1: The trouble began when Bill was given a new assignment.
He traveled extensively around the world as part of his job. He would be in charge of a project in the Far East.
“The CEO had begun paying special attention to me, calling me directly, often bypassing my boss.” Bill recalls in Fred Kofman’s book The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership.
“Before this project,” Bill explained to Fred, “I had a pretty good relationship with my boss, the vice president of international operations.”
Bill thought his boss likely resented being out of the loop.
While traveling, Bill began experiencing severe stomach problems. “He conducted his business meetings like a trouper,” Fred writes, “nobody noticed the pain he was in.”
The pain got worse, however, as the day progressed. He had to excuse himself from dinner to go to the hospital, where the doctor ran some tests and diagnosed him with a bacterial infection.
“The doctor gave Bill antibiotics,” Fred writes, “and, being the can-do kind of fellow Bill is, he went back to work the next day.”
Bill received a bill from the hospital, which he forwarded to his assistant for payment processing. “The bill came to less than $500, which Bill thought was quite reasonable,” Fred notes.
The assistant promptly submitted the invoice. Bill heard nothing.
Until one day, when he was cc-ed on a large group email chain from his boss to the assistant who had filed the claim. The boss instructed the assistant to file the expense as a claim to the insurance company.
What his boss didn’t do was check in on Bill to see how he was doing. No “Hi Bill.” No. “You okay?” Nothing.
“What absolutely floored me,” Bill told Fred, “was that nobody in the email chain wrote to ask me why I had to go to an emergency room in a foreign country and whether I was all right, let alone send me good wishes.
“There was only that terse business-like message processing the insurance claim.”
2: How did Fred respond? “I didn’t get angry-hot; I got detached-cold,” he reflected. “My thought was, ‘These people are as dead to me as I’m dead to them.’
“First, I became totally numb and then mightily pissed off,” he recalls. “They displayed no feelings for me,” Bill said. “They just wanted to process the insurance claim and move on. I felt like a cog in a machine; just another brick in the wall.”
Despite his anger, Bill never confronted his boss. “He was so disengaged that he didn’t even want to address the issue,” Fred writes.
“What’s the point in telling them that I’m disappointed that they didn’t inquire about my health after they learned I was in a hospital in a foreign country?” he told Fred.
“They’d come up with some lame excuse and pretend to be concerned. But that’s too little too late. There are some common decencies I expect to receive from my manager without having to ask for them.”
Bill went from being engaged with his work to actively disengaged. From promoter to detractor. “If someone asked me today if I’d recommend the company as a good place to work, I’d say ‘absolutely not.'”
3: Fred writes: “I don’t know Bill’s boss, but from his story I bet this VP was also disengaged—in fact, six months later, Bill told me the VP had also left the company. He may have been hurt by the fact that the CEO bypassed him to connect with Bill.”
A disengaged manager is a liability to the organization. Because it is nearly impossible to engage others if we are not engaged ourselves.
“Research shows that emotions spread like the flu,” Fred notes. If my boss is “depressed and unmotivated, I’m likely to feel depressed and unmotivated,” too.
Individual managers can ignite “a chain reaction” that can negatively impact large numbers of team members.
“And in organizational life,” Fred observes, “there are constant small, everyday frustrations that, left unaddressed, coalesce into thick layers of numbness that smother even the most passionate commitment.”
So, what happened to Bill? He “began quietly sending his résumé around and soon found a job at another company. The compensation and benefits were no better, but he left anyway, looking for an environment that he thought would be more conducive to his well-being.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What is the moral of Bill’s story? What can we do to prevent situations like this in my organization?
Action: Discuss with a colleague or with my team.
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