Why it’s not enough to feel valuable
For the past few years, I’ve been getting used to being an employee again after a couple of decades of working for companies I owned a stake in. My recent article explained some of the ways that didn’t work out the way I would have wanted it to…
When that all fell apart and I was left washed up and overwhelmed with self-doubt, and a level of personal esteem that wouldn’t have shown up under an electron microscope — if anyone had cared to go looking — it felt to me that the one thing I had none of was value.
Despite an entire career’s worth of experience — the good stuff and the bad — during which I’d done just about everything that it was possible to do in my chosen market sector, I simply could not conceive of the idea that anyone, anywhere would have any use for a body like mine.
The circumstances of my specific failure dug particularly deeply. It hadn’t just been that I’d made mistakes, I’d also ignored my gut — and hence denied myself — and I’d been screwed over by people I thought were my friends. How much more could I possibly need to prove my worthlessness, not just to me but to everyone else as well?
At the time — racked by the rawness of the situation — I would frequently sit and list out the things that I had thought were the valuable things about myself, then cross them out one by one as my inner judge summarily dismissed them. It was easy for me to convince myself that because I’d failed at one thing I’d actually failed at everything.
I felt that I was literally a waste of space.
Time passed.
With passing time came inevitable opportunities for the things that were in me to fall out into the light, and as they did, I finally began to remember that some of these things had actual value.
The self-realization of value is step one on the road to self-worth.
Let’s be clear. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be entirely free of the doubt that became my daily norm for so long, and I still struggle each day with the nagging voices that insist on being heard. But finding the footholds of self-assurance within yourself is the only way to begin climbing out of the pit.
I am valuable. Good for me…
But value is a relative thing, and it’s a lot like potential. You may possess it, but if the opportunity doesn’t present itself in which that potential can be realized then it is in fact worthless.
An employer’s view of value when it comes to employees needs a little unpicking.
One way of looking at a business is that it’s a group of employees who perform a set of duties in order for their employer’s business to remain viable. I realize that a lot of people might object to that definition, although it is — in reality — what is happening, and it’s sort of what you’re seeing on the balance sheet in terms of intrinsic value in a business (excluding the more tangible assets you also find there). The people’s ability to do their job — or to put it another way, their skills — is what this definition sees as value.
On the other hand, you could also view a business as a collection of individuals who possess knowledge and skills that are essential to fulfilling the purpose of that business. In a way, it says the same thing, but I hope that the subtle change in language comes across.
The business books and the Linkedin articles say it over and over. The value in a business comes from the people, but for many business owners, this is misinterpreted to mean the first of the two definitions above, whereas I believe that the intention is closer to definition two.
I have not always known this. I didn’t know this explicitly when I was an employer. I honestly thought that we were doing things right and that the goals we’d laid down when the business was formed were the right ones. But I was wrong.
As a business owner, you’ve got a whole lot of stuff to deal with on a daily basis. There’s a tipping point beyond which your ability to be equally available and focused for everyone in the organization just fails. I’m sure it’s a different number for everyone, and some people probably claim to be able to expand their sphere of awareness infinitely…and to those, I say “sure, you betcha buddy…”. Whatever the number is, you reach it eventually and then you need to build a hierarchy of management across which to spread the load.
You know you’ve reached the tipping point when you can’t remember all the names and probably their spouse's names and marital status, plus some nuggets on hobbies and interests. When you can’t have a meaningful conversation with all of your direct reports about non-work matters where you’re not asking them basic getting to know you questions then they’re not going to feel like you value their human connection very much, and if you don’t value that then they might as well be just a number and a resume full of tradable skill points. Valuable, but not valued personally.
Of course, there will be those who say that it’s impossible to create an enterprise with more than a few dozen people where this is practical. My initial counter to that would be to point out that this is how society actually works. You don’t know everyone, but you do have a circle of friends and family with whom you share valued connections, and these friends and family interconnect through an overlapping web of correlations that results in the whole fabric of your community. It can work.
I know there are narcissistic bosses out there who treat people like dirt and thrive on the power dynamic their attitudes create within their organizations. Some of these are relatively large, relatively successful businesses, in which the CEO groupies of middle-management emulate the boss and perpetuate the churn of rank and file employees, using them up and spitting them out. Often these companies do see their employees as valuable, but only in such a way as makes them tradeable and offsettable.
Ironically, some of the most valuable employees in these companies can sometimes be underpaid by industry standards and overstretched, with responsibility piled upon them because their characters are such that they feel compelled to be conscientious. These people might get drip-fed salary rises over years, and will often be slapped with generous-looking counter-offers if they finally give up and hand in their notice. This does not make them valued.
There is no universal employee that jumps when you prod it and purrs when you stroke it, just as there is no formula to follow either as an employer that will result in perfect results, happy staff, and a bumper year-end profit. Sometimes everything just goes to shit, even when you’re trying hard and doing your best.
But what helps?
As an employee, ask yourself, do the people you work with make you feel valued, or do you just feel like a commodity? Make your feelings known.
As an employer, ask your direct reports do they feel that you value what they do, and do you know what makes them feel valued? Start by making sure you know who they are — not what they do, but who each of those individuals actually is as a person. If your team is too big for you to remember them all then the group is probably too big. Start by subdividing and delegating. Measure the cohesiveness of your team instead of the individual outputs.
Value goes both ways.
Merton Barracks lives in Hong Kong after a life literally and metaphorically on the road.
He is a security technology expert, an autonomous vehicle expert, a counter-terrorism expert, a writer of fiction, a father, a ranter, and an exposer of bullshit.
He is also a victim of childhood sexual abuse, who took half a century to face up to what that did to him and also what it made him. You don’t recover. You don’t repair.
You can find some of his work published on Illumination.
Take a look at some of his fiction
Or read about the process of coping
