Why are so many people not feeling valued today?

Jeff is a journalist in a large organization. He has worked there for over 10 years and has always achieved good results with his articles. His managers have always been happy with his work. He even won some prizes and contributed to the growth of the company. His organization is now going through a big transformation and is under pressure because revenues are declining. Online content is becoming more important, and Jeff’s new boss has asked him to change his writing style. The articles need to be shorter with more images, and the deadlines to deliver them have never been so short.

Jeff struggles with that because he is convinced that the quality of the content is really suffering. He tries to convince his boss that quality remains really important. But his boss is committed to the new strategy and doesn’t value Jeff’s input so much anymore. As a result, Jeff feels that he is being left out of key decisions that his boss discusses with his younger colleagues instead.

Jeff has never worked this hard. He has changed his writing style, but not enough, according to his boss. He doesn’t feel valued anymore. He played a key role in the company in the past and was part of its success story—but now it seems like what he did in the past was all bad. He feels trapped because other companies don’t want to hire him either. The market is difficult.

He feels unhappy and is quite negative about his current job. His boss is unhappy with him as well and would probably prefer replacing him with a more positive person. Jeff is angry and finds all this unfair. He was at the origin of the success of the company and now he feels disrespected, like a nobody.

A lot of people are feeling like Jeff in today’s organizations. A lot of people complain about not being valued anymore.

Why are so many people not feeling valued anymore?

A lot of markets are changing drastically because consumers’ needs are changing. Those changes have a huge impact on an organization’s internal processes, as well as on people’s jobs. Often, people did really well in the past, but what they have to deliver today might be very different. It doesn’t mean that people are bad at what they do. It doesn’t mean that what people did in the past was worthless. But it means that they have to change their way of working and adapt to a new situation.

If, as a person, you identify with what you do (or what you did) and you don’t want your job to change, these times will be challenging. Your job is changing because the needs of your customers have changed, and quality should be defined as delivering what your customer wants.

Leaders need to create a positive climate for change

It is the responsibility of the leaders in an organization to create a climate where people are stimulated to learn new things and change their way of working. People resist change when they don’t feel able to cope. Putting pressure on people, ignoring them, or blaming or punishing them will rarely deliver the result you want, namely, that the person changes his way of working. As a leader, it is your job to increase this feeling of “being able to cope” by inspiring with a vision, listening with care, asking how you can support, encouraging, showing recognition for the little improvements, celebrating small successes …

If you currently don’t feel valued, there are things you can do to get recognition and feel appreciated again. I have made a list of what I did when I needed recognition. You can download it here.

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