Picture this: on your first day in a new role, feeling a bit intimidated, you made a joke to ease the tension. It went down well – the whole team burst into laughter.
You started to get a reputation as the ‘funny one,’ the ‘joker.’ Feeling that this made you likeable and relatable, you played up to the identity. Although you were fairly serious at home, ‘work Chris’ was fun, lively, and always messing around. Even when you felt serious, you pushed yourself to crack a joke or lighten the mood – that was ‘work Chris,’ after all.
But with this identity came another perception you didn’t intend – that you didn’t really take the job seriously. That you were more likely to mess around than to buckle down with some serious work, even though you did work hard and were objectively effective.
Then one day, there’s a new project on the table for the team, and the higher-ups are looking for someone to lead it. You know it will put you in a strong position for promotion in the next 18 months, so you throw your hat into the ring alongside one other colleague. You really want it.
But when it comes to it, you’re undermined by your label as the joker.
“Chris doesn’t have the temperament for this role,” your colleagues say. “He doesn’t take the work seriously and lacks the focus and authority necessary to make the project a success.”
When the project lead is announced, you’re bummed, but make light of it, making a self-deprecating joke to divert attention from you. After all, you don’t want to look like a sore loser, and everyone knew you were the other candidate for the role. Their perception is that you never really wanted it.
And when the promotion comes up a year later, you aren’t even considered. “Chris is a funny guy, but he’s not C-suite material. He’s great comic value, good for morale, but not a serious candidate.”
By now, you’ve gone so far down the road of ‘work Chris’ – the joker – that to go back now would feel awkward and wrong. You’re stuck, not only in your formal role as a solid player in the senior team with limited potential for advancement; but also in your informal role as the joker whose main ambition is to have fun and entertain, not progress professionally.
Your options: stay and try to fight against both the roles that have been assigned to you (and that you have to some extent chosen); or leave.
Through the lens of valency
When Chris was younger, his parents argued a fair amount. In his distress, he would do silly things to get their attention and make them laugh, interrupting the conflict. At school, he managed his anxiety about not being included or liked by being the class clown. At university, he did the same, and this persona became his default. It wasn’t an intrinsic quality, but a manufactured one in response to circumstance.
What did this mean for Chris when he entered the workforce? He had a valency to be jokey to defend against anxiety. He gave the team subtle signals that he should be cast in the informal role as the joker. Because it felt familiar (even if he didn’t like it), he allowed it to happen.
Wilfred Bion, who coined the concept of valency, defined it as “the capacity of the individual for instantaneous combination with other individuals in an established pattern of behaviour.”
In simpler terms, valency describes our tendency to internalise, collude with, and respond to other people’s understanding of us. It’s our habit to occupy a similar informal role repeatedly in groups.
Valency is powerful. In one direction, it’s our self-perception (built through our experiences) seeking a way of relating to others that’s familiar and habitual. And in the other, it’s the group (in this case, our work team) pulling us into the role because it serves some purpose for them – or the wider organisation. This informal ‘role suction’ is difficult to identify, especially if we’re part of the dynamic. And it’s often detrimental to both individual and team performance.
For example: Maybe there’s a difficult decision to be made, but people are nervous about the consequences. They’re looking for a way out of the necessary difficult conversations and conflict; so subconsciously pressure you to take the team out of ‘workgroup’ mentality (focused on the task) and into ‘avoidant’ mentality – deflecting the challenge by using humour.
“Uncertainty doesn’t have to paralyze any of us… We all can become adept at managing uncertainty and empower ourselves to step confidently into the unknown and seize the opportunity it presents.”
Harvard Business Review
Your valency also means you can become a mouthpiece for the group. If there’s an uncomfortable undercurrent in the room, you might feel compelled to voice it. And you’ll be given accountability for the sentiment, even though it was a shared one. The outcome is that you’re not only not in full control of your contribution – but you’re also being mobilised by the team to work against the task. And you’re likely to suffer the fallout.
What’s the solution?
Valency can’t be eliminated from the workplace; it’s inextricably tied to the way we relate, our personalities. But we can stop our valencies getting in the way of our productivity – and our ability to lead others. Here are some practical steps, for both yourself as an individual, and in your role as a team leader.
For you as an individual:
- Understand your own valencies.
- Be aware of role suction.
- Be proactive in defining your identity and modus operandi at work.
- Ask yourself what purpose you might be serving for the group (or the wider organisation). Is it a functional informal role that will improve performance? Or a dysfunctional one that might hinder performance?
As a team leader:
- Commit to leadership coaching and/or supervision so you can separate your ‘stuff’ from the team’s ‘stuff’. This allows you to see the dynamics from a bird’s eye view, rather than getting pulled into them – and being subject to them.
- Set aside structured reflective time, both for yourself as an individual and for the team as a group. For example, spend 10 minutes at the end of every meeting talking about how the team is ‘teaming.’ Work on the team as well as in it.
- Help people define their formal roles and recognise their informal roles. Look at team performance as a function of the team, not just as a collection of individuals (remember the sum is greater than the parts).
- Take a coaching approach to leadership. When you see people being pulled into unhelpful informal roles, don’t just reinforce them. Give the person the opportunity to take a step back and regain control over their contribution.