What Lies Beneath
Envision yourself walking into a meeting or joining a Zoom call and encountering your employees/coworkers. You most likely know them all by name, their role within the company, and their professional skills. You might even know them on a personal level. Have you ever considered each of them at a deeper level?
People are like icebergs. When you look at an iceberg, you are only looking at about 10% of it. Most of it is under water. Using this as an analogy for looking at humans, we observe:
- Tip of the Iceberg: we see the person; behaviors, body language, gestures, and tone. But what lies beneath?
- Below the surface: we don’t see all the things that drive those behaviors. Things like beliefs, values, biases, fears, past experiences – good and bad, dreams, feelings, and culture. They each manifest themselves into how we act, hence what people see.
Why does this matter and how is it relevant in the workplace?
Because people matter. We are first humans and deserve to be treated as such in the workplace. It is important that we take time to get to know each other and what lies beneath the surface so that we can better understand our people.
Research from Accenture (2020) shows that it pays to make business personal. As managers create meaningful and trusting relationships with direct reports, it causes an increase in performance. They see a turn in caring more about employee well-being than efficiency.
Another study from ADPRI (2017) shows that companies that can bridge the disconnect between bottom line results and employee satisfaction will be better positioned in an increasingly competitive era to recruit and retain talent.
Getting to know our employees and learning how to manage them based on their needs is a win for the company, employee, clients, and our economy.
People are our passion at CLG. We provide people-data and online tools to help you know what lies beneath the iceberg of your employees. When you manage your people according to their drives/needs they stay engaged and get results. Contact us today.
