Page 15 - Make Work Great

Make Work Great

We Are Driven by Expectations
Take a moment to fantasize. What if you decided to stop working but
remain employed? You would still show up at your workplace, still
attend any regular meetings and still “play the part” around the offi ce
or job site by seeming engaged and productive. But you would no
longer do any work. In this fantasy situation (please don’t really try
it!), you wouldn’t tell anyone about the change. You would just wait
to see what happened, as if you were conducting an experiment.
Now ask yourself, who would notice fi rst? Most likely, you have a
small core group of people who would be quick to start complaining
about your newfound lack of output—or at the very least, to stop
rewarding you for what you were doing before. These are the people
who are most dependent on your work and most connected to your
activity. They often are also the people with whom you have the most
diffi cult relationships.
Studies have shown that this core group usually consists of around
fi ve to eight people. They are called your “role set” because they
send you expectations about what you should or should not be doing
(a.k.a. your role), along with the promise of rewards and/or punish-
ment based on whether you comply. Often working in subtle ways,
these people make it clear to you that if you don’t toe their line, you’re
going to lose something you like and/or get something you don’t. 6
Now here’s the interesting (and possibly scary) part: these people dic-
tate more of your workplace activity and enjoyment than you realize.
Studies suggest that a layperson can predict not only another person’s
role, but also his or her age and gender, using only the communication
coming from the role set. If I just listen to what your role set is telling
you, I can make extremely accurate guesses about what you do and
even who you are—without even meeting you. For example, I could
probably guess that a female project manager in her early twenties is
in fact female, a project manager, and in her early twenties, just by
eavesdropping on what her boss and a few coworkers say to her during
a meeting. I would not need to meet her, see her, or hear her responses
to guess correctly, and I would not need to be a project manager myself
or be familiar with the jargon used in her job.

4