Culture & Self Esteem Series Part 2

People draw the majority of their self-esteem from their job.

It’s important to know about this connection for two reasons.

1. It helps you to understand that culture develops on a cycle. When you try to influence your people and your culture by coming into the middle of the cycle, you only make matters worse. You may have a temporary effect, but the patterns are developed already.
2. Studies have shown that people will protect their self-esteem at all costs. This does not mean they will keep a healthy self-esteem. People will put all of their energies into trying not to lose ground or in essence maintaining their current self esteem rather than trying to raise it.

As people, we eventually accept the role we have in life and spend our days rationalizing it and convincing ourselves that this is the way it’s supposed to be. Psychologists call this our comfort zone. The hardest thing to do is push someone out of their comfort zone and get them to perform. But this is exactly what you are doing.

Follow this pattern. If the culture cycle is the development of your culture then it stands to reason that your current culture is somewhat of a comfort zone for your employees. They may moan, gripe and complain about their current work conditions, but these people could get 40 hours pay for 30 hours worked and still find something to complain about. Why? Because that is who they are. This is the regard they hold for themselves. That is what their current state of self-esteem is telling them.

Another example of this is the badge of “busyness.” Employees in the organization try to fill their calendars everyday with meetings to “provide value” to the organization (so they think.) This means that at the end of the day, they have to go home and then do their real work or emails. People in these cultures feel that if there is an empty space on the calendar, then they are doing something wrong.

It gets worse when an organizational culture starts to feed this behavior by regarding it and rewarding it!

So if a person draws the majority of his or her self-esteem from his or her job and their job is really defined by your corporate culture, then their self-esteem is determined and impacted by your culture. As if you weren’t carrying enough weight on your shoulders, we have now added the self-esteem of every employee to the load!

We make this connection to help you understand where the employees are coming from. They will resist you in your efforts. Guarantee it. This helps you understand why.

Point of fact. We are not telling you all of this to make you amateur psychologists. Do not go out and buy a couch to place in your cubicle for your next set of employee one-on-ones! Ultimately, a person is in control of his or her own self-esteem. The culture and the company will definitely impact it, but to what level is still up to the individual.

We have heard many stories about people who work jobs that most of us would consider demeaning, but they have a smile on their face and take such pride in their work. Bill Pollard in The Soul of the Firm describes the majority of his company’s people as being this way. ServiceMaster cleans toilets as a business. But the people who do it, work with pride because they are members of a culture that values them as people and that strives to maintain an environment for their employee’s development of a healthy self-esteem.

These are the types of people you want on your team. They have learned to disconnect who they are from what they do. Unfortunately, you cannot go out and fire everyone and start over. If you could, you would not be reading this brief.

You must understand what you are dealing with when you start to mess with a corporate culture. Those 2nd graders did not learn to devalue someone who picks up garbage from school. They learned it from their peers and family. For many years, the rules mandating; hierarchical structured “ring cultures” have taught us all that there are two types of jobs - menial jobs and important (glamorous) jobs.

By the way, a “ring culture” is one where the company promotes from within and the only way to get to the top is by kissing the ring of the top guys in respect for their making it. If you have this type of culture, we pray for you. Someone who spent 20 years kissing everyone’s ring to get there will not easily give up the pleasure of now being the ring kissee. They will be a big challenge for you. Why? You know the answer. They draw their self-esteem from the amount of kisses they receive.