Nature vs Nurture in the Workplace - Vol 1

By Jane Roberts

When in the workplace, we often wonder how employees behave the way they do and question the influence of their behaviors. We see people of the same generation behave in certain ways, and we often dub their behaviors of that generation, but how much of those behaviors are nature versus nurture? “The expression “nature vs. nurture” describes the question of how much a person's characteristics are formed by either “nature” or “nurture.” “Nature” means innate biological factors (namely genetics), while “nurture” can refer to upbringing or life experience more generally” (Psychology Today). People will say, “I’m this way because of my mother, father, family, etc. to talk about their personality traits, physical characteristics and other born features. We build ourselves in youth to rely on natural-born traits and behaviors as they help people have a framework for their ethics, work habits and conversational habits.

• Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors.

• Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception e.g., the product of exposure, life experiences and learning on an individual.

Breaking the Narrative

While we generally think that each generation has prescribed characteristics, we often box them into certain parameters and don’t allow for different behaviors to manifest.

How much of those behaviors are actually nature versus nurture? 

Working through that process is difficult. Personally, I fall into the Millennial generation, but I don’t have the same experiences of my peers born during those years. I grew up in a household that didn’t spend discretionary income on things like video games, cable or other unnecessary experiences. My parents, one technically a “Traditionalist” and the other a “Baby Boomer,” behaved more like Traditionalists as their parents were born in the “Greatest Generation” (1901-1927).

I grew up with a parenting style of working hard, standing up for what is right and essentially “flying under the radar.” My siblings and I were raised to work hard at school and given the opportunities to play sports and have after-school activities as long as they didn’t interfere with our studies. TV screen time was limited and often was educational when we watched. There was also a “Baby Boomer” style of pushing for a college education because that wasn’t always available to their generations.

While my rearing was different, I am often grouped into a category of laziness, entitlement, unreliable, selfish and uninspired as a Millennial. I sometimes take great offense to being grouped into those behaviors since I have always worked hard for the things I’ve achieved in life. While I recognize my own shortcomings, I realize they are more from a “nature” side of things. There are certain traits I have and must work hard to combat to stay on track and be successful.

Working Through Nature Versus Nature

How do managers and leaders work through these generational and natural tendencies to gain the best outcome in the workplace?

While managing my own employees, many of them older than I, I find myself spending time trying to understand the personalities and work ethic of each employee so I may understand the best ways to communicate and coach them. There are some problems I have faced in the past. One employee in particular caused me much frustration, and no matter how I managed them, I wasn’t successful. Technically a baby boomer, my employee had been talking about retirement for nearly a year, which was great for me. It meant I would be able to announce their retirement, hire a new employee and have my retiring employee train the new hire. It was the perfect setting and something I try to arrange so my employees and customers don’t feel the strain of being understaffed. I bet you believe this situation was met with my expected outcome. Unfortunately, the outcome didn’t go as expected.

As we continued the path to their retirement, I had conversations surrounding succession planning. I asked the employee to go through their documents to clean up instructions and purge anything that was no longer needed. They informed me that they would be working on that as they neared their retirement date. Being the type of manager who wants to remain as transparent as possible, I gently had conversations with them about their expected retirement date.

At first, I received a date that gave me plenty of time and planning to hire their replacement. I informed my employee that to move forward, we would need their letter of intent to retire, and they informed me they would let me know as they worked on securing a definitive date. That soon turned into the “by the end of the year,” and I again reiterated our need for the letter and that I would love to have three months’ notice to post the job, hire and have them train their replacement. I preface this by saying that many of our previous retirees went through this same process and had become a common practice for our team.

As the months ran on, I wondered if my employee was working behind the scenes to purposefully leave me hanging. I believed I had done all the right things, given the information to them so that they understood the impact of their retirement on the team. My employee gave me only one month’s notice and left our team in a position that caused us to be short-staffed.

Outcome

As I went through this process, I found myself frustrated, annoyed and having a feeling of failure for the rest of my team. As I worked through things and had more conversations, I began to realize I may have been working against a veritable nature versus nurture situation. To no avail, my nurturing tactics as a leader didn’t work in this situation. I was dealing with someone who grew up in an environment of keeping things close to the vest because their previous employers didn’t take care of the employee, and they felt no loyalty or need to give more than a requisite amount of “socially acceptable” notice. It occurred to me that there was a certain amount of previous work experience mixed into the nature versus nurture for those who had previous years of work experience.

In hindsight, I still feel the little sting of failure in this scenario. Not so much for my retired employee, but for the remaining employees who were left holding up the team, doubling their work efforts and learning new tasks without proper training time. While this was a learning experience for me, I was able to hire temporary employees to support the team as we navigated this new way of work-life until our new person was hired and trained.   

Reference: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/nature-vs-nurture

JANE ROBERTS is a manager on the Administrative Support Team at ESL Federal Credit Union, and is currently an Ed. D. doctoral student. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from Lake Erie College, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in German. She works at a financial institution and has been a manager for eight years. She’s been involved in many projects and improvement processes and has found a passion for implementing strong coaching practices in her work. She’s an avid traveler, photographer and outdoor enthusiast.

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Keep an eye out for our next issue on April 1st, with more articles related to workplace coaching. Sneak peek at the titles and contributors:

• Beyond Management: How Top Sales Leaders Drive Real Results by Mike Carroll

• Nature vs. Nurture Vol 2 by Jane Roberts

• How a Chief of Staff Drives Strategic Leaders in the Executive Suite by Anne Marie Otanez

The Workplace Coaching Times is a free publication created by Tim Hagen from Progress Coaching. See a list of previous issues here: