5 Signs that Employees are in Survival Mode
Today’s workplace is a reflection of the times: uncertain and unstable. As employees navigate this short-term, fast-paced, tension-filled terrain, they develop an attitude that creates an uneasy environment: survival mode.
The workplace used to be focused on the planning and execution of short, mid-range and long-term growth objectives. It was a place where careers were born and legacies were created. A place that encouraged teamwork, unity and advancement, fueled by collaboration, partnerships and client relationships. Today, long-term business goals have been eclipsed by short-term personal goals: survive the unknown long enough to stay in the game. For employees this means adapting to a role where time management is unmanageable and where everything is a priority.
As you think about the dynamics in your workplace, watch out for these five signs that your employees are in survival mode:
1) Relationship Building Amongst Peers is Fading
In the past, having lunch with the colleagues you worked most closely with was normal. But now, you’re lucky if anyone in the office can spend time with you during work hours. Because employees in survival mode focus specifically on people who can salvage their jobs and careers, socializing is infrequent and relationships are fading.
2) Meetings Are Frequently Cancelled or Rescheduled
Today’s survival-mode environment has made it increasingly difficult to get a team of people in a room, because they each have a different set of urgent issues to deal with. Canceling and rescheduling meetings has become more common than ever because people want to make sure that the right people are in the room so they can sell themselves, rather than advancing the organization’s initiatives.
3) People Don’t Trust One Another
Because everyone has their own survival agenda, employees have grown to distrust one another. Since people don’t know their colleagues’ hidden agendas, employees are wary of engaging with those who may violate their trust to advance themselves. One example might be two people who were once close colleagues competing for the same promotion within their department.
4) Turnover is High and Employer Loyalty is Low
People become disenfranchised when survival mode takes over. Think about it: When you go to work and people are only interested in themselves, what’s the incentive to give more. For example, when your manager is focused more on his or her own advancement than the betterment of the team, it sends the wrong message. Over time you realize that you are not valued and thus you begin to lose that fire in the belly and you lack the desire to give it your all. You become a victim of someone else’s survival strategy and thus begin to lose loyalty for your organization. Ultimately, you leave the organization.
This year I have seen this scenario play out more often than not. In fact, people work more on their resumes than their own jobs.
5) Self-Promotion is Out of Control
Self-promotion is the ultimate sign of survival mode. When employees get desperate they begin to sell themselves in ways that become irresponsible and that can harm the organization and client relationships. Survival mode creates a fierce dog-eat-dog mentality. Even the least likely employee can turn on a dime. Keep your eyes wide open, so that you don’t get blindsided by the lack of organizational loyalty the survival mode can create.
They don’t teach survival mode in school. None of us started our careers hoping to work only for our own short-term goals. But survival mode takes over in more and more workplaces each day, as uncertainty looms and the future becomes unclear.
01/09/2012
The Case of the Missing Latina Leaders
There is a well-documented and dramatic absence of Latinas in leadership positions in many organizations in this country. In my experience as a researcher looking to identify Latinas in upper management for my research and as an organization consultant focusing on building inclusive organizations, I have consistently noted that the higher one looks, the fewer Latinas one sees at the decision-making table. While there continue to be more examples of Latinas assuming prominent positions in many industries, the numbers are far from adequate when one considers our representation in the population.
The question becomes how one explains this absence. Of course, there are those who are quick to attribute this dynamic to the lack of leadership competencies or experience among this group. Latinas are seen as lacking the ambition or competitive drive to move into senior positions. Instead their consideration for the well-being of others and concern for the collective needs of the whole are seen as deficits which make them unfit to lead. The problem, however, lies not with Latinas themselves but rather with how leadership is defined and enacted in most organizations which is based on a stereotypical model of a strong, competitive, individualistic, rational, task-focused male leadership style.
Leadership theories have typically focused on what was called “The Great Man” approach, which described the ideal leader as a hero of superhuman ability to inspire and lead his followers into battle. In this model leaders were born with traits like charisma and dynamism. You either had it or you didn’t. Other theories framed leaders as demanding task masters who got the work done by holding people to high standards and providing incentives to workers to perform in a fairly transactional manner – a days pay in exchange for a days work.
Though today’s workforce has changed dramatically from the 1950’s and 60’s when these theories were developed, many organizations have not significantly changed their ideas about what leadership is or needs to be. Today’s younger, more diverse workers are looking for new models of leadership that allows for power to be shared and provides them with opportunities to have influence on the context in which they work. The skills needed to work well and manage these new workers are more related to collaboration and team engagement than the top-down styles of the past.
Now is the time where Latina leaders are most needed yet their talents to lead are under-recognized and not fully leveraged to meet the needs of these changing organizations. Organizations and their leaders need to take off their blinders and appreciate the unique style of leadership Latinas exemplify and provide developmental opportunities so these qualities can flourish and mature. While Latinas interact and lead in non-traditional ways, the results they are able to produce speaks volumes about their abilities.
Part of the equation involves Latinas themselves recognizing and amplifying their leadership skills. They sometimes take for granted that their emphasis on the well-being and productivity of the work group or team are important. Their upbringing taught them that success in any endeavor is related to attending to the needs of a diverse group in order for each person to contribute to the overall task. Their ability to build long-lasting relationships and networks allows them to create cohesive teams and build trust among diverse co-workers.
When the mystery of the missing Latina leader is solved, organizations will see that the leadership ability they bring are exactly what is needed to inspire today’s workers – and these powerful “mujeres” have been hidden in plain sight for far too long. Perhaps 2012 will be the year when these patterns are recognized as unworkable and Latina leaders will gain the exposure and prominence they deserve!
12/21/2011
6 Essential Characteristics All Business Leaders Will Need in 2012
The United States is undergoing great change -- and at an ever-accelerating pace – during these tough post-2008 economic times, with upheavals in the political, social, and economic spheres all at once. The political mood is bitter, the social fabric is ripped in many places, and the economy continues to deliver bad news in terms of foreclosures, business failures, and high unemployment.
How to survive in this tough, fast-changing terrain? When my Cuban parents came to the United States in the wake of Castro’s revolution, the most precious possession they brought with them was their perspective. It was that perspective – their immigrant values – that enabled them to adapt, reinvent themselves and ultimately thrive in a new country, a new culture, and a new set of challenges. That’s what we need today. The following represent the six (6) characteristics that define the immigrant perspective on business leadership that will be essential for business leaders to embrace in 2012:
1. Keep Your Immigrant Perspective:
Like an immigrant who comes to a new country with nothing but faith, hope and love, all employees must not have myopia where opportunities are concerned. We need to see that opportunities are everywhere, every day, and we must make the most of those that cross our path. We need to see the opportunities that others don't see.
2. Employ Your Circular Vision:
My family – like most immigrant families – experienced crisis and change in our mother country – strengthening in us a sort of essential sixth sense, an ability to anticipate false promises and unexpected outcomes. Because our immigrant perspective allows us to see opportunities others cannot, we have wide angle vision and are proficient at anticipating crisis and managing change before circumstances force our hand. All leaders in 2012 will need to develop this ability to see around the corners up ahead.
3. Unleash Your Passion:
Our ability to inject intense passion into everything we do makes us potent pioneers. We not only blaze paths few would go down, we see them through to the end. Our passion opens new doors of possibilities that we aim to share with others. When the terrain is difficult, only passion for the quest will see you through.
4. Live With an Entrepreneurial Spirit:
In America, you might be an entrepreneur. In Latin America and other developing countries, you must be one, just to survive. The ability to see and seize opportunities to build relationships, advance commerce, and better humanity is an inborn survival mechanism for immigrants – and must become one for all business leaders in 2012.
5. Work With a Generous Purpose:
It is our nature to give. We are raised to consider others’ needs as much as our own. This begins with giving inside our family when we are young, and then, when we are older, we are taught that we are a part of a larger family all around us. Our propensity to give to others from our harvest ensures us a perpetual harvest. Business leaders who adopt this abundant, glass-half-full attitude will find 2012 a year of surprising opportunities.
6. Embrace Your Cultural Promise:
Our familial style of relating brings potentially everyone within the circle. The strongest bonds in business, across the entire value chain, occur when employees, partners and distributers alike are treated like family. The treatment is reciprocated and opportunities continue to arise. Our cultural promise is that success comes most to those who are surrounded by people who want their success to continue. Business leaders – and their companies – that embrace this attitude, and practice this skill, will thrive in 2012.
2012 – the year of the immigrant perspective. Because the times demand it, and all business leaders need to embrace the opportunities this perspective provides.
Hispanic Leadership in the Next Decade
The successful recall of Russell Pearce in Arizona shows what a powerful political voice Hispanics can have when we work together. It is critical that in the next decade our community unites to exercise similar influence in the corporate world.
When I founded the Center for Hispanic Leadership (CHL), one of the first things we did was to carefully listen, observe, and learn from other Hispanic professional organizations and their leaders. Our findings were disturbing: our community is overly protective, we don’t trust one another, and we don’t often collaborate with one another.
There is no central agenda that each organization can act on to support the advancement of its Hispanic professional members. Hispanic professional organizations operate in silos, they are territorial, and they don’t do a very good job of finding ways to unite to accelerate the advancement of the Hispanic professional community. At the current rate of development, the Hispanic identity crisis will last for generations.
We Hispanics continue to create barriers to our own advancement. In the next decade, we must unite to empower ourselves as Hispanic professionals. This begins by being transparent with one another and sharing our intentions, challenges, goals and objectives – openly. We must activate our generous purpose within our own community.
It’s time to learn from the lessons of other cultural groups that have been faced with similar challenges in the workplace. Let’s employ our circular vision. If we don’t manage our Hispanic brand, the marketplace will do it for us.
The challenges for Hispanic professionals could overwhelm the resources available to all Hispanic professional organizations - combined. We must not view one another as competitors, but as strategic allies. At CHL, we want to unite, empower and expand the leadership of our community, so that those from the outside can begin to experience the cultural promise that is inherit in the ways we think, act and innovate as managers and leaders.
It’s time to unleash our Latin Passion - with proper focus - to engage those around us in ways that can create opportunities and innovations to create and benefit our whole society.
The next ten years will define our Hispanic leadership legacy. Instead of thinking why we shouldn’t unite, let’s think about our entrepreneurial spirit and how we have limited our potential for advancement because we continue to find reasons to disconnect.
Let’s connect our immigrant perspective and our powerful voices to work as one. I have been told by many corporate diversity and talent management executives that we are unlikely to unite. Collective leadership is the only solution to our problems, and it must be developed within our community. We must embrace the unique cultural difference and the deep-rooted diversity that exists with our community. We must educate the doubters by being more accountable than ever.
Hispanic professionals have been forced to assimilate to seek equal opportunity in the workplace. In the next decade, we must teach others the value of assimilating to some of our ideas, by focusing on being our whole selves in everything we do.
Hispanic professionals are in a unique position to take advantage of the many untapped opportunities that the post-2008 economy has created. But that will only happen if we can unite as Hispanic leaders, and create a platform for sustainable impact and influence.
| "Adversity is very big when it is all you can see. But it is very small when in the presence of all else that surrounds you." |
| -- Glenn Llopis |
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