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Using Heart and Humor to Explode Workplace Paradigms

Flexibility is a major key to personal and professional success. Humor is the magic that fuels flexibility and allows individuals to survive the most gruesome workplace relationships. We can choose our spouse, our friends, even our jobs, but we can't always choose the people we work with OR the customers we serve.

How Does an Inflexible Workforce Affect the Bottom Line?

In studies by the Technical Assistance Research Program (TARP), a program initiated by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, show that dissatisfied customers can be saved if their problems are resolved quickly and satisfactorily. The following information was documented in 1985, however corporations still use its significant findings today:

1) The average business hears from 96% of its unhappy customers.

2) Complainers are more likely than non-complainers to do business again with the
company that upset them, even if the problem is not satisfactorily resolved. [This
means that the non-complainers simply do not return.]

3) Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54 and 70 percent will do
business again with the organization if their complaint is resolved. That figure
goes up to a staggering 95 percent if the customer feels the complaint was
resolved quickly.

4) The average customer who has had a problem with an organization tells 9 or 10
people about it. (13 percent will recount it to 20 people).

5) Customers who have complained to an organization and had their complaints
satisfactorily resolved, tell an average of 5 people about the treatment they
received.

What are Three Personal Traits Necessary for Positive and Flexible Workplace Relationships?

1) An adequate level of maturity and self-esteem to establish a healthy relationship with
customers and coworkers.

2) A high degree of social skill.

3) A high level of tolerance for contact. This means that he or she can engage in many
successive episodes of short interaction without becoming psychologically
overloaded or overstressed.

If technical skill is all that an employer is interested in, that may be all they get when hiring people based on those attributes. If you want depth, a cohesive and team-oriented environment, people who care, creative, productive and overall emotionally healthy employees, skills may not be enough.

If You Expect to Get What You Expected, You Only Get What You Expected.
Good Paradigms vs. Bad Paradigms

A paradigm is a set of rules and regulations that establish boundaries and tell us what to do to be successful within these boundaries. Good paradigms show us what is and what is not important. They give us a set of rules to solve problems. They focus our attention. However, sometimes the way we do things becomes the only model which will work. This causes paradigm paralysis, or inflexibility, because our new paradigm becomes a barrier to exploration of new ideas, relationships and opportunities. Many breakdowns in workplace relationships are a result of paradigm paralysis. In the 1996 article, "Social Misfits, Workplace Outcasts," 9 out of 10 fired employees had adequate job skills, but could not get along with people or had bad attitudes. 'Lightening' up workplace environments and encouraging appropriate levity helps improve employee relationships, keeps customers, and builds a creative and productive work environment.

Four Common Sense (of Humor) Tips on Changing Workplace Paradigms:

1) Develop a workplace philosophy that empowers workers to have ownership in
creating a positive workplace that benefits their coworkers and customers.

2) Offer/mandate personal enrichment training, which goes beyond the basic technical
job skills they probably already know, and that teaches them how to develop their personal skills. Leadership, diversity, self-esteem, benefits of humor…are just a
few.

3) Make sure that any workplace philosophical/environmental change comes from upper
management, and becomes a culture for the whole organization. Complete
employee involvement is a necessity for success and credibility.

4) Hire flexible people by judging applicants on their ability to adapt. (Emotional
Intelligence)

Bibliography and Resources used:

Albrecht, Karl, and Zemke, Ron. Service America. Homewood, IL; Dow-Jones Irwin,
      1985.

Connellan, Tom. Inside the Magic Kingdom. Bard Press, 1996.

Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY; Bantam Books, 1995.

Jeffers, Ph.D., Susan. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. New York, NY; Fawcett
      Columbus, 1987.

Morreall, John. Humor Works. Amherst, MA; HRD Press Inc., 1997.

"Social Misfits, Workplace Outcasts". Vocational Educational Journal, Vol. 71, 1996.

Spector, Robert, and Patrick McCarthy. The Nordstrom Way. John Wiley and Sons,
      1995.

Wall, Bob. Working Relationships. Palo Alto, CA; Davies-Black Publishing, 1999.

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