The Stepford Organization
Your employees have a secret. They don’t love you and your organization as much as you think they do.
A February 2009 survey by salary.com suggests that employers underestimate how many unsatisfied employees they have and overestimate the number of extremely satisfied employees nearly 2 to 1. This could be happening for one of two simple reasons.
First, you don’t have a basic measure of job satisfaction. As I have written here before, a simple measure of employee satisfaction and commitment is one of the most useful pieces of information an organization can have. If you are not measuring this on a regular basis, I think you are making a big mistake. If you contact the College of Business at your state’s major university you can probably find someone that will help you do this for free.
Second, your insistence on having a positive work environment is blinding you to reality. If you systematically eliminate the folks that don’t absolutely conform to your desired image of perfection, the ones that are not your true sycophants will learn to appear as if they are when you are around.
Is there too much pressure to be positive at work? Timothy Judge and Charlice Hurst raise this interesting question in their chapter in the book Positive Organizational Behavior. If your company is paying big bucks for an employee engagement program, you are going to have a hard time avoiding the very real pressure to be positive.
Positivity has considerable merit. But how you pay attention to the negative is one of the most important ways you can make things more positive. Treat negativity, resistance, and withdrawl as symptomatic rather than problematic and you have a powerful opportunity to learn and improve when things are not quite right.
Embrace the creative tension that exists in the gap between your aspiration and your reality.
About the Author: Bret L. Simmons
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Welcome to my blog! Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section of my posts. I publish all constructive, non-anonymous comments. 
Hi Bret,
An interesting personal note on this is that I often find that leaders think that employees are being honest with them when they have the conversations about commitment and satisfaction. I’ve even had execs tell me that they have no doubt that their employees are extremely satisfied when I’ve heard the opposite from the employees.
Positivity’s dark side is that when a leader expresses this as an important value, employees can feel as if they have to “fake it” and the leader is then left clueless. It seems that as long as the leader is responsible for figuratively signing the paychecks, no matter how wonderful he or she is, there is always going to be some degree of deception going on. I wish it weren’t so.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 6:59 am
I really appreciate what you have to say, Mary Jo. The note from your experience confirms the message here. But I do think leaders must realize that they control the level of pressure and fear in their organizations. This is one of the most important things they need increased self-awareness about. Thanks once again, Mary Jo!!
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Who says that negativity isn’t positive?
It reminds me of the admonishment “be a team player” – which so often means “don’t push back, raise difficult questions, or voice your alternative views – just keep quiet and comply.”
By setting “positivity” against “negativity” doesn’t actually eliminate negativity. It erodes satisfaction and commitment. When push back, tough questions, and alternative views have no place in the official “positive” conversations – they go offline, underground, and live on in the informal complaint network.
When, authentic dissent can’t be voiced directly – the complaint network buzzes with activity. The tradgedy is that all the energy and ideas that could have been contributed to the organization are burned up and dissipated in the form of complaints.
Complaints contain a tremendous amount of energy. And it’s wasted when leaders insist on characterizing dissenting voices as “negative.”
Authentic dissent and heart felt complaints have their source in core values. At the red-hot center of every complaint is one or more core values. The core values are what give complaints energy.
As Robert Kegan, has said, “You wouldn’t complain about anything, if you didn’t care about something.”
The challenge for the one with the “complaint” is to connect with and articulate the care and commitment that gives life to the “negativity.” The challenge for the one receiving the compliant is to tune into, and listen past the surface drama, to discern the underlying values, care, and passion that fuel the “negativity.”
Neither is easy. But, insisting on being positive makes both almost impossible.
[Reply]
Bret L. Simmons Reply:
August 20th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Eric, appreciate your thoughts! I think I we are on the same page. I posted something on Netflix recently, and they actually *expect* people to say something when they think the company is doing something against its values. But I would bet you they also live the rhetoric, which is essential. Thanks!! Bret
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