Technology, litigation, and globalization present many challenges today for individuals and organizations. Instead of ignoring problems or responding with fear, managers who foster courage and organizations that recognize and reward courage are more likely to overcome challenges and adapt to change. Courageous workers demonstrate emotional resilience by staying the course despite difficulty or danger and not accepting defeat. This chapter discusses opportunities for managers to champion emotional resilience in employees through awareness of the psychological contract. Case examples are used to demonstrate the varied ways in which employees and organizations may respond to physical injury, psychological trauma, and interpersonal conflict.
The evidence and the tools presented in this book show the advantages of putting personal relationships at the forefront of business practice. The principles of relationship productivity discussed here should be on the minds of all those seeking to improve significantly the bottom line. Too often the human aspects of business are trivialized, but this sacrifices long-term business growth and success for short term-achievement of business goals. Attention to relationships and awareness of the unique nature of each person’s psychological contract fosters empathy. This permits the kind of deep human connection that builds teamwork and loyalty, enhances performance, and facilitates problem solving.
Broken relationships develop over time and with repetition and have a corroding effect on loyalty and commitment, which are the glue that holds people together enough to accomplish mutual goals. Managers need to know if someone important to their work is feeling that way, particularly if the person feels that way about them. A key part of understanding such ruptures is to understand the implicit interpersonal promises, better known as the psychological contract. The psychological contract has five essential components: predictability versus confusion, dependence versus independence, distance versus intimacy, change versus stability, and danger versus safety. This chapters explores these elements in cases about business performance and relationships between supervisors and employees.
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