Want a Bigger Paycheck ... Today? Consider Your Psychological Salary!

Is another company dangling a big paycheck in front of you? Are you tempted to leap after it and leave your current job behind?

Many people focus on money as the primary driver of their career decisions – even in the face of other factors that can contribute to job satisfaction. For example, surveys conducted by Career Systems International show that people repeatedly cite the following items as important factors in their decisions to stay in their current jobs:

·         Career growth, learning, and development

·         Being recognized, valued, respected

·         Having exciting, challenging, or meaningful work

·         Working with great co-workers or clients

·         Fun, enjoyable work environment

However, if you’re one of those people who would immediately jump ship from your current job if your magic dollar figure were offered, let me ask you this: Would you still accept that other offer if the following were true of your new workplace?

·         Movement within the company is discouraged

·         Training opportunities are limited

·         You do the same thing day in and day out

·         Your work is taken for granted – and so are you

·         A “reward” consists of the privilege to come back to work tomorrow

·         Your co-workers engage in backbiting, rumor-mongering, and bad-mouthing among themselves

·         You have little say in how you do your work

·         You work long hours under high stress in a deadly serious environment

If any or all of these factors were present, you might think twice about making the leap. Indeed, what you are doing is “factoring” each of these things into the overall value proposition. Viewed in this way, each of these factors carries a “psychological cost” that needs to be deducted from the salary in order to compute the true amount of the offer.

Now, let’s look at it from the perspective of the job you’re thinking of leaving. Even though your current paycheck might not meet your magic dollar figure, how is it being supplemented by the presence of other factors (such as those in the first list above) that provide a “psychological salary”? How could you quantify the benefit you’re receiving by working in a job where (say) you’re respected and valued, you have flexibility, your voice counts, and your work makes a real difference in others’ lives?

Everyone would probably assign a different psychological value to each of these factors. For example, some people might not mind the lack of variety or autonomy, whereas others might feel stifled.  The important thing, though, is to do the work of reflecting on each of these factors and compute its true worth to you.

You might conclude that you're really "making" more than you think!

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Many leaders who regularly ask their people about the factors that motivate and engage them report some frustration with an answer they frequently hear:

“Pay me more money!”

As a YES! Leader, what would happen if you discussed the “psychological salary” concept with your people, as a way to have them consider the full amount of their current “paycheck”?