Why is one person’s manageable job another’s stress nightmare? We look at the role of motivation and job fit as it relates to the recent resignation of Pfizer’s 55-year-old CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, due to too much stress. Wall Street Journal, CEO’s Stress Worried Pfizer In Part 1, we looked at the role of a specific personality tendency and how it relates to personal stress. Personality doesn’t tell the whole story when it comes to job stress. Another aspect related to stress is the type of challenge created by the context of the work versus individual motivation. Over time a mismatch creates fatigue and can lead to exhaustion. I think Frederick Herzberg, writing in the 1960’s, highlighted the importance of motivational alignment quite effectively. Paraphrasing his Motivation-Hygiene theory, Herzberg said that when the job environment matches motivation the situation is challenging. It is like being hooked up to a generator all day. At the end of the day a person goes home fatigued, but it is a happy fatigue. Alternatively when the job environment does not match motivation the situation is fatiguing. It is like being on battery power, discharging energy throughout the day. The person goes home fatigued in need of a recharge. In an update to 1960’s thinking, consider the battery to be a NiCad, losing capacity at each recharge, until at some point it simply refuses a charge. It isn’t much of a stretch to think that Kindler’s motivational NiCad hit a critical point and just wasn’t accepting … Continue reading →