The Three Faces of Eve(ryone)
The movie, The Three Faces of Eve, debuted in 1957 starring Joanne Woodward, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress.
The storyline according to IMDB is: “A doctor treats a woman suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder.”
Besides being an excellent and riveting movie, it occurred to me that it represents an important lesson for being successful in the workplace. Truth be told, I’m a movie buff and I’m always looking for lessons to take from movies to apply in the Real World.
This particular movie grabbed me.
I was having a conversation with a young man who had just been let go from yet another job. It was the last in a string of at least five jobs I was aware of that had ended similarly, and I was having trouble getting my point across to him — that maybe not all of the managers were “bad” and that his behavior might be the common variable. My internal monologue was framing how to tell him that he was missing an important relationship at work and I keyed on the phrase “everyone has three faces”. My brain made the connection between his situation and the movie, and the eventual result was this article, which is admittedly rather simple. In defense, I think that not all profound ideas have to be complex — they just have to make profound sense.
Without further ado….
In a work environment, we all have three faces: the face we present to our manager, the face we present to our subordinates or customers, and the face we present to our peers. In a perfect world, we present the same positive face to all three, but that’s not always the case. 360-degree feedback assessments provide data on how consistently we do that, and are designed to show us which relationships need attention.
The following is a chart that shows the eight possible combinations of positive or negative relationships across the three faces.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that the person’s actual job performance is fine. The relationships in Figure 1 which are all-negative and all-positive are the clear boundaries, but the middle combinations can be tricky. It depends on whom you ask.
From the Manager’s perspective there are four situations where their direct report seems okay (shown in Figure 1 as “(+)” in green). In fact, in one case everyone is in agreement that the employee is a top performer!
But let’s look at the other three. In two of the remaining three cases the employee has negative relationships with their peers. Those peers have the power to begin to change the opinion of their common manager with their very next one-to-one with him/her, especially if negative comments come from more than one peer. Do not underestimate the danger here! If you have alienated your peers for whatever reason, you can find yourself with limited prospects for promotions, raises, decent reviews, or choice assignments. And, at worst, you can find yourself having an exit interview with Human Resources.
Now let’s look at the inverse situation, where the manager already has a negative impression of an employee. The employee already has “one foot in the grave” with respect to their future career. In one case the negative impression is confirmed by both the peers and their subordinates or (worse) customers! It’s easy to draw the conclusion that a bad hire was made. In two of the remaining three cases the manager has confirmation of his negative impression by either their peers or their subordinates / customers.
Confirmation bias is a powerful thing, and not to be ignored.
Now we’ve got enough background to revisit the case of the young man I mentioned at the beginning of this article. It didn’t take long to figure out that he was repeatedly alienating his co-workers, i.e. peers, and that they were having substantial influence with his managers. It didn’t matter that his customers loved him, or that his managers started out really liking him. Over time his sour relationships with his peers ended up paving the way to unemployment. His opinion that they shouldn’t have that sort of influence, and that his customers should matter more, ended up being a dangerous sort of magical thinking.
We don’t live in a world of SHOULD. We live in a world of IS.
Here is the completed chart which shows the impact of positive and negative relationships across the Three Faces of Eve(ryone). Notice that only two of the eight combinations are where the Peers and Managers both have a positive relationship, but that six combinations show a negative relationship with Peers or Managers. In other words, if you aren’t paying attention to your relationships at work, you have a 75% chance of it ending badly.
To have the best chance of retaining your job, as well as being considered a Top Performer, be consistent with your Three Faces. People’s opinions — especially your peers — matter!
