Life Between the Carrot & Stick and Our Need for Belonging
Uh? Nope! Not moving any farther… Ever walk up to a cliff? Stop at the edge? 10 feet before? Or, do you hang your legs over the edge with I’m alive exhilaration? Unless you’re an experienced free climber, or a trained base jumper with a parachute, you stop. We like being grounded.
Any of that sound like you at work? You know what you could do, but you don’t. You’ve played it over and over in your head. And nope! You still don’t. You’ve taken on that critical task and it sits primarily upon your shoulders. Maybe you get into looping delays before you actually do it, but at what cost?
You’ve probably experienced your high and personally meaningful aspirations being at risk, you know, the stuff that really mattered to you. You faced increased states of fear and impending threats as the stakes became a cliff. Some of your fear was internally driven by your own not wanting to fail, and some of it was external, people were waiting to pounce on you for a mistake. Sadly, you probably didn’t have enough belonging, which is your tribal safety rope or parachute, to get you unstuck.
If someone held your rope, or worked with you extensively so you’re really comfortable with a base jump chute, would you go forth to the edge?
We spend most of our days at work, 8-10 hours’ worth. The lack of employee engagement and satisfaction in workplace studies suggests that the command-and-control (do-this-or-else) practices that use lots of carrots and sticks aren’t changing anything. A Gallup study reveals 51% are actively looking to change jobs. Various studies show that 70% of employees leave their companies because of their managers. And, 64% say they trust AI over their managers. Employee engagement hasn’t changed in 15 years. We’re still missing something.
The majority of our work world relies on influencing just two of our base hardwired emotional states: aspiration and fear. We’ve built our work world around these two emotions, and, forgot about belonging. “Come work for us and do these great things,” the carrot (aspiration), and, the stick (fear), “if you don’t do it right, you'll get banished.” In response, we tend to get stuck in the scary spaces, where we do uncool things out of fear.
Well, we have another base emotion to work with, the so often neglected, belonging. It’s always happening in us too. And without it, the fear we experience is larger and more intense, and aspiration in anything bigger than our individual selves ultimately turns into fear. When we bring belonging back into play, with fear and aspiration, we start coming together and figure out ways to be on top again.
Would you like 50% less turnover in your company? And a 56% increase in employee performance? When we use these three essential emotional states together, fear, belonging, and aspiration, we drive forward and do some pretty amazing things.
Good gardeners know, if the flower’s not blooming, it’s probably the environment. For the human flower to bloom, the soil needs some fear, a regular dose of belonging, and some shining aspiration.
Our well-used Fear & Aspiration emotions
our Carrot & Stick
Without these two emotions, we’d probably die physically and rather quickly, and or, go nowhere, slowly fading away into a slow emotional death.
The Stick (FEAR)
We need it. Without it, we’d fall off a cliff. It’s a good thing! I know that’s not what’s popular to say right now, but I’m gonna side with Leonard Kim on this one. Let your fears guide you (A great TEDx). Here’s a test for you. Just walk towards a cliff. You’ll stop, that is, if you let fear guide you. If you don’t, we're going to talk about you as a Darwin Award.
We’re wired to live, not die from the threats in the outside world, especially in ambiguous situations. If it’s unclear, we will fear. And it’s this same wiring that filters all our human interactions. Yep, every encounter with each other is first checked for friend or foe. The first thing we look at is their hands. You might be thinking, no, it's the eyes, smile, or whatever. Check out Vanessa Van Edward’s TED Talk, You Are Contagious. If the hands pose no threat, then we’re looking at or searching someone's face for the affirming and welcoming expression. The simple lack of feeling affirmed in presence equals unsafe in our wiring. You might be thinking this concept makes really good sense when we're talking about meeting strangers. But guess what, it happens all the time, even when we’re in the familiar spaces with familiar faces, like work.
Take, for example, two people who work for the same company, call them Morty and Mattie. They have different roles in their company and share the same strategic end goal. They’re part of the same corporate tribe. They have a good history of solving problems together. This sound familiar to you? I know I've been here myself.
One day, walking past each other, Mattie gives Morty a disinterested stare. Morty’s split-second response in the unclear, something's wrong. Wait? Is Mattie friend or foe? As subtle as it is, it’s a fear response. And Morty’s recorded it. This is Brain Rule 2: Survival, from John Medina, in action. Later that day in another meeting together, Mattie doesn't acknowledge the importance of Morty's efforts to make the project succeed. Uh-oh! Again, friend or foe? One + one equals way more than 2 when in fear. “Way more than” equals any number of possible reasons that Morty can consider. And in those considerations, whether Mattie is intentional and or of malice, or just distracted away from also considering his feelings and well-being, Morty's not safe.
Morty’s fear that guides could be this: I'm not feeling safe. My teammate doesn't have my back. “I need to reach out to fix our relationship.” His parachute here is acting in vulnerability by reaching out to what was historically for him a good safe place. His cliff is to continue going forward without acting on that fear. In this Morty's “Choose Your Own Adventure Book”, Morty reached out in curiosity with an FBI approach, Feelings-Behavior-Impact. Mattie, responds with her incredible emotional intelligence. She listened and then apologized for overlooking him, and tells him that she'll do better next time because she appreciates their having each other's back. Morty let his fear guide him to a better outcome, instead of ignoring it and going off a cliff. Small corporate Darwin Award averted.
How often do we hear things like this: Fight fear. Overcome fear. Don't let fear take control… …?
I’ll say it again, fear is good. Here's a few more good things about fear. It keeps you from walking into the room and being an a$$-hat. Well, most of the time it does 🤔. The fact is, fear saves your life every single day. When was the last time you stepped out in front of an oncoming car (when you weren’t staring at your phone walking down the sidewalk)? Fear keeps us alive, physically, emotionally, and aspirationally.
What makes things so hard is that fear’s primal wiring hasn’t caught up to the world’s changes.
Our brains evolved to:
(Brain Rule 2 - John Medina)
Solve problems
Survive the sabertooth tiger and other scary things
Be in an unstable outdoor and physically threatening environment,
Be in nearly constant motion.
So, let’s compare that to our work environment of today. This is where it gets a little tricky, we're in a different environment with the same neuro-circuitry.
Solve problems- yep that’s the same
Surviving/fighting an economic sabertooth tiger- different type of survival, that’s much harder to recognize
In an indoor, static, and protected environment- an environment that is safe by comparison to a physical sabertooth tiger, but you might have an emotional one crouching in the cubical next to you
Sitting still at our desks- in isolated responsibility with no place to go (oh s#!t, we can’t escape… and we’re alone!)
Our brains are still designed to solve problems of clear and present danger, out in the open, while always moving for the tactical advantage. But we now end up with, we’re not out in the open where our brains like to be. We’re cornered and alone in our cubicles, heightening our fear response. The teeth and claws of a clear threat now show up, cloaked in words and smiles. We feel the danger and try to talk ourselves out of it, which heightens our fear response all the more. We fear gossip about us and then participate in it in hopes of safety. Oh, that gossip thing, it really never ends up being safe. And sometimes, we even talk ourselves into something being dangerous when it really isn’t. Here, an unintended sideways look from someone becomes a sabertooth.
Worse still, is when those with authority and power threaten you to get what they want to be done, done. This is the command-and-control management design. Fear here, is an emotional blunt force object. Can you imagine a gymnast trying to perform on a balance beam while getting water balloons thrown at her? Yet, it’s the same scenario for people trying to perform various tasks in your company under threat.
It seems to me, that the 70% of people from the engagement studies that are dissatisfied and would leave a job if offered, and the 51% who are actively looking, well, they’re just following the good sense of their fear. They’re looking for a safer and better place. They dream of a better place.
The Carrot (ASPIRATION)
If you were allowed, what cool stuff would you dream up and do at work to make your company amazing? What would you do? We are aspirational beings. You get an entry-level job, then you want to grow into a senior position. You search for a better-paying job so you can buy a house, start a family. Or, so you can travel and experience far-off places. The words, imagine and what-if, can change our whole perspective and outlook on a situation, and, our lives.
We aspire! It’s part of our neurobiology. (Brain Rule # 12) And because of that, we explore. We want to fly. We want to dream. We want better. We want to do better. Sometimes we aspire to meet physical needs. Winter’s coming and we don’t want to starve or freeze. Sometimes we aspire to figure out and do the miraculous. Like, I think it’s amazing that I can get on a Zoom meeting with a friend or client in India and talk with them over video like we’re right next to each other.
Let me share this one from the miraculous and more personal side with you. I got to spend five minutes over 10 stories deep underwater, wrapped up in the arms of a 14 to 16-foot diameter Giant Pacific Octopus! Scary? Could have been. Practice allowed me to be mindful, go for it, and embrace the wonder in an environment that could kill me in 5 minutes, and, where I would be eye-to-eye with a large wild animal that can pull a clamshell apart. Can you pull a clamshell apart? I can’t. My experience was fumazing!
Sometimes our aspiration is practical, sometimes it’s selfish, and sometimes it’s for the good of all humankind. My big aspiration, I call it my GAS (Give-A-Shit) - help people find ways to be happy and fulfilled at their workplaces so that when they go home each night, they give hugs, smiles, warm looks, and kind loving words to their family and friends.
What do you dream about, aspire to be, or do? What’s your GAS?
So yep, we explore, and then we want to do. We all want to do something great and have someone that matters to us say, “you are so-o-o-… AWESOME!!!” We may not want a parade in our honor, but we do want someone who thinks well of us to appreciate what we did. We’ve been this way since birth and for thousands and thousands of years. Have you ever watched a toddler do something, and then look to their parent for that affirming gesture? I love seeing that moment. We’re born with it. And when we stop being appreciated, we stop.
And we chase that carrot to the dark side…
It seems we’ve always used the carrot in our work and personal worlds as a motivator. We get this from outside pressures and the internal ones that we do to ourselves. If you’ll do this, you’ll get… you want that promotion, you gotta make this level of performance. You want that raise? Then bring in this many more customers. You’ll get more pay when you’re a manager. You can’t play until you finish your dinner.
Oh-oh, it’s getting dark. We’re regularly told, and we tell ourselves, set goals- that will lead to our progress, success, and happiness. However, chasing that carrot creates the opposite effect in us. We end up as individual rats following the cheese into an emotional trap. Succeeding in our goals is supposed to make us feel happy, accomplished, and fulfilled. Turns out it doesn’t. We end up alone and suffer the stress that harms us instead of experiencing the kind that helps us grow. The truth, happiness is the precursor to success. Positive neuropsychology tells us we had it backward the whole time.
And then, here comes aspiration’s even darker side. We want that dream soooo… bad! But, making the dream happen requires far more of us than we could possibly do as an individual or even as a team. We keep pushing even when we believe we can’t win. Our aspiration has now become a source of killing stress, steeped in fear. It’s here where aspirations, couched in the isolation of our individual responsibility put us at our own peril. Work stress is a leading killer now. Our body’s fear response says, hey, we better slow down or stop! And, if we listen, it saves our life. If not, we’ve all heard the stories of, you know so-and-so, he just dropped dead.
Belonging, your game-changing emotion
We’re meant to belong
I say that, and we all know what that means, or, should I say, we all know what it feels like. But it’s really hard to define, at least in a way that works for the person next to you. The "you must do this" to create and foster belonging, well, that depends on each person in the belonging web. And, it’s bi-directional. We receive the waves in belonging and we make the waves in belonging.
Belonging happens at the individual level and ripples from person to person, in communal waves throughout the tribe. Imagine throwing a handful of belonging pebbles into perfectly still water, close to the shore. Watch the waves go outward across the pond. The waves crisscross, touch, impact, and alter each other. If enough impacts from the same direction happen, the waves magnify each other and reach farther. And with consistency and enough time, the waves reach the other side. They can even move an object to the other side. That’s how belonging spreads, through sustained and repeated action, together.
This is precisely why you can’t scale a belonging culture with a rigid process. It's person-to-person, unique, and in mutual positive impact, towards a shared belief and effort. If we can make enough purposeful impacts in the right areas, we go in the positive direction. But guess what though, if we’re not consciously shepherding our people in belonging, they’ll never stay together long enough to fulfill your company's shared purpose. They’ll eventually subdivide as their need for belonging pulls them in response to their perceived safety.
We’re human beings, we step on each other’s toes, work from different perspectives and mess up. Our employees’ waves impact each other in mistakes and vulnerability. Sometimes they look to each other for safe harbor. And yes, they also become that dissenting group within our companies. As such, they’re nothing more than the natural outcome of the human need to belong. Have you experienced something like this in your company? Maybe they don’t belong with you anymore? Or, vice versa. Or maybe, leadership hasn’t shepherded a caring enough culture of belonging, and you should fix that? Remember, belonging is a two-way street, that doesn’t make them or you, bad.
In the grand economy of doing things, isn’t a new way to serve a customer just a dissenting group’s finding their way as a new company to make their tribal mark?
We’ve always been this way
Long ago, our brains developed so we could survive outside and inside threats to perpetuate our species, by working together. We are safe when we are together in belonging. We didn’t hit the top of the food chain as an individual. After all, we are the biggest wussies in the food chain. We got no claws, scales, fangs, body armor, thick skin, or heavy fur. We did it as individuals in belonging.
In belonging, we’ll go to the ends of the earth with and for each other, and band together in a common cause. Outside of that, we’re merely exchanging our effort for pay.
I’d like to offer you this as a definition of belonging:
In belonging, we feel, own, and care for each other in success, dreams, and failures. We do for each other from our pooled strengths of heart, intellect, and physicality in pursuit of our shared promised land. And on that journey, we won't let each other down.
Belonging changes everything for us.
Belonging lessens fear and makes our aspirations achievable from our pooled hearts, intellect and strengths.
Ever had this conversation with a friend? “I dare you! No, you! No, you! I will if you will!” Then you both go and do it. But you wouldn’t do it on your own. It pretty much sums up how we deal with fear and aspiration in belonging. We fear less and aspirations are just easier in belonging.
And if you think about it, isn’t your job just a dare? There is always an “or else” with a dare. Sure, you’re getting paid. And if you’re lucky, you’re going into a place where you have a friend. You must perform or you’re going to get fired. Going into it with a friend is a whole different ballgame. We want to be there when we belong. Companies set the stage to invite you in belonging or, bring you in as a commodity to get a task done.
I’ll side with Walt Brown, in setting the stage for belonging it’s the company’s leaders’ larger obligation, more than the individual employee’s responsibility to provide for belonging and its boundary. Yes, the person coming in is also responsible for creating belonging. Like I mentioned before, it’s a two-way street. From the leaders’ perspective, imagine that new person you hired coming through the starting gate ready to run. You get that when a new employee is treated as a tribal friend right when walking in the door. Belonging does that. And from the employee's standpoint, they can start off fearing less. The relationship begins with I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. They enter with the response of taking care of their new tribe, versus, “did I just walk into danger and must protect myself?
We fear less in belonging
If it’s unclear, we will fear. Transforms into, if it’s unclear we must be on an adventure while in belonging.
Think about the examples in your lives. Like… The moment that an infant realizes mom or dad is holding him or her. You can literally watch the fear leave their face and body. We're hardwired. In belonging, we are a magical neurochemical positive influence on each other.
Ever had a huge project with its whole responsibility resting on your shoulders? And then someone says how can I help? Our hearts and heads physically change in response, we generate the love and confidence chemicals of oxytocin and serotonin in response. The cortisol at that point which has been prepping us for fight/flight gets used to unite & fight together. Fear weakens. We’re physiologically changing in a way that makes handling and solving a daunting task easier for, the heart, brain, and whole body.
A stranger or acquaintance just won’t do. Think about a haunted house, it’s way less scary when you go into it with friends. It’s why we want our loved ones close at death’s door. It’s why buddy action movies succeed at pulling us to the box office. Thelma and Louise, yeah sure it was tragic. Think about this though. Thelma wouldn’t have driven that T-Bird off the cliff by herself. Nor, would’ve Louise. But in their belonging together, we can identify with them. Together is better.
We used to do epic paintball outings at my former company, Fulcrum. One of my favorite moments was with a buddy, Doug Scott. We’re playing this game where 5 or 6 of us had to survive an onslaught of an ever-returning 10-15 attackers for 15 minutes. We were the last two, we were dug-in, back to back, ducking, defending, calling out threats and cover, and supporting each other, with just 3 minutes left. We felt we could win, until 20 seconds left, when we didn’t. We had each other’s back, bruised and battered to the end. We walked out of the woods laughing, Doug’s giant arm and mitt over my shoulder, and reflecting on how badass we were, even though we lost. We belonged. I learned a lot from Doug in the short time we worked together.
As head of people and culture at Fulcrum, I would stay late with various individuals and teams across the organization when the delivery of the product or service forced people to work way long into the night. Sometimes shit hits the fan. I knew that the fear that was intertwined in their struggle was going to be worse for them if they were alone. And that was going to get in the way of their good life at Fulcrum and lessen their ability to do great work. So, I’d call my wife, let her know I’m gonna be late, take people’s food, coffee, and drink orders, and make sure that they could be at their best in light of difficult circumstances. I said I’d be their extra set of eyes and ears if they needed. Even though 9 times out of 10 I could offer no technical assistance, I always got a real thank you from them at the end of the night. Or sometimes, at 3 AM in the morning. I really wasn’t their extra set of eyes and ears. I was their extra heart. Success or failure and in the middle of fear, we belonged. Fear became less.
On the economic consideration alone, if the recent studies are correct, I helped our people be 50% more productive.
Think back at the relief you got when someone said, “I’m going to the stick around with you, let’s do this.”
Aspirations become reachable in belonging
The things we could never reach alone, we can reach together. It’s pooled hearts, intellect, and strengths in pursuit of the promised land. Hands follow head, head follows heart.
In belonging, these things go up as fear goes down:
engagement, commitment, accountability, empathy, humor, joy, resilience, trust, love, honesty, cooperation, curiosity, challenge, psychological safety, teamwork, optimism, fidelity, leadership, compassion…
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that shared aspirations get easier to accomplish.
Think of a recent work situation and trace out the areas of belonging that really made you able to do something super cool. Then, go thank them!
The formation of your company was simply the tribal act of world change by your reaching higher in belonging.
And in that, we fear, and we aspire all the time. It always starts like this. One person dreams to change the world, and she talks to another. Their belonging allows the dream to be shared and owned by both of them. Now it’s a shared belief that they’ll attempt to accomplish as they live their values. Things get a little muddy, mistakes happen, they begin to write their stories, practicing new ways and growing along the journey.
They figure out that, “oh, this aspiration’s bigger than the two of us- we’re going to have to invite more people into our story.” It’s wash-rinse-repeat: belong, share beliefs, live values, join stories, practice, and grow. If they weave their stories together in pursuit of that dream well enough, they become a growing tribe with one story in belonging, a successful company.
This cycle repeats each time someone joins a company tribe to play a new role, no matter what organizational layer. And not everyone’s going to belong. It’s a delicate thing that goes sideways when we confuse looking and thinking like "us" as believing in the same cause and make that belonging’s membership filter. When it should be, belonging, believing in that shared cause, plus the varied strengths, skills, and weaknesses that a person will contribute to the tribe’s purpose.
If we really want to be at our best, we need to make sure we’re in good belonging, so we stay on the healthy sides of fear and aspiration. It’s how we made it to the moon. Now you and your company may not be trying to land on the moon, but you’re always trying to get to that higher orbit. And remember, you don’t get that higher orbit as an individual, you get there as individuals in belonging.
Awe heck, higher orbit…screw that. Aim for Mars!
Thanks for reading. And if you'd like help in developing and integrating belonging into the runnings of your company, get in touch with me.
Peace, Paul