How Can We Un-Learn
Helplessness in the Workplace?

  Can you give me some information on the concept of learned helplessness and how to beat this psychological tactic?

--A Union Man

  Dear Union Man:

I must report that research on learned helplessness is little and not recent.

Why do you ask is the important question. Learned helplessness dates back to an attitude and comment of Henry Ford. To paraphrase it--all I want is a pair of hands but what I get a whole person. So Mr. Ford employed social secretaries to visit the homes of his workers and advise the family on the way he wanted his employees to behave.

Many, if not all, organizations really would be happy if they could employ the part of a person that, like a good machine, would do the task that was needed and that was their only obligation to the employee. They then would not have to deal with working conditions, attitude, career development, health and safety issues, etc.

Traditional workplaces, like the military's efficient "yes-sir-when-you-say-frog-I'll-jump" training of fighters, too often want dependent rather than independent mindedness. They do not want workers who speak up, argue, or talk back. If they can clone such individuals, they will have a workforce satisfied with pay and benefits which is not employable elsewhere.

Manpower planning too long has been the province of management development. Those in management training programs are given opportunities to develop a career path that might benefit both their workplace and themselves.

Every good superior is concerned about more than getting a product/service out the door. Good superiors care about the development of their employees. They take a personal interest in their self-worth and attitude toward life. They talk with and think with them about the direction of their lives. They encourage learning new skills relevant to their current employment and future.

Learned helplessness is shortsighted, but it is not not uncommon. Organizations that want pawns rather than people should fail as surely as organizations short-change their research and development.

But your concern most likely springs from a feeling of being personally thwarted in your efforts to enrich and expand your skills and opportunities. If you feel this way, any change may have to begin within you.

• You may have to be the one to ask for special assignments.
• You may have to be the one to initiate and to begin outside the workplace training.
• You may have to be the one to decide if the leadership in your workplace has a place for individuals who want to learn.
• You may have to be the one who challenges your workplace to be a Workplace which values Learning.

A Wego Workplace Is Committed to Learning and to the Whole Person. Please share with me more of what prompts your query about learned helplessness.

Questioning is the way out of an environment of learned helplessness.

Sincerely,

Bill Gorden, The Workplace Doctors

AND THE UNION MAN REPLIES. . .

Thank you for your reply Dr. Gorden. The reason that I ask about learned helplessness is that I am trying to inform my union brothers and sisters that this is a psychological tactic used by management. I work for GM and it is fitting that you brought up Henry Ford in your answer to me.

This is the typical attitude of GM management. They just want to use what part of the body they need. Their most precious resource the human factor is omitted in their processes. Our contract even states:

"It is recognized that the point where product design, technology, process and materials come together and must work in harmony is at the worker/supervisor level in the organization. High quality products result from a well managed process that motivates employees to work together within a spirit of teamwork to continuously improve customer satisfaction." --UAW/GM National Contract 1996 page 568.

There is no harmony in this workplace. We are talked down to. My plight is to open the eyes of my fellow workers:

1. To open their eyes to the abuse of which they have been exposed.
2. To show them that they must be accountable and must hold management accountable if we are to achieve our mutual goal of customer satisfaction which is job security.
3. To get our leadership to recognize this and to use the grievance procedure to enforce it.

The data that I have found is minimal but what is there is helpful. "In concentration camps, in prisons, even in factories, colleges and well-meaning nursing homes, people given little control experience a similar lowering of morale and increased stress" from Exploring Psychology (2nd Ed.) from Worth Publishing, 1993.

Thank you very much for you time,

The Union Man