Disappointed by your disengaged workers?

Dr. Meryl Herr joins the Mode/Switch roundtable to look beneath worker disengagement to uncover the reality of "work hurt." Her advice to managers? Work has probably hurt your team. But it's hurt you, too. Deal with that first.

Meryl is an organizational researcher and nonprofit consultant who’s skilled at locating the hidden disappointments, buried devastations, and quiet disillusionments of doing a job.

Her book When Work Hurts: Building Resilience When You’re Beat Up or Burnt Out isn’t primarily addressed to mid-level leaders. But there was a moment at our roundtable with Madeline (the Gen Z), LaShone (the millennial), Emily (the xennial) and David (who, along with me, is an Xer) where she brought things home for managers.

She helped us see that when you’re baffled and disappointed by your team, when it seems to you that they are stuck in a cycle of disengagement, you might want to ask if they’re experiencing work hurt. Not that you can automatically fix their injury. But you can work on your own work hurt. Believe it or not, you’ve got it. Everybody does.

What struck me is just how easy it is to get on somebody’s else’s case in order to avoid your own devastation and disillusionment.

Needing help dealing with that work hurt? Press play on the pod and pull up to the roundtable with Meryl and our team!

This week, the Mode/Switcher team probes work hurt from all directions:

• Madeline asks, how do you know when pain means you should quit your job? When is it just a rough season—and when is it a definitive red flag?

• Emily asks, is it safe for women to express work hurt on the job? Or will they be labeled as too emotional? (She uses a stronger word than that.)

• David wonders how admitting work hurt might victimize you—how can you be more than your work hurt?

• LaShone tells a story about her work hurt as a Black woman professional in predominantly white organizations.

• Craig wonders if hidden hurt ever brings hidden gift with it.

We learned a lot from talking with Meryl. She gives language for dimensions of work that are all too easy to ignore. For me, though, it comes down to this:

If you’re disappointed by your team’s disengagement, it may be time to ask what else is going on inside you. Try asking what’s beneath your urgency and your irritation. You may find reasons to show yourself a clarifying compassion.