Are You Feeling Torn Between Places or Projects?

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1:33There's no safe like SimpliSafe. From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

2:00You know that phrase, that old cliche people use, you're married to your job? Well, funny thing about that. So I spent a lot of time studying the relationships people have at work, what makes them hard and uncomfortable. And what I realized is the relationship that we have with our careers, with our jobs, is very similar to the kinds of relationships that we have with other people, our romantic partners, our friends, our colleagues. That is Tessa West. She's a social psychology professor at New York University who studies interpersonal interaction and communication and also has a new book out called Job Therapy because she says this thing about how our work and our personal relationships are the same is actually a pretty useful way to understand the things we need at work.

2:49I think it actually can help us to think about the workplace through this relational lens and to that and to actually need some therapy to help us get through all those difficulties that we face at work. Hence the title of her book, Job Therapy. But how do we make sense of that? What does it mean that our relationships with people is similar to the relationship that we have with work? A lot like our relationships with other people, We have these psychological ups and downs. We feel jealous and resentful. We often love something one day, feel ambivalent about it the next. And we're on these emotional roller coasters all the time.

3:28We justify decisions that we make that maybe aren't so good for us. We stick with things longer than we ought to. So all these patterns that we find ourselves in romantic relationships, we do at work too. And I think a lot of my work has shown that just when it comes to the dynamics that we put ourselves in, there's really only so many ways we can skin a cat. We fight the same way at work that we do with our relationship partners. And the emotions we have, the ambivalence we feel around our careers often takes the form that we're used to seeing with our other types of relationships. There's just a bunch of psychological similarities and emotional similarities between how we feel about the other humans in our lives and how we feel about our careers.

4:08Any of that sound familiar? I bet it does. Tessa has so many interesting things to say about our relationship with work. On Problem Solvers here today, I wanted to narrow in on just one of them, which is what do we do and how do we make sense of feeling torn between two paths, between too many options, taking on too many things at work? Something I certainly feel, It's something I imagine every entrepreneur does. I just recently heard this great line, which is that entrepreneurs don't die of starvation. They die of indigestion because we all want to do too many things. So how are we to make sense of that?

4:49How are we to get a little job therapy and clarify our purpose? And even if we are taking on a lot of things, eliminate that constant feeling of being torn between them all. Boy, if we could solve for that, our relationship with work might feel a lot better. So that's what we're going to be talking about with Tessa West today on Problem Solvers, coming up after the break. We all want the best of both. Dessert without calories, luxury without expense, and how about security without passwords? With Okta, it's possible. We secure identity for your business so you can safely use any technology. You can build experiences that are richer and more secure, grow revenue without running up costs, and scale easily, no matter your tech stack.

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7:09We're going to get to that in a minute. But first, before we got into the main subject of this episode, I just I had to ask Tessa something about our relationship with work, because just before recording this conversation with her. I had done, her book is called Job Therapy. I'd done my own kind of therapy session in a way with a team of leaders at a tech company. I do a lot of corporate speaking. And oftentimes that takes the form of keynotes, but sometimes it takes the form of workshops where I just come in and lead a intimate conversation with leaders, usually when they're navigating some big change and everyone's really frustrated.

7:51And in that conversation was so interesting. The one that I had had just before talking with Tessa, because I was talking to a team that was the company was going through big changes and people were really freaking out. There had already been a lot of layoffs. Everyone's job was going to change. And this one woman raised her hand and started to talk about the changes that were taking place. And she'd been there a long time and how this company is no longer feeling like the company that she had started with. And I'll just pick up with how I'm describing this to Tessa because I was so interested in her take on it.

8:29Oh, and I'll just acknowledge up front, my microphone gets a little crackly at points during this conversation. I don't know what happened. I'm really sorry if that's distracting, but it's such a great conversation. I want to air it for you anyway. Okay. Anyway, here's what I said. She thought she would be at this company her whole career and she loved this company and now it's turning into this other kind of company and she really wants to stay, but there are these changes that are being made and she now doesn't know what the future holds. And as she was saying that, I realized and then I said to her, I said, the way that you're talking about it is as if you have absolutely no agency in your own career, that you are now fully at the whims of other people to decide what you do with your work and your life.

9:15And that is not a, I can understand why you would be very dissatisfied feeling that because that's an absolute absence of autonomy. And that isn't often how we think of other people, right? Like other people we think of as, I do have someone, I can sit down and I can talk to them. I can make a decision about how this relationship should go. Should I stay in this relationship? Should I leave? But with work, we don't. And so I love the way that you've tied these two together because one of the visualizations I get from it, and I'm just putting this to you to see how you react to it. One of the visualizations I get from it is that if you can imagine your relationship to work as if it is a relationship to another person, then you can sit down and talk to that person.

10:01You can try to figure out if you and that other person should still be in a relationship. It just makes it more human. I totally agree. I actually think the way you open that describing this person as I used to love this job and now I no longer feel that way. People talk the same way about their marriages to other humans as if they have no agency and leaving those or staying in those as well. So you hear that rhetoric in relationships with humans, but I think you're right that the problem is really one of level. And so when we think about our interpersonal relationships with other people, we can think about what would I say?

10:38What would I do? It's this natural communication pattern to think of these things as one-on-one. There's a bit of a dance between the two of us in terms of what I say and what you say back. But when we think of our careers, they're big and they're nebulous and they're structural. And a lot of those decisions are often going on behind closed doors. that we don't feel like we're privy to. And so that creates this loss of autonomy, this kind of victimhood that people often have, that things are happening to them at work, that they are not part of what's happening to them, that they're the recipient of structural change, of organizational change.

11:12I haven't, someone gave me this new boss. I was put in a new team. And they even use this passive language to describe their own career trajectories as if they're on a train, that they have no choice when it stops and where it stops and when the meals are going to be served and so forth. But I think you're right. That same rhetoric, you can see this happening in marriages where people feel ineffective or unable to change things as well. And so I think that this kind of passive language isn't just something we see in careers. It's something that we see in all of our relationships. It's just much easier to do when it's in the zeitgeist when it comes to work.

11:48And I think that work is a relationship with other people. In fact, everything that you do at work breaks down to a one-on-one interaction with another person, even if you're in a team. So if you shift your thinking from that high organizational structural level down to the interpersonal level, then you actually have a much better handle on what you could do to gain that autonomy back so you're not in this learned helplessness state of things happening to you all the time. But you do need to make that shift from that organizational top, high structural level down to that interpersonal level to get into that mindset that's more relational.

12:19all. I really love how you zeroed in on the passive language. That reveals so much about the mindset the way that we think. Tessa, your research has found five common sources of career frustration. You break them out in your book. And I would encourage people to go through all of it. We are just going to talk here about one of them. It was just the one that, I don't know, maybe I'm just talking to you because selfishly, it's the one that I relate to the most. But it is you're torn between places. Are you taking on too many roles at work, switching tasks too often or stuck between two paths. Let's just go down that path because I bet that a lot of people listening to this relate to it.

12:56I certainly do. Describe what's happening there. I really think there's kind of two sources of feeling torn between places. So the first is you're just taking on too many roles at work. So if you were to list out all of the jobs that you do, all the things that you're in charge of, I surveyed a bunch of people and the majority of People have a dozen of these different things that they're doing. There's a busyness problem we have right now. We believe that more is more, not just in terms of the amount of work we're doing, but the heterogeneity of the tasks that we're taking on. So we take on a lot of these different roles, many of which we believe make us very visible, make the boss think we'd be good for promotion.

13:33I can dig into the lay theories behind why we do this, but I think there's definitely an epidemic of taking on a lot of different roles at work. And then that kind of other side of that is a task switching problem. It's not what we're doing, it's how we're doing it. And I think task switching is in the air. Most of us are doing it right now. My listeners are probably online shopping or going through their social media while listening to this. It is normative for us to do a million things at once. Can I just share that this is so funny at that, in the like work therapy thing that I was doing with this large company today, I had 150 people on a Zoom.

14:09And at some point, so there was this, It's one of these, a woman who was working there speaking and she like broke down in tears and she was talking about losing her kind of sense of place in this company. And it was a great, I was so appreciative of her to share it like that. And it created this very heavy moment. And about a minute later, just a very clear voice says, can I get bacon with that? Because clearly some dude is like listening to this and ordering at wherever he was at McDonald's or something and he wasn't on mute. And that just goes to show how, yeah, we are all doing multiple things at the same time.

14:45I went to a Zoom funeral and people were multitasking. It's almost like we have this collective tick. We are just not capable of not doing it right now, I think. And so I think telling people to stop task switching probably isn't effective. But what I've done in this book and learned in my own research is there is an art to effective task switching and creating spheres of work around the types of things that you do that really capitalize on the neuroscience of how we form memories and how we are able to integrate our work together over time. And so I think all of us can experience this. I wouldn't believe someone if they told me that they don't have a torn between places problem or they don't feel like task switching is a problem.

15:29Most of it's self-imposed. Most of us are actually doing it to ourselves, even if we want to blame the boss. So I think those are the two key pieces that are ubiquitous. People are taking on too many jobs, too many roles, and they're task switching all day long. And they feel like they're working all the time and getting nothing done. And they don't quite know who to blame. It's a little bit nebulous. Who can I blame for this problem of working all the time and accomplishing nothing? And I think we can look in the mirror, but I think there's some good structural explanations as well. That was where I wanted to go was, how do we solve for this problem?

16:00or maybe we should even identify what exactly is the problem because what you're describing is a feeling, is a situation. And I don't know if what this is a problem of not being able to focus on one thing enough to create mastery of it, to be feeling like I have a clear path forward. Define the problem by which is to say what's lacking from what I should be doing. So one of the major problems is it is normative where you work to take on multiple roles. So if you want to point fingers at the organization, this is the part of the process in your psychological journey of determining if you're between places where you can turn to the place where you work and think, is there just a culture problem where everyone's taking a lot of roles?

16:50Now, I want to say that this isn't necessarily something that's going to feel negative. In fact, in a lot of companies where there's a strong workplace identity, where teamwork and positive company culture are promoted and it's organized and it's well executed, you see this problem of multiple roles propping up. And ironically, what I found in some of my research is that people are taking on multiple roles to correct for team members who are free writing in the most structured teams because they realize that if they do this, it might help them get ahead because there is enough structure to actually give them credit for that work.

17:28And so one of the misconceptions people have, especially junior people, those trying to climb up, is I'm going to take on all these roles and I'm going to get credit for it because the organization is really good at giving people individual credit for teamwork, for picking up the slack of others. But inadvertently, it's actually making them lose out on the things that they should be doing. And I think that is a place where you find that this multiple role thing is actually coming from organizations that are doing the right things. They are creating workplace identity. They do have these rules and regulations, but at the same time, there are these false beliefs around visibility.

18:04And I think that's the main reason, that's the main mistake people are making is you think that these roles are going to make you visible for the right reasons. They're going to make you visible. You're going to get a reputation as being the person who can take on a lot of stuff, but they're not necessarily those that lead to promotion. And I think that's a huge misconception between people who are taking on these roles and people who are making promotion decisions. is that visibility piece. So I think a big piece of that problem is really a culture problem that we don't normally see as a culture problem.

18:36Is you work in a place where everyone is helping out, putting out fires together, lifting each other up, all these wonderful euphemisms that are actually creating a problem that we're not really talking about. So there you can completely blame your organization, but of course the individuals involved in that play a role as well in inadvertently promoting the problem. I want to split our conversation now into two directions because listening to this conversation are two sets of people. There are people who build companies and there are people who work at companies. And so as you were talking, the first thing I thought of was from the perspective of people who work at the companies is that creeping passive voice that we were talking about earlier, which is, this is happening to me.

19:21What am I supposed to do about this? I don't control the company culture. I don't control how I get evaluated. But of course, then there are a set of people who do that. And so I would love to hear your guidance for both sides. The people who feel stuck in this kind of environment, we know what they want. What they want is to be recognized for good work. What they want is to thrive where they are. What they're getting instead is being stretched thin and in every direction. and are maybe unsure of exactly where it is that their rewards come from. And then the entrepreneur, the leader, the executive, who maybe thought that they were building a great culture, but have instead created a system in which everyone feels stretched then.

20:11Yeah, I think if you're one of these people who's feeling this, and you're either interviewing or having some kind of conversation with your manager about what's going on, And I think the easiest way to start is to force rank order the different roles that you have. Rank ordering is something we often use in social psychology when people say they love everything. What are the top things you love about your spouse? I love them all equally. Now I'm going to force you to rank order them in terms of the most or the least important. And it makes people, it forces clarity in situations that lack that clarity.

20:43And what we often see is when individuals rank order their roles in terms of the most or least important. And then you ask those promoters to rank those same roles. Those lists do not match up. And you need to have that frank conversation with your boss where you write down, here's the order in which I think these roles should be the most prioritized. And a lot of what goes into that list making for employees are local norms around what gets patted on the back by other team members. Thank you so much for stepping in. You really helped us out. So you're getting socially rewarded at the local level.

21:18But at the next level up, no one cares. And that's where the mismatch is. It feels good to help people. It doesn't get you promoted. Those are not the conversations people are having in those rooms when they're trying to decide among 35 people who's going to get the promotion. So you need to make sure those lists are actually aligned. And I think a forced rank ordering is a good way to start. And then if your lists are mismatched, dig into why. Why is it that I think managing this team's basketball Saturday adventure is number two? and it's not even on my boss's list. It's making me liked, but it's not respected by those in power.

21:53So I think that's one of those main things that individuals need to do. And I think the other thing that when you're interviewing, if you're one of those entrepreneurs starting out, you need to have a very clear rank ordering of those roles that everyone at the top level of the organization, the C-suite agrees on. And where we often see this role clarity issue coming up is when there's mismatch between people at the same level. One manager is saying, I really think it's important that you develop this new protocol for something. Another manager is saying, no, prioritize this other thing above that.

22:27And so there's heterogeneity in the beliefs among leaders of how those roles should be prioritized. So it's not well communicated. And then I'd also say that one of the biggest misconceptions people have at the promotion stage is thinking that their manager will put their name forward because they've done well at certain jobs. And often the jobs that they're doing well at are not as relevant as they think they are to getting promoted. And so actually making sure that your name is gonna come up for those right reasons. But I think getting everyone on the same page with just that kind of rank ordering of those roles is critical.

22:59And I'll add one more piece. What I found in my research is that for every one paid role that a person takes on, the likelihood of doing a volunteer role goes up about 60%. So there's something about us becoming really well-respected and getting status at work that is actually begetting volunteer work. The competence and liking are getting a little, they're overlapping and we're lacking that clarity. And so we need to pull apart those required roles from those volunteer roles and make it really clear to people when they need to stop taking on those volunteer roles, which people spend about 11 hours a week doing.

23:34That needs to be made super clear and that needs to come from that top and the signal needs to be consistent across everyone. I was recently talking with the in-house productivity expert at Google. They have a person who works in the office of the CEO and she coaches executives there on how to manage their schedule. And this is not a random fact. This is going to tie back to what you just said, I promise. And the first thing that she does is she asks them to list their priorities. And then she takes a printout of their calendar from the last few weeks and has them highlight everything that they did on the calendar that actually aligns with their priorities.

24:19And of course, oftentimes the case is that they are not all that aligned. There was all this time spent on other things that are not actually towards their priorities. and that's a version of what you just described. And I think it's really important for anybody to be thinking about this. Look, I am not, I don't run the company Entrepreneur Media, right? I'm not the top boss. I basically run a department in there. So I have only so much influence in the kind of overall operations there. And I am also as an employee, not exactly the thing that you were describing about how employees get pulled in all these different directions and don't know which things align with actual priorities for the company and therefore the things that get them promoted.

25:06And yet still I was hearing, and I say this because I bet that a lot of people who are listening will have heard that too. Still what I'm hearing is a diagnosis of what's wrong in all the things that I've signed up to do and all the things that I think are important. And I look at how I spend my time and I do things exactly for the reasons that you just described because of immediate validation from people who I just helped or because it's something that I perceive to be important. But I'm not always checking to make sure and I haven't had the conversations with relevant stakeholders, whoever they are, about what the actual top priorities are and therefore can gain clarity on which ones I should say yes to and which ones I should say no to.

25:49And so I just want to point out what you're saying here is as equally true for the kind of large organizations that I imagine your research is drawn from, but also basically everyone who feels pulled in a million directions because of whatever reason. Yeah, I think too, we're often afraid during conversations with someone who holds a potential role or a boss or when we're interviewing to ask the tough question, when you took on this role, what did you give up? Or if I'm to take on this role, what do you want me to give up? And if the answer is, what do you mean give up? You're still going to do all the same things or we don't give up anything here.