Work Babble

Employee Adaptive Displacement: Addressing a Void between Workplace Depression and Career Burnout

 

For many people, 2012 represents a new beginning especially related to career development or job change. For others, change is a fantasy replaced instead with thoughts of complacency, redundancy, and general malaise over work environment, job duties, or career choice. Over the course of my career I have been witness to, and coached on, the effects of both career burnout and job loss. The emotions, thoughts, and decisions people make on these ends of the workplace depression spectrum are intense and require a great deal of sensitivity in the hopes of turning a negative perspective into a positive one.

Somewhere along the workplace depression spectrum, however, I have observed another condition. The state of mind I have observed is that of a productive employee. An individual that comes to work, shows no overt signs of depression, smiles, chats, and conducts business as usual but hides a level of dysfunction that impacts his or hers ability to be fully engaged.

I spent some time reading up on workplace depression to see if I could pinpoint another term for this condition and didn’t find anything to my satisfaction. So I decided to coin the term – Employee Adaptive Displacement – in order to focus on this piece of the depression continuum. The way I broke things down is as follows:

Employee

Adaptive (I’m not fully engaged in what I do; I think I should be doing something else but will “drift” or go along with the flow of things until somehow I “figure” things out or the decision is “made” for me)

Displacement (I am here but not “really” here; lights are on for the basic operational survival but not much else; I don’t fit – I’m displaced from the state I should ideally be in).

The challenge I have is finding an easy way to locate these people in a work setting. I wrote this paper as a means to starts a discussion on the topic and see what other experts have found. I think for most practitioners we are able see the signs of someone who is in a depressive state or at burnout. Often the behaviors are more obvious – performance suffers, absenteeism, etc. But when all of these “normal” giveaway factors are not present or at least not consistently apparent to draw a pattern, how do you tease EAD out in coaching conversations? 

I plan to begin some research into how I can differentiate this condition given that so many pieces overlap with existing knowledge on workplace depression symptoms and remedies. Maybe it’s the same thing. I’m not sure beyond what I have experienced in the field.

In any case, I welcome comments and please download my free paper for more information and feel free to distribute as appropriate.

CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD THE PAPER

Download EmployeeAdaptiveDisplacement_Deblauwe2011v1

Human Resources and Moneyball

I’m a little late but finally watched Moneyball and this should be required viewing for managers and HR because there are some great takeaways.  I only wish we could make things move as fast when it comes to Human Capital decisions. For example, in Tim Sackett’s post on ‘3 Things HR can Learn from Moneyball’ he talked about straight talk with employees – viewing them as professionals who can take bad news while understanding it’s a business decision. This idea is shown in the following scene from the movie:    

 

Can you imagine if HR could do that? And the point is well made as Brad Pitt states, “Would you rather take one bullet to the head versus five bullets to the chest and bleed to death?” Often Performance Improvement Plans are just that. It’s a document created for compliance purposes even though PIP’s are usually the result of a decision to get rid of someone. That is not how they are intended but they get used that way. So rather than speak frankly with an employee that his or her performance is suffering, behavior is poor, or skills are outdated, we go through processes like PIP which only delays the inevitable decision to cut the person.

This idea leads to the other point of the movie which is talent. How do you select talent when you have roadblocks like budget, skills availability, location, etc.? Dr Jac Fitz-Enz has spent years driving the human capital metrics game with great results but it’s not exactly like baseball where you can be as precise in certain parameters that can precisely define a top talent profile. That’s not to say you can’t – we are much closer today to doing that then twenty years ago, but Moneyball-like results are not quite mainstream HR practice.  If you are interested in metrics, here are some links:

Measuring Employees like Moneyball:

http://www.weknownext.com/workforce/how-moneyball-measures-up-as-an-hr-approach

http://www.slideshare.net/jbersin/data-science-and-analytics-in-human-resources-moneyball-comes-to-hr

http://www.shrm.org/Education/hreducation/Documents/Moneyball%20Original%20Article%2045-1.pdf

Ahead of finding the secret Moneyball sauce that will apply consistently to the corporate world; we can say that we are getting closer and closer to the union of individual expertise and interests, and business needs and interests. The faster we bridge these gaps both humanely and mathematically, the higher engagement and retention we will witness—not to mention profits.

Tony Deblauwe, Author Of ‘Tangling With Tyrants: Managing The Balance Of Power At Work’, Named As One Of ‘50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading’

Deblauwe was picked from a field of hundreds of authors who appeared on The Authors Show. His book, entitled ‘Tangling With Tyrants: Managing The Balance Of Power At Work’, improves workplace relations by helping employees effectively partner with superiors

[San Francisco, CA, January 17, 2012]  Tony Deblauwe, author of ‘Tangling With Tyrants: Managing The Balance Of Power At Work’, has been named one of ’50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading’. His honors came as a result of his appearance on The Authors Show. Deblauwe was chosen from a field of hundreds of authors through a public voting process. ‘Tangling With Tyrants: Managing The Balance Of Power At Work’ is the ultimate guide to helping employees create effective strategies to improve workplace communication and take back power.

“I’m thrilled,” stated Mr. Deblauwe, “to be included in the Author’s Show 2011 edition of '50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading.' The recognition means so much to me and that my book continues to help people faced with a difficult work environment.”

Career coach Tony Deblauwe has spent years coaching weary employees how to manage a difficult boss, and he has compiled his experiences into this indispensable guide. 'Tangling with Tyrants® Managing the Balance of Power at Work' offers practical techniques that show readers how to build a process that turns things around and build successful outcomes. The book includes guidance on:

* Addressing direct and indirect bad boss behaviors

* Developing the right approach with your boss

* Achieving mutually beneficial outcomes

By applying the techniques in this book, the reader will be equipped with the right tools to handle any boss and create the desired results.

A recent Midwest Book review stated, “ ‘Tangling with Tyrants’ identifies and explains dysfunctional relationship roles, what behaviors will adversely affect an employee, and actually changing the relationship dynamics with enduring, practical, applicable solutions.”

‘Tangling With Tyrants’ was a 2010 Silver Medal Award Winner in the Axiom Business Books Awards, a 2010 Gold Medal Winner in Rebecca’s Reads Book Awards, won Honorable Mention in the 2010 ReaderViews Book Awards and was a Silver Medal Winner in the 2009 Readers Favorite Book Awards. Tony Deblauwe is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below, or by email at tony@hr4change.com. More information is available at his website. ‘Tangling With Tyrants’ is available at Amazon.com and at his website.

Susan Rae Baker – Defining Moments

I had a chance to catch up with Susan Rae Baker, award-winning author and life coach. If you aren’t familiar with Susan, check out her book, The Last Box, A Women’s Guide to Surviving Corporate America which provides an energizing view of women at work. Susan is now finishing a new book called Defining Moments: A Gathering of Women’s Journeys.  I asked her a few questions about her latest work.

What inspired you to write the book?

What inspired me to write this book was the evening of the completion of my first book, The Last Box, A Women's Guide to Surviving Corporate America. I had gone to my favorite spot in Ocean Grove, NJ and stayed at a wonderful B&B to finish the book.  My gal friends met me there that evening and after the other two ladies got to know each other, the one had helped the other realize her potential. As they were about to walk out the door, I said, well, this was some evening, sharing my accomplishments with good friends, but there was a defining moment her too!  I looked at my friends and said - that's the title of my next book.

Who is the intended audience?

This book was designed for women as a book of inspiration and motivation.

What are the key themes of your book?
The theme is overcoming tough times and coming through victoriously!  The Defining Moment is the same as what inspired me. It is also due to my desire to help women have a more fulfilling life even in the face of adversity and trials.

Thank you Susan - empowering women in leadership roles and finding value and meaning in everyday contributions is a powerful message.

For more information in Sue and release date, please visit:

http://future-endeavors.net/products-page/books/defining-moments-a-gathering-of-womens-journeys/