Beaten Down, Vulnerable, Out of Control–Are We in a Psychological Recession?

For this issue of Cincom Expert Access we talked to Dr. Judith Bardwick, a highly regarded speaker, consultant, researcher, and writer on psychological aspects of people at work. She is the author of “The Psychological Recession.”  For more than two decades, Dr. Bardwick has combined cutting-edge psychological research with practical business applications to optimize organizational performance, change organizational views and values, and help managers achieve financial and personal success. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, BellSouth, and National Steel are among her many clients.

Dr. Bardwick is the author of one of the top 25 bestselling business books of the last decade, Danger in the Comfort Zone (AMACOM Books; 1995). Her other books include The Plateauing Trap, In Praise of Good Business, and Psychology of Women. In addition, she has published scores of journal articles, papers, and book chapters on an array of topics.

Nettie: Your eBook, “The Psychological Recession”  – http://tinyurl.com/494af8q - is garnering some real visibility and has strong synergy with what is going on in the nation’s workplaces – what do you think is the main message of the book?

Dr. Bardwick: Since the early 1980s, about half of the employees in the world’s developed economies and as many as 2/3s in the U.S. are frightened by their loss of job security in a world-wide economy and depressed about their future.  Despite the great financial cost that follows the end of employee commitment, governments and employers have thus far ignored the need to replace these profound feelings of alienation with optimism.  Optimism, commitment, greater confidence about the future, and a Let’s Go! Spirit will result when individual employees are once again treated as significant resources.

Nettie: You note that optimism is the key to taking risks, growing the economy and sparking innovation – can you talk about that briefly and how organizations need to empower optimism so that the psychological recession can have less impact?

Dr. Bardwick: Optimism is the result of success and success is the key to developing confidence, resilience, and appropriate risk-taking in individual employees and their organizations.  To counter pessimism stretch goals need to be achievable and their accomplishment visibly celebrated, recognized and rewarded. In other words, all progress toward a better future needs to be front and center at every level with everyone aware that hitting goals sets the stage for even greater achievement.

At the same time commitments need to be made to employees that communicate in terms of what happens – and not just in words – that the organization respects, trusts and needs their valuable employees.  Examples include Conditional Commitment which is a policy which says as long as we need your skills and can afford to pay you, you have a job with us.  I’d also like to see some version of a “G.I. Bill” for the retraining of displaced employees.  And customizing rewards and working conditions for employees goes a long way toward rebuilding the high energy of commitment.

Organizations, in which employees are committed to the organization and invested in its mission, return an average of 30% higher profits than comparable organizations in which commitment levels are low.  Acting to reinforce the value of employees is, therefore, self-serving to the organization.

Nettie: You define today’s Psychological Recession as “a prolonged terror of uncertainty combined with an absence of trustworthy leadership” – what are the 2 fundamental reasons for the malaise today?

Dr. Bardwick: Jobs, jobs, jobs is the major preoccupation of the public.  With an unemployment rate stuck at roughly 9 percent, with the majority of unemployed people out of work for more than half a year, feeling frightened and vulnerable are psychologically appropriate emotions.  Virtually everyone knows people who have been laid off and whose later employment is far below that of the job they lost.  At the same time, aside from an extension of unemployment insurance, most governments and corporations have done little to encourage job growth.

Government in most states and especially at the federal level, have ignored the public’s priority for job creation.  Adversarial politics is seen as outweighing the public good.  Congress is currently viewed with contempt.  It is no accident that the undecided voter bloc is now larger than those of the two major parties.  Disgust seems to be distributed even-handedly.

Nettie: Why is trust in leadership so important in organizations and what can leaders do to build trust even during this downtime?

Dr. Bardwick: Trust is the most critical element in every kind of relationship; where trust flourishes so do organizations and personal relationships.  Where, on the other hand, there is mistrust, the suspicion of paranoia prevails and it’s every person for themselves. Then, coercion replaces motivation in getting things done.

As the Gallup Organization has noted, people join organizations but leave their bosses.  Bosses who are perceived as unfair, Machiavellian and not transparent are seen as not trustworthy and therefore are not trusted.  Trust, simply put, is based on “What you see is all there is.”  When that is not the case, mistrust precludes a relationship with and a commitment to the boss. As the boss is perceived as a representative of the organization, people will view the organization itself with suspicion and have one foot out the door.

Unfortunately, many people with no EQ are promoted into management positions where the job is to motivate and involve employees.  Most people who are oblivious to human dynamics are inept in their role as managers although they may well be outstanding professionals.  Low EQ managers should be replaced with insightful high EQ leaders and perform as highly valuable professionals.

Nettie: You say, “The only way to get significant job growth in the US is for Americans to out-innovate and out-perform their worldwide competition” – can you talk about how that works with consumers and how the job engine is performing as well?

Dr. Bardwick: The United States has a long history of creating major, significant innovations that create consumer demands because of their superiority. We have a major advantage in creating innovations because our culture tends to praise original views.  In contrast, most other cultures discourage what I call Creative Confrontation which involves forthright opinions out on the table in pursuit of better ideas.

In cultures where there is only one right answer mastery is accomplished by memorizing what has become widely accepted and rejecting other points of view.

While consumers have come to expect competition based on price, effective innovations compete on usefulness. A good example is the Apple Corporation whose products are highly innovative and routinely create industries and markets.

International competition in the U.S. began in the late 1970s and became a major factor. Our corporations started out fat and complacent since there had never been serious international competitors before.  Over the past 30 years our companies have continuously improved quality and productivity – but, to date, that’s largely been at the expense of employees who ceased being a critical resource and became a cost…to be cut.

Nettie: What are three ways today that every single person can reduce their own psychological recession?

Dr. Bardwick: The Psychological Recession is a state of generalized anxiety.  That means the problems are not specific but are instead vague, like a dense fog that prohibits seeing anything clearly.  The very vagueness of anxiety is the reason it is so difficult to get rid of.  But that is the necessary task:  the vague question of “What is going to happen to me?” needs to be replaced with the specifics of fear.  In this instance the fear might well be, “I might lose my job.”

As soon as issues become specific they are amenable to being solved.  No one can answer the question of what is going to happen…but they can come up with ideas of what to do in case one’s job is lost.  For example, you might use the social networks to achieve greater visibility; you might move to an area where your skills are valued; you might return to school to upgrade your skills…the list of possibilities of what you can do is long.

In addition to the specific actions taken to increase the probability of returning to work, setting out an agenda of actions to be taken gives people a feeling of again being in control.  That, in itself, is immensely positive, creating a sense of energy and purpose and diminishing the sense of a psychological recession.

Nettie: What are you most hopeful about in terms of how we will come out of this crisis?

Dr. Bardwick:There’s an old saying that it has to get worse before it gets better.  Since many people will always prefer the status-quo, when it comes to creating big changes a crisis can be your best friend.  A crisis can force awareness of a need to do things differently which may lead to changes in behavior, to taking action.

Generally speaking, the public is now ready for change and that is what their voting patterns tell us.  Now we also need effective leadership that will diminish the politics-driven divide and enable Americans to join together in focusing on achieving what our nation most needs at this time:  a growth in jobs, a decline in the deficit, and fiscally responsible pensions and social welfare programs.

We can and we must recapture the ebullience of “Go for it! “ Because that foretells a positive future.