Checklist 4.9Too much compatibility of values and goals
Yes Working too hard based on:
Ĺ setting no clear limits when it comes to work overload . . . Ĺ finding it unacceptable to say no to requests to do something . . . Ĺ a deeply felt obligation to accomplish a certain goal . . .
Ĺ seeing the work as intrinsically good . . .
Ĺ feeling obliged to meet the highest standards . . .
Ĺ the idea that other people are in much worse circumstances . . .
Ĺ striving for perfection . . .
Ĺ getting recognition . . .
Ĺ wanting to be a model performer . . .
Ĺ wanting to compete and win . . .
Ĺ wanting to be absolutely original . . .
Ĺ wanting to know and understand everything . . .
Ĺ not trusting others sufficiently to delegate tasks to them . . . Ĺ being too eager to engage in new options and tasks . . .
Ĺ proving that one can take on anything . . .
Ĺ doing all kinds of work for everybody . . .
Ĺ wanting to keep the atmosphere sweet at any price . . .
But what does safe mean here? Does it mean being invulnerable to any threat? That would hardly be realistic. Vulnerability is one of our essential characteristics. We all know that we will grow older, that all of our functions must come to an end and that we will die. These thoughts are reminiscent of what was said in Chapter 3 about reality. There it was argued that our feeling of reality mainly springs from the way we deal with our environment, by limiting ourselves to a very small part of all possible options. Here something similar applies. Safety refers only to what counts in the present situation and its possible immediate consequences.
Thus, feeling safe here means that it is – probably – harmless to lose ourselves in the stretch of reality at hand for the time being. This principle applies to anything we occupy ourselves with: our work, our thoughts, a conversation or whatever. The feeling of safety acts as a green light to enter that reality and to continue with it. Safety also implies that we do not have to go into the mechanics of what we are doing or going to do: it is safe, so we just do it or let it happen. In this way, the feeling of safety keeps us going in certain directions and keeps us away from other ones. It acts as a kind of semi-automatic, short-term steering device that guides us through the maze of our life.
A drawback may be that this ‘steering device’ retains us too much within our own comfort zones and keeps us away from new experiences, because these new experiences don’t feel safe enough. However, exploring the world outside our comfort zones might broaden our horizons and further our development. It might take us out of our daily rut (Knope, 1998;
McGraw, 1999) and help us to overcome ‘just good enough solutions’ (see Chapter 7).
Both reality and safety essentially are feeling states, though of a rather subtle kind, as we usually hardly notice them. However, we do notice their absence or disappearance.
The absence of the feeling of reality evokes rather diffuse and ‘unfocused’ feelings, such as alienation, depersonalization, derealization or what Goffman (1974) calls a ‘negative experience’; that is, the sensation that something is absent or missing (Schabracq & Cooper, 1993). The absence of safety on the other hand leads to more distinct feelings, including a readiness for certain actions. Examples of such feelings are apprehension, fear and anxiety.
As long as we feel that things are safe, we can go on with what we are doing. The waning of this feeling makes that problematic, as we feel the urge to find out what exactly is going on and whether we can, and should, do something about it. This urge often goes together with the ‘suspension’ of the reality of what originally was going on. Obviously, reality and safety are closely related – though not identical – while both are also closely linked with trust and faith. For example, when our trust and faith have been violated in the past by some traumatic event, this may interfere with our present feelings of safety and reality.
All in all, to be able to work well we should not be continuously diverted by thoughts about danger or warnings such as ‘pay attention’, ‘look out’, ‘behind you’, or – even worse – the telling absence of these. For perceived or supposed danger interferes with the division of attention needed for losing ourselves in our work. Conversely, too strong a preoccupation with safety can also interfere with the smooth execution of our tasks. In the building industry, for example, the safety prescriptions are sometimes ignored because following these prescriptions is felt to be ‘too much work’.
Too Little Safety
Feeling unsafe interferes with the division of attention needed for losing ourselves in our work. Perceived danger makes it difficult to keep our mind on our work and renders our work less effective. Some of these sources of ineffectiveness are discussed below.
Traumatic Experiences at Work
Traumatic experiences are events that endanger our life or imply another gross violation of our personal integrity. Traumatic experiences at our work site are an important cause of feeling unsafe there (Kleber & van der Velde, 2003). Examples are accidents, hold-ups and client aggression. Such events help us to remember that we are less safe than we thought we were, and may completely unsettle our trust in the safety of our work environment for a long time. Events that in themselves are harmless but remind us of the traumatic event then may evoke violent stress reactions. An example is the entrance of some suspicious-looking but actually innocent people to a bank that has been robbed three times already.
Daily Hassles
Some events negatively affect the feeling of safety without demanding a complete new adaptation of our life. These breaches of safety are called daily hassles and there is some indication that their effects are cumulative (Kanneret al., 1981). Examples are:
Ĺ discourteous treatment and intimidation by clients or the general public Ĺ conflicts
Ĺ unwanted intimacies Ĺ serving as a scapegoat
Ĺ other confrontations with malevolent or unreliable colleagues and bosses
Concerning malevolent or unreliable colleagues and bosses, it should be emphasized that the presence of psychopaths in organizations is a rather common phenomenon (Hare, 1993;
Stout, 2005). When talking about psychopaths, I am referring to people who use others mercilessly, only to disappear to the next organization when there is nothing to take any more or when things get too risky for them.
Some daily hassles have long-lasting effects. Besides being painful, they may unsettle our trust in the organization, the more so as nobody has done anything about them and they have never been settled in a satisfying way. Examples of daily hassles that may have occurred a long time ago but still interfere with our feelings of safety are:
Ĺ being a survivor of a slimming-down operation (also mentioned under the heading of too little social embedding, see earlier in this chapter)
Ĺ being passed over (repeatedly) for promotion Ĺ loss of rights and privileges
Ĺ broken promises
Ĺ other kinds of injustices, offenses and humiliation by colleagues or managers
Apart from the fact that these memories in themselves negatively influence our effectiveness, it also implies that we do not experience pleasant things as such any more. Moreover, it means that we approach innovations with suspicion and skepticism.
Uncertainty About the Future of One’s Job and Organization
As stated before (see Chapter 1), the increased turbulence of the environment has a huge impact on organizations. One of the effects is that the survival of organizations and jobs is much less certain. This uncertainty about the future and the accompanying rumors can unsettle our personal feelings of safety as well. Taking into account the growing number of radical changes and their accelerated pace, this uncertainty is becoming an increasingly important factor. Lifetime employment, for example, is a gradually waning phenomenon.
Uncertainty about the future may evoke all kinds of disaster scenarios, also about the fate of other people, inside or outside the organization, for whom we feel responsible. All of these forms of uncertainty can negatively affect our effectiveness at work. For example, one of the nasty effects of mergers that go together with slimming down is that hardly any work gets done at all.
Checklist 4.10Too little safety
Yes
Hold-ups . . .
Accidents . . .
Client aggression . . .
Having survived massive layoffs . . .
Intimidation . . .
Sexual harassment . . .
Being pestered . . .
Witnessing others being pestered . . .
Malevolent or unreliable colleagues and executives . . .
Open conflicts . . .
Being passed over for promotion in an unjustified way . . .
Losses of rights and privileges . . .
Broken promises . . .
Being offended and humiliated . . .
Uncertainty about the future of one’s job . . .
Uncertainty about the future of one’s organization . . .
Too Much Safety
Paying disproportionately too much attention to procedures that are supposed to result in more safety may be at the expense of the attention to our task performance. Forced compliance with such procedures may also lead to ignoring some of the safety prescriptions, because following these prescriptions is experienced as ‘too much work’, which, of course, can be very dangerous.
Another treacherous point is that an overly safeguarded work environment can make us feel ‘too’ safe. This kind of work environment may have undesired outcomes. First, such safeguarding may work as a sedative. It lulls us into a state in which we are no longer alert enough to deal appropriately with the dangerous eventualities that always may happen.
Good examples are traffic situations that are so overly regulated that they completely take away our watchfulness. Secondly, just like most sedatives, too much safety also turns out to
be addictive. We cloak ourselves in its comfort and tend to forget that this feeling of being completely safe may not last for ever. As a result, we don’t take new initiatives and don’t care about our further development. However, the effect may be that we sentence ourselves to life-long imprisonment in our present job.
As a result, we get stuck in our job, even when staying in the same job is no longer rewarding at all or safe either for that matter. As it then becomes difficult to keep up the right division of attention for effective job performance, diminished effectiveness may ensue. Staying too long in the same job is particularly a problem for older personnel. There may be a number of different causes, which also can occur in different combinations, but the constant factor is clinging to the present job, though it is not rewarding or safe any more.
Many of these mechanisms occur especially – though not exclusively – in organizations that avoid competition, conflict, feedback about inappropriate task performance and open communication in general. Here I give some examples.
Experience Concentration
In general, we want to be good at something. We invest in skill development and learn how to perform well. To accomplish that, we specialize and develop a stable repertory of successful behavior. In this way, we develop ourselves solely within the narrow limits of our job: we learn more and more about less and less and unfortunately cannot be deployed elsewhere any more. This process is called ‘experience concentration’ (Thijssen, 1988).
Experience concentration makes our job less captivating and leads to qualitative task un- derload and loss of effectiveness. Experience concentration becomes most damaging when the organization changes so that our job disappears. Essentially, experience concentration is also a consequence of a failing career policy. Timely horizontal mobility, further training and education could have prevented it. Several studies show that experience concentration occurs rather frequently, certainly among employees over 40 (Boerlijst, Van der Heyden &
Van Assen, 1993; Groot & Maassen van den Brink, 1997).
The ‘Golden Cage’ Syndrome
A good salary can also contribute to too much safety. When we earn a high income it is often impossible to make the same amount of money elsewhere. As a result, we may remain in a position that does not challenge us any more, which is at the expense of our effectiveness.
The Peter Principle
The scenario of being promoted as long as we do well in our successive jobs and getting stuck in the first job where we are not doing so well because it asks too much from us is known as the Peter Principle. If this scenario were fully valid, incompetent people would in the long run occupy all key positions in every organization. Though organizations exist where this principle has actually played a part, this scenario is not so realistic in
most organizations as it is based on rather unrealistic assumptions. The Peter Principle, for example, treats careers as being exclusively vertical in nature and sees a job as an unchangeable datum, which we cannot adapt to our needs. Moreover, the Peter Principle takes proven competence for the sole determinant of promotion. Lastly, it passes over the possibility of appointing a competent assistant who can do the things that we cannot do.
As such, the principle is based on blind faith in the truthfulness of a drawing board design of organizations, which in some bureaucracies may be more or less realistic.
Being Kicked Upstairs
Some organizations solve problems with incompetent or unpopular employees by promot- ing them to formally higher but factually empty positions, where they cannot do much wrong. Seemingly, there is no loss of face. After all, they have been promoted and get a higher salary. However, everybody involved knows that they have been side-tracked and they often are perceived as being ridiculous. Though such a position offers, at least in prin- ciple, opportunities to somebody who flourishes in the freedom that it provides and loves to design their own job, in practice most of the time it does not lead to much effectiveness.
The Glass Ceiling Effect
The glass ceiling refers to the phenomenon that it is nearly impossible for certain groups of employees (women, employees of different cultural, religious, racial or ethnic backgrounds) to rise above a certain organizational level, although this was not at all clear to them when they joined the organization. The word ‘glass’ refers to the ceiling’s invisibility:
the unreachable levels are clearly visible and seem easily reachable too. The phenomenon stems from deeply rooted cultural premises about the underlying division of power and roles (see the section ‘Too little compatibility of values and goals’ earlier in this chapter).
Employees troubled by the glass ceiling often have the capacities as well as the ambition to work at a higher lever. They work hard and perform well, only to find out later that this was not as important as they had been told. At the same time, they witness how colleagues and subordinates who come from the right group do progress in their careers. Consequently, many of these employees become frustrated and cynical, which may harm the effectiveness of their functioning.
Too ‘Secure’ an Organizational Culture
Most of the previous examples – the last one is different – predominantly occur in or- ganizational cultures where a ‘friendly’ climate has become the norm. In such a culture, performance and failures are hardly addressed. Often there is also a taboo on mutual com- petition. Such an environment can be very disheartening to some people, as it makes no difference what we do or don’t do: it is OK anyway. Too ‘secure’ an organizational culture can make it hard to keep our mind on our work and to perform effectively, certainly when others experience good performance as threatening and see it as showing off.
Checklist 4.11Too much safety
Yes Attention to safety procedures that interfere with attention to the real work . . . Being stuck in your job because of overspecialization and lack of skills to
do something else . . .
Having been side-tracked . . .
Having been ‘kicked upstairs’ . . .
Staying in a job only because you would earn less money elsewhere . . . Friendliness and a nice atmosphere as an obligation . . .
Enjoying a protected position . . .
No appeal to your responsibilities . . .
Not being addressed when your performance is below par . . .
Absence of all kinds of mutual competition . . .