The ‘Low Affect’ Effect
Unlike us,
nongeeks don’t
recognize hard
work as an
expression of
enthusiasm.
IN MY EXPLORATION OF THE DIFFERENCES between technical and business people, nothing surprised me more than this: Business people tend to think that we don’t care about anything. One of their biggest complaints is that we don’t share their passion for the business. When-
ever I hear this, I have an immediate, visceral reaction of outrage: “How
could you possibly think I don’t care about anything? I work like a dog
Paul Glen is the
CEO of Leading
Geeks, an education
and consulting firm
devoted to unlocking
the value of technical
people. You can
contact him at info@
leadinggeeks.com.
to try to turn your visions into reality!”
But my recent work has given me a deeper un-
derstanding of how business people think, and I’ve
noticed that the cues that tell them what someone
cares about are completely different from ours.
As geeks, we can tell what someone cares about
by looking at what they’re working on and paying
attention to. Anyone working like a dog must be
enthusiastic about their project. Someone intensely
focused on a particular piece of code probably
cares about how well it works or how elegantly it’s
designed. Someone spending a lot of time with a
piece of hardware is probably committed to squeezing every bit of performance out of that investment.
Someone who spends a night scrubbing a requirements document is probably excited about the idea
of solving the real business problem at hand.
But nongeeks don’t recognize hard work as an
expression of enthusiasm. If there are no verbal or
emotional signs of excitement from us, they can’t
feel our shared commitment to a project. They
want more than signs that we understand what
they want. They want signs that tell them that
we feel the same way at the same time about the
same thing. It won’t matter if you immediately
immerse yourself in the project and spend hours
doing research or coding. If you haven’t given the
business people anything that they interpret as
commitment, they will not be able to sense that
their passion resonates with you.
And for business people, a sense of shared
enthusiasm is a prerequisite to collaboration. It’s
how they know that we are all on the same team
and headed in the right direction. Without it, they
don’t trust us. And without trust, we have little
hope of working together effectively.
