a second order fear) it escapes our built-in machinery (which is a first order one) to deal with fear! 

Being able to acknowledge the fear and feel the fear without fearing the fear itself has been my greatest learning from my long journey with fear because it enables more constructive and hopeful responses to fear. Interestingly, just being able to name/identify/articulate the fear is highly therapeutic (may be that is why 'getting the ghost to reveal its name' is so important in exorcism rituals!) as it reduces the degree of control/impact the fear has on us. Gradual/controlled exposure to the feared object/situation puts us on the royal road out of the land of fear, which is by working through it. I have also found it insightful to map what my fears are at a particular stage in my life and to examine how they evolve. May be, fear is a useful indicator to facilitate both our external and internal journeys!