Lower the Stakes

The Wizard of Grad School said something profound that has stuck with me for most of a week through all kinds of situations: she said that to get the best results from employees, listen to them and lower the stakes.

I'm an academic, and am constantly being asked "What are the stakes?" whenever I propose a paper or book. It's necessary in some ways, to fit my work into the larger cultural conversations, to make my writing aware that it does not exist in a vacuum. Stakes become more ethically problematic when I'm under pressure to explain them to a non-academic, who is not only critical of my work but of my entire field - a pressure I never escape, even in my own head. And so I need to raise the stakes, because what's tacitly at stake in all of my scholarship is everything I love about the world.

I'm also a fiction writer, and if you want people to get excited about the action in your books, you have to raise the stakes. Sometimes, this results in "stake inflation" (see Doctor Who, a television show in which not only is Earth constantly at risk, but the entire Universe has been destroyed and rebooted. Twice. TVtropes.org calls it "Serial Escalation"), but if you and your readers have a sense of subtlety, you can convince them that losing dignity or face is a bigger deal than losing the galaxy. They'll feel it more, too. The universe is vast, yes, but humans don't feel it the same way the Doctor does. We feel microscopically.

With anxiety, sometimes losing dignity is worse than dying. Sometimes losing your job is worse than dying. So why do they even have to be on the table? Sometimes, it really does have to be on the table, but these days, stress is handed out like party favors. Employers and managers inflate the stakes because either they mistakenly think that a scared employee is a controlled employee, or because they are fighting to justify their own work, or because they feel powerless. A scared employee is a wild card.

So maybe you want to get a little competitive. It works for certain environments and personalities. It does not work with anxiety. If you want an anxious person to improve their workplace performance, listen to them, and lower the stakes on constructive criticism. Find out what they're up against and clear the road for them, or if you're talking to a problem-solver, let that person work out their own solution. Micro-managing is just going to get you stuck in somebody else's web. Don't be that fly.

Pretend I'm a vampire, and lower the stakes.

 

I've realized that if the people around me insist on trying to raise the stakes, I can always lower them by putting the scenario into a bigger perspective, and using their threats to alter my values. I will not be squashed by fear. Nothing is so big, no lie so slanderous, and no mistake so terrible that it can fundamentally alter the things that matter most, like my worth as a person, my private character, and my eternal relationships. Popularity waxes and wanes. A job is just a job. A career is just a career. Money is just money, and life will come and go as it will. The knots in my stomach and the time I spend in tears over them are wasted.

People matter.