Blog — Dr. Maria Church Love-Based Leadership Speaker, Motivational Speaker, Best-Selling Author, Organizational Culture Expert

Today, many of our organizations are spiritually bankrupt, halls walked by zombies, the living dead.

The grim reaper has become the human resources director handing out yet another layoff notice, or the boss giving you yet another task because someone else has left the company. Too many organizations discourage deeper forms of communication, emotions, and intimacy, opting instead for superficiality.

If we continue down this path, the same path that got us here, we are doomed to fail.

Boleman and Deal stated in Leading with Soul, “Spiritual bankruptcy ultimately leads to economic failure. The deeper cost is creating a world in which everything has a function yet nothing has any meaning.”

Life gives us many opportunities to learn lessons and if we fail to learn them the first time, we get the opportunity to experience the lessons again and again until we learn them.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” If we want progress, abundance, and new way of life then, we must as Gandhi stated, “Be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Instead of following a path full of limitations, let’s construct a path illuminated with choice and abundance.

With love,

Maria

I’ve been working with a city government who is going through some pretty significant changes.

They are going through a major re-organization, and of course, some people are experiencing turnover.

I was coaching a department director whose position may be eliminated. He was very uneasy about his future and even more importantly, he was devastated at the thought of his thirty years of service suddenly ending. He thought the City would take care of him in exchange for his tri-decade loyalty. He felt extremely let down, devastated, and was shocked that the City he loved so much would do this to him.

Enter, the psychological contract.

We often times enter into a psychological contract with our employers unconsciously. These contracts are built on unspoken expectations. We’re not even aware that we’ve formed these contract. But don’t let that fool you…just because we are not aware of these psychological contracts, does not mean they don’t exist.

To the contrary - the greater the lack of awareness we have around these contracts, the greater the hold it has on us.

Our psychological contracts are like a love affair. We give so much to our organization in this relationship. We work hard for this relationship. We don’t sleep, we hardly make time to eat, and we are almost always thinking about this relationship.

How can we give more? How can we please more?

When there is a breach in the contract, the employee/employer relationship can quickly erode and this is where disengagement sets in. It’s like a break up. Our expectations were not met.

We need to manage expectations with ourselves and our team members. We can do this upfront with interviewing, onboarding, reinforcing it during orientation and training, and periodically throughout the year.

A very simple expectation could be that I’m going to give my all to this organization, my expertise, my experience, and my knowledge, and in return they are going to give me a paycheck every two weeks.

Hmmmm that simplifies it.

When did you experience a breach in your psychological contract? How did you handle it?

As always, I love to hear from you.

With Love and To Your Success,

Maria

If you would like to work on your company’s psychological contract (personally, or as an organization), please contact me here!

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