By Marion Estienne, Ph D
The ‘Great Resignation’
The ‘Great Resignation’ of American workers has been much in the news lately. In a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, more than 19 million US workers have quit their jobs since April of 2021. Among the employees in their survey, 36% who quit in the past months did so without having a new job offer.
Others who have written on the topic such as Ron Carducci in the Harvard Business Review thinks that offering employees a sense of purpose and community or belonging in their work will help. The argument is that employers are not in touch with the real needs of their staff. By offering monetary and other rewards, it makes the relationship transactional. But aren’t these exactly what employees are running away from? Quitting also challenges leadership to reimagine how they lead. The NeuroLeadership Institute puts forward several ways compassion, rewards, and good, old-fashioned Humanism can be put into play in a post-pandemic work environment.
I read that Tom Peters has a new book out (I will be transparent and say I have not read it yet!) in which he offers a return to Humanism in the workplace. I would support injecting meaning and purpose into work. I thoroughly agree with Carl Jung who said life without purpose is no life at all. As a Learning and Development professional who also coaches leaders, the act of aligning values to actions is a precious notion of what life and work should be about.
Culture
With this discussion going in social media and in the press as the reasons behind the great quitting, what has crossed my mind is the role that Culture plays in this phenomenon. By Culture (with a capital C) I mean the values and beliefs that underpin a society’s dominant behaviors. Most often we identify cultures with nation-states, although most certainly within each national culture there are sub-cultures. We speak of a German culture, a Brazilian culture, or a Japanese culture, and so on. These cultural descriptions are the median point on a Bell curve and can be ascribed to most of that nation-state’ inhabitants.
What feeds into a particular culture are elements such as religion and beliefs as to whether we can control nature, or how we deal with time. For example, Fons Trompenaars has five cultural dimensions that describe relationships between and among people and two ‘others’ while Geert Hofstede posts four cultural dimensions (in his original work) to describe what a society values. The values underlie the choices people make in various situations.
It is important to note that culture is described by a polarity of states or conditions. Comparing cultures means comparing their differences. For example, a culture can be described as either strongly (or weakly) collectivist, in which the needs of the group have a higher value than the needs of the individual. Or, how a culture approaches time: loose (in the extreme, anytime is okay for a meeting as long as you show up!) or tight (not only be on time for events or assignments but be early!).
One cultural dimension which I believe is highly influential in the way we manage our work lives in the United States is that of Masculinity and Femininity. This is a dimension that Hofstede provides support for in his research of IBM organizations throughout the globe.
Masculinity and Femininity: Two Ways to Describe a Culture
Masculine society’s preferences are for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material rewards for success. On the contrary, feminine societies prefer cooperation, tend to have a consensus orientation, value modesty, caring for the weak and the quality of life.
According to Hofstede’s data, the US is a highly ‘masculine’ culture. Many Americans would agree that there are still segments of the society and economy which are misogynist. In such a testosterone driven work culture, is it no wonder that questions about purpose and meaning in the workplace are not on the table?
This is despite a huge body of leadership research that has demonstrated employees who are aligned with the mission, goals, and values of their employer produce better results. In addition, those enterprises that invest in the development of their leadership are better performing. Compassion, empathy, and coaching to develop employees are the emotional intelligence factors that make business sense. It makes a case for leaders to develop influencing skills which ‘pull’ their employees along rather than ‘pushing’ them to their point of view. Respect and dignity in the workplace are not only feminine traits, but traits which moderate authority and control.
The emphasis on the nature of the relationship between leader and followers brings a second cultural dimension to the fore, which may explain the number of resignations in the US. This is Task and Relationship. These are terms from TMA’s Country Navigator. Their research shows the US to be a highly task driven culture. It is a society which ‘lives to work,’ as opposed to working to live. It is no surprise that Frederick Winslow Taylor’s time and motion studies originated in the US and Peter Drucker is quoted as saying, ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ This is not to say management science has nothing to offer. However, like all strengths which are overplayed, they can become counterproductive.
The task orientation also influences the development of trust between and among colleagues, employees, and business partners. It leaves little room for affective behaviors. Studies in Neuroscience have shown that trust is the basis of effective performance in organizations. Satisfying relationships produce the chemical oxytocin, which is responsible for feelings of trust and love. If trust is only determined once the performance is up to par, or above expectations, that leaves little room for failure or improvement.
On the other hand, an emphasis on Relationship building lays a foundation of trust so that the task is accomplished more efficiently. The message is, ‘I need to know if I can trust you before I can collaborate with you.’
Returning to what current writers are putting forward when they present arguments for the ‘Great Resignation’ is the benefit of introducing ‘Humanism’ into the American work environment. This would mellow the extreme Masculine and Task orientations which predominate in US culture. It would cause leaders (we mentioned this above) to reimagine how they lead.
We live in a Culture which places a high value on identifying who we are with the work we do. So much of our identity is tied up with our job and the status that provides. The ‘Great Resignation’ may be ushering in a Culture change that demands we place an equal emphasis on Being as we do on Doing. On the Cultural dimension scales, we may be able to move the needles from high Masculinity and Task orientations towards expressions of more Femininity and building Relationships.
How Companies Can Navigate This Disruption (Part II)
If you are reading this article you may be working in an organization that is feeling the effects of massive staff resignations. You may also think it is very unfair of me to write about the problem without offering any suggestions as to what can be done. Aligning staff to strategy and insuring employee engagement have been subjects occupying organizational leadership for some time. Probably throwing Diversity, Inclusion, and Equality into the mix of a pandemic lockdown have complicated the problem even more.
Part II of this article will discuss how companies can navigate the great resignation. This will propose both short and long term strategies to bolster an organization’s culture and help align its values and priorities with those of its employees, and vice versa.
Stay tuned: Part II follows shortly.
If you count yourself among those who are looking to make a significant change in their career orientation, or even their life goals, know that I am always open to a good conversation!
- Marion Estienne
- linkedin.com/in/marionestiennephd
Task-Relationships and Masculinity – Femininity – Culture briefly explained
The original studies of societal cultures are from the discipline of Anthropology. People such as C. Kluckhohn and F. L. Strodtbeck put forward the ideas that every culture developed its own way to solve basic problems, mostly related to survival. When we look at cultural differences, we are looking at the kinds of behaviors which are valued in that society and are the predominant ways of operating or solving those problems. Societal culture is a shared system of meanings. Those meanings have values supporting them in the sense that this is the way people in that culture ‘should’ behave and that the majority do.
Task intensive cultures differ from Relationship intensive cultures. This is one interpretation of the dimension of culture, Universalism – Particularism. In Universalist cultures, the obligation is to adhere to standards which are universally agreed upon. Think of the importance of rules, laws, and codes of behavior which dominate in these kinds of cultures. A manufacturing line where all products are identically made is another example of Universalism.
A Particularism based culture takes the exceptional nature of the incident into account so that the law, rule, etc. does not apply in this case. The importance of relationships and even networks is that they are more important guides to behavior than the law. He or she is my brother, sister, uncle, niece, best friend, classmate, etc. and an exception to the universal applicability of the law.
Masculinity versus Femininity based cultures describe the dominate behaviors valued in that society.
(Here I am quoting those who have researched leadership styles): “traits culturally ascribed to men include an ability to be impersonal, self-interested, efficient, hierarchical, tough minded, and assertive.” My favorite is “ . . .a heroic orientation toward task accomplishment . . .”
Female managers are described as having “an orientation toward more participative, interactional, and relational styles of leading.”
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