According to labor bureau and census statistics, roughly 145,000,000 people make up the American workforce. That means that about 60% of the U.S. population not only go to work everyday, but also face the challenges that come when individuals are expected to get along with one another 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 those people if they wanted security in their lives, the answer would be a resounding, "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 are obsessed with national security and go to work everyday in pursuit of financial security. Once we get there we work hard to prove ourselves to obtain job security. We have lifestyles we want to secure and we look for it in our relationships as well. 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. Yet, what we also need to do is create security within ourselves.
That said, we can't go inside people and undo their development or change how they learned to see the world, especially not in the workplace. It would be inappropriate to do so and I'm not suggesting that we try. But we can appreciate how learning from the past continues to shape the future and in that process we can create environments that help people feel more secure.
Picture a school of fish. They swim together in perfect unison. They navigate their environment in complete harmony while maintaining impeccable form. The overall shape may change, but the relationship from one fish to another remains intact. In order for them to move forward as a collective, each one must be healthy enough to swim and contribute to the execution of the goal, which is to advance together as one. Sound familiar? Sound ideal? It does, because it is what the workplace should look like.
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, which they'd had only moments before. And yet when the threat is gone, they reassemble naturally as if nothing had happened.
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, one answer is that fish don't have egos that distort reality and make them feel insecure all the time. Unfortunately though, it's not as simple as that. While fish respond to threats that are real and not perceived, people often respond to threats that are perceived and not real. Human ego by its nature defends against perceptual reality informed by events of the past that may or may not be relevant in the present. Therefore the threats to which people respond tend to be part of their own perceptual worlds, rather than to what is actually happening in the real world. That's a problem.
See, in order for an organization 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. If individuals aren't healthy, in body, mind and psyche, then the company for which they work can't, and won't be either. This then begs the question, "Why isn't individual security and the healthy development of ego something we work on when we're at work?"
If we could only get beyond smoke-free offices and subsidized gym memberships and create personal security for people at work, we would foster the growth of healthy, robust employees who are confident and ready to bring their best to the table as opposed to their worst.
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Krysalis
