When We Lose Hope, We Cope – A Friday Serious with a Funny Ending

By Michelle Malay Carter on December 14, 2007 

The Long Path to AuthenticityWe all have our default coping mechanisms for dealing with stressful situations.? Some try to?dominate and intimidate.? Others accommodate and people please.? Others try to hide and withdrawal.

The raw material for our “mechanism of choice”?begins with our natural hard-wiring and then we develop and refine it in a delicate dance of trial-and-error with our environment over time.

As deeply ingrained as these mechanisms are, the road to authentic behavior is long and uncomfortable.? Many people never so much as step foot on the path.

From a purely ROI standpoint, does it make sense for organizations to invest in interventions to try to develop individual employee maturity, self awareness, and character, or would it pay more to design its systems in a trust-inducing, consistent, sane-making way so as not to trigger stress reactions in employees in the first place?

Personal development is a noble endeavor.? However, I believe humans are wired to work and can be relatively productive even when immature, given a work-supportive environment.?

Most current management systems DO NOT enable productive work.? Rather, they impede it and frustrate employees with a barrage of conflicts of interest.

Let’s start by creating a work-enabling environment first, and only then pull out your “Employees in Need of Therapy” list.? I’ll?bet the list will be shorter than you think.? I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.

For a chuckle, watch this FedEx clip featuring a variety of coping mechanisms.? Anyone who knows us, knows our coping mechanisms.

Filed Under Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Executive Leadership, Managerial Leadership, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management

Comments

2 Responses to “When We Lose Hope, We Cope – A Friday Serious with a Funny Ending”

  1. Dhruva Trivedy on December 15th, 2007 2:23 am

    This is the age old story of what Covey deals with in his ‘third habit’. But what amazes some of us is that even though most of us in the corporate are educated and some even thoroughly conscious about the results of these interventions in the form of training or coaching, very few simultaneously focus on the culture building exercises that emanate out of the required contemporary and competitive systems that are ‘work enabling’!

  2. Michelle Malay Carter on December 16th, 2007 4:21 pm

    Dhruva,

    Thanks for the comment. Can you expand on the the idea of work-enabling culture building exercises?

    Michelle