It is easy to go to work every day and blame lousy managers and stupid people higher up on the organization chart for our problems. It's easy to do that, but it won't change anything. It won't make our jobs or our career situations any easier.
If we want to do more than complain -- if we want to change our own situations at work and make our workplaces healthier - we have to speak up about the things around us that are broken.
We all feel fearful at work sometimes. Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to breathe through fear and say or do the right thing despite our fears about what might happen if we do.
We can start by calling out the cynical use of business jargon that minimizes the human aspects of work. Your co-workers aren't 'headcount' -- they are human people. They have families and mortgages and elderly parents.
We can't pretend that because a spreadsheet shows that we are over budget for the year, those human lives and concerns can be swept under the rug.
We hire people, not machines, so we have to own the human costs of our leadership decisions.
I was afraid to speak up about things that were broken around me at work for a long time. Little by little I found my voice. I've been an HR person for a long time. I had to tell angry department managers "No, you can't fire Sharon, who hasn't done anything wrong. You have to work things out with her" and sometimes that made them angry.
They cursed me out and went over my head but I stuck to my guns because it was my job and also the right ethical thing to do.
Once we had a layoff and I saw certain managers choosing which employees to lay off not on the basis of their performance or tenure but by asking the question "Which of these people are my favorite employees and which aren't?"
I had to go to bat for our employees because the favoritism in the decision-making process about which employees to keep on the payroll and which to let go was very obvious. You will not always want to tell the truth in a sticky situation like that but when you do, you'll be glad you did it. That's how your muscles will grow.
Work is a human place. We can pretend that it's a mechanical place where the forecast, the budget and the policies are more important than the human beings around us but in our bodies we know that's not true. "Headcount" is just a number on a spreadsheet, but people are real and their commitment to your organization -- meaning their commitment to the people around them, including their managers -- is the only fuel source that can power your success.
We can pretend that a great strategy and smart financial decision-making will make our organizations thrive but we know it's not true. People make the difference between success and failure in business, in sports, in entertainment and in every human undertaking.
If you want to acknowledge the power and significance of the human energy that fuels your business, you can start to do that by using language that honors people instead of trampling them underfoot.
People are not 'headcount' nor are they 'bodies.' They are valued collaborators in your organization's success. What they can accomplish is remarkable. We only have to stand back and let them do it!
