What are the three worst emotions in business?  Disagreement, Disappointment, and demotivation.  These are all on the “misfit’s wheel of misery.”  This is the first in a four-part series about how to reset work, and avoid the wheel of misery.

Did you know that 85% of workers in the world hate their job?  That is according to a Gallup poll at https://returntonow.net/2017/09/22/85-people-hate-jobs-gallup-poll-says/.  Over these four podcasts, we will discuss how to change this.

Listen to the podcast here:

The Three Worst Emotions in Business: Part 1 of 4

Karla Nelson:  And welcome to the People Catalyst podcast, Allen Fahden.

Allen Fahden:  Hello, Karla.

Karla Nelson:  Well, hello my co-host for today’s show. How are you doing?

Allen Fahden:  Big day today.

Karla Nelson:  Big day. Oh, this is a great one.

Allen Fahden:  It’s a big day for work emotions.

Karla Nelson:  There you go. Yes. We’re going to be getting in today to the three worst emotions in business, which is disagreement, disappointment, and de-motivation, and this is part one of a four-part series. We’re going to talk about the big picture and then we’re going to be breaking each of these down into a full podcast with each of the three emotions.

Allen Fahden:  Yeah. It’s not only a great day for emotions, but it’s a great day for misery, because what we’re talking about here is the wheel of misery. These emotions feed each other and whenever you’re having a bad day, you’re going to be able to look back at these three spokes in the wheel of misery and realize that these folks to one degree or another are involved.

Karla Nelson:  You got it. Yeah. And the first one we’re going to talk about is disagreement, right? This often gets brought up into conflict management areas in training and business, and it’s natural and it happens every time we engage. Right? So the thing is, is that what we’re going to focus on is what you do next after you disagree, because people are different, they respond differently, they respond differently to work. And we’re going to be dissecting one of our favorite stories, which we like to call 36 to 37 in that podcast. And basically what happens at each stage, right? And how do you interject? How do you change the process that typically happens, that happens every time we engage with other people?

Allen Fahden:  Yeah. And the second emotion is disappointment and it’s a little bit different there, because what we’re going to share with you are some ways to avoid disappointment. And the story we’re going to talk about is just think about this, when you’re a boss and you give an assignment to somebody you expect something or you may make an agreement with a coworker, you expect something, you expect a result, but oftentimes it doesn’t go the way you expect.

Karla Nelson:  Oh, really, that happens, Allen? It doesn’t go the way you expect, huh?

Allen Fahden:  That’s amazing how that just might happen. So the best way to deal with this, instead of coping, is to prevent it or fix it. And we’re going to tell you a little story about performance management and pushing your button.

Karla Nelson:  I love performance management, right? When really the emotion is just disappointment. How do you eliminate the disappointment?

Allen Fahden:  Yeah, avoid it. If you avoid it, you don’t have to deal with it. It’s a beautiful thing.

Karla Nelson:  I think I know a lot of managers that do that. And then the third emotion we’re going to talk about is de-motivation. I love this buzzword in corporate America, employee engagement, right?

Allen Fahden:  Buzzword, buzzword.

Karla Nelson:  Right, it hasn’t changed for 50 years, 50 years, they’ve been putting billions of dollars into this problem and they still don’t know how to fix this issue, right? And when you have disagreement and then you have disappointment, that is what leads to de-motivation. But we can hang up some real fun posters. I heard somebody created a de-motivational poster back in the day.

Allen Fahden:  I can imagine.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah. And so when people aren’t in agreement with you, right? They’re disappointed in you, how do you expect them to be motivated and we’re going to be dissecting a story in regards to, that we’ve told before, in regards to the type of work that they do, what they liked about it, what they didn’t like about it, how they were completely different types of people, they were disappointed in their jobs, but how do we get them engaged again just by changing, in this particular story, it was two technology guys, but it’s not all technologies the same type. And we’re going to be talking about and dissecting that story so you can see, okay, this is how this happens, this is how we get to that space and this is what we’re going to do differently, right?

And actually, Allen, you should share a couple of your de-motivational posters.

Allen Fahden:  Oh yeah. Well, those beautiful posters with the beautiful pictures and they have one word like team and winning and all that. I hate those. So my posters say things like, “Give up. You’re a loser. No motivational crap’s going to change that.”

Karla Nelson:  That’s one of my favorites.

Allen Fahden:  Lets everybody go ahead and get de-motivated.

Karla Nelson:  Well, and when people read those things it makes them feel worse. That’s the thing is, “Okay, let’s bring in a motivational speaker.” Okay, but the thing is, you still have to go back to your work. You still have to go back to your desk. So culture is, and how you change it, isn’t your actions, it’s what you do. It’s not what you write on the wall, it’s not the ping pong table or the potluck on Friday.

It’s physically the steps that you are taking with your feet and then what you are doing. That’s what creates culture and we’ve got, as we were talking about conflict management, performance management, employee engagement, right? I love the buzzwords of culture, but it’s really about the steps and the process that you use in regards to change. How can you not have so much disagreement or actually you’ll always going to have disagreement, but how can you change what you do after you disagreed that’s creating disappointment, right? And then leads to de-motivation.

Allen Fahden:  Absolutely, so the concept actually is the same for all three, at least the same that can lead to correcting all three. Now, think about this, we are all misfits at certain parts of the work. Now, not all the parts of the work, but some of them. You’ve heard that expression that it’s unfair to criticize a fish for its inability to climb a tree. Well, in most of our work, most of us are fish trying to climb trees. So what’s been happening, up until now, is that businesses use the solution of criticizing you for what you’re not good at instead of focusing on what you are good at. It’s sort of like if you’re a square peg in a round hole, the worst thing that can happen is they’ll send you to roundness training, because it does not work.

Karla Nelson:  You got A’s in every other area, but you know what? Let’s work on your C.

Allen Fahden:  Yeah, that’s exactly right. So how do you feel going away? Usually, there’s disappointment. There’re all three emotions in the wheel of misery.

Karla Nelson:  Boy, we’re definitely not into motivation today here, Allen.

Allen Fahden:  No, and 99 people or 99% of the people are, at some time, pushed into their week-work. And that should be the alarm bell, is when you get an assignment that presses you and your week-work. And by the way, most of them are, because, “Hey, you started it, you finish it.” That old common wisdom thing that gets you, most of the time, into your week-work. Well, that’s the reason that 70% of the people hate their jobs, it’s 85% worldwide, according to the latest survey.

Karla Nelson:  Yeah, Allen, can you believe that? Seriously, 85? And we’re not talking, don’t like, we’re not saying disengaged we’re not saying happy. We’re saying hate, I mean that’s crazy that, that many people get up every day and have to do something they don’t like and then we use words like employee engagement, right? What are you going to do about that?

It’s just kind of madness when you look at it and the research, or 50 years we’ve been trying to fix these issues, and they’re only getting worse. I think the study actually said in China it’s 94% of people hate their work. I mean how sad is that? It affects everything. It affects your health. It affects your home life. It affects your stress levels. I bet you, there’re tons of health reasons, right, why hating the thing that you do for more hours than anything, by the way, when you figure out how many hours we sleep, and we work the balance of that is when we spend it with our friends and family, think about that, the thing that you are doing the most of and 70% of people hate it and we can do better than that. The thing is just understanding the parts of the work that we’re good at.

Just as, Allan, was saying, 99% of us, right have weak-work. It’s only the Oners, the 1% that can come up with the idea, pick the set of ideas, figure out all that’s going to go wrong, and actually implement it and repeat it over again. We’re talking 1% of the population, right? So it really is madness, and we’re wondering why the problems are getting worse. Well, now, let’s add-on technology and all these … We used to be able to just go and go to work. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t even figure out what headset goes in my iPhone and then this phone and then this plug. Do you know how many pieces of technology we use throughout the entire day? And the thing is that if you can’t do something manually, right, let’s layer all this other stuff on it and it becomes really challenging, right?

Because now, although the work, although only 1% of people can do all processes of the work well, think about it, if you then layer over, when you’re not good at all the electronics, or you’re not good at the software system, or you’re not good at a mover creating facilitating the process. Now, we’re asking people to do even more than we’ve ever asked them in corporate America and understand and know even more.

So we basically, and that’s why every year this pole keeps on going up. Right? And you look at employee engagement, it’s even a higher percentage of people that aren’t engaged. It’s like that’s the result. That’s not the source of a problem. Just by talking about it is not going to fix things, right? So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go through each parts of the I love, the misfits wheel of misery, which we talked about earlier, the three worst emotions in business, disagreement, disappointment that leads to de-motivation.

So we’re going to break those down, with three different stories, and we’re going to talk about the cause and the root cause and what emotions does this cause and then we’ll be going through, based off of your core nature of your work, if you’re a mover, shaker, prover, maker, how does this make you feel? And then a remedy of how do we interject, in a certain problem, challenge, disagreement, disappointment in leading to de-motivation. And then how do you fix it? How do you fix it using the process? So did I cover all of that?

Allen Fahden:  Absolutely, and I think it’s a really important piece here, is that why don’t any of these programs work? We’ve tried all these things for years, and it’s because nobody has gotten to the real root cause. Think about this, if you’re spending 60 to 80% of your time doing the parts of the work that are wrong for you, that you’re weak at and that you hate, how is anything else going to fix this if you haven’t solved the basic problem? And the only way to solve this problem is to do a reset on work itself.

Karla Nelson:  Oh, I love that. Reset on work. And again, we’ve stated this many times over again on the podcast and in training, is that everyone wants to blame the person instead of the process, right? And it’s easier to point the finger, right? Which causes these emotions, disagreement, disappointment, and then that leads to de-motivation. So it’s easier just to say, “Hey,” and I love the quote about a fish climbing a tree. Well, all of that leads to it. So resetting the work, not in allowing people to do what they’re good at and what they love and they enjoy and they’re way more effective at it than to bringing in a motivational speaker, right?

Because you still have to go back to work. And at the end of the day, that’s one thing I can’t stand about the whole culture word, is that it’s great, everybody wants to have a positive culture, but the thing is by saying, “Let’s get together on Friday.” It doesn’t change the fact that we are all sitting in a room to get an objective happening in business. Okay? So the object of the exercise is to do something. Well, again, the only way that you can change that is the actual steps in the process, because it is a process and when we do work is we throw everybody … I love the three-hour long meeting that you get nothing accomplished in, and it’s because we dumped everybody in at the same time and we go, “Good luck,” right? So one of those things I’m really excited about in the next set of podcasts, Allen, is breaking down how a mover, a shaker, approver or a maker then feel, right?

Because the emotion is kind of at a root cause of it. So how do you eliminate the emotion? Right? If you, and again, we’re always going to disagree, but if you have a process that you can change the steps that you’re taking next, knowing who to go to fix that piece of the process. Right. And so I’m really excited about that. We’re going to have some fun.

Allen Fahden:  Yep, me too.

Karla Nelson:  Awesome, anything else you’d like to add before we sign off?

Allen Fahden:  Just one thing, I have a beautiful tree outside my window. It’s one of these trees were the leaves look like it’s fall color, year-round, they’re kind of reddish brown. And I was just looking at the tree and realizing something very important. That is that there it is there are no fish in this tree.

Karla Nelson:  Just a couple of squirrels.

Allen Fahden:  It’s a bathing thing.

Karla Nelson:  I think what you should do is sign us off with a story of what’s the worst that could happen, just to inspire everyone to want to join us for the rest of the four-part series.

Allen Fahden:  Because I’m here to de-motivate all of you and here’s just another way to do it. And this is in the days of downsizing and there was a consultant or an outplacement consultant that had about a 100 people in the room and these are people who were laid off from the company. And he was trying to cheer everybody up, because they were in a lot of distress about losing their jobs, he figured and so he’s kind of the right psychological move says, he says, “Think about this. Okay, so you lost your job. It’s not the end of the world. I mean what’s the worst thing that can happen anyway?”

And, and there was a little silence in a room and a guy, in the back of the room, raised his hand and he says, “Yeah, what’s the worst thing that could happen?” Then the guy in the back of the room said, “I’ll tell you what the worst thing that can happen is. That Monday they could call us up and hire us back. That’s the worst thing.” Everybody kind of nodded their heads.

Karla Nelson:  Yep. And they do it and they, seriously, it’s like selling your soul, right, when you work and you do things that you don’t like every day. So that is our mission is to reset work, not blame people. Excellent, my friend. All right, well, make sure you guys join us for the next three episodes on this four-part series about the three worst emotions in business.