“At the end of each week, we’re going to do an Employee Shout-Out! It’s just a really great opportunity to be transparent with one another about what we appreciate and just to like, I don’t know, like, notice hard work!”
The employee shout-out is the compelled elementary school birthday invitation. Decent parents swiftly form alliances with other couples in shared hatred for the Smith’s spoiled kid. Because they were likely raised to be normal, they at least still possess the decorum to invite the Smith kid anyway. They’ve resigned to their passive resentments about the Smith’s expensive purchases and kitchen remodels in order to make their asshole kid feel included in the school birthday party. It’s forced merriment, really--- little more than contrived politeness that is self-serving more than it is altruistic. This is what comes to mind when colleagues describe the “shout-out” to me: while it initially comes across as thoughtful recognition of employees’ work, it is arbitrary and generic. One of the most common “rules” of the shout-out, for example, is not being allowed to “call out” the same person more than once. With an increasingly dwindling list of people to choose from, then, you’re only crafting insincere and generic compliments out of scarcity more than you’re appreciating a job well done. “We’re down to the K’s this week… hmmm… Kaitlyn already got, like, 9 shout-outs for showing up to work late only 3 and a half times last week. Maybe we can remind Kinsley or Kennedy that their hair smells good. Two snaps for self-care, girlfriend!”
I’m unsurprised by my budding interest in talking about the dysfunctional dynamics of the modern-day workplace. While psychology and psychology-adjacent topics comprise the bulk of my wheelhouse, there’s a sadistic appeal in identifying the stinking rot causing friction between a company’s staff. The counterfeit compliment that is the shout-out is a symptom of a bigger problem. It’s one in which people have lost the ability to show appreciation with words, and instead resort to AI-constructed emails or three-times-edited text messages to give thanks. In defense of such conversational cowardice, if I had hired self-obsessed 24-year-olds who screech about the word “no” being a full sentence, in a tone similar to the bellowing “SAY THEIR NAMES” or “FRESH POPCORN”, I’d probably be more trusting of the AI-generated email, too.
As detrimental as entitled behavior in the workplace is, I’m afraid I find the gutlessness of administration and higher-ups to take the cake for incompetence. We do find ourselves in a culture entirely run by a very loud, very microscopic percentage of people who sport their mental instability as if it’s a Gucci purse. As Jonathan Haidt and Peter Boghossian eloquently state, “the past decade of American life has been uniquely stupid.” With this said, there are parts of me that sympathize with the apprehension on the part of bosses. But fully surrendering to a 24-year-old’s unreasonable requirements for the upkeep of their ego? That is not compassion, that is selfish indulgence. In the same manner that therapists have taken to the “gentle parenting” approach, which begs a child to comply with their boundaries, CEOs have devolved into the permissive mothers of the work world. They’ve suspended their own judgment in pursuit of appeasing the whiners. They reinforce incessant, baseless complaining in lieu of effectively managing it. Yes, shoving the iPad in the sticky hands of a screeching toddler temporarily relieves an adult of their irritation. But it’s just not adorbs when that toddler becomes a 17-year-old who drops to the floor of a Walmart and renders every adult around them their bitch.
Industries and disciplines vary, I’m sure, in how they both hire and fire entitled twats. I can say with certainty that the trades and any laborious job which requires strenuous effort probably weeds out laziness by virtue of its job title. Bricklayers will not attract entitled women, much like construction, landscaping, plumbing, or industrial cleaning adequately stave off the apathetic or the work-from-homers. Because I must have been in a delusional stupor to have chosen psychology as a career path, I’ve found myself surrounded, for years, by emotionally unstable women somehow tasked with helping emotionally unstable kids. It’s similar to Hitler running a MasterClass on tolerating differences, or Michael Vick running the ASPCA.
One of the most warped workplace dynamics I’ve seen recently was the 20-something who told their direct supervisor, with barely a blink, “by the way, I’m having a hard week. I’m going to be operating at like 40%.” I wonder how she would’ve responded if her boss told her that that was fine, but to expect 40% of her paycheck. Most troubling about this exchange was her tone of voice and demeanor in making the claim, stated as if it were a legally binding statement agreed upon in writing by both parties. Call me “old school”, but this “bosses-as-friends-and-confidants” attitude is remarkably inappropriate and unprofessional. Higher-ups aren’t our friends, and they’re not meant to be people we rely on for income as well as emotional support. The CEO who has unknowingly wedged themselves into this role is likely one who has relaxed the boundaries to the point that employees see them as optional. The administrator who spent too much time trying to build rapport by forgoing any sort of line between manager and employee may find it difficult to suddenly enforce rules. Believe you me: the notion that we must like a person before we decide to listen to them is a farce.
Should a CEO decide to sprout a pair of cajones, though, I’ve decided that perhaps I am the best person you can turn to to learn the ropes of herding cats, aka, dealing with belligerent, emotionally unstable employees. While I’m certainly a poor reference as it relates to femininity, I can vouch for the unreasonable and nonsensical rhetoric espoused by mostly women who are triggered, or at least women who claim that the slightest inconvenience is worthy of their employer footing the bill for their Xanax prescription and a nap. I’ve outlined what to expect below.
1. Expect A Tantrum When You Start Telling the Truth
Our culture is that of validating how one feels and thinks, even if their thinking is irrational, stupid, illogical, or delusional. We’ve lost trust in the ability for adults to endure their existence should they be dismissed or ignored, which has evolved into workplaces instituting “DEI Initiatives” so everyone feels “included”. If you are a CEO, I beg of you: it’s just you and me talking. This is not a pageant, and you’re not required to craft a counterfeit diversity statement telling me why POCs are especially damaged by Daylight Saving Time or why lesbian patients are more at risk for psychic harm than straight ones. Identifying what YOU believe, and what YOU value as a CEO, is perhaps the pre-requisite to toleration of tantrums.
Tolerating a tantrum means preparing yourself for listening to stupidity, and a lot of it. The schizophrenic with paranoid delusions isn’t mentally ill, he’s just creatively divergent and has a unique perspective on what reality is! The severely autistic nonverbal adolescent isn’t disabled, he’s just different in how he fancies his ability to communicate. In order to combat this brand of depravity, it’s imperative you identify with what they may be feeling/getting at. While I’m certainly one for a tough love approach, I also find it crucial to be respectful and even compassionate in delivering your subsequent doses of reality. A person can be straightforward, stern, and blunt while also preserving the other’s dignity. There’s not a single purpose, in anything I’d ever suggest, in humiliating, shaming, or punishing people for how they feel. Even if what they feel is utterly insane.
When you become a truth-teller following a stint of being an enabler, the disproportionate responses of your staff may make you wonder if you’re attacking them. If done correctly and with love, this is largely possible to avoid, or at least diffuse. Stick strictly to the facts, remove the judgment from your statements, and attempt to instill seeds of doubt in their thinking. It’s imperative the conversation be steered consistently away from emotions, how one’s feelings have dictated their actions, and how a person has been emotionally impacted by a logical statement. Indulging this sort of ruminative behavior only furthers the problem you aim to reduce (i.e., entitlement). At the core of entitlement is wanting but not having--- do not give in.
Any effort toward pointing out reality as that being a sum of what is real in our universe may be followed closely with emotional outbursts to the person who has been conditioned not to tolerate it. It’s your job as the boss, then, to anticipate tears and defensive resistance. This is not a reflection of you; as stated in the next step, you can control only one person’s feelings. And that is your own.
2. You Cannot Control Their Feelings, So Control Your Own
As stated earlier, a refusal to co-ruminate with employees is a requirement for successful leadership. Parents often explain their difficulty in tolerating their toddlers’ tantrums, as they claim the screaming, thrashing, and crying is something they can’t take. As someone who isn’t a parent but empathizes with them, I can understand why caving seems to be the path of least resistance. But, much like people pleasing, our attempts at peace are crafty covers for our own inability to regulate ourselves when under distress. Those who fear confrontation aren’t fearful of the confrontation itself, but of the uncertainty that comes with what another person says, and, in turn, an inability to control the responding on both sides. While we can show empathy for a person truly in a state of emotional distress, there’s an aspect of leadership I find absolutely necessary should management aim to restructure their work culture: stop apologizing for someone being triggered. Responding to bellyaching staff with, “I’m sorry, maybe I should have said that differently” or “I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said anything, I’ll take care of XYZ” is indulging avoidant behavior and serving your own insecurity around confrontation. Emotional reactions are hard to deal with--- this is an unfortunate give-in of being a social creature. With this in mind, though, you can more closely focus on managing yourself in volatile situations versus trying to inaccurately predict how another person will “take it”.
When we demonstrate ownership of our own feelings, we encourage others to do the same. A leader who frenetically apologizes or aims to be everyone’s “friend”, so proceeds to appease employee preferences over their own, is a person that cannot be trusted to make important decisions. Clout cannot come before resolve, much like feelings cannot come before logical fact.
3. Kick It Old School
Get in the habit of face-to-face communication with your staff. Millennials claim, with gusto, “of course I’m going to text you instead of call you, I hate phone calls!” With texting, emailing, and G-chatting being omnipresent forces in the workplace, we’ve lost the ability to talk to one another, to gauge another person’s facial and gestural reactions, and allow for conversational lulls to occur. This is further pronounced when “directors” being hired are those in their mid-20’s who themselves cannot muster up the courage to approach people unless both parties are veiled behind a screen. With this said, approaching people in the office and initiating conversation of any and all sorts is a great place to start. Hell, instead of that copy-and-pasted shout out, why not pull someone aside to provide performance-specific praise? And no, it doesn’t matter if they don’t like compliments. We all need to hear every now and again that our work has not gone unnoticed.
When you’re tempted to text someone a question, try walking into their office and asking them using voice-to-voice dialogue. Should an employee email you a manifesto about their rickety emotional state, invite them into your office to share their thoughts without their phone or their computer. Rid yourself of anonymous surveys, as they reward adult tattle-taling and make everyone feel as if they’re under constant surveillance. An employee that claims to fear confrontation? “I recognize it’s uncomfortable. It’s hard for me, too. But that’s how we learn to deal with it.” There cannot, and should not, be options for people who prefer digital communication because their supposed anxiety won’t allow for face to face communication. People don’t need as many accommodations as we’ve been sold to believe.
4. What’s Important To You?
In my field, one of the most common excuses for a refusal to fire idiots is that “we just need an extra set of hands” or “we’re short staffed”. High rates of turnover will always be a problem in human service fields--- with this said, perhaps taking on an abundance of clients without the staff to sufficiently manage them is a direct path toward martyrdom. While I do recognize some administrators as being big-hearted and therefore wanting to help as many people as they can, let’s be honest with ourselves: the driving force is insurance billing. So long as the billable hour is upheld as sacrosanct, and it’s communicated that the billable hour takes precedence over all else, you are begging for incompetent laziness. Do you want money, or do you want progress? Sure, you can have both. But again, quite similar to the emotional awareness required for points one and two, radical candor is a necessary-pre-requisite to leadership. And an unwillingness to be honest with yourself about what your “why” is as a leader is the tacit acceptance of mediocrity. Should you find your aim to be that of helping people and creating a workplace where people feel free, independent, creative, and productive, proceed to guideline 5.
5. Weed Out the Lazies By Refraining From Hiring Them In the First Place
Job interviews in the field of behavior analysis, on average, are less than 20 minutes long. So long as you meet the basic and most minimal requirement for billing insurance, you can sign your employee paperwork and begin billing the day you’re hired. If you’re a CEO that recognizes this fast-food chain, factory-style scheme as counterproductive and causing issues, perhaps adjusting your hiring practices will operate as a filter. Manny Rodriguez, a behavior analyst and organizational behavior extraordinaire, recently presented a CEU about stopping entitlement in the workplace. At one point in his presentation, he provides possible scripts and questions for screening for entitlement: the questions allude to mistakes the individual has made in previous jobs, what they were grateful for about their past employer or experiences, and what they’ve gained from working amongst previous teams. While the lazy employee can probably put on a good show for the 12-minute phone call, more rigorous hoops must be made to jump through should an employer better understand who they’re hiring. I do love these questions, and I think they can be tacked on to another professional whose idea I absolutely adore for job interviews. While his name escapes me, I’ll paraphrase what he said:
“People don’t know how to talk to one another. Especially these younger kids. That’s why, for job interviews, I engage them in reciprocal conversation. I don’t come with a teleprompter script of generic questions about what their greatest weaknesses are, which always seem to be answered with something like perfectionism. I analyze how they relate to me. How they respond to differing ideals. And then I tell them, for the next interview, that I want them to determine the course of the next conversation based on what was talked about today. That way, they’re forced to understand the person who will essentially be giving them orders. It helps me recognize if they’re capable of empathy, and if they’re able to humanize those around them.”
While these guidelines require quite a bit of effort up front, I believe they’re capable of drastically shifting the framework by which companies operate. Managing personalities and perspectives and learning histories is one of the most difficult things to learn how to do, and it’s no wonder so many cower to their iPhones at even the slightest conflict. But we must remember: leadership is the ability to uplift and empower others. We cannot empower people if we train them to be fragile.
As Max DePree states, “the first responsibility of the leader is to define reality.”