Last week, I left you with a cliffhanger ending and asked you to fill in the final blank. We outlined the “Ten Commandments of Being a Good Work Neighbor,” and number ten remained a blank canvas for your imaginations. As anticipated, you did not disappoint, and I had several quality commandments from which to choose.
Every response triggered a memory for me and made me chuckle. It is uncanny how every workplace seems to have some of the same characters violating the same unwritten rules in the most obvious ways. The suggestion that I have decided will become the official tenth commandment, though, struck a chord with me immediately, because it is one that I had to admit to myself that I had broken from time to time in the past.
The Tenth Commandment of Being a Good Work Neighbor is…
Thou shalt not kill…workplace morale.
My longtime friend and former coworker Sheryl gets credit for this suggestion. It sounds like another simple one, but this one has stronger implications for followers of The Cubicle Survival Guide. Allow me to confess having broken this commandment on at least a couple of occasions in my own career journey.
If you follow the tips we provide here from week to week, over time you will likely see a difference in the way that your coworkers interact with you. As you build more and more relationships on trust and mutual benefit, you will find yourself becoming more of a “thought leader” for the people you work around. If “Star Wars” taught us nothing else, it showed us that once we possess that force, we can employ it for good…or we can cross over to the Dark Side.
If you have the respect and trust of your peers, you might be surprised at the profound impact that you can have on their emotional state – and the even more pronounced difference that you can make on their workplace morale. I probably don’t need to define “workplace morale” for this audience, but I will take a stab at it regardless. I would define workplace morale as the feeling of positivity or negativity that you have toward your job and the amount of real engagement, satisfaction, or fulfillment of some purpose that you derive from it.
Working on a team that has high morale is a fun experience. The days go by faster. The work seems less like a stressful burden and more like a rewarding challenge. Your coworkers are pleasant, kind, and helpful to you. Life is good.
Working on a team that has low morale is a painful experience. The days seem to drag on forever. The work you do seems pointless and trivial, so you try to zone out. Your coworkers are annoying, stressed, and out to get ahead at your expense. Life is rough.
If given the choice, of course, we would all prefer to work with a team that has high workplace morale. The fly in the ointment, though, is that one single person – who so chooses – can kill workplace morale with very little effort required. I know this because I am guilty of being that one person. I confess to you today, that I have been guilty of the crime of murdering workplace morale in my past. I hope by coming forward today and telling my story that I can help prevent others from making the same mistakes that I made.
For me, it always started with a pity party. Something happened in my company that I disagreed with or felt slighted by, and I went home feeling sorry for myself. Whether it was finding out I was getting a new boss that I was not fond of, learning I had been passed over for a promotion I felt I deserved, or hearing of the poor treatment of a respected coworker, I allowed the anger to take root. Rather than be a good Jedi and dust myself off and get back to work with renewed vigor and determination, I chose in those moments to cross over to the Dark Side. I chose to allow my own disappointment and frustration to steer my actions. I chose to murder workplace morale.
Once you allow yourself to head down this road, you will find the pavement is smooth and the lanes are wide. All it takes is some sullen silence, or some bitter gossip, or some angry outburst to take the morale of your team and shoot it down in flames. The coworkers that trust and respect you the most will likely share your frustrations and follow your poor lead in expressing them. The other members of your team that don’t have the same negative outlook on the matters at hand will sense the hostility in the air and either isolate from it or confront it directly. Ironically, either path they choose is futile; as both will have an added impact to “cratering” the team’s already sinking morale level.
Looking back, I am ashamed of the times that I allowed myself to be the bad apple that spoiled things for my coworkers. I offer no defense other than I was a younger man in those days, and I believe time and circumstances have taught me better now. Once you have committed workplace morale homicide, it is a tough road back, and it will always involve swallowing your pride and admitting your mistakes to others.
Be on the lookout for the warning signs that you might on the verge of breaking this final commandment. Catch yourself having those pity parties and break them up quickly. Life is not always fair, but your coworkers don’t deserve to have a bitter or hostile environment to work in because your personal circumstances went south. Don’t constantly badmouth your boss or your company. If things are so bad that you can’t keep your own spirits up, find a new job or find a way to transfer to a new role in your current company. If you remain the drain on workplace morale for too long, no amount of obedience to the other Ten Commandments is going to keep you from being universally disliked in your office.
Next week, we will find ourselves in the middle of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. This is a time that most of my fellow cube-dwellers manage to get away from work for a while and enjoy some vacation with their families, so The Cubicle Survival Guide series will take a break as well. Instead, I will have some personal thoughts that I look forward to sharing with you and gathering your feedback on.
Until then, I wish a Merry Christmas to all of you! Thank you for visiting The Brush Fire Forum and for reading my posts and interacting with me online. Your support means more to me than you realize, and I look forward to keeping you engaged in the coming year. God bless you and your families.
