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Peeve of the Week: Insecurity

April 30, 2009 According to labor bureau and census statistics roughly 145,000,000 people over 16 years of age make up the American workforce.  That means that 65% of the U.S. population not only go to work everyday, but they are also faced with the challenges that come when individuals are expected to manage other individuals and get along in the name of striving toward the successful achievement of a common goal.  And I bet if I were to ask all 145,000,000 of the people who work in this country if they wanted security in life, every single one of them would say, “YES!” They would no doubt also think I was crazy for asking such a stupid question, or stupid for asking such a crazy question. 

We want security and we want it everywhere.  As a nation, we’re focused on national security.  We schlep to work everyday for financial security.  Once we get there we work hard to prove ourselves hoping for job security.  We have lifestyles we want to secure and we look for it in our relationships.  We secure our buildings, our computers, our accounts and our valuables.  But we never seem to notice that the security people feel inside is often the least secure thing of all.  Instead we install more alarms, add to our nest eggs and write new laws to protect our assets, our futures and our loved ones, when what we really need to do is exert as much energy securing ourselves internally as we do our external environments and circumstances.

Now, in the workplace we certainly can’t go inside people and undo their development, and specifically how they learned to see the world.  I’m not suggesting that we do.  But we can appreciate how learning from the past continues to shape the future and by doing so, we can create environments that bring out the best in people and not the worst. 

Picture a school of fish.  They swim in perfect unison.  They navigate their environment in total harmony while maintaining impeccable form.  The shape may change, but the relationship from one fish to another remains in tact.  Each one must be healthy enough to be on the team and contribute to the successful execution of a collective goal, which is to swim together in one direction toward a destination point.  Sound familiar?  That's what we are supposed to be doing at work.

Now picture a school of fish that feels the threat of a pebble dropped into the center of its formation or the vibration of a nearby swimmer who gets too close.  The fish scatter every which way and abandon all semblance of order that they’d had only moments before.  And yet when the threat is gone, they reassemble themselves into perfect and harmonious unity.

Why then is it that people in most organizations perpetually look more like the fish reacting to a threat than they do the fish who swim merrily along as a whole - even when there is no threat?

Well the easy answer is that fish don’t have egos that distort reality and make them feel insecure.   But unfortunately it’s not that easy.  While fish respond to threats that are real and not perceived, people often respond to threats that are perceived and not real.  Therefore the threats they respond to are actually part of their own perceptual worlds that are askew with the real world.   Human ego by its very nature, defends against perceptual reality informed by events of the past that may or may not be relevant in the present.  That’s a problem.

So in order for companies to be intrinsically healthy, it’s not enough that employees exercise, eat right and go for their annual check ups.  Physical health, while important, does not define the health of a workforce, not by a long shot.  Why then isn’t individual security and the healthy development of ego something we work on when we’re at work?  If the people within a company aren’t healthy, in body, mind and psyche, then the company can’t, and won’t be either.

Therefore, if we go beyond smoke-free offices and subsidized gym memberships and create security for people in our work environments, we would foster the growth of healthy robust employees who are confident and at the same time, mitigate the insecurity and defensiveness that directly binds us to ho-hum results - or worse... 

Posted by Donna Flagg on April 30, 2009 | Comments (1)