It’s Just a Job!
“And if your train’s on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay.”
Written by: Randy Bachman (1973). (Bachman–Turner Overdrive)
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Have you ever been at a function, such as a family gathering, when in response to the ubiquitous question, “how’s work?” comes the reply, “you know it’s just a job, it pays the bills!” There are a number of ways to interpret this answer. It is entirely possible that the person who answered, doesn’t really want to be talking work at a family gathering or doesn’t want to discuss matters from work with people who don’t work for the company. It’s possible that the person concerned is ‘between jobs’ or has only just started a new job, so there is nothing to talk about. The other possibility is that the organization they work for, has such a toxic culture and employee engagement is so poor, that the only reason people turn up is to collect their pay at the end of the week. If true, it suggests that employees are doing the absolute minimum to meet what is required of them. They may be thought of as engaging in ‘Quiet Quiting’. Whatever the issue, a good leader would try to ascertain why these things occurred and seek appropriate solutions.
There may of course be a range of reasons for the disengagement. It may be that the employee, is doing work that is beyond them. It may be that there are personal issues such as: family, health, or even a discord of personal values and beliefs, relative to those of the organization. Another explanation could be ‘The Peter Principle’. In 1969, in a satirical view of dysfunction in organizations, Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull (1969) wrote in the introduction to their book:
“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
Peter, Laurence J., Hull, Raymond. (1969). The Peter Principle. New York: William Morrow.
As a concept, it attracted some interest by a cross section of people, including business professors and writers. For many people it was common sense. What it is really saying is that people might do exceedingly well in their role today but of itself, that is not necessarily an indicator of success if they get promoted. It logically means that people who have risen to certain leadership roles within an organization and are no longer being promoted, most likely have been deemed incompetent in their current position. It may of course mean they are too good at what they do! Rather than seeing it as a deficiency in the incumbent leader, it might just as easily be seen as a deficiency in the leadership development programs, within the organization. Does the organization have high impact leadership development programs, for the aspiring and emerging leader, all the way through to the experienced leader, new to a role?
In reality, the disengagement that people feel at work is something real.
“Worldwide, with virtually no exception, some 50 to 75 percent of employees are “not engaged” in their work. One cause tops the list: bad bosses. Begin—immediately—a deep-dive assessment of your frontline chiefs. No strategic move could be more important than upgrading the quality of your full portfolio of frontline chiefs. Consider launching a formal ‘Frontline Leaders Excellence Program.’ Make it a first-order strategic priority. Right now.”
Peters, Tom. (2021). Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism (eBook). Chicago, IL: Networlding Publishing. pp97-98.
Whichever way you bounce the issue of disengagement around, the employee, either through word, action or inaction, even through their ‘Quiet Quitting’ protest, is being ‘prophetic’. They serve as a dangerous memory, to the organization, of what could be lost and what could be at risk: experienced staff leaving with an abundance of knowledge, leading to financial risks, legal risks and possibly reputational risk. By definition of these risks coming into play, our ‘prophetic employee’ has signposted what is essentially a governance issue. Governance issues usually require the attention of the senior leadership team (the ‘C-Suite’) and the governing board.
Ignoring it is not a long term option. It doesn’t take much for something small to snowball into something much bigger. Being inattentive to the warning signs could be disastrous in the long term. The uncomfortable question for the senior leaders of the organization is simply, do you know who the ‘prophetic’ employees are within the organization, the people who are reading the signs of the times and directing your attention to this? If the leader does not know, then they are not listening and therein lies a massive problem. The most likely outcome is a dysfunctional organization embedding an unhealthy organizational culture. The other question to be answered by the organization is, where are the strong and highly capable leaders of the future coming from? If the pathway to leadership from within the organization is perceived as blocked, then the talented staff, seeking promotion, will simply go somewhere else. After all the pernicious message from the leadership group is that your work is not meant to be something you might dedicate your working life to, ‘it’s just a job!’
High performing and high potential leaders, leaving for better conditions and for a better role or promotion into a leadership role, creates another problem. What happens to the work that was covered by the employee that left? Typically, the workload is often assigned on a ‘temporary’ basis to at least one or two employees, who have their own work to do as well. Greater discord and discontent is created. Where the work they are being asked to pick up for ‘a few weeks’, is work they are unfamiliar with, then overload, Cognitive and Role Overload, is the outcome and burn out a real possibility. Educator and Neuroscience researcher, Dr Eric Jensen, in his ground-breaking book ‘Teaching With The Brain In Mind’, explains the concept of Cognitive Overload well.
“In-depth (as opposed to superficial) learning requires time for organizing, integrating, and storing new information. Even visual images require rest time for processing (Stickgold, James, & Hobson, 2000). It’s clear that although humans have an enormous lifetime capacity for learning, on a daily or “per task” basis, that capacity is limited by the processing time that brain systems require. And furthermore, the brain has several systems and structures, such as the hippocampus, that actually inhibit higher speeds of processing. Learning involves multiple stages of processing via these structures and systems, and each one serves as a “gating” device. Considered as a whole,these structures act as a “surge protector” for the brain…The frontal lobes are where much of our short-term visual memory is located. Researchers have found that we can take in only three to seven chunks of information before we simply overload and begin to miss new incoming data (Linden et al., 2003).”
Jensen, Eric. (2005). Teaching With The Brain In Mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. p42.
It is highly likely that the overworked employees in the scenario described, will be juggling multiple pieces of information simultaneously and the likely consequence is that Cognitive Overload will kick in and things will get missed or fall through the cracks in the metaphorical floor. The irony is that the ability to juggle multiple things for an extended period of time is an ability, that is often prized by other employers.
It is imperative that the leader takes care of their people, so they no longer say “it’s just a job!”.
This Cognitive Overload can be overcome by putting the information into, what educators often call ‘bite-sized’ chunks, of information. The reality is, for many employees, each and every day involves some deviation from the routine and thus some type of learning. If you are called upon to cover for a colleague, the details of whose work you might be unfamiliar with, then you will be on a steep learning curve and Cognitive Overload will most likely become a part of your world. Cognitive Overload could certainly be the by-product of Role Overload.
In most organizations, every person, from the CEO to the most ‘junior’ member of the organization, have a role that they fulfill. In most cases, this is explained in a document often referred to as a ‘Role Description’ (sometimes called a Job Description or a Position Description). In many jurisdictions, when a job is advertised, you should be able to access or request the ‘Role Description’ that goes with the position. The ‘Role Description’ points towards a working definition of what is meant by Role. Simply put, Role is the expectations, formal (as in the Role Description) and informal (as in requests that others might have of you outside of the role Description), that others have of you as they intersect with you whilst you carry out the role. Where this role expectation overlaps with the expectations that people have of another person in another role, Role Confusion is likely to occur. Recently on Twitter, Harvard Business School Professor, Amy C. Edmondson, put forward this solution to overcome Role Confusion and the likelihood of Role Overload.
“Role confusion often comes with the territory of novel/uncertain work. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is keep communicating – with curiosity and transparency to navigate necessary (and always provisional) role shifts along the way.”
Prof. Amy, C. Edmondson. (2023) Role Confusion – Twitter 10 July 2023.
So, when these expectations, formal and informal, increase significantly, either because you are covering a colleague’s role or because of ability, you become a person that people gravitate to, Role Overload, the expectation that you should be doing more in the role than what is either feasible or should be expected, occurs. To worsen the situation, that elusive promotion may be avoiding you because you are too key in your current position. There are various reasons as to why this might occur. The first and most obvious is because of your qualifications and experiences. The other choice is that your leader is relatively new to their role and is reliant upon those with experience. In time they could be an outstanding leader or become an underachiever in the role (think of ‘The Peter Principle’). A third possibility is that your new boss is an overachiever. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, ‘Ascend’, Jeff Tan explains the impact of the leader who is an overachiever.
“Working alongside an overachiever can be inspiring…But working for them can be overwhelming and exhausting. Their rapid pace, knowledge, and seemingly infinite capacity may leave you struggling to keep up. The pressure to meet their standards can become all-consuming. In the face of their drive, you may end up comparing your abilities to their own, resulting in self-doubt, low morale, and imposter syndrome.”
Tan, Jeff. (2023). ‘When Your Boss Is an Overachiever’ in Harvard Business Review: Ascend (July 18, 2023). Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.
Jeff Tan goes on to identify three things that could be done to address the overachieving leader.
- Adjust your expectations — and theirs.
Start with yourself, then approach your manager.
- Be honest about what you know and what you don’t.
Avoid the temptation to overstate your capabilities.
- Help your manager prioritize by giving them choices.
Differentiate between what’s urgent and what’s important.
Tan, Jeff. (2023). ‘When Your Boss Is an Overachiever’ in Harvard Business Review: Ascend (July 18, 2023). Brighton, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.
Often Role Confusion and Role Overload stems from a difference of perception. Remember that Role pertains to the expectations that others have of you as you undertake the role you are in. These expectations, especially the informal expectations, are very much the perception that others have of you in the role. It may well be that their perception is based on the one or two specific matters that they engage with you on, out of the dozen or so things you do across the organization.
One way of understanding this is to reflect on perceptions through four questions. You might like to then ask these questions to those whose opinion you would trust.
How do you perceive you in your role?
How do your team colleagues perceive you in your role?
How do colleagues external to your team or to the organization perceive you in your role?
How do your loved ones perceive you in your role?
The caveat here of course, is that the perception is always in relation to the person doing the perceiving, rather than the person in the role being perceived. How I perceive a person in a role will be colored by my life experiences, my formal and informal learnings and how I understand the role relative to my role. How another colleague will perceive the same person, will have a different set of reference points and even though the perception might be similar, the process will differ.
At the heart of overcoming Role Overload and Role Confusion is communication. It is at the heart of what Jeff Tan is suggesting and the solution that Prof. Amy C. Edmondson proposes. Being on good terms with yourself is key to all of this and that implies being in touch with your inner-self and being self-aware in the role. Understanding yourself makes it easier to understand and interact with others, how you reconcile your values to the organization’s and determine what is a negotiable and where the boundaries are, the point at which you would consider leaving.
There is a very fine line between Role Overload and opportunities for growth in the role. Mark C. Crowley names this well in his excellent book ‘Lead From The Heart’.
“Consider opportunities to design additional responsibilities (recall the importance of “job design”) for your employees to deepen their enjoyment and routinely refresh their engagement in their role.”
Crowley, Mark. C. (2022). Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century (eBook). Carlsbad. California: Hay House, Inc. p236.
The caveat that Crowley names astutely is the importance of job design. If the leader is going to expand the role to provide an opportunity for personal and professional growth of the incumbent, then trim away those aspects that could be easily done by someone else, for whom that might also be a growth opportunity.
Leadership is meant to be other centered. It is imperative that the leader takes care of their people, so they no longer say “it’s just a job!”. That requires a leader to have the capacity to form great leaders, who can shape, guide and inspire others to be more than what they think they can be.
“The only thing worth doing is what we do for others.”
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