When I was a teacher, my goal was for every one of my students to get an A.
I felt that if an A meant “You learned everything you were supposed to learn!” and “You can do all the skills we practiced!” then why wouldn’t it be my goal—if not the definition of my job—to help all students get there? Of course, education (and business) loves a good forced ranking. Many of my colleagues argued that we need to define B as “good” so that the students who want/need extra challenge can go above and beyond to get the A. As so often is the case, the norms of school bleed into the norms of organizations, and all companies want those A-student employees who go above and beyond. Or in performance review parlance, who “exceed expectations.”
This has always given me pause. It’s one thing to expect that of students who are learning for their own benefit. It’s quite another to expect that of employees who are working for the benefit of their organizations.
Did you know that one of the most common academic definitions of employee engagement is whether employees are devoting “discretionary effort”? On the surface it makes sense. You see an employee going above and beyond the role, devoting time and energy outside of work hours—discretionary time—and you say to yourself, “That employee is engaged! They’re SO into it. Gotta get more of those folks.”
It’s no wonder why organizations want the Above-and-Beyonders—it’s free labor! But we shouldn’t kid ourselves where that discretionary effort comes from. It comes from the bedtime stories that employee is not reading to their children. From the exercise class that employee never went to. From the sleep that employee never got. It comes from somewhere; we just don’t like to think about the cost.
And the truth is the leader won’t see it. We don’t see the frustrated spouse or the blood pressure report or the lonely kid or the anti-anxiety medications. Employees are taught to shield these things as the ultimate NSFW content.
So it’s easy to see why a leader in this position might say, “They wanted to! I didn’t make them,” and that may be true. It’s possible they really were that into their work, that they took pride in it, that it was meaningful to them—and you know those aren’t bad things. The trouble comes when, as an organizational baseline, employees are only seen as meeting expectations when they’re exceeding expectations. Or more simply, when overwork is expected.
The thing is, that wasn’t the deal. We have employment contracts for a reason. I’ll give you this time/effort/skill and you give me this money. How funny would it be if we expected employers to exceed expectations with their paychecks? Ugh . . . just the usual two weeks’ pay. I expected more! My company is just not going above and beyond like I hoped.
Now that I’ve exhaled that rant, let me say, as you know, I also believe in doing great work. Impactful, captivating, generous, needle-moving work. I just believe that that work should be accounted for in your day job. It’s the employer’s responsibility to realistically consider what it takes for an employee, a team, a function, or an organization to do that kind of powerful work, and then set up employment contracts, objectives, key results, and deadlines that allow for that work within the confines of the workday. In other words, without breaking their promises.
Otherwise, your business runs on extracting more than your fair share from employees. It runs on breaching your employment agreements. It runs on baiting and switching employees, often with a story about how purposeful their work is, ignoring that their time spent on family, friends, health, leisure, and rest is also purposeful. The solution is hard but simple: hire more people or reduce the work.
Huh, look at that . . . I guess my rant was not over.
Okay, I’m taking a deep breath, and now I need to say that this riles me up because I’ve been an Above-and-Beyonder all my life and often still am. My rant is hard to reconcile with my desire to go the extra mile for a client, even when that means putting on my figurative running shoes at 10 pm when I finally have time to focus.
From a leadership perspective, I take it as a personal failure when my project teams run hot. I scoped the work. There’s no one but me to blame. For every project I scope, I try to bake in time for us to uphold the incredibly high standards we have for ourselves and our work and our clients. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Although it may sound like I’m targeting leaders unfairly, I really do get how hard it is to do this because I’ve been a CEO. Hire more people? With what money? Reduce the work? How will we keep our business afloat? Oh, just raise prices. Ha!
But, ultimately, I believe that’s why leaders are paid the big bucks: to figure this out.
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Hi! It’s Bree. This piece was excerpted from my fresh-off-the-presses book, Today Was Fun, published by Page Two. Want to channel your Above and Beyond energy into your life—not just your work? Order today.
Connect with me on my website, LinkedIn, and Substack, and if you need a pick-me-up, go here and dance a little.
I’m an author, speaker, and caregiver living NYC. As a senior advisor to the global consultancy SYPartners and former CEO of NOBL Collective, I’ve partnered with executives at Alphabet, Pfizer, Microsoft, Calvin Klein, Atlassian, Hilton, and many others—helping them navigate transformation, culture, leadership, and new ways of working. I hold an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University and have delivered dozens of keynotes globally on the human experience of work. When I’m stressed, my motto is most things, most days, and sometimes that even means ending my day in bed eating takeout queso and watching reality TV. But most days, I’m healthy. Most days, I’m happy. Most days, I have a really, really good time at work.