Bob Rosner, author, "Working Wounded" & creator of the award-winning Web site of the same name.

Bowen:    Bob, I enjoyed tapping into your web site the other evening and just to describe this for all of us. The web site starts with a road sign, Working Wounded, and we watch the bullet holes appear in the sign and then slowly we see it list to the right. And that's our doorway into your web site. And I assume that basically, it represents people getting shot full of holes just trying to survive in the daily world. But tell us about it.

Rosner:    Well, when I had to sum up what I felt most workers were experiencing at work, I couldn't think of anything better than a good old-fashioned Men at Work sign full of buckshot. That's how a lot of people respond to the workplace. Although the times are relatively prosperous, at least if you believe government statistics and Wall Street, most people seem totally miserable at work. And I find that totally ironic. So I wanted to create Working Wounded as a place that people could come to both learn and laugh about how to deal with today's workplace.

Bowen:    And laughter is certainly important. But the point that you make about all of the numbers and all of the hype in terms of the economy is a wonderful point, because the question is why is everyone so miserable if they are given the good news?

Rosner:    Well, a friend of mine made a mistake once in his marriage and he uttered the word divorce and, as he commented later, the marriage is never the same once you utter the D-word. And in much the same way, in the early 90s when basically anybody could get laid off, top executives, middle managers or the last person in the door, I think that workers remember that. And, although times are good now, everybody's wondering what happens if the economy takes a turn -- could I be next? And there are actually been studies by the Conference Board that found that 90-percent of the companies that they talked to said that their employees either had absolutely no job security or a lot less job security than they used to. So I think that although times are good now, a whole lot of people feel that there's a guillotine over their heads if anything changes and so therefore we're not having a lot of fun even though the times are relatively good.

Bowen:    So the anxiety exists around possible job. But I also know that there are other things that you are hearing and seeing in the workplace and hearing from your people who are writing into the chat box. Describe them.

Rosner:    Well, my favorite e-mail to kind of sum up the feeling that most people have about work was a guy who was working in his company on a Saturday morning. To begin with, he was kind of upset because he wasn't with his kid on a weekend. He was actually sitting at work. But then he looked out his window and he saw his boss pull into the parking lot. And the boss methodically went from car to car feeling the car hoods. Now, it wasn't good enough that people were at work on a Saturday. This boss wanted to know who was there first and who had been there for a while. And that sort of mania that we have about the workplace is I think the root of a lot of problems. These days it's a question of how many hours are you going to throw at work. Will you come in Saturdays? Are you coming in evenings? Are you taking work home? Work has become way too intense and the expectation level off work I think has gotten way too high. Beyond that, a bunch of years ago I dated a woman cop and back then, 15 years ago, I noted that almost all of her friends were cops. But most of my friends were all kinds of different people. I had a really varied group of friends. These days look at yourself, look at your friends. What I tend to note is like we're those old cops of old. Most of us, all of our emotional relationships come off our work. All of our identity issues come off of our work, our sense of self worth. We put so many eggs in our workplace basket so is it any wonder when we get upset when they get scrambled?

Bowen:    In your book, "Working Wounded," you indicate to your readers that you are going to provide advice that adds insight to their injury. Share with us some of those insights.

Rosner:    Someone called me that Martha Stewart of the under-employed. And I kind of feel like the emergency room physician trying to patch people up also trying to bring people together and create a dialogue so people can come up with their own solutions. Let me give you an example of an e-mail that I recently received. An employee complained because his boss knew nothing about technology and he was always having to take time to explain to the boss how things work. And one day, his boss got a brand new computer with a CD player and all the bells and whistles, speakers, you know, the whole nine yards. And the boss called the employee in like two days later, and he said, "I've got a little problem here. Can help me. My computer's retractable coffee cup holder is broken." Basically, he was using his CD player to hold his coffee cup. Now, are the odds that your boss is occasionally going to say something stupid to you pretty good? You bet. Are your co-workers going to get in the way? Are they going to hassle you? It's almost a guarantee. You've got to learn to have some level of perspective, some ability to retain your sense of humor. As I like to say, the key is you've got to learn how to do your job, not be your job. Let me give you the philosophy I that I have in terms of how you do that. Do you remember that story about the kid in a room full of manure? He keeps digging and somebody says to him, "What are you doing?" And he says, "With all of this manure, there must be a pony in there somewhere." Using that story as an example, what I've found in the workplace is often times, people who you're having troubles with, your boss, other co-workers, usually there's some information that you maybe don't know. There's some history that you don't know. There's some pressure on them that you don't know. And rather than responding in anger and biting back at them, can you take a deep breath and try either to put yourself in their place or try to draw them out to find some more information. Now if your boss is chewing off your ear, it's not always easy to do. But what I've found is that anger can kick in when you get annoyed with someone and the easiest way to diffuse your own annoyance is to find out some more information and to better understand why they are laying this particular trip on you. So that would be one of my core principles. So even when you're knee-deep in manure, keep digging, figuring that you'll eventually find that pony.

Bowen:    What other kinds of situations are you hearing from your readers about workplace issues?

Rosner:    Well, I think that thing that's most interesting to me, and in the context in your program, the military term "friendly fire" is a perfect fit. Because I think that in a perfect world most of the problems that we would have would come from external enemies, i.e. competitors to their business. But in point of fact, most of the flack that I hear people taking is form their co-workers, people supposedly on their side, or even worse, they're taking flack because of their own bone-headedness, their own stubbornness, their own stupid mistakes. And so the thing that I try to focus on with Working Wounded is to try to get people ammunition, tools, perspective, a sense of humor so they can deal with the flack that they take in the workplace. Now the big question that I always get asked is, you know, "The people in my workplace drive me crazy. What can I do?" And, I hate to tell you, but the number one thing that you can do is walk your own political talk and not stab people in the back and not brown-nose and not do all the things that drive you crazy. The ability to be a role model for the behavior that you think people should be exhibiting in the workplace is a really important one. And my Uncle Frank summed it up better than I ever could. He said, "You know your friends, because they're the ones who stab you in the front." And I really think that is necessary in the workplace. For us to get out of that underground economy of gossip and all the game-playing and just try to be as straight as we can in our interactions with people.

Bowen:    You know, managers are no less vulnerable to changes in the workplace. What sort of insight do you have around the shots that they take?

Rosner:    Well, I think middle managers have one of the worst jobs in the world because they're getting bit from both directions and there's a whole lot less of them. I think that middle managers have to really think of themselves as having two constituencies, pleasing their boss and keeping some level of contact with their employees. And it's a miserable job, but I think that you just start focusing in one direction or the other, you set yourself up for a really bad fall. The other thing about managers is similar to the old canaries in mines. That middle managers often times hear about stuff early on and they're frustrating and it's difficult for them to get the senior managers to take the issue seriously. So learning how to package your concerns and also to offer constructive solutions is really a difficult job these days. And I really respect the middle managers who try to take that job on.

One of the big buzzwords that we always hear today is that I want employees who think out of the box. How many times have you heard that said in your company? And I had a little experience with my daughter that gave me some great insight. My daughter on Halloween came to us and she wanted to be a mermaid with wings. Now, initially, my wife and I thought that was fabulous. Then we realized that you can't go to the local K-Mart and buy a costume that's a mermaid with wings so we stayed up night after night making her this elaborate costume. But suddenly I realized that there's a metaphor there for employees thinking out of the box. We all want employees thinking out of the box, but how many managers are willing to put the extra energy into these employees like my daughter who wanted her costume out of the box? How many times are we willing to roll up our shirtsleeves and give these employees the extra energy, the extra commitment, the extra time that they often need? We want employees who are creative, dramatic, will bring these great ideas. But then we want these employees who in reality who are passive and sit in the corner and are invisible and don't require a lot more work. And so I think as manager, as owners, we need to get a better grip on both the up side and the down side of employees who think outside of the box. And I think that some level of anger and frustration is based on the fact that companies say they want one thing but they're only really willing to support another thing.

Bowen:    So, a combination of mixed messages and also being frustrated in doing exactly what the organization would like them to do. Is that what you're saying'?

Rosner:    Exactly. And I think of a company as basically very simple terms. Take a box, a building, and throw in some employees. Now, depending on how cynical you are, you would say some are arbitrarily made managers and bosses. If you're not, you'll say other people have earned some level of responsibility. But any way you cut it, there's a differing pecking order in terms of the group of employees. Then throw in money, throw in pride, throw in ego, and sit back and watch the dysfunction begin. And I think that the workplace to me is fascinating because you try to pull all these people together. You have a lot riding on it in terms of money and pride and people start tripping over each other. People start getting in other's way. Sometimes even sabotage takes place. It's amazing the full range of human possibilities, both good and bad, that you start to see. And I think far too many people in the business book world, columnists, people who look at business, try to constantly oversimplify workplace and make it simple black and white. And to me the beauty of the workplace is all those shades of gray. We all struggle to try to deal with our varying agendas. So I think that part of the problem is we try to make the workplace real simple and neat, and any time you get more than three people together it's the furthest thing from being simple and neat. Especially when you get a couple thousand people. So I think we fail to appreciate the complexity of the workplace.

Bowen:    Along those lines, you offered some suggestions in terms of how people might cope and how they might manage anger. What are some of the things you are seeing on the part of people who are coming up with other solutions?

Rosner:    Well the first thing that I see when I look at the workplace on issues of about anger is denial with a capital "D". I got an e-mail just a couple of days ago from an employee who said that she worked in a job and one of her employees threatened to kill her and another worker and the boss just blew it off, "Oh, well boys will be boys" kind of thing. And I think that the number one thing we have to take seriously is it's one thing to say you're upset at somebody. When anybody at any workplace says they want to kill you or they want to hurt you. You know, managers at that point need to get involved and need to really sit down and introduce a zero-tolerance policy for that level of abuse, that level of disrespect. So I think number one is, when you start seeing those signs, you have to hop on it, you have to deal with it, you have to get in a dialogue with people. And this notion that, you know, let them blow off a little steam. Hey, that is not blowing off steam. That is a direct threat and it needs to be taken very seriously.

Bowen:    Are you seeing any other kinds of solutions that employees are applying to their work situations in order to be able cope, to survive?

Rosner:    I think that you have to look at anger in the workplace on at least two levels, and maybe a whole lot more. But I think there's the postal shootings, the lottery office shooting, when people just become unhinged and literally there's homicides. I also think there's a lot of steps that lead up to that level of violence. There's disrespect, there's sexual harassment, there are all kinds of ways that we get in the way, hassle, bother and actually abuse other people. And so I think that just like New York city has found in terms of its police force that a really good strategy to make the streets safer from murder and serious crimes is to worry about those vandalized cars and the simple crimes that begin that downward slide to lawlessness. And I think that in the workplace we can learn a lot from those recent lessons that police departments have learned by getting on top of the little early shows of disrespect. The power plays, the bad stuff that we see in the workplace. And I think if we can create a company where employees understand their rights, but also understand their responsibility in dealing with other people, we can nip some level of these problems in the bud. But I think that word that keeps popping up in my mind is that denial word, starts popping up. We don't worry about problems early on, we don't try to catch them. We don't see anger as a continuum. We wait until it blows up, and then we sort of wonder how all these crazy people came to work for us. I think you have to start nipping problems in the bud. You also have to watch this kind of slash and burn. Out here in the northwest, Microsoft, you know, for a bunch of nerds, these guys I think are really trying to get back at all those guys who kicked sand in their face all those years. And the culture is totally macho, departments get cut off right and left. It's really run on a really huge level of testosterone. And I think that when we run our companies in a really macho way, it's like trying to tell a kid "hitting you're brother isn't a good idea." So you then you spank them. You know, you're really teaching them that you deal with violence by violence. I think companies really need to reconsider how hard core, how ready-fire-aim they are with their employees. Because when the employees' tension level starts to rise, the employees will respond in kind. And so again, I don't want to get too touchy-feely. But I do think companies need to a much better job of understanding where their employees are at, and also hopping on those problems very, very early on.

Bowen:    So what kind of mindset do employees need to have when they go to work?

Rosner:    Well I remember when I was a little kid, walking down the street with my father when we'd go to a big city. And he would give me this crime safety lecture. You have to keep your head looking in every direction. You have to be conscious of alleyways and things people can hide behind. And as much as we like to think of our workplace as this safe place where we can let our hair down and forget all of those things. In point of fact, you have to be as conscious of your workplace as a place that suddenly could have a serious problem take place in, as any other place you that you'd be in your day. And just as if on plane, the experts always say, understand how many rows back is the exit and exactly where you're situated. Sit at your desk sometime and figure out where the exits are. Figure out if something serious went on, what you could do to deal with the workplace. Now, again, I'm not trying to ruin your day, and I'm not trying to introduce bad information. The bottom line is be prepared. Workplaces can to be dangerous. And you really are always in a stronger position when you have a plan in mind. So think about what might happen in the workplace and develop a constituency plan and then don't worry about it. You know, keep it in mind, but then move on. Because then if something would happen, you'd have a plan. It's people who live in this idealized workplace who are totally shocked when anything goes wrong that I think are potentially a real problem.

Bowen:    What would you say are the underlying causes are behind anger in the workplace?

Rosner:    I think that no one would argue with me that the workplace today is blown way out of proportion in terms of the amount of effort and energy and psychic thoughts that it occupies in all of our lives. Anything that is that paramount in terms of dictating who our friends are, what level of income we have, what our relationships are, what our pride is about, potentially has the problem to also bite us in the butt in terms of things like anger spilling out. When you've got two people who have a lot at stake on a specific project, it shouldn't be a surprise to you that that could potentially literally blow up in both of their faces. So, number one, I think we really have to focus on how ridiculously seriously we take our workplace and how much of our personal identification flows from it. Number two, I think we to deal with the denial word, and we have to really deal with problems. People have problems. People bring those problems to the workplace. And denying that problems exist, that things will come up, potentially puts everybody at risk. So issue number two would be deal with your own personal denial. If you get an inkling that there's a potentially violent situation, if you're a boss, deal with it; if you're an employee, go to human resources, go to someone you trust above you in the chain of command and bring it to their attention. Pushing things in a pile to be forgotten is very risky as we've seen by the fact that homicide is one of the leading causes of death in the workplace. On a more cheery note, I think we all have to try to not check our sense of human our sense of perspective at the door when we go to work. And the most valuable thing we can bring to work is a willingness to learn. You know, maybe that idiot who's driving you crazy has one good idea in him. And by totally tuning him out and getting angry at him, you could be losing a fabulous idea. Trying to convince yourself to have some level of perspective to draw people out, to understand where they're coming from, can not only be life-enhancing but it could actually be career-enhancing in terms of what you could get out of it.

Bowen:    So why is it that people do invest themselves as much as they do, put all their eggs in one basket so to speak, at the expense of the rest of their life?

Rosner:    Well, part of it is in the layoff streak earlier in the decade, corporations have moved a lot of people out the door. There are fewer people to do more work. So I think that we're all running a lot faster to try to stay on top of our jobs. At the same time, there are companies that try to exploit their workers by getting more work out of them by holding that layoff threat over their heads. So I think that more workers have more work. There's more pressure to do even more.

Bowen:    Yeah. People being pushed out the door, and so those of us who are left have an inordinate amount of work to do.

Rosner:    A couple of weeks ago, I went to visit a friend at her office, and it was hilarious because it was this huge office and there were these desks kind of spottily located around the room. And I asked her why they had so much space. And she said, "Well, when I started here ten years ago, this room was full of desks, but through a variety of layoffs, things have kind of cleared out a bit." And I think that that results in two things. Number one, the employees who remain tend to have the same amount of work to do, so everyone's working a lot harder. Number two, people when they get that layoff word planted in their heads, they get worried. They wonder if they could be next. So everybody's working harder, a, because there's more work to do, and, b, because they want to keep that job if something goes wrong. So I think that people bring a lot of intensity to work. Companies encourage that kind of intensity. They like that extra work that they're getting out of their people. But they also don't realize that in that environment, people can lose any ability to have any level of perspective about how they do their jobs. And in an anger environment, that can create everything from arguments to fist fights to even bigger problems. So, I remember when I was a kid, we used to take a magnifying glass and hold it in the sun and burn paper and things. And I sort of feel that that is what the workplace has come down to. The light is like at the bottom of that magnifying glass. It's so intense it can just burn through anything. And that's the workplace. Now you throw into this our liveliness depending on it, our ego is depending on it. Since we're spending so much less time outside of our work, our friendships, a variety of other ego needs are coming from our workplace. It's just created this kind of hothouse effect. And I don't think it's to anybody's benefit that we put so much and derive so much from our jobs.

Bowen:    So taking responsibility for yourself and taking your life back under your control is actually an effective way of managing fear, uncertainty and anger in these otherwise difficult times.

Rosner:    Yeah. There's a great book out there called "We're All Self-Employed." And I think these days even if you work for a corporation; you kind of have to have eyes in the back of your head, looking out for your own self. You have to try to push your jobs a little further. You have to except new responsibility. You have to be conscious of environmental pressures. I have one friend that got laid off from a big bank. And she called me up and she was shocked and surprised that her bank merged. And I just had to say to her, to be honest, where were you six months ago when the laws changed that allowed out of state banking in your state? You should have seen the writing an the wall that your bank was a take-over target, and you should have been out there with your resume networking early on in the process. So I think all of us need our own early warning system to be survivors in today's workplace. We can't just rely on the company to take care of us and for things to work out. We need to be aggressively out there anticipating problems, dealing with problems early, and then keeping our sense of humor if we have to hang out for a while until a new job materializes. It's just what the times require.

Bowen:    Certainly the concept of viewing ourselves as being self-employed is a worthy concept particularly during these times. But aren't companies losing out in some respect by having such disengagement, such self-centeredness if you will. And the other side to that is, don't they have a responsibility to provide more for their employees?

Rosner:    Well there is a classic letter that I saw a number of years ago where an employee asked his employer, "You had my body for 17 years, for hardly any extra effort, you could have also gotten my mind." And I think that that idea does get raised in a lot of the letters to me, you know, you treat me as though I was a disposable entity. Why don't you engage me and form a partnership with me to do this job? We'd all be better off. I think that I'm going to leave it to social philosophers and university professors to debate the relative merits of an engaged management and whose fault it is and all of that. I'm just going to simply say that times have changed. Loyalty is by and large a notion for previous decades in the workplace. In the '90s, loyalty is a day by day or week by week thing. It's not something that you can go to the bank on. I'm not going to say that it's good or bad. I'm simply going to say it is. And I that it is time for all of us to orient to a workplace which has less permanence, which has relationships that are more transitory, which has a much more profound upside, but it also has a huge downside. The bottom line is, smell the coffee and adjust to today's rules and make the best out of it.

Bowen:    So, Bob, who are the Working Wounded?

Rosner:    Well, I do a lot of public speaking, and when I get into groups, I say basically, has anyone been wounded at work recently? And I'll be darned if every hand doesn't go up in the room. I find it rare to find people who don't feel that they are wounded at work. I am continuously surprised at how this little name I came up with one day brainstorming has resonated with people in almost every workplace I have ever seen. I should also say that I am one of the working wounded. I have been fired. I have had to fire people in my company for embezzlement. I've seen the range of workplace situations. I've been abused by co-workers, bosses, customers. So I think that I can really appreciate the situation of being wounded at work because I have taken more than my shots in the course of my career. And most people I know have.

Bowen:    And yet what you point out is that if one locks into a mindset of being victim, it can be a pretty pessimistic situation. So what's the alternative?

Rosner:    Well, the alternative is to learn how to dodge and deflect the workplace flak. The term that I always used, is the issue is not to try to whine about your wounds, it's to try to rise above your wounds. We all take shots at work. That's the bottom line. Some literally, others it's more subtle. But everybody's going to catch flak at work. The key issue is how much of it can you dodge? How much of it can you deflect? How much energy, humor, can you bring to your job so you have the energy to continue to dodge and deflect? You know, too many people seem to have the mindset that maybe would have worked in the 50s where being invisible would somehow career-enhancing. And for most people, work has got to be a very active process, with you constantly out there working. There's a great Will Rogers quote that I'd like to borrow here: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you sit on it." Work has to be a very active process. And if you think that things will happen by closing your eyes, by denying, by sifting in the corner. In today's workplace, it just ain't going to happen. You've got to get out there. You've got to be an active participant, and you're going to take some flak because of that. Well, face it. The workplace is a contact game. It's a contact sport. You're going to take shots. If you're going to do anything in today's workplace, you're going to attract a certain level of heat. You've just have to come to terms with that. I still think that I am basically an optimist about work. I think that a lot of companies have pulled together and done some really wonderful things.