![]() So, what’s wrong with being a team instead of a family? Beyond being just plain wrong, this mindset can actually limit a company - since research shows former colleagues that stay connected become potent sources of new knowledge for each other and for their new employers. It’s not uncommon for companies to cut off communication with ex-employees and instruct their people to do the same. In organizations that overemphasize family, it becomes easy for leaders to label to departures as a form of betrayal. If employees decide they don’t like blurry boundaries around work and life or around ethics and choose to move on - that can create a whole new issue. Departing employees get labeled as betrayers (See Theranos or WeWork for two recent examples.) 3. When the survival of the company - or the family - is at stake, employees can feel pressured to use any means necessary. In the worst-case scenario, overcommitted employees can be asked to go beyond overwork and commit ethically shaky actions. Beyond being just plain wrong, this mindset can actually limit a company. It’s not uncommon for companies to cut off communication with ex-employees. One project after another gets taken on, without considering existing workloads and making it difficult for employees to say no. And this creates a lot of opportunities for leaders to take advantage of employees. When companies or team leaders overemphasize the family metaphor, the next step is asking for a family-level commitment from employees. Committed employees can be taken advantage of Employees never left work, spending more and more time with their “work family” but never getting the downtime they needed to keep their productivity going. This was seen much more often before the pandemic, when companies touted free food, dry cleaning, happy hours and all sorts of amenities designed to make life as easy as possible - as long as people never left work.īut that became a problem unto itself. Many of the organizations that emphasize being a family end up taking actions that blur the lines between work and life for their employees. Here are three in particular that stand out. Misusing the “family” metaphor at work can lead to several ways in which employees can suffer. Below, I’ll explain how the “family” metaphor can lead to dysfunction - and the steps that leaders can take to transform their dysfunctional work families back into the thriving work teams they sought to build in the first place. Indeed, pushing for family levels of commitment can actually do damage to company culture and morale. ![]() When companies overuse the word “family,” the results are rarely positive. When companies overuse the word “family,” it can actually do damage to company culture and morale.Īnd what’s more - a company should not try to be a family. Over time, more and more corporate leaders started using the phrase “like family” - until one decided to take it to the next level and skip the “like” altogether boasting “we’re a family.” ![]() Most likely, some well-meaning executive somewhere described their company culture as feeling “like a family.” ![]() It’s unclear just where the metaphor got started. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from people in the TED community browse through all the posts here. ![]()
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