Why Is It So Hard To Motivate People?

My goals are not your goals, neither are your objectives my objectives, sayeth the employee.

Yeah, it's not quite scripture, but it's still worth remembering.

It often seems like people can be frustrating to try to motivate. When I'm trying to get people going, I sometimes imagine myself as being Tim Conway in an old Disney movie, trying to get some stubborn animal moving. Sound familiar? It makes for great comedy. Doesn't make for so great work days.

So why does that happen? Why do people have such a hard time shifting gears from park to drive?

Or, you might be thinking you'd be happy with park. Why does it seem your employees are set in reverse?

You're probably asking yourself, "Why is it so hard to motivate people?"

As in many cases, sometimes the best way to get better answers is to ask yourself a better quality of question. Your brain is very good at answering the questions you feed into it--that's what it was designed to do.

So if you ask yourself a question like, "Why is it so hard to motivate people?" you're going to get answers that will support the idea that people are hard to motivate.

Answers like, "Because they're lazy." Or, "Because they want to get something for nothing." Or, "Because everybody wants a free ride."

Again, all these answers do is reinforce the idea that people are hard to motivate. You're going to be left with this list of reasons why what you're trying to do is impossible.

What's worse, they're all going to be things you can't do anything about. They're all about what's out there, in your employees and in the world, and when it comes right down to it, those aren't things you can do anything about.

And if you can't do anything about it, then why try, right?

Well, this post isn't over yet, so you can guess we're not going to end there.

Instead, we're going to ask ourselves a better quality question, so we can get a better quality answer.

In this case, we could ask ourselves something like, "When have my employees been motivated?" Or, "What have I seen my employees really excited about something?"

Or, even better, ask questions like, "What can I do differently to better motivate my employees?" Or, "What am I doing that's keeping them from feeling motivated?"

For example, let's say an employee you're having motivation problems with comes to you and asks for a bunch of time off at a bad time. There's another sign this guy's not motivated, right? He's asking for time off at the worst possible time. If he had any mind for the business or any cares about your results, he'd never ask for that time off.

But as you gently reprimand him for the lack of care about the business that his request is showing, stop and think about what effect your gentle words are going to have on his motivation. Can you really think of a time that anyone has been chewed-out into excitement? Does anyone ever say, "Man, he told me I was wrong, and it really inspired me?"

Of course not. I can't lecture someone to greatness.

I also can't scare someone into greatness. I can threaten someone into performing a specific action, sure. "Do X or else Y," can often lead to Y. But it doesn't lead to excitement about Y.

The fact is, we get motivated by two things: Opportunity and success.

We get excited when we either see the possibility of something good potentially happening to us, or when we have just reached something good.

So that gives us two ways of motivating this guy.

The first way is opportunity.

The fact is, this guy probably knows that he's asking for a bad time. He's probably expecting you to say no--especially if you're the kind of boss who's said no a lot in the past.

So instead of saying no, say maybe. Give the guy an opportunity.

"You know, that's a really tough time for us, but I think I can figure out a way to make it work. If you do A, B, and C before you go, then I can do X, Y, and Z, and we can get you the time you need."

See? Opportunity. How motivated to you think he's going to be about doing A, B and C now? Probably more motivated than he's ever been about getting those done. And if A, B, and C really are the things we need him to do, then we're still not out much with him leaving. To use the motivational vernacular, it's a "Win-Win."

Plus, because you're doing X, Y, and Z, you're building trust. Now he knows that you're willing to go out of your way to help him get things he needs. What do you think that's going to do do his desire to help you get things you need later?

He can also be motivated by success. In this case, we might go ahead and give him the time, citing past accomplishments as being the justification for it. "How can I say no to an employee who always does A, B, and C?"

Of course, it could be that this is a situation where we absolutely, positively, cannot say yes. That happens. Especially with small businesses, or businesses that are time-based like retail, where we can't give the time off because we're going to be so busy at that point.

Often in these situations, managers put the responsibility for finding a solution back on the employee. "Of course you can go, as long as you can get someone to cover your shift." Knowing that everyone is working that day, they know there's no one to cover, so they can seem like they're saying yes, when they're really saying no.

Ultimately, this kind of dishonesty leads to mistrust, and mistrust leads to unmotivated people.

My philosophy is, if you can't provide what they want, at least provide honesty. Explain to the employee exactly why they can't go that day. Maybe sales records showing how busy it's going to be, and maybe a frank explanation of why you just can't do without them.

But more important than the explanation part is an accompanying part where you listen. Let them talk about what their expectations are for when they should be able to get vacation time, or about what vacation they'd like to be able to take in the future. Again, listening to them builds trust.

Of course, that's only if we're listening sincerely.

These types of articles always talk about listening sincerely as being the key, and it really is true, but I sometimes despair at being able to convey that clearly. I think the people who believe in sincerity already believe it, and the others think, "Yeah, yeah, sincerity. I'm pretty good at faking that."

Being pretty good at faking sincerity leads to employees who are pretty good at faking they care about your expectations of them.

As long as the employee, on any level, feels that you're working against their interests, they're going to follow you slowly or actively resist you. An employee only becomes motivated when the employee truly feels that the place that you're trying to take them is a place that they truly want to be.

As I said in my earlier post about how to motivate people, everyone has a different set of things that motivate them. The key to motivation is you keying in to their wants and desires, not by cramming their personalities into the holes you would like them to fit into.

So I guess when it's all said and done, it isn't so much that people are hard to motivate.

What's sometimes hard is stepping back, getting to know your employees, and then finding their motivations, instead of trying to get them to adopt yours.

And that's serious--it truly is hard. But the good news is, if we do that part, the other stuff, the stuff that seemed so hard before, becomes the easy part.

Be The Change That You Want To See In The World

Imagine, if you would, that your company put Eeyore, stuffed donkey from the Winnie-the-Pooh books who is wont to lose his tail, in charge of employee motivation in your office.

You can just imagine the meetings. You can imagine him in his deep, monotonous voice, talking very slowly as he says something like, "Hello, everyone. I'm here to motivate you. There are a lot of great reasons to work here. The company is doing a lot of great things." Here he would pause to heavily sigh. "We've really got to get morale up around here or else we all might not jobs in a few months."

(Feel free to substitute Debbie Downer here, or whatever other habitually depressed character is appropriate to your cultural experience.)

It's clearly a silly example, but it illustrates a serious matter--in order to create change in our organizations, our behavior has to be consistent with the change that we want to create.

It's silly to imagine we can get people to become more motivated by chewing them out or by threatening them. Fear can improve performance, certainly, but fear is limited in that it fear can only motivate to an expectation.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that if we use fear to motivate employees, we're basically saying something like, you have to do X or you get fired. We might sugar coat it, we might hide that in "managerspeak," but when it comes right down to it, we're saying "You have to do X, or you're going to be fired."

That fear has, at most, the power to get them to do X. And it only has the power to barely get them to do X. It does not inspire them to do X to the best of their ability. It does not motivate them to do X and Y. At best, it simply gets them to go along with your orders.

It certainly doesn't inspire them to do X better than anyone has ever done it, and wouldn't even occur to them you ever appreciate them figuring out a new idea that would make X easier or even make it become completely unnecessary.

All you're going to get, if anything, is X.

But in some cases, like motivation or customer service, motivating through fear--by any means--is generally counter productive.

Can you imagine that one? Imagine Bobby Knight trying to inspire a team of salespeople to give better customer service.

Or Skeletor. Or Grumpy from the seven dwarfs. Or the Grinch. Or Cruella DeVille. Or the Grumpy Old Troll. Or Captain Hook.

Imagine any of those folks trying to tell people to keep the customers interests in the forefront of their minds or to be sensitive.

It wouldn't inspire a single soul to listen sincerely to people or to keep customer interests in mind. If their own leader doesn't see the need to listen to them or keep their interests in mind, they're not really going to believe you think any of that stuff matters, since you're not doing it for them.

Between my examples and the title of this post, my point is probably obvious.

It was Ghandi who said it:

Be the change you want to see in the world.

In this case, we can paraphrase that as, "Be the change you want to see in your organization."

The way to improve the customer service in your organization is by improving the employee service you, as management, provide your employees.

The way to help the organization to become more motivated is by becoming absolutely motivated yourself.

Now that's not to say either of these are foolproof. Becoming more motivated isn't going to guarantee motivation improves. However, it is the only alternative that at least makes motivation possible.

The question to ask yourself is an easy one:

Is my behavior consistent with the change I am trying to create?

By being brutally honest about the answer to this question, you can better put yourself in a position to get the results you're looking for.

The Arbinger Institute

A while ago, someone recommended a book to me called Leadership and Self Deceptionby a group called The Arbinger Institute. I sort of started to read it, was bothered a little bit by the way it was written, so I never finished it. (It's written in that way that's so popular among business books right now, where you tell it like a story, and the main character is learning everything you want the reader to learn.)

About a year ago, I did read it, along with a good chunk of the other stuff published by the Arbinger institute.

What I found was a philosophy that had become one of the most impactful of any that I have ever read. It's changed my life, and it's changed the way I manage.

I've always despaired at being able to write succinct summaries of their philosophies that would inspire those who ought to read the books to read them. Like the phrase "Self-Deception" in the title of the book would indicate, the people who most need to read the book would probably be the least likely to read it, were I to give an explanation.

Arbinger has published their own summary of their philosophies in an online paper titled, "What We Are." written by philosopher C. Terry Warner.I realize that not everyone is going to be willing to click over and read a 26 page scholarly paper (although I'd strongly encourage everyone to--Warner explains all of this better than I ever could), so I'll do my best to sum up what's being explained.

Often times, the conflicts we have in our lives--whether they're with the people in our families or the people in our work or the people we deal with on the internet--these conflicts arise out of mutual mishandling of a situation.

Generally, it is really, really obvious to us the way the other person is mishandling the situation. We can see their lack of tact, their meanness, their rudeness, their inconsideration--these are so obvious to us, it's like a mack truck parked behind them.

However, the problem comes because of an innate ability people have to be blind to their own mishandling of situations. This happens because as soon as anyone does something--in fact, it is probably more accurate to say that as someone is doing something, they'll give themselves reasons for doing it.They'll give themselves intellectual reasons for doing it--it's smart, it makes sense, etc--but they'll also give themselves emotional reasons for doing it. They're angry, or they're frustrated, or they're deeply, deeply hurt.

And these are trickier, because in our society, we've become accustomed to thinking about emotions as being something that other people create in us--you make me mad. You make me sad.

And this gives me an even stronger justification for whatever I'm about to do than the intellectual reasons do. Because the emotions give me an excuse for blaming you for my actions.

Here's the classic example, that's in almost all the Arbinger books.

A new father hears his baby start fussing a little in the other room. It occurs to him that if he got up and rubbed the baby's back a little, the baby would probably fall right back asleep and neither he nor his wife would have to get up with the baby.

But he doesn't get up. And so he starts talking to himself about why he's not getting up. Maybe he has a meeting the next day, early. Maybe his wife had a nap when he got home, and it's "her turn."

But he doesn't stop there. He gets a little annoyed with his wife. Why doesn't she hear the baby? Why isn't she thinking about letting him get some sleep?

He starts getting angry with her, and thinking about what a bad mom she is, and what a bad wife she is.

See what's happening here?

He starts off feeling some sense of what he should do. I don't mean this in a religious sense, or under any specific moral or ethical code. There was just something he felt he should do.

But then he didn't do it. And since he, like all of us, wasn't inclined to start telling himself a story about what a bad person he was, he started telling himself a story about why what he did was the right thing to do.

But it didn't stop there. Because there was still a little bit of doubt in his mind, his mind needed to shift blame elsewhere, and his wife was the natural target. Not only did it create intellectual means to blame her, but emotional ones as well.

Had he simply got up before he'd started feeling the need to justify his actions, the emotions would never have arisen. They weren't caused by any real action of the wife--they were created to justify his own failure to be who he thought he should be.

Even worse, he starts feeling the need to see her as a bad person, as if by raising or lowering her degree of "badness," his own virtue can be raised or lowered accordingly.

Now if you've followed me that far, then come this last step with me, because this was the part that was the biggest eye-opener for me:

At this point in the game, it wouldn't matter if he did get up and help with the baby.

That didn't make sense to me, at first. It seemed to me like the problem was that he didn't do the right thing. If he did do the right thing, how can he possibly be wrong?

Well, like this:

We all know how it would play out if this guy made his wife get up. He'd say something like, "Honey, you know you got that nap when I came home. And I have my big meeting tomorrow. Can't you just go get her?"

His phrasing, which he thinks will clearly show her how much sense it makes for her to get up, while just hinting at how thoughtless he thinks she's being (in other words, which he thinks is defensive) comes across to her as an accusation that she's lazy or uncaring (in other words, it comes across as an attack).

This prompts her to go into a similar self-justifying cycle of why his attack is unjustified as he went into when he didn't think he wanted to get up.

But now, imagine that instead, he decided that, despite all his reasons for thinking she should do it instead of him, that he was the good dad and she was the bad mom, despite all of that he was going to do the "noble" thing and get up with the baby anyway.

He's still got all these feelings. So he's still going to say something like, "No, honey, you just keep sleeping. I'm sure my meeting tomorrow won't be a problem." Something designed to seem thoughtful, but still hint at what she's putting him through so she'll appreciate his sacrifice. Of course, rather than seeing his comments as being about him, she'll see what he's saying about her, and still take it as an accusation.

It still invites her to go into her own self-justifying cycle. And it still adds to the conflict.

Even if he doesn't make a comment, he's going to sigh a certain way, so she'll notice. And even if he doesn't sigh, he'll still just remember, let it fester somewhere in the back of his mind, to add fuel to the next fire that flares up between them.

Does it make sense now? The problem isn't which thing he did. It isn't about whether he did right or wrong. The problem was his attitude towards her. The problem was his need to find blame.

Had his attitude towards her been different, there are ways he could have asked her to get up and help with the baby as well as gotten up himself that would have done nothing to add to the conflict, but could even have made their relationship stronger.

Had he not had the bad feelings towards her, he could have gently said, "Honey, could you please get up with the baby? I have my meeting tomorrow, and I'm really worried about getting enough sleep. I know you're tired, too. I promise to make it up to you tomorrow night." More important than the words, would just be the absence of the animosity. The lack of need to show her how her getting up was somehow the right thing.

In other words, in many, many cases, seeing other people as the problem is the problem.

Often, in making ourselves a victim, we're also victimizing someone else.

Now the obvious rebuttal a person might have is that there are some cases of clear-cut victimhood. Cases of abuse, for instance.

This is talked about at some length in the book Bonds That Make Us Free. And what it explains is how even in those cases, it is often self-deception that traps us into those problems. It is self-deception that either obligates us to stay in the abusive relationship or that keeps us from being able to let go of it once the relationship is over. To "release its power over us," as a pop psychologist might say.

It gives the example of a woman who kept going back to an abusive husband. Despite his cruelty, she knew his self-destructive lifestyle would destroy him, and felt guilt whenever she'd leave him because she was afraid of what might happen to him. She justified leaving him because of what he was doing--his "bad" actions justified the act she sort of felt was "wrong"--leaving him, even though she knew he was in trouble.

The problem was, whenever he'd come back to her apologetic, she'd feel obligated to go back to him.

It wasn't until she was finally able to separate the morality of her own actions from the immorality of his that she felt free to leave him for good without feeling like a bad person.

They're a wonderful set of books. If you're only going to read one, I suggest The Anatomy of Peace. You can read the first few pages of it online here. It's the one geared towards families and individuals.

Leadership and Self Deceptionis more of a business book, so I'd recommend it if you're a manager or work with a lot of other people, although it's a great book for everyone. The Anatomy of Peace is actually a "prequel" to this book in terms of storyline, and a "sequel" in terms of content, but they can be read completely individually.

There's also an 8 page article on parenting that can be read here.

The Two Levels Of Leadership Training

There are two levels to "Leadership" training.

The first is attributes. That's who you are.

The second is technique. That's what you do.

So any leadership training would have to focus on both levels.to have two-level leadership training. You deal partly with what a leader needs to be, and partly with what a leader can do.

I see it kind of like this--if you want to build buildings, there are two levels to what you have to learn.

First, you've got the principles of construction. Where do you put support structures? How much support do certain weights need? What types of materials are best in what situations? Knowing this stuff is what makes you a builder.

From there, you also learn how to use the tools. How to use a screwdriver, how to use a hammer, how to use the nails.

But if I want to be a true builder, it has to go in that order. The knowledge of how to use the tools is useless before I've learned the principles. I might be the best in the world with a screwdriver, but if I don't know how many support beams to put in a wall--or, even worse, if I don't know when to use a screwdriver and when to use a hammer--it still won't help. And I'll likely fall into the trap of trying to use a screwdriver for all my building needs.

For example, I see a seminar on "Offering Constructive Feedback" to be the "Technique" side of things. It's "tools." It's good, and it's necessary, but if it's not grounded in correct principles and sincerity, it's not going to work.

The purpose of the leadership training should be principle based. It's about the ideas that help you know when to use which tools.

And, just as importantly, about being the kind of person who can do it. In the analogy, that means being a builder. Or in this case, being a leader.

It's like I've discovered about my struggles with my weight. It was, in the end, less about the "tool" than it was about the sincerity and the effort behind what I was doing. When I really, really meant what I was doing, almost anything I tried would work. When I didn't really mean it, nothing did.

Telling a poor leader the right words to say when giving feedback can be just as ineffective as telling a CSR who doesn't care about his customers to smile more and giving them a cheerful script. It won't improve the way they're being received, because, deep down, their heart isn't in the right place. The pasted-on smile or cutesy script won't change that.

So "being"-type training--the things that focus on who a leader is--would be just as important as "doing" training that teaches skills or other tools.
When I hear someone say that "Attribute" training is too theoretical, I worry. Because it means they're probably focused on results at any cost. They just want to know what to say to make everything come out the way they want. They want the magic tool.

And that makes them forget that other people have things they want, too, and that some costs are too high, and that you can never force greatness. Because ultimately, results-at-any-cost isn't true leadership. It's bullying or emotionally blackmailing and short-sighted.

If you want specifics, one that springs to mind is trust. I've really come to believe that any problem that two people have, whether it's a CSR and a customer, an area manager and one of their store managers, or even a husband and wife, or parent and child, can usually be broken down on some level to a problem with trust.

The symptom might be something else ("My manager is giving that CSR more hours than me!") but at it's heart, it's a trust issue ("I no longer trust my manager to look out for my best interests.").

So the attribute would be twofold:

1. Giving the other person all the reasons in the world to trust you.

• Recognizing that trust is not automatic, and that we have to give others reasons to trust us.
• Not making commitments you can't follow through on.
• Sometimes making commitments and keeping them that have no business benifit, but for the sole reason of giving them another reason to trust you.
• Being careful about what you do and say about others around people, lest they worry what you do and say about them when they're not around.
• Being very open about where employees stand, how they're progressing, what our plans for them are, etc.
• Creating goals and plans together, and then working together for common goals.

2. Finding all the reasons we can to trust them. (Not in a Pollyanna-ish, naive way, but by:)

• Soliciting feedback frequently, so we're not in doubt as to their thoughts
• Creating an environment in which they are comfortable offering us feedback, so they can tell us what they're really thinking, not just what we want to hear.
• Not just assuming the worst when problems arise, but sincerely trying to figure out their motivations and point of view, and even eliciting the facts before jumping to conclusions
• Creating goals and plans together, and then working together for those common goals.

How To Motivate People

Imagine, if you will, that your district manager called you up tonight and told you that there had been an emergency. There was a rock slide that had buried the parking lot of one of our stores, and they needed you to come out tommorrow morning at four in the morning and move rocks so all the rocks would be out of the way in time for the store to open at nine.

How would you feel as you set your alarm for the next morning? How would you feel as you lay down, knowing you would have to get up in just a few hours? How would you feel when that alarm went off, and you knew you had to get up?

Now imagine this: You get the same late-night call from your district manager. They still want you to meet them at four in the morning, but the reason is different. They've had to go out of town at the last minute, so they had to cancel a visit they were going to make with their family to Disneyland. Their flight leaves early, but if you can meet them at four in the morning, you can have the passes for you and your family for free.

Now how would you feel as you set your alarm? Now how would you feel as you lay down? And how would you feel when the alarm went off?

Probably a completely different feeling. In fact, you might set the alarm for an even earlier time now, just in case. You'd pop out of bed and dash off to go get those tickets.

Notice that even though the events were the same--you were having to get up early--your attitude about it, your eagerness to do it, was entirely based on your perception of what was going to happen, not on the act itself. It was still the same time of morning both times, but the action got easier based on how you felt about it.

Now I'm not going to pretend that your job is anything like a visit to Disneyland--if it were, your could probably charge you to work there instead of paying you. But I will say that playing up the fun and entertaining aspects of your job will make your job easier, as well as the people you manage.

As managers, it is your responisbility to keep your people motivated. That means motivating yourselves, as well as motivating your staff. In order to do this, you're going to have to put some effort in to figuring out what motivates yourself, and what motivates them. You're probably motivated by very different things! You might find the thought of a big bonus drives you to working hard, but your CSR might not care about their bonus, so much as they want recognition.

Here are some questions to ask yourself to try to figure out what motivates you:

1. What do I feel is the biggest accomplishment I've made outside the home?

2. When have I felt the most valued and appreciated?

3. What event I was involved with, outside of my home, brings a smile to my face when I think about it?

4. What job that I've had brought me the most satisfaction?

5. If you remember a day when you were excited to come into work, what was special about that day?

By thinking about the answers to these questions, you can find what area of the job means the most to you. Here are some possible motivators:

Competition. Did you think about times where you knew you had stood out from the crowd, and made a difference? Did you think about times where you had "won" or "beat" another? Then competition may be your biggest motivator.

To make work more fun, you may want to find a store that's about the same size and with the same types of customers as yours and start trying to beat them. You may want to ask your district managers if you can have a competition with that store, where the losing store pays for lunch for the winning store out of their expenses.

Maybe pick a store that's doing a little better than you and start trying to pass them up.

By giving yourself something to shoot for, you can exploit that competitive spirit in yourself.

Warning: It is not a good idea to put your staff in competition against each other. This can make them start working against each other, which will hurt your store overall (eg, if you have a contest for which CSR can get the most contacts, a CSR might withold infomation from the notes that might help other CSRs reach that customer). Instead, have your CSRs compete as a team against some other team, or for a common goal. This builds the spirit of cooperation and commeradery. When people are working together for a common goal, it gives them less reason to work against each other.

Recognition. Did you think about times when you received special awards or honors? Did you think about a special phone call that you got from a supervisor or co-worker aknowledging an effort you had made? You're probably motivated by recognition.

This one's tough, because in a lot of ways, you can't control how other people recognize your accomplishements. You might get a pat on the back one month, but the next month do even better and have it go unrecognized.

However, look for those spots where the company regularly recognizes performance, such as top performers or biggest movement.

If your employees are motivated by recognition, it is important to create means whereby they can be recognized. These can be informal, such as daily aknowledgement of efforts like making phone calls or obtaining promises, or more formal, such as with certificates or awards of Days off or other forms of recognition.

Money. Some people are motivated by the cold, hard cash. If this is the case with you, track those areas of your performance that are tied to your company's incentive bonuses. Create a way to know, at any given moment, how you stand in terms of that bonus.

If your employees are motivated by money, share these same forms with them. Help them see where they are, and how the way they perform their work duties affects that bonus.

Service. Maybe the times you thought of involved helping other people, and you feel the best about yourself when you're doing good things for other people.

There are lots of opportunities to serve in any job. Everyone is paying for a good or a service that they need, and the way you help with that can, at the very least, brighten their day, and, depending on the product or service, make a difference in their lives. By focusing on how your job helps others, you may find the sense of satisfaction you need.

Fun. The things you thought of may have been things you really didn't think of as "work." Maybe for you, you want play, plain and simple.

Well, that's great! What ways can you bring fun into the office? What appropriate music can you play? What games can you involve the store in?

One large store rotates lunch each week--each day, someone prepares lunch for the entire store. The next day, someone else does. They take turns helping customers during the lunch hour, and they get to sample a lot of different foods from a lot of different people.

One store made a daily checklist on a big board with magnets. When they finish an item on the checklist, they "cross it off" with a magnet, and intial the clipboard, which hangs from the board.

Finding ways to make the workday more fun makes your store more pleasant for you and your customers.

There are lots of other possible ways you can motivate yourself and your employees. All of them may not work for you, but no one item may be complete either. If you have several CSRs, you'll probably need to use a variety of techniques to motivate all of them. Getting to know your CSRs will help you do this.

Remember--as tough as any job can be, as intense as you want to be, that doesn't mean it always has to be unpleasant or rough. The more effort you put in to making work pleasant, the more free your employees (and you!) will feel about giving their all to their work effort. Just like trying to get out of bed in the morning, the less you can find to be excited about, the harder any job becomes.

But the more you have something to look forward to, the more likely you'll be to leave that snooze button alone.

Book Review: The Anatomy of Peace

This book is changing my life.

Actually, it's a group of three books.

One is Bonds That Make Us Free, which I reviewed earlier in a review I still think needs updated.

The second is Leadership and Self Deception. Leadership and Self Deception is a business book. The Arbinger Institute originally did business consulting, teaching certain principles to businesses about interpersonal relationships and leadership. But as time went on, the implications of their philosophies for families and other groups became obvious, and that led to the writing of the third book.

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict is in some ways the perfect blend of the other two books.

Bonds That Make Us Free is written by a philosopher. It's sophisticated and heavy. It's my favorite of the three, especially because it includes a lot of case studies and real stories, but I realize it's not for everyone.

Leadership and Self Deception, on the other hand, is extremely simply written. Some people see it as being repetitive to the point of frustration, but I've found it to be the perfect book to give to people who've never read a leadership book before.

Sitting right in the middle is The Anatomy of Peace. It's written in the simpler style of Leadership, but it is a little more sophisticated in its approach to the material.

So what is it that all these books are teaching?

It's hard to sum up (hence why I've never been happy with my Bonds review), but I'll do my best.

A lot of the pain that we experience in our life, the frustrations that we have, even when those frustrations seem to come from other people, is really about us.

It's about the division that exists between who we feel like we're supposed to be, and who we really are. The feelings that we create in ourselves when we don't do things we feel like we should.

Let me use the classic example from the books: A father, lying in bed. He hears the baby crying in the next room. He feels like he should get up and help with the baby.

But he doesn't want to.

So he starts thinking about all the reasons why his wife should do it. About the meeting he has the next day. About how he's the one who got up with the baby the night before. About how she got to get a nap in after he got home.

So he starts creating intellectual justifications for not getting up.

But it doesn't stop there. As he thinks about all the reasons why his wife should get up instead of him, he doesn't just think it, he starts to feel it. He might get frustrated that she doesn't understand all these things, or even angry with her for not thinking of his situation.

In other words, he starts creating emotional justifications for not getting up.

And from there, he'll start painting pictures of himself and his wife in his mind. It could be that he sees himself as the good dad who works hard (didn't he watch the baby earlier so his wife could nap?) and his wife as the lazy, bad mom (doesn't she hear the baby?), or he might portray himself as the victim and her as his oppressor (is she going to to make me do this again?).

Now, he's even making moral justifications for what he wants to do.

The important part is that all of his feelings--his frustration, his anger, his desire to make someone else evil and himself good or a victim--none of that started until he started trying to create reasons to justify what he was going to do. He never would have felt any of that if he hadn't felt the need to justify himself.

But it goes on from there. Because at this point, no matter what he does, his behavior is going to affect his wife.

Chances are, he's not going to get up. He's going to wake his wife up, and make her get up and get the baby.

And he's going to do it in such a way that his attitude shows. He might make overtures of trying to be sweet about it, but the general vibe is going to be a defensive one, trying to make her see why it makes more sense for her to do it.

But the fact is, at this point, he could even get up and help with the baby, and it would do the same thing. He's still going to do it in such a way that his attitude shows. He's going to make some comment or sigh in a certain way or just do something so she understands the injustice of what he's doing.

And even though the reason he'd let his attitude show would be so she'd either forgive him or appreciate him, the actual result would be the opposite.

His defensiveness as he made her get up would come across, to her, like an accusation. At best a mild accusation, but she'd be far more likely to think about what his line of thinking said about her than about what it said about him.

Same thing if he got up--his attempts to make her see how hard it was would be far more likely to make her feel he resents her than make her feel he loves her. Rather than feeling gratitude, she's going to begin to feel defensive feelings about herself similar to the ones the husband felt as he tried to justify not getting up. She's going to start thinking of all the ways that she's good, and he's bad, or that he's an oppressor and she's a victim.

Her defensiveness, as she begins to show it, would then be interpreted aggressively by her husband, who would react again--and so the cycle goes, and so the relationship degenerates. Both people think they're only acting in their own defense, but in reality both attacking the other with accusations they feel are somehow necessary for their own defense.

Who's right? Both of them, sort of. And neither of them, sort of.

In reality, neither of them is either the hero or the monster that they feel the need to paint each other as. They're both fallible people with strengths and weaknesses.

But it is no more necessary that the wife be a monster in order for the husband to be a "good guy" than the husband has to be negligent in order for the mother to be loving.

In other words, sometimes the two biggest enemies to our happiness are justification and blame.

But that's a tough way to convince you to read this book. Because if you think about it, the people who need this book the most would be the people who absolutely didn't think they needed it from reading that description.

"Oh, I don't have a problem with justification," they would say. But they could only believe that if they were so heavy into self-justifying that their problem had become invisible to them.

Or they might say, "I have a bit of a problem with self-justification, but my real problem is in ______, and self-justification doesn't have anything to do with that."

The blank might be a relationship with a co-worker, or self-esteem issues, or marriage, or money issues, or some other thing.

But all of those things are deeply rooted in self-deception.

Sometimes, in the interest of justifying ourselves, we allow ourselves to hold on to anger or depression or frustration or heartache that we don't need, because we think we need it to justify ourselves.

A woman might not be able to let go of anger towards her ex husband, because she thinks she needs her anger to justify leaving someone alone who was in as much trouble with drugs as he was.

A man might hold on to depression, because he needs to believe that his life is hard to justify why he's never been able to do better for himself.

As crazy as it sounds, sometimes we do things that go against things we want, because what we want more is to feel like we're okay, right now. We want to believe (or want other people to believe) we're good or smart or deserve something or even just believe that we're really, really struggling.

This book is about the way this can affect our relationships. It's about conflict--whether the conflict is with a co-worker, or with a family member. It compares these with the conflicts between religions, between nations, between races.

It's told in the story of two men, one Jewish and one Muslim, who come together to form a camp for troubled teens. The viewpoint character is a dad whose son has had to come to the camp following a drug arrest, and the ideas are introduced to us as the Father is introduced to them. As they talk about conflicts in the world and in the homes of the parents, the ideas are taught, with the parents voicing the questions the reader might have.

It's a great book--I said Bonds was my favorite; Anatomy of Peace is my wife's.

If you're just going to read one of these books, make it this one.

And I can't say enough--read one of these books.

Better Sooner Than Late - Relationships Before Correction

How employees react to you in the moment when you're offering correction is usually far more about what's happened in the minutes, hours, days, weeks and even years before the moment the correction gets made.

So talking about techniques for offering effective criticism or constructive criticism is a little behind the eight ball.

Those two days you spent festering, hemming and hawing about the right way to talk to the employee about the problem, because you wanted to get it just right? Yeah, that's when the employee thought you were snubbing them. Showing them how mad you were. Or, at the very least, they at least knew you were displeased with them, so they've been stewing themselves.

That reaction that seemingly came out of nowhere, that you felt was completely unjustified, and proved how irrational they were being about their response, since it didn't match up with the calm, measured, and dare-you-say caring tones you used while you talked? Chances are, it's more about who they've come to see you as than it is about anything you did.

Actually, to take it a bit more realistically, it's more about who they've come to believe you see them as.

Because let's face it--no matter how petty and vindictive that employee might seem, they're not really out to get you. It can sometimes seem like they're doing things deliberately, just to provoke you, but they're really not as interested in you as all of that.

What they are interested in is themselves. And since you don't seem to be as interested in them as they are, they're always going to feel the need to defend themselves, justify themselves, or explain themselves to you.

The biggest key to leading people is to have them believe, truly believe, that you are leading them to a place that's good for them. And of course, for them to believe that, it has to be true.

You genuinely have to be operating in the best interests of everyone in your organization. Your customers, your managers, your staff, your superiors. To truly lead all of these people, you have to know them, know their interests, and work at bringing them about.

Old school managers don't believe this. They think that leadership is about getting what you want. If you start giving in to demands, or making concessions to people, then they start walking all over you. They start thinking they can make more demands. Before you know it, the inmates are running the asylum.

Employees must be made to understand the needs of the organization, say the old-schoolers. They need to be Team Players, which to the old-schoolers means doing whatever the coach wants.

Loyalty, to these old-schoolers, is something that should spring forth spontaneously from within employees.

Never mind that in actual practice, the organization-focused mindset of these guys is actually more likely to drive loyalty out of good employees than it is to cause any loyalty to spring forth in employees who aren't as naturally inclined to it.

I'm not saying to swing the pendulum too far to the other side either, though--by becoming completely employee focused, you really can get walked all over, and the organization really can suffer. You'll be liked, but won't see progress. It's a matter of balancing employee interests with company interests with customer interests with your own interests . . . .

Yeah. Easier said than done. But knowing there's a balance to achieve can get you further than trying to balance the rest on the backs of employees.

That said, it's still easy to hurt relationships by giving employees what they want.

Yes, you read that right. Giving employees what they want can hurt relationships.

No, I'm not giving the old-schoolers a chance to twirl their mustaches and go back to neglecting their employees. I'm actually trying to prevent the next incarnation of the mustache-twirler: The boss who tries to meet employee needs, but does it in such a way as to remind the employee of exactly how benevolent he is being, of how put out this is going to make him, or as if he is mentally keeping a score of exactly where they stand.

I exaggerate in these examples, but even little bits of this creeping in to our attitude comes across to the employee, then little bits of resentment will start to build up in the employee.

Because when it's about how benevolent I am, or about how put out I am, or about what they now owe me, they're going to see that it's still all me, me, me, and they're never going to be able to relax into accepting that I'm looking out for them. And if they don't believe you're leading them to a place that's good for them . . . well, there goes leadership.

So how do you do it? What's the technique that will make them buy it when you give them what they want?

Well, first you take off your right shoe and put it in a plain brown paper bag. Then you roll up the bag at the top like a kid's lunch sack. Then you stand up on your desk, wave the bag over your head, and cluck like a chicken.

I'm kidding, by the way.

The truth is much less interesting. The truth is, there is no technique that can make an employee "buy" something. If you go in trying to show the employee how much you're caring about them, it's just going to come across as being about how caring you're being.

No, unfortunately, the only way to do it is to really care. The only way to do it is to really fix the relationships you have with your employees. To really and truly want good things for them, not just because it will bring you money, but because they're people and they're working for you every day and because looking out for each other has to start with somebody, and it might as well be you.

So the next time you're tempted to practice "Management By Wandering Around," looking for things to correct and talk about, instead practice "Management By Settling Down." Spend time with people. Build relationships with them. Spend more time listening to them than talking to them. Worry more about discovering what and interesting, diverse group of people you have working for you and you'll find your employees worrying more about coming through for the person who seems so interested in them.