I’m a little late to this one, but I only recently watched Leah Remini’s docuseries, Scientology and the Aftermath on Netflix.
Watching these families, and listening to their stories of how blind loyalty to a belief system tore them apart, is just heartbreaking, and frankly mind boggling.
It was so easy to sit back and judge them for allowing themselves to get sucked into letting other humans have such power and influence over their lives, so much so that they were willing to disconnect with their own families if they didn’t share their same beliefs
Some of them who even wanted to leave didn’t because they got too comfortable.
The organization became their everything, their livelihood…their shelter, their food…their community…their identity…
They became loyal to a fault.
It was in that moment, of my judginess, that I saw it. OMG…we are all guilty of this.
I’m sure you’re thinking no way that could ever happen to me. I don’t have a cult survivor’s tale to tell, and these are rare and extreme examples.
But the simple truth is that people give away their power to think for themselves – and their belief in themselves – every day.
I am sure you’ve heard the saying, how do you boil a frog? You don’t throw him into a boiling pot of water. He will just jump out. You put him in a comfortable temperature of water, and slowly turn up the heat.
If we each took an honest, hard look at ourselves – are we 100% sure we’re not allowing this to happen in some aspect of our lives?
Let’s step away from Tom Cruise’s peeps, and apply similar thinking to a more familiar situation to most of us – organizational loyalty.
Our parents and grandparents love to talk about how back in the day companies were loyal to their people. They say things like you got a job at a company, you stayed there until you got your gold watch and retired. Companies just aren’t loyal to their people anymore. Such a shame.
I am sorry to have to be the one to shatter that illusion, but in my opinion, company LOYALTY to its people, never existed.
What they are describing isn’t loyalty. The gold watch is incentive to work hard and stick around. Companies – especially manufacturing ones – realized it was more cost effective to keep people who were already trained and loyal to THEM. This helped them avoid turnover, meaning they didn’t have to spend time and money in talent acquisition, and training new people. When people become complacent, I’m sorry I mean comfortable, they could take a little away here and there, a benefit cut here, a change in policy there, and people either didn’t really notice or they became so comfortable they convinced themselves they couldn’t get any better, do any better, too old to start over somewhere new, having to prove themselves again…sounds exhausting and scary. They didn’t think they could compete against people half their age. They became so complacent they didn’t even realize their own worth anymore so likely they weren’t asking for raises or promotions because they are just happy to have a secure job. The company helped convince them they were LUCKY to be there. They would find themselves defending every company decision. “Oh, that’s ok we don’t have an incentive program anymore, we get free coffee in the break area.” Then imagine the turmoil that ensued when a plant closed down or a workforce reduction took place.
When you turn up the heat a little at a time to boil that frog, it’s no different than people slowly giving away their power to a company, a leader, a person, an organization of any kind, and slowly sipping the Kool-aid at the corporate picnic so much so that they are both blindly loyal and have lost their own identity and they don’t even realize it.
How do I know? Because I’ve been there. I’ve worked for the same company for 25+ years. Same company, but different jobs and departments, even different geographic locations. Obviously I enjoy it, or I wouldn’t be there if I didn’t. And I sought different opportunities because I wanted to keep learning and growing and expanding my network, trying new things. But I have fought – many times over – losing my identity by putting my self-worth in my job.
I still struggle with putting my job first over my health, my family and wasn’t until I had a really exceptionally terrible leader, that I finally woke up to the fact that I was putting my self-worth into what the leaders I worked for thought of me, and that’s not being a leader myself.
That’s giving the power of our leadership away to another person. I don’t care what title or position someone has, that is on you if you choose to allow someone else’s opinion of you dictate your value, your worth, your unique abilities and strengths. Not to be confused with on the job skill building and feedback. But even feedback is not something to be blindly taken and accepted. It is to be assessed then applied, and part of that assessment should be of the person’s motives who is giving it to you.
Often times we don’t even realize this is happening until your world gets turned upside down.
I’ve been connecting with family, and friends who are right now are enduring the tough realities of being furloughed, laid off from a job, or their business struggling in these crazy COVID times.
Some are depressed, some are pulling through with new hustles, but every single one of them is asking – why me?
Was I not valued? Did I not work hard enough? Do enough? But I worked so hard, gave it my all, my heart, my soul. Why me?
They are spiraling into feelings of self-doubt and self-loathing…feeling non-essential (which BTW is a word that should never, ever have been used to describe PEOPLE or even the jobs THEY do).
So, what if we just changed our perspective a bit…
Another human being (or beings) made a decision that workforce had to be cut, trimmed down, reduced.
They tell their people and it trickles down the chain of command. The initial decision wasn’t personal, wasn’t made with you personally in mind.
We could debate for days on whether or not role elimination or workforce reductions are right or wrong, necessary or unnecessary, and of course I have an opinion like anyone else, but that’s not my message here. Regardless of that, it happens. The point is to maintain a healthy perspective about your value and the ability to stay eyes wide open regardless if that happens to you or not.
I know easier said than done, and sadly for some of you reading this, it’s already happened to you…and it’s gut-wrenching, scary, disappointing and life-changing. I am not minimizing the real sucky feelings around something like this. I’ve also heard from some people that it often ends up being the kick in the butt they needed to get out of their comfort zone and follow their true passions. Whatever you’re feeling now, it’s ok. Just make sure you visit, and not build a house there.
What I am saying to everyone is let’s not wait for something life-changing like that to happen in order to have a healthy perspective about your job, and to make sure you are not blindly being loyal to anyone or any organization while slowly losing yourself in the process.
It’s ok to love a brand, the product and the company you work for – it’d be super weird if you worked there and didn’t. And I am not trying to portray corporations as evil entities. They are businesses and need to turn a profit to stay in business. Of course this shouldn’t be at the expense of your people and humanity, but that’s a topic for another cup of coffee.
We have to let go of the outdated perception of company loyalty. A healthy company-employee relationship is a mutually beneficial relationship. I work hard for you, leaders recognize me, company invests in you and it helps you both – you get new skills and grow, come up with new ideas for the company. You take your experience within the company and keep growing together. And when you want to do something new and different, ideally, the company’s leaders are there to help you move around and try new things, again, investing in each other – mutually beneficial. Ideally this is a balanced relationship, which can get out of whack at times. But focus on what YOU can control. Nobody is forcing you to stay in a job, whether you think you have golden handcuffs or not.
I know some of you may work for small organizations, have very specialized expertise, or you might be entrepreneurs, or leaders in nonprofits and churches, so in terms of internal mobility, this may look different for you than it does in big companies and corporations, but the concept is the same in any organization. Decisions to move on, change jobs, try something new should be supported by any type of leader you have – for entrepreneurs, leading yourself is even harder. You have to take a hard look at yourself, your consumers and staff, plus keep growing and cultivating to keep up with the ever-evolving marketplace.
Remember these 3 important things:
- Power is not in the purse strings. You are much more than your job. Your team members and team mates are much more than their jobs and functions. Be the leader you would want and help them see they are more than the tasks on a checklist or meetings on a calendar. I wish we could change our perspective of “career” to this: Your current job is a moment in time. Your career is the entire journey of your work life. Stop thinking about your job as something the company does FOR you and start looking at your job as YOUR choice. Because it is your choice to be in a particular job. Stop telling yourself you have no choice because you have a family to feed. You 100% have a choice in what you do to make ends meet. Make sure you are continuing to grow in your job and the mutually beneficial relationship with your employer doesn’t get out of whack, and if it does, take action. I love this quote by Trent Shelton, “You accepted less because you thought a little was better than nothing. Know your worth.”
- Your worth does not lie in the opinion of others. Your value and worth cannot be quantified by any other human being, I don’t care what someone in a position or title says or what system they’re using. In his book, “9 lies about work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World,” Marcus Buckingham says most of your experience at work is mediated through the lie that people can reliably rate other people. How you are selected, how you are promoted, how you are paid, how you are developed, and possibly how you are terminated all depend on somebody else’s rating of you. Unfortunately, people are not reliable raters of other people. The main reason is called the “idiosyncratic rater effect,” and it works like this: when I rate you, over 60% of your rating is about me, and not you. Now many people think that by combining my rating of you with several (or many) other people’s ratings of you will somehow reveal the truth – but that’s also wrong. Just like noise plus noise will never equal a signal, bad data plus bad data will only ever equal more bad data. How often do we get down on ourselves about a performance review or rating…even if your company has this process, I am only saying keep it in perspective. Your value, your worth, your abilities, your uniqueness lies within you, and others’ opinions include their own filters, bias and observations. Take it for what it’s worth to improve in your role and function, but don’t let it chip away at your self-image and esteem.
- Help others grow and go. I can’t tell you how many leaders I’ve talked to who take it so personally when someone from their team leaves for another job. Don’t. We are all on different life paths, some of us want to change things up sometimes, and great leaders support their people and help them get to where they want to go no matter what. Some of you might be thinking yeah but sometimes I do leave jobs because I have a crappy leader. That’s true. People leave people…100% So if someone on your team wants to move on, definitely ask why, get to the heart of the motive. If they say the motive is to grow, do something new, different, support them. Help them. If they have the courage to say it’s about you, LISTEN and LEARN. Also please don’t write someone off for promotions and opportunities because they may have expressed interest in another area or dept. That’s as bad as the scientologists disconnecting from family members because they have decided to leave their church. Haven’t you ever dreamed a new dream? Set a new goal? While you’re working on making that happen, it shouldn’t be held against you in your current role as long as you’re performing well. Yes, losing talent is a bummer, sure, but keeping someone who wants to move on isn’t going to make them want to stay, only resent. Appreciate the time you worked together and cheer them on from afar…besides it’s a small world, you never know when your paths will cross again.
One of the reasons I share my thoughts here and started my LeaderSips podcast is in the hope that people see the powerful opportunity they have to step up and be leaders in any role they have in life. Leadership is not about position or title, it’s about behavior, behavior built on character, character built on the central value of helping others grow and fulfill their God-given potential, purpose and passions to make the world around them better than before they were in it.
Leaders have the ability to shape minds and influence people. And that is a good thing when it’s done for the betterment of the person and team, not when used by power-hungry people with selfish goals, intent, and to foster blind loyalty or followings. Sometimes there are wolves in sheep’s clothing, so we have to make sure we – and the people in our charge – remain empowered with a voice, the ability to think and speak up for themselves and they are valued first and foremost for WHO they are…before WHAT they do.
Karlynn Holbrook 