Organizational Well-Being as a Mindset
Are you a leader who feels concerned about your employees’ well-being and yet you often feel overwhelmed yourself or don’t know where to start?
Do you find yourself feeling torn between “business” objectives and “people” objectives - as if it’s a constant struggle to do both well?
Have you already addressed core employee needs such as fair wages and manageable workload and don’t understand why your people are STILL struggling with burnout, disengaging or leaving?
Then read on to explore the power of cultivating a strategic organizational well-being mindset!
If you’re familiar with my work you’ll know that I often say well-being in organizations needs to be a strategy, not a benefit. I address the ways that organizations may unknowingly be CAUSING stress and burnout in their organizations with systemic micro-stressors that ultimately undermine any efforts to boost well-being through benefits. There are systemic micro-stressors hardwired into the fabric of generational corporate processes, policies, procedures and behaviors built on the industrial revolution. I love talking about how to tackle those micro-stressors, but today I want to address what sits UNDER those processes.
To build new organizational strategies, we need to start with new mindsets and beliefs.
I think, therefore I am
A fundamental principle of human behavior in cognitive or positive psychology is the idea that we become what we think about. Our thoughts shape our behaviors and our behaviors shape our lives. Back in 1984, Edgar Schein explained how this materializes in organizations through his “iceberg model” of workplace culture.
Essentially, in every organization there are the cultural influencers that are visible - systems, processes, behaviors and policies, but those are driven by the invisible beliefs and values within the organization’s DNA.
In my research and years of work on organizational culture, I have come across two common but sneaky mindsets that are at the root of unhealthy cultures and the growing problem of workplace stress and burn out.
Theory X/Y
Douglas McGregor in his groundbreaking 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise introduced the idea that hidden assumptions about what motivates humans can significantly impact management style and, ultimately, organizational success. For those not familiar, he divided those assumptions into two categories which he called Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X is essentially the belief that employees are inherently lazy and need close supervision and incentives or threats in order to be effective. This approach to management was heavily applied in the Industrial Age when the majority of work was menial, predictable, and repetitive, but it contradicts most of what we have since learned about human behavior.
Theory Y, in contrast, assumes that employees are internally motivated to do well and naturally desire to contribute, to succeed, and to learn and grow. Managers with this mindset focus more on trusting employees, giving them autonomy and empowerment and enabling their growth and development.
In our current economy, where the vast majority of work is complex knowledge work that requires collaboration and innovation and can be done from anywhere, it’s time to kick the Theory X mindset to the curb! McGregor also said that when the workforce is held in “low esteem,” then they will reciprocate by holding management in low esteem. In other words, why would they offer their discretionary effort to a company who doesn’t trust, value or invest in them? It’s simple math! An adversarial “us vs them” mindset between employees and leaders is BAD for business!.
Where you see this mindset creep up - challenge it! Believing that all humans - including your employees - inherently want to succeed and contribute and have impact drives an empowering, trust based, collaborative culture and that level of autonomy contributes to greater employee well-being, engagement, performance and profit!
The TFW Virus
The other toxic mindset still invading the corporate landscape is another holdover from the 19th century, when some of the leading “experts” in management theory were Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), Henry Fayol (1841-1925), and Marx Weber (1864-1924). Despite more than a hundred years passing, their fingerprints are still all over management training
I personally LOVE the metaphor of the TFW Virus, created by Henri Savall, author of Socially Responsible Capitalism and Management and early founder of the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM). Savall and others point out that the theories of Taylor, Fayol and Weber have grown into a virus which has infected organizations for decades and is characterized by a mindset that a business’s sole purpose is to deliver profit. It feeds a perspective that people are disposable and drives a “performance or results above relationships or humanity” environment that equates human value with performance. This produces all sorts of dysfunctions including burnout, dehumanization/disengagement, and fear of failure.
People are NOT machines!
Bottom line, it’s time to acknowledge that the Industrial Revolution is over and people are NOT machines. Deloitte Chief Well-Being Officer, Jen Fisher, articulated this beautifully in a recent LinkedIn post, highlighting the need to “decouple” people from productivity. She quotes Cal Newport’s new book. Slow Productivity, which highlights how our failure to redefine productivity as we evolved from an industrial to a knowledge based and digital economy is at the root of burnout. It’s time for a new revolution - a HUMAN revolution!
The fixation on profit and productivity is like a hamster wheel that is slowly exhausting us but leading nowhere. When poorly defined measures of productivity are the sole definition of an employee/human’s value at work… and when money and profit are the only measurement of success for an organization - who is really winning? Aren’t humans your most important resource? Do companies win by depleting and devaluing their most important resource? Hamsters think they are winning.. But they are really going nowhere.
When it comes to burnout and well-being, I encourage everyone to take ownership of their own boundaries and need for rest and self-care, but it’s time for companies to take responsibility for their role in this systemic problem.. And that starts by changing MINDSETS!
So take a look at the mindsets in your organization this week. Have some hard conversations with your leaders and employees and look deep within yourself. Do you believe that humans are inherently valuable and intrinsically motivated? Can you trust, empower, equip and energize your employees instead of pushing them to “perform”? Do you believe that your company exists NOT just to make money but to make the world a better place? Are your people part of your purpose? Let’s see if addressing some of these mindsets don’t help move the needle to END the normalization of burnout!
