Excerpt from Charlotte’s new book:
Consider the relationships where we spend much of our waking time: the workplace. There are 168 hours in a week, with an average of 112 waking hours. If you clock 38 to 50 hours of that waking time at your job, chances are those hours are where you spend your most valuable energy. In other words, your coworkers and manager/employee relationships are getting more attention than your relationships with loved ones. While our neurobiology may crave authentic, positive, trusting relationships, we rarely experience them at work.
In 2016, The Harvard Business Review reported on a global study conducted by EY, which surveyed 9,800 full-time workers regarding employee trust. One of the more salient pieces of information from that data was that 58% of employees trusted strangers more than their bosses. The top reasons for distrust were unfair compensation, lack of equitable opportunities for promotion and pay, too much voluntary and involuntary employee turnover, a lack of strong senior leadership, and employers who do not foster a collaborative work environment. Certainly, there is an inherent imbalance in the dynamics of power and vulnerability in the manager-employee relationship. In a transactional relationship, the employee gives work. The manager oversees the work and controls the pay rate on the return for the job. Positionally, the manager holds the majority of power. Naturally, the employee experiences the relationship as vulnerable under the manager. The shortsighted manager may find the power imbalance a great advantage. But in the long run, employees who do not feel supported or trust their bosses and feel the constant risk of job loss will disengage from the work even if they still show up to collect their paycheck.
Employee disengagement is a red flag for burnout. According to a 2022 study conducted by AFLEC, burnout is now negatively affecting 59% of America’s workforce. That is a troubling number, considering burnout often results in physical illness because it weakens the immune system. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognized how troubling burnout is. In 2019, it classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon, defined explicitly as a syndrome caused by workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. And what are the causes of unmanaged workplace stress leading to burnout?
A lack of control over work schedules
Insufficient recovery time
Unclear communication
Lack of empathy for the employees’ work challenges
Dangerous working conditions with insufficient resources to keep employees safe
All of these dehumanizing conditions communicate to employees that they are expendable. Organizations that highly value their employees and maintain trusting relationships will enhance productivity. Organizations that don’t will see productivity plummet.
Here’s the neurobiological reason: When team members don’t feel emotionally or physically safe at work and mistrust management, they go into fear/survival mode. Fear kills creativity. Fear shuts down the neocortex where our higher-level cognitive processes, such as reasoning and brainstorming, occur. Instead, the autonomic nervous system takes over, kicking out survival hormones such as epinephrine (otherwise known as adrenaline) and norepinephrine, which cause fight, flight, freeze, or fold reactions.
As an organizational change management consultant, I’ve known many managers who thought that a good leadership practice was to create extra stress and pressure to keep the team on their toes. While a degree of stress is expected in the workplace and creates laser focus in the human brain, it is deadly when teams perceive the leader is manufacturing stress as a weapon to weed out weaker team members or keep team members in competition with each other. It puts people in threat mode and destroys trust, ultimately destroying relationships.
I prefer fostering collaboration over competition, but I’m not suggesting all competition is bad. There are Olympic team competitions, and then there are “Hunger Games” competitions. An Olympic team competition is a team of relative equals who may be vying for the number one spot but are loyal to their team and country. But suppose a manager is creating a war-like atmosphere. Eventually, team members will turn on each other because, without trust, it’s easier to believe everyone is out to get them than risk vulnerability
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