Get in Touch with Reality

September 2013
From: Andrew Clancy
Executive Editor
Soundview Executive Book Summaries®

Workplace dissatisfaction continues to plague leaders' efforts to make their organizations perform at their peak. What leaders need is to cut through the problem and find the root cause of the issue. Cy Wakeman, author of The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, offers a better way to evaluate employees and turn negatives into positives. In this interview, she discusses the new value equation, the true source of employees' problems and a better way to improve toxic workplace culture. 

Soundview: Tell us about the new value equation and why it is a self-assessment tool that can help employees.
Cy Wakeman: Employees really need a better explanation for why they're not finding the results and happiness that they think they deserve in the workplace. Up until now, we've talked to employees about performance but we've measured companies in terms of value. When you try and link performance to value, there's not a correlation and so there's a broader conversation that needs to happen when we're just talking about one's performance. We're talking about how they currently are meeting the minimal expectations for these people who want to add value which is really what's going to get them promoted, paid what they're worth and create value for the company. We needed to come up with a new equation, a whole different understanding of how people truly add value and it's not just performance. 

Soundview: You often hear people talk about the pain they experience in the workplace and employees claim it's the result of increased demands. What do you say is the true reason for those issues?
Wakeman: You know, it's interesting because when I talk to people, what they tell me is that they're suffering. The jobs have gotten too big or the expectations are too unrealistic. And they really blame that on their leaders.The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace really helps employees understand that they're the source of their own suffering. That they need to get very clear on what the true cause is. 

If someone is suffering from change; if they see change as painful, what they need to realize is that change isn't painful for those who are ready and keep their skills up. This is only painful for the unready. If I'm finding change hard and I'm resistant to change, it's because I'm trying to keep myself from being exposed as unready or incompetent for what's next. 

I try and help employees understand that their leaders didn't decide the size of their jobs, the competition did. The leaders just are reacting to the market. My pain isn't that my job is too big, I am simply feeling pain because I am feeling where my next growth needs to come from. I am being exposed where I'm not ready yet. 

All the organization is asking me to do is grow and develop faster than the needs of the marketplace and that's not an insult. But we create a story. That's the true insult. It's not I'm being asked to grow. We create the story that my expectations are too high, my bosses are unrealistic. We think it's about our external circumstances when it's really about our own state of readiness. 

Soundview: I'm sure you also hear the statement from clients, "The culture at my company is very toxic." How do you respond to that claim?
Wakeman: I really hear a lot of excuses like that. In my first book, Reality-Based Leadership, I advise leaders that they have three responsibilities: ditch the drama, reserve sanity to the workplace and turn excuses into results. The last of the reality-based rules, "Succeed anyway," is a way to turn excuses into results. Because our circumstances aren't the reasons we can't get something done. They're the reality in which we must get something done. 

So I hear people say a lot, "Gosh, my culture is very toxic." To me, that's an excuse because if I'm a high-value player, I'm able to deliver regardless of the culture. When I use that phrase, that's just our agreed-upon stories of why things won't work. 

What I can do is implant my own "climate," which is the 12 people around me. I don't have to worry about culture. I cannot control the weather but I can turn on air conditioning. What I encourage people to do is stop using culture as an excuse for not being able to succeed. A great high-value person needs to be able to succeed in any culture. What I have found is so much of what we deem to be culture-related is our judgment. This is convenient because it quickly becomes our excuse on how not to get things done.