Waiting to Exhale: How the ”Hustle” Mentality Can Destroy Employee Experience

We’ve all heard the phrases.

“The early bird gets the worm.”

“Go hard or go home.”

“If you work hard enough, for long enough, you’ll get what you want.”

Even the incomparable Jay-Z said, “I’m a hustla. I’m a, I’m a hustla, homie,” and we all sang along.

We are inundated with the message that working harder and longer until we’re exhausted is the only way to claim the American dream. It framed employee experience in terrifying ways. Because if you do anything less … well, I’m sure you could guess the narrative.

But has it really been to our benefit? How many ever get to enjoy that ultimate happiness by retirement? And why is no one really talking about this?

Well, because it goes against the status quo. Let’s talk about it.

Birth of the Type A Personality – The “Perfect” Employee Experience

Yes, I wrote “perfect” employee experience instead of “perfect” employee because the person, except in certain defined situations we’ll discuss later, is irrelevant to the experience an organization has from the said employee.

Wait, that’s not what employee experience means!

Ah, you caught that too. We’re also talking about two different employee experiences here:

1. Employees’ experience – the employee’s experience with the organization across touchpoints, which positive employee experiences are the key to success for any company.
2. Employer’s employee experience –s the employer’s experience with the employee.

Clarification is needed in understanding that the Hustler mentality was developed to improve the employer’s employee experience but had dramatic consequences on the employees’ experience. And it also is an explanation for gaps in employee experience.

First, a bit of explanation on the Type-A personality—aka the Hustler. ?We should say more aptly that there is a personality continuum where Type-A and Type-B would be on the extreme ends. This idea was coined by two cardiologists—Meyer Friedman and R. H. Rosenman—in 1976 to define personality types who run a higher risk of heart disease and high blood pressure than Type-B.

In recent years, it is now conceptualized as a set of behavioral patterns collectively known as Type-A or Type-A behavior Pattern (TABP). So, when we see TABP, we read Hustler’s mentality.

TABP individuals are highly self-critical and competitive and have the greatest happiness upon setting and accomplishing goals. TABPs are identified by a significant life imbalance with high work involvement, are easily “aggravated” or considered “high-strung” at times, tend to overreact, and have elevated levels of suffering from high blood pressure.

Bummer.

But that’s, unfortunately, not all.

There is also a sense of time urgency and impatience. There is an invisible struggle this type of personality has against the clock they set themselves. You’ll recognize this person easily in the crowd. They will do more than one thing at a time, maintain the schedule, rally everyone around them, and can be a strict “mother hen” to the group.

It’s also important to note that hostility is part of the TABP individuals’ group. If someone cannot express these negative emotions in more positive ways—as it’s considered TABP have higher levels of hostility or aggression overall—it can show up as bullying or abuse. Higher levels of hostility with TABP are a better indicator of heart disease here. ?

A Look at TABPs Employee Experience

Now, a confession. I am a TABP.

But you probably guessed that. Recently, in work and life, I’ve realized how much my personality is tied to what success looks like to me and my innate drive for more.

On paper, this is how I look:

• Marketing writer and Email Champion
• International and bestselling author of nearly 100 distinct works over my career
• A regular panelist on character design and development
• Fantasy map cartographer and designer
• Cover designer
• MBA graduate
• Service dog, pup-in-training, and snake mama (because this is important!)
• Human mom (because that’s more important!)
• Gamer, content creator, and steamer
• …..I’m going to stop listing now because even I’m getting uncomfortable here.

And I did this all before I turned 35. ?

If you ask me, it’s not enough. I haven’t gained what I want because society has always taught me to want to be better. To be “perfect”. So, I do more, always more, at work, at home, and for everyone.

Mostly I forget about myself.

I told a bit of my story here to illustrate how TABP individuals are great employees. We do everything, take on more at work, and are high performers. Consistently. We are more productive and engaged at work, which is the desire of any organization. On paper, we have developed a personality that organizations covet as the prime candidate to hire and focus professional development on when possible.

But we are also victims of quiet promoting. We are facing unimaginable levels of burnout, and TABPs are quiet quitting and a large part of The Great Resignation. All because while we are providing excellent employee experience for our employers, we find our employee satisfaction and morale failing under the weight of our expectations. Often, mental health awareness and support in employee well-being aren’t always a focus for high performers. Why would they need any help??

Because our employee experience matters too, especially if you want to retain such amazing assets in your organization.

The Minority Report

Not to be confused with the movie, even if it was cool, but here we’re talking about BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA+, and other protected classes. Remember how I said we’d get into different defined situations where the person is relevant to employee experience?

Here’s where we get to another dark aspect of an employer’s employee experience being better than the employee’s experience. But I want you to remember these are added stressors particular to these groups on top of the drive to be good hustlers.

BIPOC

Many minorities in the work world face impossible ceilings attached to their race. BIPOC workers experienced increased racial discrimination, job loss, and financial hardship three times the rate of their white counterparts in 2021 alone.

Let that sink in.

Beyond driving the Hustler mentality always to work harder and more, to produce at high levels to be “good” at their job, BIPOC workers have the added fight of battling racial stigma. Another confession, I’m also a BIPOC worker, and I’ve been taught the adage, “You have to work twice as hard as them to get half.”

We already know who “they” were in the context. Culturally, societally, and professionally BIPOC people will be pitted against The Great White Hope.

While I’ll speak about the broader gender inequality in the next section, I’ll note that being a Black woman also adds another nuance filled with microaggressions and stereotypes. If I’m passionate, I’m aggressive. When I’m thinking, I look angry and unapproachable. If I’m outgoing and engaged, I can be accused of shutting others out or not allowing others to speak.

It’s ancestral and transgenerational trauma for the BIPOC community that is continuously perpetuated.

Women

There is documented gender inequity regarding pay, hiring practices, and promotions for women at work. Professionally, there is even bias against women in industries filled with more male than female workers—law, education, healthcare, and faith-based non-profits.

The idea that women are still better suited to be in the home or can’t do what men can is still common. Don’t believe me? When wages were compared in 2020, women made 83 cents to every dollar earned by a man. Women of color received even less, averaging 64 cents to the dollar, and Hispanic women got 54 cents. Taking a step in another direction, most female-dominated jobs are also less likely to include the necessary benefits.

LGBTQIA+

Pervasive and accepted, discrimination against the LGBT community in the workplace has gained rising visibility. And yet, many LGBT employees still perform “covering” behaviors to avoid bias or being treated differently at work. As a note, 57% said most of their unfair treatment was motivated by religious beliefs.

Eight million workers in the United States identify as LGBT, and the workplace culture is a place where most of them face struggles. This is because jokes harmful to the LGBT community are normalized and acceptable in many environments.?

The Consequences of Productivity Connected to Performance in Employee Experience

As we’ve brought all the pieces together of the Hustler mentality and added stressors for workers, we can now look at the consequences of productivity connected to performance.

As I’ve pointed out. TABPs are highly self-critical and yet competitive with high work involvement. And we reward them by tying performance to productivity. It makes sense, right? From an operations standpoint, the more a company produces, the more profitable they are. The more profitable a business, the more successful. There is a simple, clean line between productivity and success.

Wrong!

Workers call for more flexibility and control over what they work on, whom they work for, and their time worked because. 60% of employees are stressed at work every day, and the drive to keep pushing productivity to mark performance leads to higher employee turnover.

Employers and employees are becoming more familiar with terms like:

• Quiet Quitting
• Burnout
• The Great Resignation
• Mental Health Crisis

Employee Experience as Human Experience

The best way to approach employee experience from the employee’s and the employer’s perspectives is to look at it as the human experience. People are not machines compiled of outputs and inputs—which go into the calculation for productivity, in case you were wondering.

Remember, your employees are assets to your business beyond the tangible profits they can be connected to. Their engagement in your organization can do wonderful things beyond the bottom line.

1. Employees as ambassadors – eNPS is more than just a powerful tool to measure your likeliness of not just retaining employees or as a signifier of employee satisfaction. It can also be used to amplify the ambassadors of your brand. Those voices can help you attract top talent, build a positive work culture, and help build your brand.
2. Employees as customers – often, employees utilize the product or services they work with when they believe in the business. They also have extended circles around them of potential customers they can bring in. Their experience with your company may be from the inside, but their experience should be as crucial as your consumers.
3. Employees as developers – your employees are the boots on the ground, so to speak, and have the closest view of how your customers interact with your organization. Because of this, employees hold a wealth of information and suggestions on improvements and ways to better serve the customers they deal with regularly.
4. Employees as growth material – promoting from within is a good way to upskill or cross-train employees to put them where you need them most and retain good talent. This is not to say that hiring from without isn’t a good practice to keep things fresh and innovative, but growing your own managers and supervisors can help cement a positive work culture.

While productivity is a valuable metric in measuring performance, using it as a primary driver can devastate employee retention. Look at the healthcare industry facing employee retention and staffing issues post-pandemic amid burnout. Or the credit union industry is fighting to attract newer, younger members as expectations change and using employee retention to do it.

The Hustler mentality has been with us for decades, and I’m not sure it will disappear any time soon. Hopefully, though, as new waves of the workforce calling for work-life balance and to get more out of life instead of work keep growing as trends show … We can see a time where the ideal employee’s experience is where an employee loves their job, they do it amazingly well, and employers appreciate them for it and enjoy their success. What a world it will be, eh?