Why do peons work? For the paycheck, right? Beyond the obvious reason that we need money to survive, though, why do we work, and why do we aspire to a larger paycheck? Why do we aspire . . . to a more distinguished title or a better-looking business card, the closer parking spot or the nice big office? Why do we take extra school classes just to get ahead? Why do we do these things?
I realize I'm getting a little philosophical with you, but really, the answer is pretty simple: We work for respect. That paycheck is a message from the world that we are a respectable person. That larger paycheck, and the subsequently larger vehicle we drive is, we feel, a greater manifestation of respect. Most of our reasons for working, and for working hard, can be whittled down to respect.
It is safe to assume, therefore, that if we work for respect, then most motivating factors can be traced back to an employee earning or receiving respect. It is not about a plaque to hang on the wall, and it is not only about the money. If it were, then you would not see high-priced athletes, who are paid plenty of money, demanding trades and opting out of contracts. While the money is nice for them, the fact that some do demand trades and opt out of contracts obviously means it is not everything. Money is only a motivator if it comes coupled with respect.
The way to truly motivate people is to respect them.
The plaques, the money, the employee-of-the-month awards—all have to be given in a spirit of respect in order to be effective. Likewise, if I am motivated by respect, whether in monetary or in personal form, then the opposite is also true: My motivation is lessened when I am disrespected.
Disrespect is such a serious offense that rap music has come up with a shortened version of the word: dis. As in “He be dissin' you girl. Kick him out.” Or “Don't dis on my fresh rhymes.” Or, my personal favorite, “Ever since he made it big, he be goin' round all frontin' and dissin'.”
Since disrespect is a very serious offense, we must establish what behaviors are interpreted as disrespectful and decide how to avoid them. In order to avoid the pitfall of disrespect to peons, and to build the trust toward progress, you must first get real.
When I say, “Get real,” I'm talking specifically about adjusting an attitude—the attitude that there exists an imaginary gap between management and peons, and that one is better than the other. Think back to your days in school and to how upset you used to get when some other kid on the playground assumed they were better than you. Remember that feeling of disrespect? All you wanted was to be treated as an equal.
My experience in many workplace environments has been not much different from the playground. In some situations, managers and peons are perceived as completely different types of people. The manager is seen, in his own mind and maybe in the minds of some subordinates, as more educated, wealthier, more successful, and therefore a better person than the lowly peon. In addition, because the manager knows the measly salary of the peon, and knows that she has the power to advance the career of said peon, she may feel a little more power in the relationship. The eyes of the manager look down upon the peon, and the forced eyes of the subordinate look up at the manager.
I realize some companies perform better than others in the area of employee equality. If you work in one of those companies, good for you. However, I am sure there are still areas that need work. So how do you know how well you are doing in the area of employee equality? Don't ask some magazine that ranks you a great place to work—what do they know? When was the last time a magazine writer walked by an executive in the hall without receiving even the courtesy of a “hello”? The writer never has, but the janitor might have experienced this. Therefore, if you want to know how good you are at getting real, go ask your employees. Ask the janitor. Ask the receptionist. Do they get the same rights, benefits, and respect as everyone else?
If you find there is distance between last and first in your company, start addressing that by taking a good look inside yourself. Think about how special you felt when you finally got the promotion to management, or when you first started your business. You probably washed your car that day, or got your hair cut. You started wearing a cell phone or a pager, or maybe both, and had your spouse call you three or four times a day, just to make it look like you had somebody important to talk to. You felt like royalty when they finally put your name and title on the door, didn't you?
And remember the day your new business cards arrived? Oh, that was wonderful, wasn't it? You immediately put twenty of them in your wallet or purse, didn't you? You just couldn't wait to give them out. You found yourself giving them to everyone: the lady at the grocery store, the guy at the oil change place, your dry cleaner. Sometimes you gave them out at places unconventional to business card swapping: at church, at the gym, in the middle of Lamaze class. It didn't matter. You were now a manager, and it served the world right that they should know.
Come on, don't lie. You did that, didn't you? It's all right— you aren't the only one. You loved to go to lunch and see those little bowls where everybody would throw their business cards in hopes of winning a free egg roll. Heck, you'd throw in three or four cards, and you'd make sure that one of yours was sticking face up on the top, so everyone could see your name, with the title under it: Manager or Owner or President.
Take out one of your business cards. Go ahead; I'll wait here. Put down the book and pull one out. Okay, now look at it. It looks good, doesn't it? Does it make you feel powerful? Maybe a little fulfilled, like all your work has paid off. Does it make you feel like somebody special? That's who you are, right? You are J. Doe, Manager, or J. Doe, Owner. That describes you in a nutshell, doesn't it?
Okay, now I want you to do something else with your business card. I want you to put one hand on one side of it and one hand on the other side. Now I want you to tear it—tear it right down the middle. Come on, you sissy, rip it! Do you want me to tell your manager how bad you are at following directions? Rip it with all the aggression you have. Rip it up into tiny, indiscernible pieces.
J. Doe, Manager, is not who you are. You are not your business card, and your business card does not describe you. If it does, if you are one of those people who started to pick up all the little pieces and try to tape them back together again, then you've got it all wrong. That business card, that title, makes you no more of a woman or a man than does an expensive European car, a fancy watch, or a new hair color. If you want your peons to work for you, to trust you, and to respect you, you cannot be J. Doe, Manager, you must be just J. Doe, Person. That is what I am talking about when I say, “Get real.”
Thinking back to my time working at a large public company, I recall the illusion of grandeur built up around some senior-level managers. In these situations, many of the lower-level managers, and some of the peons, treated a meeting with a senior-level executive as though they were meeting the pope, and many times that type of treatment went right to the executive's head.
On more than one occasion, we were informed that a senior manager would be coming to our division to come speak to us. We peons were told, “You are so lucky. I worked at this company five years before I ever got to speak with a senior officer.” Fabulous. I am giddy with anticipation.
The day before we were to be graced with this visit, word went out that we ought to dress up for the visit. “You should dress for the position you want, not the one you have.” So of course, the day of the visit, some people showed up in their nicest Italian suits and department store heels.
Personally, I thought, “This guy has no idea who I am, and he wouldn't give a slick of spoiled milk to know that I am wearing a tie. The fact that I am wearing a tie for this guy will not get me any promotion, any raise, or any bonus. This tie is doing nothing. And to think, I spent fifteen minutes trying to decide whether the yellow tie (which says ‘creative and bold’) or the red tie (which says ‘steady and powerful’) would be more impressive.”
Some of the lower-level managers acted like reporters at the red carpet of the Academy Awards: “He's here!”
The screech of excitement generated interest among us cube dwellers, and like little prairie dogs, we popped our heads up over the cube walls to see what the commotion was about. “The corporate jet just arrived at the airport. Make sure your desk is clean. Go shine up your shoes one more time.”
A person close to the noise signaled back to fellow prairie dogs what was going on, and we all sank back into our holes. Then the screeching started again, and sure enough, the prairie dogs popped up again.
“Okay, they have left the airport, they should be here in fifteen minutes! Are you ready?!”
Play by play, blow by blow, we peons received the action.
“His car is here… and, what's that? Okay, he just opened his door. We have word that the Executive is now stepping out of his car and is on his way in the building. Did you hear that? He's here, he's… What the…? Omigosh! Your tie is on crooked. Hurry! Fix it! For the love of all that is decent in this world, fix your tie!”
The Executive walked into the room, the commotion was too much, and the prairie dogs all popped up to see. The anticipation increased if the Executive was vertically challenged. In such a case, the only thing the prairie dogs could see was a general movement through the crowd, the top of a gray head moving through the masses.
The peons asked themselves, “What does he look like? Is he happy or mad? Did he go with the yellow or the red?”
At some point during the day, everyone herded into a conference area to hear the words of this wise person. Of course, the Executive wasn't already in the room. Oh no! Like a prizefighter, he waited off in the wings, ready to make his grand entrance. The lights came down, the smoke started to pour down, stage lights moving around in all directions—only then would he walk in. There always were some people who stood up, clapped hard enough to do permanent nerve damage to their palms, and started cheering and whistling.
I was amazed at the pompous reception. All these yes-people treating this guy like royalty. Who is he, a prophet of God? The president of the United States, or possibly the author of The Peon Book? Heck, is he at least a rock star? No, he's just some vice president of some company. One of the who-knows-how-many thousands of vice presidents of countless companies all over the world. Did he at least cure cancer, further world peace, save some lives? No, he just worked his way up the corporate ladder. He started out as a grocery store bag boy, you know. Then he worked hard and made it to where he is today.
That's nice, but did he get that kind of reception when he was the bag boy? The way some executives are treated, and the kind of applause they get, you'd think they were headed for sainthood. Unfortunately, some executives take the cheering seriously, and they let it go to their heads.
The thing is that, outside of the company, this guy is a normal J. Doe like the rest of us. His card just shows a different title under the name. Does that make him a different kind of person? Does that justify treating this guy like he's someone extremely important? I don't think so. A person outside his company wouldn't think more than two seconds about the choice between yellow and red ties to meet this guy. So this guy is vice president of some company—so what? I was vice president of the glee club at school. What's the big deal?
On my way to work one day, I stopped by a convenience store to fill up on some soda. This was a national chain convenience store, not one of the no-name places that only sell hard liquor, pornography, and stale potato chips. No, this was a high-class corner-store establishment. As I filled my cup with a quality beverage, I saw a bald-headed manager come racing from the back of the store to the front.
“There he is!” he informed his employees. The young kid behind the counter stood there with his mouth open and his shoes untied. Looking around, he saw a lot of people coming in and out.
“Who?” he asked.
“Mr. Whatshisname, the guy in charge of this.”
“In charge of what?”
“In charge of all of this, all these stores. You know—one of the bigwigs.”
“Oh.”
“You better say ‘Hi’ to him when he walks in.”
“I say ‘Hi’ to everybody.”
“I'm just telling you…”
By the time the guy walked in and the kid had complied with the mandatory “Hi,” my drink was full and I proceeded to the checkout counter. Mr. Whatshisname was standing there, doing the manager thing and talking to the kid, when I came up to purchase my drink.
I kindly said, “Out of my way, jerk. I'm late for work.”
All right, I didn't really say that. Really, I said “Excuse me,” the kid took the money for my drink, and I left.
As I drove off, I reflected that this super-turbo manager guy was nobody to me. In fact, he was just another person I could blame for my tardiness. While his presence put the manager on edge and made the peon kid confused, to me, an outsider, this man was just another person. I could very well have called that guy a jerk, or slapped his rear and told him, “Keep it real, baby!” In either case, nothing more would have happened to me than if I did the same thing to an old lady. His business card meant nothing to me, just as yours means nothing to me. I'm glad to hear that you worked hard to get where you are, but this is just a job, it's not who you are.
The point is, most organizations include this imaginary gap between peons and management, and when you encourage that gap, you disrespect those below the gap. Getting real means not treating your position as manager as some distinguished, elevated chair. Sure, you worked hard to get where you are. Sure, you deserve a little respect because of your position. But you are not Supreme Chancellor, and we are not some lowly, dirty, pond scum peons. We are all members of the human race. We all drive the same freeways to get to work every day. You wait to see that paycheck every two weeks, just as we do. We all go home to families, spouses, kids, and pets. I hate to break it to you, but in the grand scheme of things, we are equals. I know the E-word is a little hard to take sometimes, but it is true.
Manager = peon.
In order to maintain a level of respect in the manager-peon relationship, and to narrow the gap, it is important to recognize that we are not your subordinates—we are your co-workers. Most likely, we lack the tenure, experience, education, or abilities that you possess; otherwise, we might have your job and you might be our peon. That is neither good nor bad, it is just part of life. Your position of authority does not make you a better person. It doesn't make you any more important to the company. In fact, as layoffs, rightsizing, fat trimming, and cutbacks show, most companies can live without most management. Companies cannot, however, live without the people who are actually putting the product together and getting the work done.
If manager = peon and peon = manager, then we all ought to act like it. You, as a manager, need to work to break down the imaginary gap where it exists. Work with us as equals. Give us directives as an equal. Announce company policy to us as equals.
Most importantly, when you treat your peons as equals, they will see that they can treat you as an equal. As you come to recognize that your job is as dependent on us as ours is on you, you will see that we really are equal co-workers. There is no room for disrespect when employees view each other as equals. An environment of equality will result in a higher level of motivation than an unequal environment. As peons see that their work is equal in importance to that of the manager, each person will bring a new sense of ownership to their work.
Empathy
So how do you reach this state of equality? How can manager truly equal peon? The first step is to strive for another E-word: empathy. It amazes me that empathy is such a difficult thing for us to truly show. I guess the reason is that empathy is not something you show at all; it is something you feel.
By simple definition, empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
This is different from sympathy, which is to imagine what it would be like to be in somebody's shoes. Empathy goes deeper—it is the ability to realistically put yourself in someone else's shoes, because you yourself have worn those shoes.
For instance, I feel empathy when I take my kids to the store and they cry and cry because I won't give them twenty-five cents for a piece of gum. I remember when I was a kid and my mean old dad wouldn't give me twenty-five cents either. I start to actually feel the pain and frustration of being let down by the man who says he loves you. I begin to empathize with my kids. So I give them a quarter, and then all of a sudden they want two quarters so they can get Sticky Piece of Goo instead of the gum. Or they cry because “He got the blue gumball, and I wanted blue. I don't want pink.” Before you know it, I spend four dollars in quarters buying gum, until another stupid blue gumball comes out. Then, frustrated, hot, and angry, I injure my jaw on the enormous gum sandwich of discarded pink gumballs in my mouth. At which point I begin to develop a different sense of empathy—for my father.
If you don't have kids, you may have a hard time empathizing with me, but I have a hard time believing that any manager would have difficulty empathizing with their peons. You were all peons once, right? So why do so many managers have such a hard time empathizing with their employees? Why is it so difficult for you to put yourselves in our shoes?
Maybe you do empathize, but you dislike what you see when you get in our shoes, so you elect to spend less time in them. Maybe putting yourself in our shoes makes you realize that a management decision you made was wrong, or a policy you created was a bad move, and you don't want to face that. Maybe you do put yourself in our shoes, but elect not to act on the impressions you receive while in them. Maybe you remember wearing the shoes, but you don't remember the stinky feet and knee-high tube socks with the blue and yellow stripes that went in them.
I know that when we graduated from high school or college we all thought for sure our first job was going to be vice president of a large corporation; however, after a couple months of job searching, we soon found out that we were qualified only to swim in the shallow end of the peon pool. I have never heard of anybody (other than family) skipping the peon pool and jumping right into the executive hot tub. Even people who start their own business have to go through those first few months or years when they are a nobody, running as hard as they can but getting nowhere.
So how is it that, the minute they are promoted, some people forget what life is like back in the shallow end of our pool? What kind of holier-than-thou training do they give you when you get that promotion to management? Is there some sort of mandatory Management Only meeting, where they put you in a small room with only one light and play a recording of the phrase “You are better because you are management” over and over again, until you believe it?
I realize that it is difficult for some managers to show empathy for employees because they may have come from a different department or a different company altogether. They may have made it to their position without ever performing the exact functions required of their subordinates. But that is not an excuse. The empathy principle can cross over from division to division, from company to company. Your peon shoes may have been Nike and mine are Reebok, but they are both athletic shoes; you can still have empathy for me while watching me walk in my Reeboks.
Don't you remember what it was like to work hard all day, every day, and be paid squat? Don't you remember what it is like to take orders all day from managers that just seemed oblivious? Maybe you still feel that way, but for some reason some of you seem to forget that you were ever a peon, and have a real hard time showing empathy for those under you.
My theory about the apparent lack of empathy is that some managers are insecure or embarrassed about their time in the peon pool. As a peon you may have had bad days, or had months or years in which you didn't perform in the top one percent of the company. You may even feel that this causes current peons to view you as unqualified or unworthy of your post. Your past peon life may strike you as somewhat hypocritical when you preach to us about being mediocre, lazy, or discouraged. I guess these types of managers expect more out of their subordinates than they expected of themselves at that level.
It is important to remember that sometimes there is no way to avoid bad days.
Peons are humans.
Until scientists invent an exact peon-replica robot, you are stuck with human peons. You are stuck with people who will have bad days, who will try hard and still not be in the top one percent. You are going to have people who come to work and put in their time but do not aspire to live up to some inspirational words about success. You are going to have people with different motivations and different backgrounds than you. You are going to have people who call in sick when they really aren't ill, or people who surf the Internet at work and minimize the browser real quick when they hear you coming.
You are human too. I am sure some days you aren't going full speed ahead, so recognize the fact that we may have such days too. Rather than expect peon robots, fired up and ready to go every day from the minute they walk in the door, accept the fact that you have human peons. Rather than knee-jerk punishment of an underperformer, why not have more empathy: remember the time when you worked your hardest and still had mediocre results, and try to help that peon work through it the way you did.
Another possible explanation for the lack of manager-peon empathy is the Parent Theory. Managers operating under this theory are similar to overprotective parents—the ones who tell a boy to bring their daughter back by 9:30 P.M., and if she's a minute late, threaten to track her boyfriend down with a shotgun. Most parents like that were probably pretty daring when they were teenagers. Their thoughts go something like, “I know what these kids are doing when they are staying out late. They are doing the same things I did when I was their age… Oh no they won't!” Such a parent empathizes with their teenager, but only negatively.
Many managers behave the same way. You might have a guilty conscience about the way you slacked when you were a peon (or the way you continue to slack today), and you just know that your people are slacking too, working the system the same way that you always did. This type of manager generally checks up on their employees from the weirdest angles. They know all the best ways to catch somebody slacking, because they thought it all out when they were peons, in order to avoid being caught themselves. This type of manager can be especially dangerous to the average peon because such managers tend to micromanage every minute detail of peon jobs.
Micromanagement is never an acceptable style of work management.
I don't know any peon that goes home to their spouse at night and says, “Man, I wish my manager would follow up on more details of my job.” If you have to manage every single, minute detail of someone's work, then you might as well do the job yourself.
I don't understand micromanagement as a general practice, and even less as a style of reaction to a business crisis. Too many times micromanagement is used as a “wonder tool” to fix just about any business situation. It never gets the intended results, however, and is only a show of severe disrespect.
To illustrate: Let's say the numbers come in, and your department is way below expected productivity levels. There are a number of different ways you can react. You can analyze the situation and ensure that the peons have the tools to reach that level of productivity (yeah, right!). Or you might analyze your management style, to ensure you are helping your people reach that level of productivity (I don't think so!). Even better, you could reassess the productivity goals to determine if the original goals were unrealistic (yeah, like that is ever going to happen!). While all of these scenarios are acceptable reactions to the problem, they are also the reactions that very seldom occur.
Instead, the low numbers come in and the knee-jerk reaction is to think, “Those peons aren't working hard enough. That's it—enough of the slacking. I am going to get tough.” So you walk around with a clipboard and a mission, and you start analyzing every little detail of your peons' work lives: how many breaks we take a day, how many times we go to the rest-room (only three bathroom breaks a day, and nothing past 4:30). You analyze what we eat for lunch and how many times we blink in a day, as if managing every sordid detail of a workday is going to somehow change the numbers around. Instead, all you are doing is disrespecting your employees and beginning to alienate them.
This trend will become worse if your micromanagement turns to threats. Maybe you get rid of one of us as a sacrificial lamb, to send a message that four bathroom breaks will not be tolerated: “There is work to do! We are paying you to work. Get your butt behind the desk and work. And until the numbers return to an acceptable level, you are going to have to keep this up.”
You might feel a little mean, but that is your job, right? And you continue to manage this way because things start to change. You are happy to go to your boss and inform her that your people have actually limited it to one bathroom break per day, because they go before work, after work, and during lunch. You feel like you are making a difference, and things are turning around. You seem to be rewarded for your micro-management.
Don't puff your chest out any further, though, because you are not actually getting the results you think you are. The only reason people are taking fewer bathroom breaks is because we are so scared to go we would rather just wet our pants at our desks than risk crossing your path on our way to relieving ourselves. I'm not joking. You have now officially turned yourself into the KGB.
Unfortunately, fear is not an acceptable motivating factor. Fear is no way to run a business. You do what I say or you will be eliminated? If that is your style, then maybe someday you could write a book on all the great management decisions you made in your career and sell millions of copies. You could title it The Napoleon Book: How to Micromanage.
Do people enjoy working under those conditions? Does it help them to thrive and be more creative, to take better care of your customers? Do they come to work early because they are excited to be there and they enjoy the work they do? Are they dedicated to your team, and to you, and to working hard to bring the productivity numbers up? Do they feel respected? Absolutely not. All your peons are worried about now is survival. We are petrified of getting on your bad side, so we do what we have to in order to survive, and we wake up every morning hating our jobs. Peons in this situation are certainly feeling no respect or empathy from you.
Remember
Whether you subscribe to the Parent Theory or to the micromanagement one, an inability to empathize can be a real speed bump on the road to a trusting, personal relationship with your employees. So how are you supposed to show more empathy? I take issue with management books that advocate a particular phrase to indicate empathy, like “I understand” or “I know what you mean,” or that rely on gimmicks, such as rephrasing a person's statement, to show empathy.
Instead, in order to show empathy, just mentally put yourself in our shoes. Sometimes this is just a matter of remembering what it's like to be focused on one thing, and then to have management come down and change your direction 180 degrees in one afternoon. Or recalling what it's like to have to ask for time off, or remembering what it's like to be the new guy on the job, having a hard time remembering everything. The overwhelming theme here is that
empathy = remembering.
So, if remembering is a skill required for empathy, how can you develop that skill and likewise develop empathy? Each mind is different, and everyone has different cues that help them recall something. For example, you might put an item on your desk or near your computer, something that reminds you of your first years at the company. Maybe a picture of the company's logo from “back in the day,” or a picture of the car you drove when you first started your job. Sure, a picture of your beat-up Mercury is not going to impress people as they walk in your office, but your explanation of why you have it hanging there will.
If you transferred jobs into this management position and you don't have a history with this company, you still might put something on your desk to remind you of your first scrub job. For instance, I could get a model lawn mower, since that's how I got my start, or maybe a model school bus to remind me of the time I drove a school bus to put myself through college. If you work on the road, get a trinket and put it on the dash or hang it from the rearview mirror—a little hammer, if you work construction, or a rubber band, if you manage newspaper deliverers.
Whatever you choose as your cue, get it on your desk today. Look at it often and remind yourself. Put it by your computer, and the next time you get a bad report from someone, or the next time a new person is having trouble understanding everything, look at that bus and remember what it's like to be what the world sees as a nobody. Every time you come up on a job that looks like a four-year-old slopped it together, look at the little hammer or whatever hanging from your rearview mirror, and think about how good it would feel to take that hammer and slam it to the kneecap of the guy that did this crappy job.
Actually, you could take time to look at the hammer and remember what it's like to not know exactly what you are doing, and remember the time when it used to take you ten whacks with the hammer, rather than just two, to drive a in nail.
If you are managing children as a mother or a daycare worker, put a picture on the fridge of yourself when you were a little rug rat. In fact, get a picture of the time your mom caught you playing in her makeup and had the presence of mind to snap a photo—before she sent you to your room for a month and took away your Easy Bake Oven. Put a childhood picture of your husband on the fridge too, so when your boys are acting like they just got back from a field trip to Satan's Lair, you can look at the picture of the cute little boy that ended up being your husband, and you can blame it all on him.
Get real. Respect your co-workers. Keep yourself levelheaded. Take time to empathize. Remember to remember. It is not about management versus peons, it is about working together as equals. Take time to put yourself in the dirty, smelly shoes of your peons. And remember that we are all peons in one way or another. If you don't like being treated like a peon, don't treat us like peons either.
