Do you love and hate your job?
It's a simple question. Not either/or. Both/and.
If you answer the latter, you are ambivalent. Not indifferent. Ambivalent. No, it's not the same thing.
Ambi = both. Valent = strength. You have contradictory strong feelings and/or thoughts about work.
Why am I asking this question? Because employee engagement is about how we manage these contradictory feelings. The more love we feel, the more we engage with work. The more hate we feel, the more we disengage. The fundamental claims of the engagement movement.
Somehow, we've becomes stuck in a belief system that sees us as being either/or. Not both/and. Despite nearly all of us identifying with the latter.
How and why did we get to this state of affairs? Develop a system of measurement for feelings and thoughts that doesn't relate to how we actually feel and think. And does this mismatch result in unnecessary emotional and psychological stress?
It's a complex story. It's dramatic. Full of blind ambition. Ethically dodgy practices. Backstabbing politics. Sex and violence. And death.
With all good stories, the best place to start is the beginning.