Being recognized at work, a vital need.
15 November 2017
Read by 5216 persons
Are we eternally children seeking compliments? No. Professional recognition offers a sense of belonging to a group, allows us to value our uniqueness, and helps us to give body and meaning to increasingly dematerialized activities.
“Actually, you have no skills. You're just lucky.” Marc, 32, a sales representative at a large European bank, initially thought he had misheard. How could his “N+1” have said that in his annual performance review when he had “exceeded” his objectives? “I was the one in the team who made the most profit,” he says. “At first, I was stunned. Then I wondered if he wasn't right.” Gradually, Marc's self-confidence eroded. “At the risk of looking ridiculous,” he adds, he ended up calling former employers to ask them if he really was “so bad.” They reassured him, but after a few months, only receiving polite silence despite his overflowing activity, Marc threw in the towel and resigned, convinced that if he had stayed, he would have fallen into depression.
A legitimate desire for social esteem
This extreme example is more akin to harassment than the everyday experience of each of us, yet how many of us anxiously await those famous year-end reviews? How many of us watch for that opportunity to finally hear our superior highlight what we have accomplished positively, say “thank you,” give us a raise, who knows? In short, to assure us of their confidence? Basically, why do we attach so much importance to it? After all, who better than ourselves can judge the care we have taken in accomplishing our daily tasks? The whole question is this: we have a visceral and timeless need for recognition.
Because, explains psychoanalyst and coach Hélène Vecchiali, “work is etymologically linked to pain and difficulty. Even those who love their job make efforts. It is therefore normal to need to be recognized. And then recognizing someone means identifying them: when a child is born, they are recognized by their parents at the town hall. This is how they will become part of society. At work, it's the same thing: recognition is not just something that makes us feel good from time to time. It offers us a sense of belonging to a group and allows us to forge a social self-esteem.” But we are not all equal in the face of this desire: to be convinced of the value of their work, some need to be told ten times in a row. Others want to be recognized publicly and not tête-à-tête: the trumpets of fame must resound.
“Good grades” that define our worth
Work is linked to love for each of us. When we were little, our parents congratulated us for our good grades and scolded us for bad ones. Since then, we have all more or less tended to confuse the value of our grades, that is, the value of the fruit of our efforts, with our own worth, the value we represented to our parents. Some are more expectant than others, because “their self-esteem, their recognition of themselves is fragile or has not been able to form correctly,” explains Hélène Vecchiali. “On the other hand, a child who has been dreamed of, desired, carried, recognized in their efforts by their parents will spontaneously have anchored in themselves this feeling of being valuable. They will be less demanding.”
Marion, 45, is one of those fortunate ones who do not neurotically doubt the quality of their work, but, she says, “if my superiors and colleagues didn't congratulate me from time to time, I think I would be completely lost. For years, I have been filling out summary sheets on the computer without really knowing who reads them.” Nothing could be more logical, assures economist and psychoanalyst Corinne Maier. According to her, our professional lives are increasingly virtual: “In an office, nothing is really concrete. We produce immaterial things, which are therefore difficult to evaluate. Unlike someone who repairs shoes or an independent person who makes their turnover, job satisfaction is little linked to the completion of an object. It is also not based on the well-being one can feel in accomplishing a task from beginning to end, since the functions are ‘cut up’, detached from one another and compartmentalized.”
Result: we have fewer means than ever today to assess ourselves. We are lost in the blur of increasingly abstract and compartmentalized activities. Nothing tangible comes to reassure us. We depend more than ever on the opinions of others: they alone can support and reassure us in environments where layoffs are multiplying. In a company, recognition is also “an excellent way to boost teams,” recalls psychoanalyst René Fiori.
Managers who are afraid to congratulate their teams
Why, then, are some managers and department heads increasingly hesitant to show it? Some are manipulators, certainly, but the vast majority are more seized by fear. Let's take the example of this company manager who is nevertheless very concerned about the well-being of her employees: “I no longer dare to express my gratitude because I fear that my words will be used to build files in case I have to, for economic reasons, part with collaborators whose work I appreciate.” If I send a congratulatory email to someone, won't they keep it and then use it in a lawsuit “just in case”?… Absurd fears that end up straining relationships, and that's a shame, notes Hélène Vecchiali, because “playing with or mocking the need for recognition of one's subordinates is a double-edged sword: even if they are discreet, senior managers themselves sometimes need to be recognized by those they supervise, especially when there are tensions in the offices.
In fact, everyone is concerned by this issue! Freud said that a balanced person works “well” and loves “well.” Love and work are the two great crutches of the human being. One can help compensate for the other. We are all equal in the fact that, sometimes, professional recognition helps to overcome difficult times in private life, and vice versa.” Only, trust bumps up against the principle of precaution, and the expression of recognition is sometimes no longer indexed to the quality of the work done. Suspended from strategic calculations, it loses its great virtue: that of responding to the universal and profound need to be distinguished. Even if we have the feeling that the person facing us is less and less reliable, even if they are subjected to unbearable pressures, we would like to be able to yield without distrust to the temptation to savor their recognition, to savor this proof that our work is necessary to them in all its uniqueness.
Hélène Fresnel.
Psychologies.com
“Actually, you have no skills. You're just lucky.” Marc, 32, a sales representative at a large European bank, initially thought he had misheard. How could his “N+1” have said that in his annual performance review when he had “exceeded” his objectives? “I was the one in the team who made the most profit,” he says. “At first, I was stunned. Then I wondered if he wasn't right.” Gradually, Marc's self-confidence eroded. “At the risk of looking ridiculous,” he adds, he ended up calling former employers to ask them if he really was “so bad.” They reassured him, but after a few months, only receiving polite silence despite his overflowing activity, Marc threw in the towel and resigned, convinced that if he had stayed, he would have fallen into depression.
A legitimate desire for social esteem
This extreme example is more akin to harassment than the everyday experience of each of us, yet how many of us anxiously await those famous year-end reviews? How many of us watch for that opportunity to finally hear our superior highlight what we have accomplished positively, say “thank you,” give us a raise, who knows? In short, to assure us of their confidence? Basically, why do we attach so much importance to it? After all, who better than ourselves can judge the care we have taken in accomplishing our daily tasks? The whole question is this: we have a visceral and timeless need for recognition.
Because, explains psychoanalyst and coach Hélène Vecchiali, “work is etymologically linked to pain and difficulty. Even those who love their job make efforts. It is therefore normal to need to be recognized. And then recognizing someone means identifying them: when a child is born, they are recognized by their parents at the town hall. This is how they will become part of society. At work, it's the same thing: recognition is not just something that makes us feel good from time to time. It offers us a sense of belonging to a group and allows us to forge a social self-esteem.” But we are not all equal in the face of this desire: to be convinced of the value of their work, some need to be told ten times in a row. Others want to be recognized publicly and not tête-à-tête: the trumpets of fame must resound.
“Good grades” that define our worth
Work is linked to love for each of us. When we were little, our parents congratulated us for our good grades and scolded us for bad ones. Since then, we have all more or less tended to confuse the value of our grades, that is, the value of the fruit of our efforts, with our own worth, the value we represented to our parents. Some are more expectant than others, because “their self-esteem, their recognition of themselves is fragile or has not been able to form correctly,” explains Hélène Vecchiali. “On the other hand, a child who has been dreamed of, desired, carried, recognized in their efforts by their parents will spontaneously have anchored in themselves this feeling of being valuable. They will be less demanding.”
Marion, 45, is one of those fortunate ones who do not neurotically doubt the quality of their work, but, she says, “if my superiors and colleagues didn't congratulate me from time to time, I think I would be completely lost. For years, I have been filling out summary sheets on the computer without really knowing who reads them.” Nothing could be more logical, assures economist and psychoanalyst Corinne Maier. According to her, our professional lives are increasingly virtual: “In an office, nothing is really concrete. We produce immaterial things, which are therefore difficult to evaluate. Unlike someone who repairs shoes or an independent person who makes their turnover, job satisfaction is little linked to the completion of an object. It is also not based on the well-being one can feel in accomplishing a task from beginning to end, since the functions are ‘cut up’, detached from one another and compartmentalized.”
Result: we have fewer means than ever today to assess ourselves. We are lost in the blur of increasingly abstract and compartmentalized activities. Nothing tangible comes to reassure us. We depend more than ever on the opinions of others: they alone can support and reassure us in environments where layoffs are multiplying. In a company, recognition is also “an excellent way to boost teams,” recalls psychoanalyst René Fiori.
Managers who are afraid to congratulate their teams
Why, then, are some managers and department heads increasingly hesitant to show it? Some are manipulators, certainly, but the vast majority are more seized by fear. Let's take the example of this company manager who is nevertheless very concerned about the well-being of her employees: “I no longer dare to express my gratitude because I fear that my words will be used to build files in case I have to, for economic reasons, part with collaborators whose work I appreciate.” If I send a congratulatory email to someone, won't they keep it and then use it in a lawsuit “just in case”?… Absurd fears that end up straining relationships, and that's a shame, notes Hélène Vecchiali, because “playing with or mocking the need for recognition of one's subordinates is a double-edged sword: even if they are discreet, senior managers themselves sometimes need to be recognized by those they supervise, especially when there are tensions in the offices.
In fact, everyone is concerned by this issue! Freud said that a balanced person works “well” and loves “well.” Love and work are the two great crutches of the human being. One can help compensate for the other. We are all equal in the fact that, sometimes, professional recognition helps to overcome difficult times in private life, and vice versa.” Only, trust bumps up against the principle of precaution, and the expression of recognition is sometimes no longer indexed to the quality of the work done. Suspended from strategic calculations, it loses its great virtue: that of responding to the universal and profound need to be distinguished. Even if we have the feeling that the person facing us is less and less reliable, even if they are subjected to unbearable pressures, we would like to be able to yield without distrust to the temptation to savor their recognition, to savor this proof that our work is necessary to them in all its uniqueness.
Hélène Fresnel.
Psychologies.com
