In business we often hear about a company’s desire for a high “ROI” (Return on Investment). “If we invest X amount, how much will we reap from that investment? What’s our rate of return?” High numbers make people happy. Low numbers get them fired.
Companies live to know and discuss ROUI. People like chasing a high ROI with their money, too. Bernie Madoff’s entire fraudulent house of empirical cards — all $18 billion worth — preyed on the predictable desire of the rich to crave the maximization of theirs. Promise it, he knew, and they would come.
His plan worked a bit too good. For those keeping score at home, Bernie is scheduled to be released from prison on November 14, 2139. Assuming he lives that long, he will be 200 1/2 years old.
All of us place some sliding scale of importance on the value of money. Regardless what it is, more important than financial resources are emotional ones.
Instead of stocks we invest in a wide portfolio of things like personal and familial relationships, and work commitments. Do we engage? If so, how much emotion are you willing to pour in or risk? Are we fully engaged or just partly? Over time, is that investment rising in compounded value or diminishing?
These emotional interactions create what I call “ROE” — a Return on Energy. What do you harvest, compared to what you invest? What is the emotional payoff to you, based on all you’ve chosen to invest?
At work we’d like our ROE to be high. At home, in our real life, we’d like it even higher. Let’s look at each separately: work-life and real life.
Work-life ROE. Virtually all client companies I work with seem to share one thing: their employees have varying commitment levels. Workers parachute into one of four camps:
- Fully engaged. They are eyeballs deep committed to the action and make things happen.
- Somewhat engaged. “It’s just my job five days a week,” as Elton John frequently sings.
- Somewhat disengaged. It’s a paycheck, a means to an end. If the phone rings with another opportunity, they listen.
- Disengaged. Every day is a burden. A dreadful way to live but for some reason people choose to do it.
The challenge for every organization is foster increased engagement. The key to this is growth. People who grow dig in. People who do not lack passion and will not fully engage. They will do what’s expected but rarely more.
Workers want to feel respected and most have a need to be recognized. When they commit to the company, the energy it requires expects (and hopes) it reaps a commensurate reward. If it’s not, the worker perceives he or she is unappreciated and quits giving a maximum effort. They will also look for other, more rewarding work.
In these cases, without reciprocal reward and recognition, the ROE is insufficient to keep the person pushing.
Real-life ROE. Relationships, family, friendships, and community involvement all take effort. We engage in each hoping for and seeking a good ROE.
Relationships bust when a person’s ROE is too low to justify the price he or she is paying to stay in. A diminished ROE drags down with it the value proposition of the engagement. “Is this all there is?” is the death knell candle blow-out of many a former flame.
Familial relationships fall out when one side or the other perceives they are giving more than getting. People reach conclusions borne from accumulated frustration: giving more is as fruitless as throwing good money after bad.
Families are dicey ROE situations for many of us to make the hard call and protect ourselves from because we grow up with a strong cultural and traditional inference that families should be resilient, and deserve extra energy to protect and maintain.
People buy that to a point; but today’s parents and kids are so often wrapped up in their “mama bear, papa bear, and baby bear” den of self-judged perfection that too often they miss what others might see — that they are taking more than giving and anyone who says differently surely is mistaken.
Familial myopia — a shortness of sight.
Familial stress weighs extra-heavily, so therefore should be managed respectfully. If someone in the family is causing you undo stress, recognize that stress as well as who’s causing it. Severe long-term penalties come from carrying the stresses imposed by others too long. Do the unconventional but right thing: Eradicate the cause of the stress. Block the person out of your life until you are ready to reengage on your terms, not theirs.
Sometimes this mean severing ties. If the ROE of interaction is not worth the emotional price you pay, cut the cord. Jettison the source creation. No one is more important than you.
Sometimes what has cause a severely negative ROE like that tempers over time, or eventually rolls around full circle where it can be discussed from a different point of view at a different point in life. A safer place, a better place.
Mediation and family peace are good. But not at any price.
I have been on both sides of this issue. I have taken more than I have given, and I have given far more than I received. Neither made me a better person. What did was learning from the interactions of both.
No one has a birthright to make us feel bad. Nor does anyone have the right to sit at the table if their presence takes us to a negative emotional place.
Here are five tips for protecting your ROE:
- Maintain realistic expectations. Human and business relationships are elastic. They stretch in different directions. Don’t expect things to always be fair or linear.
- Do not over-invest. Overdoing it will not force a person’s feelings to change, nor their behaviors.
- Do not rely on reciprocity. Just because you give does not mean someone else must give back. If you over-commit based on that expectation, you set yourself up to as vulnerable to disappointment.
- Manage your Worry Circle. The Worry Circle is the imaginary place in your mind that houses everything you worry about. These worries take three forms: things you can control, things you cannot control, and things you can influence but not completely control. Your ROE is diluted when you worry about things you cannot control, so bar those thoughts from your mind. Protect your ROE. Be judicious about who and what has permission to enter your Circle.
- Protect yourself at all times. Head management is like a waking-hours boxing match. Low blows and hitting on the break are part of the sport. Protect yourself. Like my late friend Angelo Dundee, a Hall of Fame boxing trainer, used to remind me all the time, “Keep slippin’ punches!”
We all get tagged on the chops every once in awhile but the key is to keep moving, keep bobbing and weaving, and conserve your energy for the championship rounds.
Protect your ROE. The process of doing so will protect you tremendously from the sadness of emotional vulnerability.