Beyond Compensation, Part II: All About Emotional Salary

I’m curious to hear from both of you, what are some examples you’ve experienced of emotional salary components that you really appreciated as a team member?

I’ll start. One of the first ones. When Sarah and I were partnering, I wasn’t sure that this would resonate with her, and this felt very risky to me to even say out loud. But I did say, I don’t know if you know this, but if I can go to Costco on Thursday morning, it saves me like three hours on the weekend. Are there any circumstances where I could flip flop and take care of business during that window? And she was like, yes, this is freedom. You do. You have your to-dos, but it felt vulnerable to ask for. And very simple. Very simple.

So I guess part of me sharing that one specifically is to issue a challenge to everyone listening. If Sarah would’ve tried to guess what was important to me, it probably wouldn’t have been that. She probably wouldn’t have thought. I bet getting through Costco in 30 minutes on a weekday morning is going to ring her bell. The odds that you can generate what will matter to people, even when you know them pretty well, don’t bank on it. Ask many times, give tangible examples of things that are on the table and be truly open to what they’re saying. In this example I shared, Sarah could have dismissed it or why do you go to Costco? Or why can’t you get delivery or don’t how important Thursday at 9:00 AM

Make up those two hours.

Yeah, right.

Exactly. And track that time for me.

Yes. Right. I mean all sorts of things could have been the response, right? But she heard that that was important to me. And off we went with this experiment of what would it look like to do this? And sure enough, several, many years later, we’ve survived. We have survived and thrived in the Thursday morning and we

All go to Costco, Costco stuff.

But don’t assume what would be important, even those little moments, this is taking me to a conversation from the week of the coworkers are being very, the coworkers, the colleagues, the team members are very vocal about what they want and they want something that is pervasive in every other environment and they are told, no, absolutely not. It’s because it’s a no and stop asking me for it. And so it’s kind of fun to watch because there’s definitely a lot of friction bubbling about remote work or hybrid work, which is one of many. Right? But

If I really want tea, don’t give me an orange and say that’s good enough and close.

Or keep saying, so what do you want to drink tea? What do you really want Tea? Well, I don’t think we’ve got everything else with water and flavoring, but we just can’t give you that one. Right? I don’t love the power, power dynamic at play there. What comes up for you, Brandon?

So y’all triggered a memory. I got to tell this story, the funniest service oriented story. One time I went to Wendy’s and I wanted an Arnold Palmer, and so that’s the lemonade and t mixture. And so I was talking to the cashier and she told me, look, I can’t do that. I said, the lemonade is more expensive, I’ll just pay for the lemonade and would you mind putting a little bit of tea in there? She said, Nope, I cannot do that, but I can give you tea with lemons. I said, I guess I will take that. It just made me think. I know that has nothing

Yes, same.

My niece, my niece Evelyn created the Dean. Palmer. No. Why? Don’t know why It’s dean and it’s going to sound horrifyingly gross.

Don’t say orange juice.

Root beer and lemonade. Sounds terrible. She was trying to prove a point and then I drank and I was like, hot. Damn. It’s actually really good. She’s like, Dean Palmer. Don’t know why she called it

Now. I have to try that.

It’s really okay. I’m going to get back on track. I’ll get back on track.

I love it. As far as that emotional salary for me, I believe it’s a combination of leadership support and flexibility. So I have a very supportive leader right now. I’ve had some in the past as well. The thing that we can’t account for is what happens in our personal lives. So as long as everything’s going well at work, people need to understand sometimes things happen outside that you can’t control and that you really don’t know how to contend with. And just having that leader that’s there in those hard moments to help you navigate and they’re not going to tarnish a reputation or judge you unfairly because of an off day or something personal happen to you. That is just a huge burden lifted off because the thought of trying to balance can I keep my reputation intact and can I be there for my family? There’s always going to be a decision that’s made and it’s never going to be for the organization anyway. So leaders that understand and embrace and just see when somebody’s a little bit offered, when there’s something that’s happening that’s creating a challenge for them and they offer that support, that’s of significant value, that leadership support is critical. And that flexibility,

One of the things that connection that I’m making that we know is true in marriages or romantic relationships, and I’m just reflecting that there’s truth to this kind of what you both were talking about in any relationship is that idea of turning towards each other, right? This comes from the work of the Gottman Institute. It’s literally one of the most consistent factors to assess, not only predict whether a marriage is going to last, but even if people stay married, how happy they will be. And it’s that idea of turning towards each other of recognizing what’s important, knowing that your family is important to you, knowing Theresa that being able to have time at night for your kids is important to you. How do we turn towards that and make that work? And the same thing is true. I mean, I was thinking for myself of, and this is I think a really lovely example of how you can marry a financial reward with an emotional reward.

So if people don’t know this already, I love going to Disney for vacations and it was my dream to take my parents there and my boss Lisa and Erin knew that. And so one time they gave me a spot bonus and on the envelope it was for your Disney trip. And so it wasn’t just that they gave me money, it’s that they knew what was important to me. Now I could have spent it on anything. It wasn’t like they were saying I had to spend it on that, but there was something so meaningful that I wasn’t made fun of or dismissed or they had forgotten about it. But it was, we know this is important to you and we want to reward you and contribute to this dream that you have. And that was such a beautiful moment of what it can look like to do both.

And the other thing that I’m thinking about, and I think I’ve told this story on the podcast before and I’m curious how this has been true for the two of you, or I hope you’ve experienced this, but I worked in a really tough situation for eight years. Really, really tough. We worked very long hours, we worked every weekend. We were severely underpaid, pushed really hard. And when I got to RA, I remember doing some major culture efforts and I remember the CEO and I were standing in the back of the room as we were having some pivotal conversation as a leadership team. And David, who is a man of few words, said, pretty lucky to have you Sarah, right? You just got a picture. He’d rather be out fishing. So that’s just the context.

So it’s you and Kenny Rogers. So

It’s me and Roger.

Okay, good. Keep going, keep going. Got my visual

Note. And the thing I realized in that moment was I told him, I said, I appreciate that David, and understand that I was the same person at the last company, so I’m pretty lucky to have you two. And how being in a space that valued humans, that was intentional, at least my experience. I can’t speak to everyone else’s experience where that emotional salary was really, really high. It had an exponential impact, not just on my mental health, my physical health, but also my ability to step into a potential I had only dreamed of. Right? I was the same person, but the environment I was in was so vastly different. And I’m curious if the two of you have ever experienced something similar or different and separate just to show the impact of when we are intentional about thinking about that emotional salary possible with it.

Yeah, I think for me, I think about one of my early jobs and not really having a budget for training or learning. And so my research capability kicked in because I had to have it to learn. And so it shifted to a new place with my role that I’m in or the company I’m with now where when I first asked about learning, they’re like, sure. And I asked about learning again and they said, well sure. I’m like, I don’t don’t have to write this extreme business case or you’re just letting me go do stuff and grow myself. So it was almost like I was so used to figuring out things for free. I wasn’t used to being sponsored or supported for my growth and development. So that would be my example.

That’s the reason I had a strong reaction was similar. I was like, I want to buy this book for $18. Can I? And my boss just kind of laughed at me. He was like, it’s $18. I’m like, I bought all of my books at my last company and and that investment of not just saying, we invest in your development, but giving you the time and giving you the financial resource and making it okay and not gatekeeping the resources. And not limiting the resources. I’m making an assumption here, Brandon, but so often we see organizations gatekeeper those resources for just a certain position instead of, no, we’re going to invest in you and here’s how we’re going to commit to you because you’re committed to us. Yeah, it’s beautiful. Theresa.

I was thinking back to a situation, middle of my education career, and we were really trying to do some things very differently and trying to turn what we had experienced and what we learned about how education was supposed to be on its head a bit and see how far we could push things. And there was so much trust of the group, but I think particularly of me and my teaching partner, shout out Sarah Mock Smith, I love you, that we could take risks, appropriate risks that we could, gosh, just devour knowledge at whatever pace we wanted to try something different. And the feelings I have still thinking about that, it was such an exciting time. I got better at everything we both did together. And it was sometimes painful and it didn’t go as planned and we had to do some things over. But the learning curve for us was enormous because we had plenty of space.

It makes me think about, this is the government teacher in me coming out a little bit. There are two philosophies with humans on some level. There are many philosophies, but just go with this one for a minute. And one is, I can do everything you tell me I can do. And one is I can do everything except what you tell me I can’t do. And we were playing all in the space of I can do anything except break these three rules. And that was when the gates opened up, which was different from a place I had taught previously where things were much more regimented and you had to do what they said you had to do. And even if it wasn’t formally regimented, it was socially very regimented. And this was just shed that old skin and I can do anything except maybe these three things.

And they were probably three things I didn’t want to do anyway. But when we think about emotional salary, a space to play, to play in your content, to play in your passions, to break free of some of those, I don’t know, the boundaries imposed on you as a human. I think that’s something alive in all of stories about emotional salary is there is an enormous amount of freedom while accomplishing your job. It’s not like, oh, I’m just writing a carousel from the time I get all of us were lighting up about learning about doing the work, about getting better at our jobs. And that could happen when your mind and your soul have space to breathe and to navigate when your needs are being met. I feel better just talking about it. To be perfectly honest. My emotional salary is up right now in this conversation.

You triggered a thought though, this socially regimented, can you expound upon that a little bit more?

I mean, I am all in my social studies mode, but defacto and deur, right? These regulations, these requirements weren’t written. They weren’t part of the rule book. They were part of the culture and that was not one and the same. And so trouble happens and we confuse them. We think that the cultural norm is it came down on a tablet or something as opposed to actually there are only a few rules and the rest is up for grabs. And I find that really exciting because I think, and I’m thinking about some teams and some conversations we’ve been in communication with. I’m absolutely thinking of the place where I felt shocked to my core and nearly disintegrated as a person. It was the social, it was the same rule book as the place I had worked previously. But the social regimented, the social expectations, the norms of that school were, it was like you worked on another planet.

It was like, I don’t even know how to operate in this. And that change happened pretty fast, which probably partially this feels good to say out loud explains why I just wanted to melt into a puddle. I’d gone from high autonomy and autonomy and collaboration, high sense of drive. I could do anything I wanted as long as it linked to the best practice. And then the opposite, the social pressure, I mean like, oh, I can just feel it on my soul a little bit. What comes up for the two of you when you think about that,

How even more significant that cost is when you’ve experienced it and then you go into it, whereas mine was the other way.

So

It lifted me up, it accelerated me. But if my experiences had been flipped like yours and the cost in the first organization was significant on its own, and I could only imagine how much more significant because you knew what was possible. You knew what was possible not just for you but for others. So yeah, that was just my initial reaction.

Well, and before you jump in, Brandon, it’s funny, it’s, it’s the opposite of your story of changing too, because you were like, I was just like this before and I felt like I can’t even recognize myself. Who is this person? What is she doing? Why is she saying that? Calling a timeout, technical foul myself, you’re on the bench, you got to regroup, right? But yeah, I mean I like playing with the direction of that change on how it puts a squeeze on. Yeah. Yeah. Brandon, I was just so excited. Brandon, go ahead.

Yeah, no, that’s good. I mean, it feels like sometimes as you elevate the air pressure changes as well. It is not the same. You start to, it’s a little harder to breathe up here. So that was something that I’ve noticed as I learned a little bit more in the stakes kind of raise a bit. So does the pressure, social pressure, things of that nature. So just building that resiliency. I really liked the book. What Got You Here won’t get you there. And it teaches you additional skill sets to navigate like, hey, you got to a certain point, but to fly at this altitude, you’re going to have to learn a few different things to really live in that type of environment. So that’s one of the things I think about when we go with the social pressures and things of that nature.

That’s a good visual for people too. And then it makes me think of situations where you’re so far removed from being grounded. I’m kind of replaying it in what I was that it was like, oh, this cabin is not pressurized. I got to get out of here. I mean, that’s how it felt. There were no protections in place for the humans and I wasn’t the only person struggling there for sure. But yeah, there’s something to that visual of the pressure that you’re under,

Which leads us so beautifully into a future topic of accountability versus support. I mean, it leads so beautifully into how often companies when the stakes get high or the needs are high, they focus way too much on accountability and not enough on support. But that will come in part four, five, and six of our mini podcast series because we have absolutely created a three part conversation here,

Thank goodness.

I’m sure next to the room, why are we just recording this for the podcast? Why isn’t this just happening?

We just need to know now when the three of us get together, it’s going to be magic. So just come on.

Yes, it just needs to happen. What are the questions that the two of you would want people to think about, particularly let’s speak to our people who have the authority to influence what gets added to the emotional salary versus what can they protect against the emotional cost? What are the questions we want them to be reflecting on as we wind down our time together?

If you’re in authority, just think about it just takes a behavior change, you changing your perception and really seeking to see and understand people. So how would you want to be treated? Sometimes we forget when we lead other people, what it was like to be led, especially at higher levels. So just put yourself back in that position and create the right environment and just think about all the other things that have happened in this world that have created this rise of mental health awareness, which is so important. So I would just focus on that,

Theresa, that’s beautiful. I think I want to go back to ask people what matters to them. Don’t assume that what matters to you matters to them. You can certainly step into the empathy of what might’ve helped you when you were at that phase of your life or your career. That’s a good jumping off point potentially for conversation. That is not the end of the conversation. Get really curious about people. Think about how many things can be put on the table, and it’s like Legos. There’s so many ways to put those together. So think about what might be possible or under what conditions some of these requests could be honored, could become part of the new social norms of your organization.

I have one more honor, the backstory, Theresa. Honor the backstory. If you find yourself in a position where somebody opens up and they give of themselves, honor that backstory. Don’t weaponize it, don’t punish it. Don’t use it as something to hold against the person, but really honor them, sharing it and use it to understand them deeply.

That feels like a chapter of the book. The three of us are going to write someday. So with that, my friends always good to be in conversation and part of our goal with these little mini conversations is to invite you all in to be a part of what we’re thinking about and talking about, and also to see how nothing is figured out. We’re all figuring it out together, but how can we make the work better for humans? So Brandon, Theresa, adore you, love you guys. And now we’re going to stop recording so we don’t have an hour long thing.

Bye everyone. Bye.