Equal Work for Equal Pay is for Losers

I almost forgot about this topic until recently when I had a chance to talk to someone who seem to embrace this concept. Some years ago (a long time ago actually), I tend to say this a lot. Whenever I would see co workers go the extra mile with their work, I would say "I'm not paid enough to do what you are doing." I would further say that if they want me to work harder, they have to pay me better. I have always been a good persuader so I get to influence a lot of people to share my opinion. It wasn't really hard to do because it seems to make sense. In fact I know a lot of people who keeps on using this as an excuse for not doing their best at work.

I can't remember when and how I turned a new leaf. I just found myself one day beginning to doubt the logic of this concept. I started looking around and found
that a lot of those who hang on to this mindset are losers, bitter and stuck up bottom feeders. A lot of them are angy because they can't seem to get a break despite their tenure. They tend to be overtaken by younger more determined individuals they call ass kissers. I'm glad I realized early enough that equal
work for equal pay doesn't work. That if one wants to succeed at work, one must be willing to invest some time and effort to show management that one is capable of taking on bigger responsibilities, more complex tasks and delivering better results.

When I became a manager responsible for identifying future managers, I would tend to look at work attitude before leadership aptitude. I'm just glad that they often go together.

So, what's the point Ed, you might ask. The point is a lot of people on the ground don't know this who would benefit a lot if they will be able to adjust their mindset about work and how to climb the career ladder. As managers who have experienced how to move up in the organization, we should communicate this with them.

Once, I attend a seminar and the speaker, shared her own experience of ascending her own career ladder. It helped that somebody told her, no one can promote you except yourself. And if your boss fails to notice, somebody else will. I agree.

Note:

This blog post received a lot of comments these last few days due to according some readers as its vagueness and inability of the writer to substantiate some of what's written. There are also those who seem to have been offended by my use of words. I apologize to those who felt mislead, slighted or offended by what I wrote here. It is never my intention to mislead, slight or offend people. I'm writing this addendum to further explain myself. I did not edit or delete any part of the original article because I want to give credence to those who shared their comments here. Please let me clarify my point about what I'm talking about here.

The intention of this post is to share my opinion on the subject matter based on my work experience and what I have observed in my 18 years in various companies starting from being a bus boy at a food court, a store clerk at 7-Eleven, moving up to become supervisor, manager and up to where I am now. The key point of this post is that if you limit your performance according to how you feel about your salary, you lose out. You lose out opportunity to show your real potential, you lose out to people who are probably less capable than you but has better attitude towards work. That is what I mean about being a loser. My intention is for readers to embrace the idea of going the extra mile at work as a strategy towards career success. It is also my intention to help managers communicate that this is the way to go towards career success.

This blog post is not about asking for salary increase to match your salary. If that would be the case the title should be "Equal Pay for Equal Work" Which I will gladly take up when the inspiration comes. Please don't get me wrong. I see nothing wrong about that, I have on a number of occasions approached my boss to ask for an increase.

This blog is not about unfair labor practice or people trapped in a bad company with bad compensation.I appreciate the amount of demoralization that can go with that. I've written about those things in the past and if you read back those articles you know how I feel about unfair labor practice.

This post is an opinion and not a rule. If rules have exceptions, my opinion most likely have more. So if you feel that this does not apply to you or your situation, you are probably right. Let me add that this entire blog is collection of my opinions. It's my personal journal that deals with my work. It's not an academic material to be used a reference, it's a set of opinions on various HR related matters for readers to consider.

Please take what you can from this blog post and if you find nothing that benefits you or you agree with, that's alright. We don't have to agree on everything. That makes blogosphere a great venue for discourse and sharing of opinion.

To those who call on me to not touch on topics I can't substantiate, I'll try not to but I can't promise.

Leadership: What Separate the Men from the Boys or Women from Girls

I am often asked by clients to identify who among my participants have the leadership potential when I conduct leadership or team building workshops. each time I wish I am clairvoyant so I can give them a more accurate answer. As I am not, I talk to them about leadership behaviors or qualities demonstrated by participants during the sessions like ability to communicate their opinion clearly, facilitating skills when asked to work in groups etc. I make clear however that these competencies do not guarantee leadership. these qualities support leadership but they do not define leadership. Besides, There is hardly any accurate way to pinpoint leadership potentials just by observing participants behave during a two or three-day session. I made enough guessing mistakes to know this to be true.

My experience tells me that if you want to separate the men from the boys or women from girls as far leadership is concerned, you have to give them a test to find out who will step up to the plate and make a difference. Yes, a leader will step up to the plate and make a difference, a nonleader will keep the status quo or worse turn in a mediocre performance. A leader will enroll and engage people to realize a vision, a nonleader will instruct or worse, not. A leader will turn the seemingly unessential role to a highly contributing role, a nonleader will take advantage of the seeming lack of importance of the role to do nothing.

I use two places to do my non-scientific observation on leadership behaviors. The first one is in my workplace and the other one, In my Toastmasters club . At work, I get a chance to rotate leadership roles or assign nonleadership roles and observe how my team members engage other members to make things happen. All things being equal meaning given the same amount of support, materials and encouragement, a leader will step up to the plate, engage others and make a difference. A nonleader will not. In fact even if you give a real leader a hard time and make it easy for a nonleader, the leader will prevail, the nonleader will give you excuses.

Let me share with you what I see at Toastmasters. For those who are unfamiliar, Toastmasters is a club where people hone and improve not only their communication skills but more importantly in my opinion, their leadership skills (visit www.toastmasters.org for more information). Let me further substantiate that. Those who have leadership skills or potentials improve their skills when they participate in Toastmasters, those who don't have it waste the opportunity. In this club, members get the opportunity to become leaders when they take on positions from President to Seargent-At-Arms, all of which are leadership roles believe it or not for as long as a leader takes on the role. Let me take the role of the Seargent-at-arms position, the least of the officer roles, it seems but in the hand of a leader, the seargent-at-arms make sure that where he or she makes a difference, things get better and better like meeting organization or protocol. A nonleader may hold any of the important President or Vice president positions and trash it.

Speaking of leadership positions, I think all positions are leadership positions in the eyes of real leaders. That's because they make it... they can't help it. They have to lead. Ask succesful leaders when they started leading and they'll tell you that it all started when they are still struggling to make a difference because they are not in the leadership position.

So, how do we spot them? how do we seperate the leaders from the nonleaders? The answer, observe them demonstrate the following:

- Desire to improve things
- Communicate the desire
- engage others (including peers and boss)
- Show how it's done
- make things happen.

Give real leaders opportunities to demonstrate this and they will deliver. If you find them, take care of them. They can be an asset to your team.

Teamwork and Bosswork Both Work But...

I agree with Patrick Lencioni's thesis that Teamwork is characterized by trust, conflict management, commitment, accountability and focus on results. Trust is manifested through open communication. Open communication is manifested through healthy discussion and resolution of issues or problems which pave the way for achieving clarity on what needs to be done that helps in getting buy-in and commitment to goals and team norms. Commitment on the other hand is manifested by team members' willingness to make each other accountable for their performance or behavior by challenging each others' ideas and calling team members attention on behaviors that do not support team work. This accountability paves the way for focusing on results that allow teams to achieve their objectives.

to think however that teamwork is the only way to go is naive. Considering the lack of teamwork going on in organizations today, we can say that there is a more dominant way of getting things done and that is through "bosswork".(an obvious play of word to describe the opposite of teamwork).

Yes, there is a much easier way to getting things done. In bosswork, trust, conflict management, commitment, accountability and focus on results are not necessary. The boss can get things done through others through two things; rewards and punishments. A good boss (skilled in bossing people around) knows his tools. He makes good contracts that detail the requirements of the job and the implications of failure. He knows how to get the respect (read fear) of his subordinates and use it to get them to do what needs to be done.

Let's look at advantages and disadvantages and leadership requirements of these two approaches:

Advantages of teamwork: It encourages team members to generate and contribute ideas, Q.A. each other's ideas, buy in to strategies and give their best whether the leader is there to see what they are doing or not. Because relationship is better, team members are happier and are more likely to stay and work hard for the team.

Disadvantage: Teamwork takes more effort to build. Building trust, establishing rules of engagement, and getting the team to work together takes more work than invoking the leader's formal authority to sack an employee if she fails to make the number.

Leadership Requirement: Teamwork requires a mature leader. By this I mean a leader who is confident enough of her own capabilities to not feel intimidated or insecure by smarter team members. A Leader is interested in building relationship without compromising the need to deliver results. She studies human behavior and is interested in learning how to adjust her style in dealing with different behaviors. She also has the humility to say sorry or permit her team members to challenge her ideas or call her attention on behaviors that do not support teamwork.

Advantages of Bosswork: tasks get done. Saves you some teambuilding money. Some of the most successful people possess strong bossly qualities which means it is possible to succeed using this style. The exercise of authority and power can get you an enormous amount of ego boost.

Disadvantage: I believe that the bossly approach to getting things done is getting really old. The advancing technologies and increasing knowledge of the workforce and the preference of the young professionals for empowerment will make bosses fail to benefit from the growing capabilities of people in their organizations. They will spend more money on recruitment for replacing people who don't like to work for the type of environment they create.

Requirements of the Job: In order to fit the bill of a boss, the person should have an inherent distrust in people so they can micromanage everyone. They must know how to hire people for their arms and their legs because they don't have much use for their brains. There should be a test that they can use to determine the submissiveness of a potential employee and avoid hiring those who have minds of their own.

In case you are asking what my preference is, I prefer teamwork anytime. It may take more effort to build but a good team environment is not only good for the business its good for everyone in the team. The only way for teamwork to happen is for leaders to allow it by shifting mindset from BOSS to LEADER. If you need help making the shift, send me an email.