On the surface, there’s nothing not to love about smiles. I smile when
· I’m happy, and when
· I like someone, and when
· I want to communicate that I’m genuinely pleased.
But smiles can be deceiving. I also smile when
· I’m pissed off but don’t feel at liberty to say so, and when
· I don’t want to let others know the pain I’m in, and when
· I have already hatched a plan to get you back for all the pain you’ve caused me and I can’t conceal how excited I am to see it fully executed.
I get leery when I’m with a new client in which every employee has a smile plastered across the front of his face (perma smile) – when everyone I speak with begins our discussion with: “oh my God, what a wonderful company we have, it’s just perfect, and there’s never any conflict and everyone is just so darn nice, and it’s kind of like I always imagined living in the Midwest would be.” Are they hiding something? Are they afraid I’ll spill the beans? Were they forced to drink the company Kool-Aid? It gives me the creeps.
I don’t doubt that certain environments are more people-friendly than others, and I’m certainly not advocating the creation of openly hostile work settings. It’s just that managers often interpret their employees’ perma smiles as signs that everything is rosy, when in fact they might be masking some very serious issues.
If your people look so damn clown happy all the time, there just might be reasons to investigate to make sure their smiles are real and not made of plaster. Here are three:
1. People are Afraid to Tell You What’s Wrong.
I was involved in a productive team-building session at a historically difficult client recently when I jokingly cautioned some employees that “big brother” might be watching. Just before my comment, the employees’ guard had lowered enough for them to finally be making concrete steps toward real (and tough) organizational improvement. With one stupid comment, I unintentionally re-stoked their fears that the company’s notorious “big brother” – they all called him “Junior” – might actually be lurking around the corner waiting to pinkslip anyone who was complaining. My clients’ perma smiles instantly returned and the team-building session regressed to the surfacy, unproductive discussions that I had grown weary of. Ruling by fear can cause inhibition-driven perma smiles that stifle innovation and productivity.
2. People are Too Proud and Insecure to Discuss Their Pain.
Don’t you want to know if your people are struggling? If they hate their job? If they feel as if they were overlooked for a promotion? If they can’t stand the person they’re forced to sit next to every single day? Sure, there’s some strange American pride about those who get up every day and get right back on the hamster wheel with perma smiles affixed, even though it’s slowly killing them. They “grin and bear it” as the saying goes. But if you took the time to ask, perhaps you’d uncover a thing or two you could do to make the hamster wheel a bit more tolerable. Squashing opportunity for employees to appropriately air concerns is inviting true workplace unhappiness, which will in turn, squash performance.
3. People are Secretly Plotting Attacks Against You or Their Peers.
I observed a meeting recently in which two so-called “best friends” assaulted each other through passive-aggressive barbs aimed to lift themselves up and tear the other down. Their rigid smiles affixed as shields across their faces, they traded punches like Frazier and Ali. My favorite:
Psycho 1: “Oh sweetie, I just love when you where those long thin vertical stripes. They make you look thin!”
Psycho 2: “Um, but I’m wearing wide, horizontal stripes.”
Psycho 1: “Yes, I know.”
They left the meeting arm-in-arm, and if I’m being honest, I swear I saw them each trying to twist the other’s arm from her body. Allowing passive-aggressive behavior to go unchecked can cause irreparable harm to your team dynamics, which will irreparably harm performance.
About Sean O'Neil
Sean O’Neil is Principal and CEO of One to One Leadership (www.one2oneleadership.com), a sales and management training firm with clients that include the National Basketball Association, Major League Soccer, News Corporation, First Data, ADP, Xerox, the Oakland Raiders and the New York Knicks. Sean and John Kulisek co-authored Bare Knuckle People Management: Creating Success with the Team You Have – Winners, Losers, Misfits and All, which is due to be published in May 2011. Sean has contributed to or been featured in, among others, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Selling Power Magazine and Incentive Magazine.
