What is your first impression of employees who ruffle feathers, shake things up, make waves or upset the apple cart? You might think that person needs to be disciplined, maybe even fired. But there’s another way to look at “troublemakers” in the workplace. The person who can enact the most change isn’t always the worker who follows orders. Sometimes they’re the ones speaking out against the status quo that stands in the way of making things better. They can take us out of the ordinary hum-drum of rigid routines to out-of-the-box thinking that can lead to creative potential and solutions for the company’s bottom line.
Breaking The Mold At Work
“To break a mold, defy a norm, or restructure a structure, you need to ruffle a few feathers along the way,” explains Jessica Elefante in her book, Raising Hell, Living Well. “The most influential people in history were often considered mad because of their grand ideas. It takes humans a while to come around to new ideas. To do good things in the long run means you might be considered an outlier in the present moment.” Elefante says she believes rebels who fight back against oppression, gain respectability as their influence shifts a collective consciousness. “Influential people are often troublemakers who felt stifled by the system as it was,” she notes, adding, “Throughout history, the artists, innovators, pioneers, intellectuals, leaders and icons who show up with their bad selves as agent provocateurs blaze their own way, and by doing so, open pathways for others. Troublemakers are labeled as such because they speak up when others won’t. Troublemakers are alternate voices. Troublemakers stand up against the people, the structures, and the that’s-just-the-waythings-are mentality when nobody else will. They don’t conform—and by doing so, or not doing so, become influential.”
Growth Only Occurs In A State Of Discomfort
Change isn’t easy for the average person. That’s why it takes an extraordinary person to lead. Great leaders and companies are always open to change and to stirring things up. They are resilient, willing to stick their necks out and get out of their comfort zones. I sat down with Bill Eckstrom, founder and CEO of EcSell and author of The Coaching Effect: What Great Leaders Do to Increase Sales, Enhance Performance, and Sustain Growth. He related the story of how discomfort propelled him into success. He was on a roll—an executive with a nice salary, annual bonuses and stock options—all the perks. On a Monday afternoon at three o’clock, the president of his company summoned him to a small conference room on the top floor of his office building for a quick meeting. “He fired me,” Bill remembers. “And I’ll never forget how his words just sucked the breath right out of me. I left the conference room in a dazed state, and I went home and curled up in my bed in the fetal position for three hours.” While the unsettling event shuddered his self-esteem and finances, he says it was that discomfort—the departure from his ordered life—that forever changed it for the better.
Eckstrom, learned that humans have a need for a predictable outcome. But more importantly, he learned that what makes us comfortable can stagnate our careers. And what makes us uncomfortable is the only way to grow. He also acknowledges that if on that day somebody had said, “Gee buddy, getting fired is a good thing because now you’re really going to grow!” he probably would have socked them. After a couple years of work with his new team, he had an epiphany on how to apply the science of discomfort and growth through the concept of “Growth Rings.”
“The first Growth Ring represents a low-performing, low-growth environment called stagnation—having to follow too many steps, permissions and minutiae,” he explains. “That stifles creativity, independent thought and action. He notes that the antithesis of stagnation is chaos—also low-growth and low-performing—that can result from internal or external conditions. “We see chaos occur at times in business mergers, natural disasters and horrific events like 9/11 when we have zero control over inputs and outcomes.”
Coming back down the Growth Rings, Eckstrom explains that next to stagnation is order—the most desirable environment when you know what you do or what is happening leads to a predictable outcome. “And in predictability, we find comfort,” he says. “But comfort is also what makes order so dangerous. Because science shows that anytime you continually do something or even think about something the same way, you’ll eventually stop growing.” Some people would rather stay in a toxic work culture than take the risk of uncertainty, according to Eckstrom, adding, before order continues to limit the way we think and act, he reminds us that it’s important to remember that our career growth only occurs in a state of discomfort.
“When you feel discomfort hit, that means you’ve entered the complexity ring,” he declares. “Complexity is nothing more than changed order, but when your order is changed, outcomes are no longer predictable, and it’s unpredictability that makes you uncomfortable.” He insists that most times our visceral response to discomfort is to avoid it, but we can grow by acknowledging the discomfort, then choosing complexity over order. “I know seeking discomfort sounds odd, and not many people do it,” he admits, “but you have to learn to embrace it because it’s the only environment where sustained or exponential growth can occur.”
Creating Discomfort And The ‘Good Trouble’ Movement
Many “troublemakers” create discomfort by “disturbing” current workplace conditions to improve them. The traditional business-as-usual-expectations came under fire when the pandemic stirred up Gen Z’s, who refused to adhere to corporate demands and pay the price of burnout as a “normal” side effect of hard work. Insisting on their own terms imbued the younger generation with greater decision-making power in their careers. You might call that “good trouble,” a term coined by the late activist and senator John Lewis, referring to nonviolent protests against unjust situations—the kind of trouble you can be proud of. It was the rally cry for civil rights and became a wake up call ushered in by “The Great Resignation.”
Singer/songwriter Connie K. Lim, professionally known as MILCK, told me she has a personal investment in the “good trouble” movement. “I watched my Asian ancestors doing jobs where they couldn’t express themselves and keep their heads down and work,” she remembers, thinking she wanted to be free. “I promised myself that when I became an adult, I would do what I needed to do to build a life where I could express my ideas.” As a result of her soul searching, MILCK took the risk of leaving a major record label to work independently. Atlantic Records wanted her to create songs first, then find philanthropic ties for the music afterwards. With MILCK’s current approach, she’s crafting the music with intent, focusing on the goal first and foremost. When she walked away from her major label deal, she said, although there were moments when it was scary and she questioned what she had done, at the same time, she felt she was taking care of herself.
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