Are You Stuck?

As I market my services my typical approach is to meet with friends and colleagues and tell my story. I focus on what I do for companies and individuals which often includes some version of the following sound bites:

• I work with senior leadership teams to help them be more productive
• Employee engagement is definitely a buzzword today, but I truly believe if employees are bought into the mission of the company everyone wins, so I work with all levels of employees to make sure that happens
• I have deep knowledge of all things “HR related” so I find myself doing a lot of projects in that arena
• At my core, I’m a selection guy so I do psychological assessments and behavioral interviews to ensure companies hire the right people

As I talk about this skillset, I usually see a fair amount of interest and positive head nodding and then I hear, “We really could use your help in my company; I wish my boss understood this because my office is a train wreck.” My first level response is always, “I’d love to meet your boss!”

But my second level response is a bit more thoughtful, “what can you do to improve your work environment?” I ask this question because I operate from a core belief that one person can make a tremendous difference, regardless of their level or power position in a company. But when I ask that question, frequently people look at their shoes, brush back the question, or respond, “My opinion doesn’t matter. I have so little say in my company I can’t do anything to change things.”

That’s the Learned Helplessness response, first written about by psychologist Martin Seligman in 1967. Dr. Seligman’s research indicated that when faced with repeated negative stimuli, in this case very mild electric shocks, dogs lost the ability to escape from this negative environment. Over time, they “learned” how to be helpless and stayed confined in a box even though they could easily escape the shock by jumping over a low barrier – a task they had done many times before.

But the good news in this story is that further research showed that learned helplessness could be reversed through active intervention on the part of the research team. If the researchers picked up the dogs, moved their legs, and showed them how to jump out of the box, they would eventually relearn how to escape the shock. However, it often took several of these interventions, physically moving the dogs’ legs, for this to happen.

Obviously, a dog stuck in a box getting a mild shock may seem quite removed from your life in a business and ability to influence your circumstances – or is it? Are you stuck in a cubicle getting “shocked” by your peers, boss, or outside forces such as your competitors? Have you learned to be helpless, thinking there is nothing you can do to escape? If so, there’s applicability in Seligman’s work that can help you get unstuck and exert more control and influence over your environment. And this might make your workplace better for everyone, not just yourself! It might make both you and your company more productive, engaged, and satisfied.

Step one is to recognize when you’re stuck which is not easy. I certainly don’t want to draw any direct comparisons between Seligman’s dogs and the people I serve, but the dogs in Seligman’s research certainly did not recognize they had learned to be helpless. So you and/or your company may not know when “you’re locked in the crate.”

In addition to recognizing that you’re stuck, active intervention is critical to jumping over the barrier. Maybe you need someone to pick you up, move your legs, and show you how to get out of the box. It’s perfectly acceptable to raise your hand and ask for help. Or perhaps you just need a reminder of what you can do, without outside intervention, to effect change in you and your business.

If you fall into the first category, then call me and we can talk! If you’re more in the second category, I recommend Bryce Courtenay’s novel, The Power of One, set in South Africa in the late 1930’s. I won’t give away the plot here, but it’s a compelling, uplifting story that may just help you realize how influential you really are. Here’s a quick quote from the book:

“When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.”

Have hope and turn it into a win today!