How To Manage People

How to Become Better In Any Relationship

2010-04-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

I was typing up a summary of the philosophies of the Arbinger Institute, and thought I'd also share it here.
The thing to remember in our relationships is this:

We think other people's bad behavior gives us an excuse for when we are less than our best. I had to get angry, or impatient, or bitter, we say, because of the way they were acting.

But we forget that our actions give them an excuse, too. "I had to act the way I was acting," they say, "because that person was so angry, or impatient, or bitter."

Even if they "went first," we gave them an excuse to keep being bad. "I knew I was right to act that way," they say. "I knew that person would be angry, impatient, or bitter."

And then we use their behavior as our excuse, and the cycle goes on and on, in a hopeless downward spiral that no one can ever win.

And it is not enough to try to break out of it by simply "taking the higher road." Because they will just see our attempts to "be the better person" as being condescending, as talking down to them, as passive-aggressive. They'll just use that as their excuse to keep acting the way they're acting.

So then, where is our hope? If we can't make it better by the low road, or the high road, what is our hope of making it better?

It lies in seeing them as a person again. A person equal in importance to us. No more special, and certainly no less. Walking next to them.

And then recognize that our anger, our impatience, our bitterness made them feel exactly the way we feel. And then in our feeling bad for making another person feel that way.

If it was so bad when they did it to us, it must have been just as bad when we did it to them.

Our ability to empathize with them gives us the hope of reconnecting with them. Our ability to understand them gives us the hope that things can become better.

Even if they were the ones who "started" it.

Because then we stop seeing them as a monster, but as a person. A person like us, who has been hurt, like us. A person who sometimes doesn't quite know how to deal with their hurt, and lashes out at a world before it can have the chance to lash out at them. It doesn't make their actions right, any more than their bad behavior made ours right. But it can make their actions more understandable, and make them people to us again instead of monsters.

And that will change our behavior--because we only felt it was okay to act as we acted toward another human being because we weren't really seeing them as a human being at all.

How To Handle Conflicts (And How NOT To Handle Conflicts)

2009-07-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Some ways of dealing with conflict don't work.

Competition

When we see ourselves as having to struggle against other people to get what we need, it makes us see other people as enemies and work against them. This usually makes them struggle back. It leads them to mistrust us, and us to mistrust them. As was said, "When we see the world as a jungle, it becomes a jungle."

When we think we have to fight against everyone (and by fighting we don't mean punching--it can be arguing, or even passive-aggressive manipulation) it becomes true, because, as often as not, they feel they have to fight back.

People doing this usually believe that if someone else is getting something, that means they're losing out on something themselves.

Capitulation

The other thing that doesn't work is just giving in. We usually do this because we want to keep the relationship good, and are trying to avoid hard feelings. However, when we see how easy it was for the other person to let us give in, it usually results in our getting upset, resentful, and mistrustful of the other person, even though we're the one who gave in! Rather than helping the relationship, it also makes it worse.

And it makes the other person more likely to expect us to back down again the next time--which means it becomes even harder to get what we need.

These people also think they have to give up what they want in order to give someone else what they want.

Compromise

Believe it or not, compromise usually doesn't help either. Combining the worst parts of conflict and capitulation, compromise could be called when, "Both people give up a little of what they want so that nobody ends up happy."

People compromising usually still think that everything someone else gets means something they have to lose, and so every inch of who gets what is struggled over, leading to the same kind of problems for the relationship that Capitulation and Conflict cause.

So if Conflict, Capitulation, and Compromise all don't work, what does work?

Cooperation

This is a fundamental change in attitude about how we see conflict. Instead of thinking, "If I give other people what they want, it means giving up what I want," it says, "I believe that, in most cases, a solution can be reached that can help everyone get what they really want."

Instead of saying, "I just have to think about myself," it says, "The other person here is just as much of a person as I am, and what they need is just as important. I should try as hard to help them get what they want as I would try to get something for myself."

Now this may seem hard if you focus on "What" people say they want--This is called their position. For example, a child might want mom to take them to the arcade, but mom might want to go to the gym. Looking at their positions, it seems impossible to do both. At best, they might find a compromise and mom only goes to the gym for half the time, and takes him to the arcade for a couple quick games.

But was there a better solution?

In order to find out, it helps if you focus on "Why" they want it--their fundamental interests. In this case, Mom's been trying to lose weight to win a contest at work, She's gone to the gym every day this week, and she doesn't want to break her streak.

But when she asks the child why he wants to go to the arcade, he says, "You've been gone every night this week. I just want to spend time with you."

So the gym wasn't really about the gym--it was about getting fit. And the arcade wasn't really about the arcade--it was about spending time with Mom.

They decide to go play Frisbee at the park. That way, Mom gets her exercise in, and the child gets to play with Mom--everybody's getting everything they want!

Only this way strengthens relationships instead of hurting them, and helps people get what they want more often than any of the other ways.

To make this work:

1. You have to really want to help the other person find a solution as much as you want a solution for yourself. You can't just want enough for them to get them by. You really have to be as committed to finding them a solution as you are for yourself, otherwise it's too easy to give up too soon, or settle for less for them as long as you're getting what you want.

2. You have to be relatively flexible. Remember the difference between "positions" and "interests" and don't get so caught up in arguing over your "position" that you reject solutions that would meet all of your interests.

3. You have to understand what the other person's interests are as well as you understand your own. Do you really understand what the other person wants? Or have you just made assumptions about what the other person wants? Usually we just assume things, and, most often, we assume the worst. For example, if an employee doesn't want to work late, a manager will usually just "assume" it's because they're lazy or they're trying to see what they can get away with (We do this because, by assuming negative motivations for another person, it becomes easier for us to justify not helping them get what they want and still think of ourselves as nice people). Finding out their real interests is about communication, not assumption.

4. Attack problems, not people. Don't be either defensive or reactive. Try to do and say things that will both strengthen the relationship and help solve the problem. Personal attacks--even if made defensively--only detract and derail discussion. If you're trying to change anybody or make them want something different than what they already want, you're going to be banging your head against a wall.

Why Is It So Hard To Motivate People?

2008-03-05T16:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-23T10:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-23T04:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-18T23:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-09T23:29:00.001-08:00

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

2008-01-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Where Outstanding Customer Service Starts

2007-12-19T22:41:00.000-08:00

We live in an age where it's not enough just to set up shop and open a business and expect people to come flocking through our doors. Maybe there was a time when you could just find a town that didn't have an appliance store, go there, and open up an appliance store, and you'd be guaranteed some business. But today, when people are willing to drive long distances to shop at outlet malls or order things online or get things from complete strangers through the classifieds or Craigslist, you've got to have something going for you if you want customers to buy from you.

If you ask 10 businesses what the key to their success is, chances are the majority of them will say, it's their great customer service. And chances are, in the majority of cases, that's complete hogwash. Oh, sure, they talk about customer service, and customer service comes up in the annual employee performance reviews, but if all the companies who said they were about customer service really provided the level of customer service they claimed to, wouldn't our day-to-day experiences be a little different? Maybe even dramatically different?

So how do you go about institutionalizing good customer service? Do you just do some customer service training with the employees? Maybe some role playing games to help the employees see things from the customer's point of view?

Maybe customer service training and role plays would help, but there's an even bigger factor that can make a bigger difference: You have to model good customer service for them.

Sometimes this can be done in front of your employees, with actual customers. However, as managers, sometimes we don't have as many opportunities for customer interaction as our employees do. How can we model customer service if the employees never see us with the customers?

The answer: By seeing our employees as our customers, and meeting their needs as well as we want them to meet the needs of our customers.

Think about it:

When an employee comes to you with a problem or concern, how quick are you to act on it? Do you make it seem like it's a big deal to you, or do you ask them to, "Email me about it when I'm not so busy?"

When an employee has an issue that you or the company have no way of dealing with, do you dismiss it flippantly, or do you make the employee feel like you wish you could help in spite of your limitations, and maybe suggest some other alternatives?

When they come to you, do you smile and act happy to see them, or do you seem frazzled and busy, like you don't have time for them?

Often, these actions on the part of management set the tone for the actions that employees take down the line. It is far harder for employees to spontaneously spring forth a helpful, courteous attitude towards our customers out of themselves each day, than it is for them to pass along a helpful, courteous attitude that's flowing to them from all corners of the organization.

For this reason, it's actually helpful to provide customer service training to all parts of the organization. Your IT department or payroll department might not talk to your customers, but they are talking to your employees. In some cases, they're the people at the home office your field teams are talking with the most. Their customer service skills should be some of the best in your organization, if you recognize their opportunity to set an example for the rest of the company.

It is a service minded organization that creates truly service minded front line people.

The Value of Training

2007-12-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

Imagine a farmer with fruit orchards. He's got oranges and apples, maybe a few pear trees here and there.

He's hired you to come talk to him about why his business isn't doing so well. He's cut expenses back every way he can, but he just can't turn a profit.

Analyzing his balance sheet, you're shocked to see that two of the areas he's cut down on are water and fertilizer.

"How are you watering your trees?" you ask.

"I'm not, really," says the farmer. "Not fertilizing, either. The way I see it, I'm here to sell fruit, not soil. I got worry about the fruit first, then the tree second. Something had to go, and that was the ground!"

The flaws in his logic are obvious. In fact, there's very little you can do to improve the health and quality of either the fruit or the tree that doesn't start in the ground first.

Every self-respecting farmer knows that, which is why it's highly unlikely you'll encounter a scenario like the one I describe here.

However, I see businesses doing the equivalent of this all the time. When there are cuts to be made, one of the first departments to get funding slashed is the training department.

"We have to focus on quality of product," people will say. Or, "We already have good quality, highly trained employees."

And that's generally true enough. However, the roots of both high quality products and great employees are grounded firmly in the soil of good training.

The other problem with this attitude is not always as obvious: it suggests that employees are the only ones who need training.

Upper management knows that they are in a position where they can make a huge impact on their organization--they certainly want that reflected in their salaries. However, often ego, or a worry that such training will make them look like they're weak, will prevent them from so much as attending the same seminars or workshops they're putting their mid-level managers through.

Good, principle-based training gets to the root of employee issues, management issues, and interpersonal conflict. By helping employees and managers on those deep, fundamental levels, it creates change that can reach through all levels of the organization. It manifests itself in areas ranging from quality of product to employee morale to employee loyalty.

Spring Water Clear Messages

2007-12-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

When I was doing volunteer work in Brazil, I met a wonderful indian family living in the city of Manaus.

Manaus is a huge city of four million people, but when you start coming to edges of it, the rain forest still creeps its way into the city. This family was living in a little ravine on the edge of a neighborhood near the north end of the city, where the foliage around their house was pretty thick.

The person who I was working with at the time was a huge nature fanatic. He dreamed of becoming a fly fishing guide and had owned snakes and other reptiles as a teenager.

He was trying to learn the names of all the different animals in Portuguese. We'd bought a couple of animal books and he'd been studying them. When we were talking with this indian family, he realized they were pretty familiar with the animals of the area. He started talking to them about different animal names, especially lizards.

When they got talking about one particular kind of giant lizard (I have no idea what kind--he was the nature fanatic, not me), they told him they'd seen one of those around their house lately.

He was ecstatic. He wanted it. Having raised so many reptiles as a teen, he was excited at the chance to have such an exotic pet.

"If you see it, you've got to get it for me," he told them.

They smiled and told him they could get it. No problem.

The next time we stopped in, he was hopeful that he was about to walk away with a new pet.

Sure enough, they smiled when they saw him. "Hey, we got it for you," they told him. "We already started in on it, but you can have the rest."

Yeah, you probably guessed it. They brought out the charred, half-eaten lizard they'd shot with a bow and arrow, and cooked up for him.

He didn't try it (But I did, just so I could say I had).

It was Dr. Benjamin Martinez of Panamerican Associates that first introduced me to the idea of "Spring Water Clear" messages. He defined that this way: Messages so clear that not only can they be understood, but they cannot possibly be misunderstood.

Making sure instructions are spring water clear is one of the biggest challenges of management. Communication is a tough thing--you're trying to get an idea out of your mind, and into the mind of another. Generally, any number of obstacles can keep that mind-to-mind transition from going smoothly.

Often, businesses have certain cultural "lingo" that aren't always clear to new employees. Even worse, sometimes it can vary from state to state. A term that the west coast divisions use to mean one thing may mean something entirely different to the east coast divisions.

Also, one phrase is often used to describe entire processes. Although the manager and the employee might be clear about the job to be done, the details of the process might vary.

There are two lessons to take away from this: It requires caution before, and understanding after.

When delivering a message, we must be cautious that we make all instructions as spring water clear as possible, and that as many of the relevant details are outlined as we can. Taking time at the start will lead to time saved later, both because there are fewer mistakes to fix, as well as because even though confused "lingo" costs time, confirmed "lingo" saves it.

After the message is delivered, when problems arise, understanding is necessary. We need to remember that it is often inadequate communication that leads to mistakes, not incompetent employees. If you're repeatedly finding employees performing tasks incorrectly or differently than you would like, it is more likely that you're inadequately communicating your expectations than they have begun to suffer from communal, contagious ineptitude.

Conflict Management: Reasons For Employee Conflict

2007-12-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

An Observation of a Cycle

Pretty early on in my studies of the principles of management, I came to a realization.

Every conflict between a manager and an employee--in fact, every interpersonal conflict, whether it was in the workplace, the home, sports teams, volunteer groups, or anything else--could be traced to one source.

A lack of trust.

If two people were not getting along, somehow they had come to stop trusting each other. For whatever reason, they now thought the other person was no longer acting with their best interests in mind.

If you think about it, this is always true. Whether it's a husband and wife drifting apart, a parent and a child fighting, or a manager who is in conflict with an employee, at the core of the conflict is the fact that they've become afraid that the other person isn't acting in their best interests any more.

I also noticed the way that lack of trust could begin to perpetuate itself. Because the manager, for example, was now afraid that the employee wasn't acting in the manager or the company's best interests, the manager would be hesitant to accept the employee's requests, complaints, or suggestions.

This hesitancy would cause the employee to further mistrust the manager. If he's not taking my requests, complaints, or suggestions, he must not be taking me seriously, the employee would think. Consequently, the employee would be hesitant to accept assignments, critcisms, and direction from a manager he felt wasn't really concerned about him.

Which leads to increased mistrust from the manager. Which leads to increased mistrust from the employee.

You see the cycle. It was always obvious to me, as an outsider, when I'd see the cycle develop.

The solution, to me, was obvious. Since this cycle was continuous, either one of them could break it. If I could just persuade one of them about the truth of what was going on, we could break the cycle.

A Problem With The Solution

But here was the problem: neither my observation or terminology helped me persuade them at all.

You see, my observation didn't change the fact that they were both right. The other person was acting in a way that did not merit trust. No matter which person you were, the fact was the other person was focused entirely on themselves and their own self interests. Their mistrust of you was that you would not do what they wanted. The other person wasn't thinking about your concerns at all.

Nor did my observation that there was a lack of trust. You can't spontaneously generate trust for someone who has honestly been demonstrating over time that they aren't thinking about how avoid injuring you, but has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to disregard your interests.

Despite my observations, I still felt powerless.

Help From The Arbinger Institute

Then I began reading some of the works of the Arbinger Institute, and found a much more sophisticated, useful view of the cycle I observed. They'd even given a name to it: collusion.

Normally, collusion means two people conspiring for a common goal, but in a twisted sort of way, it perfectly describes the way two people in conflict manage to exactly act in a way that justifies the other person's feelings towards them.

The manger, in his attempt to manage the untrustworthy employee, manages to act in exactly the controlling, resistant way the employee needs in order to tell himself his manager is oppressive and doesn't care about his employees.

And the employee, in an effort to stand up for himself and fight for his rights, acts in exactly the rebellious, resistant way the manager needs in order to tell himself the employee is difficult and doesn't care about the company.

But Arbringer doesn't label the thing flowing so freely back and forth between the two as mistrust. They label the thing flowing back and forth between them as blame.

Now that was a word I could use.

The Problem With Blame

If you asked the manager what the problem was, he would blame the employee. But if you asked the employee who the problem was, he would blame the manager.

But what was the real problem?

The problem was the blame.

The manager was actually reacting negatively to the things the employee was trying to do to "deal" with his oppressive manager. but the employee was only reacting negatively to the things the manager was doing to "deal" with his rebellious employee.

When one of them blames the other, in word or in deed, it provokes defensiveness and blame back. And that returned blame invites more blame and defensiveness.

And, even worse, at that point, they both begin to focus on proving themselves right rather than on solving the problem. In their book, Leadership and Self-Deception, Arbringer writes:

However bitterly I complain about someones poor behavior toward me and about the trouble it causes me, I also find it strangely delicious. It's my proof that others are as blameworthy as I've claimed them to be--and that I'm as innocent as I claim myself to be. The behavior I complain about is the very behavior that justifies me.

The eye-opening revelation is that blame is a divisive force that creates more problems than it solves.

Blame is a recourse for those who are more interested in justifying themselves than in getting results.

Blame is a weapon, but a twisted sort of weapon that seeks to transform the one it hits into an attacker, and the one who fires it into a victim. It is designed to elicit certain feelings towards the one leveling the blame and the one the blame is directed towards.

This is not to say that there are not responsibilities, and that in any given situation, some people may be more responsible than others. It is not to say

Blame is not about solving problems, but is simply about creating perceptions. Imagine if your doctor was more concerned about creating a certain appearance than about finding out what was really wrong with you. He would be inclined to overlook certain obvious symptoms, as he was continually reaching for hard-to-diagnose cases that would make him look like an insightful, knowledgeable doctor. He would be slow to diagnose things that should be easy for him, like simple colds, as he continually reached for diagnoses that were more in line with his own ambitions. His worries about perceptions over problem solving would hinder his diagnosis.

Similarly, let's say there is a person in our department who we want to blame for all the problems in that department. It doesn't matter if the person actually is as big a jerk as we think he is or not. What matters is that our focus on them, and our desire to isolate them as the cause of all our problems. Such a focus will make us as slow to diagnose seemingly simple problems as the doctor was in the example above.

Most particularly, it will render us almost completely impotent to diagnosing any problems in ourselves.

In fact, the blame becomes our proof that we're good, and that the problem is somewhere else. Whatever we do magically becomes okay. Sure, we'll acknowledge our own imperfections, and even work on them some, but we know they're not responsible for any of the big problems. What do our little imperfections matter, when there is such a problem person as so-and-so in my department?

But Isn't It Somebody's Fault?

The biggest reason to internally rebel against this idea is obvious: But what if it really is his fault? Or, perhaps, But it really is his fault.

And the answer to that is, it can be his fault without any need for the kind of bitter, vindictive blame I'm talking about.

What do I mean by that?

Chances are, you've been corrected once or twice in your life. You've made mistakes, and other people have seen fit to tell you about them.

I want you to think of two times you've been corrected.

For the first time, I want you to think of a time you've been corrected that provoked you to feel some type of emotion. The correction made you angry, or rebellious. This is a time when someone was blaming you.

Now, think of a second time. Think of a time when someone let you know something that you could do better. This time, think about when the correction was a good experience. You felt, if anything, grateful, or at the very least, none of the hostility you felt the first time.

If you think about the differences between the two times, chances are the difference wasn't in the correction. Chances are the difference was in how you thought the person who was talking to you felt about you.

In the first example, the person making the correction may have been trying to make themselves look smart (and, you felt, trying to make you look stupid to help them look smarter). They might have been trying to make you look bad (because they were trying to blame you for something). They might have been someone you saw as constantly butting in, because they didn't feel you were capable of figuring things out on your own.

Whatever the reason, chances are it was the person's attitude towards you that caused you to see the correction as being something you needed to resist.

Same thing in reverse in the second example. Chances are, you saw the second person as either willing or able to help you. You either didn't know them, and therefore didn't have any reason to believe they'd need to hurt you, or you did know them, and you knew they did care about you, and did want you to do well.

See how it works?

The problem is not in offering correction where correction is necessary. The problem is where we feel the correction is coming from.

The solution to eliminating harmful blame is not to eliminate accountability. People need to be held accountable. However, it is possible to hold someone responsible for something and work towards a solution without wanting harm, shame, or blame to fall on the person responsible.

No Need For A Bad Guy

If I asked you to beat Tiger Woods at golf, chances are you couldn't do it.

If I spent a lot of time training you, working with you, and coaching you, chances are you still couldn't do it.

No matter how important beating Tiger Woods was to me, or how naturally good at golf you are, or how good a coach I am, chances are we'll never get you to a point that you could beat Tiger Woods.

So whose fault is it? Who's to blame? You? Me? Woods?

Hopefully, the answer is obvious: It's nobody's fault. It's just not something that's within your power to achieve or my power to teach. He's got more natural ability, and he's been in the game longer.

Blaming would be useless here. There is no bad guy.

Now, remove Tiger Woods from the equation. Isn't there still a limit to how far your abilities and my coaching can take us? Once that limit was hit, would it really be anybody's fault?

Not at all. No amount of me blaming you or you blaming me would help. We've both tried our best, and both reached our limits.

There is no bad guy.

However, I might harbor an unspoken fear that I was the bad guy. Or you might harbor an unspoken fear that you were the bad guy. And in an effort to prove that wrong, we'd start gathering all the evidence we could against each other. We'd starting looking for every proof we could that the other guy hadn't tried hard enough, or put in enough hours, or did his best. We would want the other guy to be the bad guy, so that we didn't have to be.

And here's the sad irony: At this point, the only thing that would help is if I start to improve my ability as a coach, or if you start to improve your ability as a trainer. By spending all our time focusing on the other person, and ignoring ourselves, we have turned away from the only thing that can actually help improve the situation--working on ourselves. Until I start learning better coaching techniques, or more about play, or you start getting better conditioned or develop a better work schedule, nothing will change.

But as long as you're focused on my problems, and I'm focused on your problems, that will never happen.

Either one of us can break the cycle. If either one of us begins to think about what we can contribute to the relationship instead of what the other person is costing the relationship, our contribution will automatically begin to improve things.

However, this only works if our efforts, if our our contributions are sincere. The second example you imagined above, the one that you didn't feel the desire to resist, wasn't someone who was "working" you, or "giving so that you would give," or "practicing good people skills."

It was someone who cared.

Period.

Management Starts With You

2007-12-03T20:39:00.000-08:00

If you want somebody to change how they are towards you, you've got to change how you are towards them.

It's that simple.

Stinks, doesn't it?

I mean, time it was that if an employee was a problem, we could just chew them out or write them up or fire them and move on.

But as time's gone on, it's started to dawn on people--even bosses--that being bossy isn't the best way to get your way.

In fact, being bossy is a pretty good way not to get your way.

It seems counter intuitive. I mean, it makes sense that we should be able to get better and better results if we push harder and harder, right? Isn't that how we've been told goals work? The harder you push, the faster you get results.

Except it doesn't seem to work like that with people. For some reason, when we push hard with people, they tend to resist. In fact, the harder we push, the harder they seem to push back. Even when we're the boss, and what we say should go.

It's a natural inclination, if you think about it, and it's born out of this fear: If that guy wants that thing so bad, he's not going to think about me while he fights to get it.

The Fable of the Sun And The Wind

This idea is illustrated in Aesop's famous fable of The North Wind and the Sun:

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.

They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.

Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt.

Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

The Meaning of the Fable

Many would argue that the moral of this fable is that it's better to treat people kindly than cruelly. That's definitely part of it. But there's a bigger lesson here that can be learned here--after all, chances are that few of us are actually mean.

Aesop himself gave moral of the fable this way: Persuasion is better than force.

In other words, Aesop was saying that it's better to try to convince a person that something is a good idea than to simply require him to do something.

I'd even like to go a step further and say the moral is this: People will always do things faster when they have personal reasons to do them than when they're required to do them.

Changing Our Attitudes

So the fastest way to get results from an employee is by connecting the project with that employee's wants and desires.

This means that for us to get better results from our employees, their wants and needs have to start to matter to us as much as our own do.

If the employee were a customer, we would be quick to that. We would want to know exactly what needs the customer had, so we could fill them as quickly and accurately as possible. We might even develop specific products just to meet that customer's needs. We would see there were dollars there, so we would try to learn that customer's business as accurately as we could, so that we could tailor products that would keep him happy and loyal. We would want to know that customer's business as well as the customer did.

We can see our employees in exactly this way. They are people with wants and needs. And the quicker we are to tap into their wants and needs, the more intricately we understand their reasons for coming to work each day, the more we can not only help them see the importance of their currently projects, but the more we can custom design assignments for employees based on what will fit their wants and needs.

This means seeing employees as partners rather than as resources.

This would cause us to look at "problem" employees in a whole new light.

Orchard growers sometimes spend some of their longest, hardest nights in the middle of winter when not a tree is producing any fruit. They stay up late with torches, keeping fires going, trying to keep trees alive during unusual cold snaps so that they'll be productive again come spring.

Similarly, it is often when employees are feeling and acting the most disloyal that they need us to provide them with reassurance that we are loyal to them.

And The Rest

Will every single assignment be one that can be custom tailored to fit a certain employee? No.

However, because of the careful way you try to match assignments and motivations to specific employees, two things will happen.

1. Your employees will be more willing to accept assignments from you. Because they feel you're acting with their interests in mind most of the time, they won't feel as inclined to resist you as they were when they were given assignments with reasons as simplistic as, "That's just the job," or, "Because that's what we have to do."

2. Your employees will be more likely to see the benefits without you having to point them out. Once you've started tying the success of projects to the individual desires of the employees, they will start to see how all aspects of the business affect them more clearly. They'll be more disposed to work for the overall success of the organization, because they'll be more likely to see organizational success as personal success.

The Change

I'm not trying to teach a technique or a practice here. There are plenty of managers who try to use some form of what I've described as a means to manipulate production from employees.

What I'm talking about is a fundamental change in the way employees are perceived.

A manager who sees employees as a resource, might still talk to them about their interests, or drop references to things they've heard the employee say into discussions, but as long as the employee was simply viewed as a resource, he would still be more interested in taking from the employee than in giving back. The employee will still feel this, and still resist.

He could even "do them favors" or "give them their way," in the interest of making them like him better, but in the end, since this technique is still motivated mostly by a desire to make himself look good rather than get more accomplished, it will still come up short of producing real results.

It is not until a manager truly changes his viewpoint to see his employees as partners that he will open up enough to them to allow them to trust him. It is not until they sense his resistance to their wants and needs coming down that they will begin to feel free to accept his assignments as being in their best interests as much as his.

And that's when they'll work for you as hard as they would work for themselves.

10 Qualities That Make A Goal Effective And Motivating

2007-11-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Definite goals produce definite results. Indefinite goals don't just produce indefinite results. They produce no results at all." -- Paul J Meyer

In his book The Game Of Work, Charles Coonradt talks about the various reasons why people will pay to work harder then they'll work at work.

You know what he's talking about--it's the way the same guy who grumbles about getting up at 7am for his 9 to 5 job, and about his 45 minute commute will get up at 4 am to drive 2 hours to go skiing in the freezing cold or flyfish in frigid waters.

He outlines a number of qualities that we find in games and other recreation that both makes it more fun as well as motivates us to work harder.

He outlines 10 things a goal must be to be both effective and motivating.

By effective, I mean the goal will actually make a difference in your life or your business.

By motivating, I mean the goal makes you feel encouraged and excited to do the goal, rather than discouraged or afraid.

1. Goals must be written. Writing a goal keeps it in front of us, keeps it from changing, and forces us to start accounting for it. A goal we don't write down that is just in our minds is a goal we are never accountable to try to achieve. And that means it will probably never happen. Also, if we write down the goal and our plan for how to get it, we can see a clear, open path to the thing we want.

2. Goals must be your own. Part of why we play harder than we work is because in play, it's my hobby, my team, my sport. We'll never work as hard on a goal if we just think it's something our "manager" wants. The more a goal is tied to an individual person's wants and needs, the more motivating it will be.

3. Goals must be positive. When they decide the winner in a basketball game, nobody cares who missed the most shots. Even if one team only hit one out of every four shots they put up, if they scored more baskets, they're going to win. If you state the goal in negative terms, like "I want to stop eating so much," or "I want to lose less inventory to breakage," it puts the focus on something negative that we're afraid of. And if we're thinking about negative things we're afraid of, that's discouraging and demotivating. Instead, we should find a way of saying the good thing we do want, instead of the bad thing we don't want. So we might say, "I want to eat the right amounts of healthy, delicious foods," or "I want to increase the amount of inventory that makes it through the quality inspection."

4. Goals must be measurable and specific. From the book:

How much, how many, and by when? If you can't measure it, how will you know you've achieved it? Even intangible goals need tangible indicators. If you have a goal to be more patient, count how many times you raise your voice in a month. If the numbers drop, your patience is increasing. Unless your goal reflects how much, how many, by when, and by whom, you really don't have legitimate goals.

5. Goals must be stated in inflation-proof terms. Coonradt says a lot of people have been suckered in to thinking they were winning the game when really something had changed in the pricing. For example, when there was a paper shortage in the 80's, many businesses actually fell behind in market share because they were seduced into a false sense of security because they were posting higher profits. Those businesses that measured success in tonnage sold rather than profits had a better idea of where they stood relative to prior performance. Goals should be based on factors that are as constant as possible.

6. Goals must be stated in the most visible terms available. Goals must be measured in something you can see. Percentages, for example, are often too vague. Telling your employees we need a loss percentage of 15% might not mean much to somebody who doesn't think that way. Telling them we need to have less than $5,000 in losses might be a little clearer, but clearest of all would be to say, "We need to collect $6,000." That's like telling your team, "We need to score 30 points." It's straightforward, and everybody can understand the goal. Can you imagine telling a basketball team, "Guys, we need to increase our scoring percentage by 60% in the second half?" They'd scratch their heads. Tell them how many baskets to make to win, and they're on it.

7. Goals must contain a deadline. From the book:

If you don't have a deadline, you don't have a goal. Goals say how much, how many, and by when. The most exciting play in all of sports occurs in that last two minutes before the clock runs down. Deadlines are what make a student who never figured out how to get out of bed during a semester to find the energy to stay up all night studying for a midterm. Deadlines account for forty percent of the money raised in any telethon being raised in the last 20 percent of the time. A goal without a deadline is merely a philosophical statement.

8. Goals must allow for personality changes. And the person who has to change is us.

You cannot, for example, become a great skier if you have a strong fear of injury. Usually, people keep doing the things they do, and keep getting the results they always get. They only change when a crisis comes--a man who has always done the same things and earned about the same salary all his life, might suddenly be forced to find means of generating more income when divorce or family illness forces him to. Those things make him want to do things he never wanted to do before. However, we don't have to wait for trauma to make us want to change--goals can do the same thing. If a goal is something we want badly enough, we will step up to the plate and make the changes in our lives and personalities that make that goal possible. Otherwise, we'll fall back into our old ways. People who say, "That's just the way I am," are people who are more interested in justifying themselves than in having better things for themselves. People can change, and they do when the need is great enough.

9. Goals must contain an interrelated statement of benefits. Goals and benefits go together. He goes back to old adage of making sure there's a WIIFM--What's In It For Me?

WIIFM explains the why to people. Anybody, when asked to do something unusual or out of the ordinary, wants to know why. They are not as interested in the how. Too often we think communication is poor when we are trying to shove the how down someone's throat when they are still waiting to hear the why. But if we can clearly define the why, then we will have the kind of performance we want and the how will pretty much take care of itself.

Too often we think our communications are not being received or that people are resistant to our requests. This happens most often when we are trying to shove something down someone's throat when they still don't understand why it's important. The great paradox is that when something didn't get done, we go back and ask, "Why didn't you do it?"

These benefits might be something inherent in the goal itself (trying to hit a higher bonus level, so everyone gets paid more), or it might be a benefit the manager chooses to give the store if it hits a certain goal (such as a casual day or buying lunch on the store or giving employees a full day of instead of two half days).

10. Goals must be realistic and attainable. When I was a kid, I was always confused when I watched football. I never understood why the teams didn't try for a touchdown on every play. The goal was less than 100 yards away, and if they hit it they would get 6 points. Why not go for it every time, instead of just trying to gain a few yards?

Coonradt talks about Woody Hayes, one of the great legends of college football. Hayes had the opposite idea. His idea was "Three yards and a cloud of dust." His goal was to do whatever it took to get three yards on every play. With that attitude, he dominated Big 10 football for decades. The three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust attitude will get you further than any instant accomplishment or get-rich-quick scheme.

Sometimes we wish there was one big thing we could do, all at once, that would get us everything we want. Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that. We don't train babies to pole-vault--we concentrate on helping them crawl. Once they've got that, then we work on walking.

It's the same way with us. We need to have big goals, but those should be broken down into small, attainable ones. Not necessarily easy--babies learning to walk fall down--but something that is doable.

Hope this helps!

Helping Employees Embrace Goals

2007-11-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

Who needs goals?

Do goals even really apply to this job?

Who even cares about goals?

As we talk about goals with people, these are questions that might come up. Yeah, I know they're rhetorical, but let's try to answer them anyway.

First, what is a goal?

A goal is where you write down something that you want, and some kind of a plan for getting it.

So who needs goals?

Anybody who has something they want.

That's it. If you want something, goals are for you. Goals are the way you take things you want and start moving closer to bringing them into your life.

If people are reluctant to make goals in some part of their life, it's because:

1. They don't want anything in that part of their life. If somebody doesn't really want to make a goal at work, they probably don't really have anything more they want from work. Maybe all they're looking for is a paycheck, and since the checks keep clearing, now it's in their best interest to figure out how to do less to get that same paycheck, not more.

2. They're afraid they'll fail at the goal. It could be that somebody doesn't want to make a goal at work because they're afraid they'll fail at it. Either they won't be smart enough or strong enough or the customers will let them down, and then they'll look bad and feel like a failure, either in front of their boss or their co-workers. The consequences of that could range from embarrassment to being fired.

3. They believe they could succeed at the goal, but it would just take too much work. Sometimes people are afraid to take on new challenges, since they feel they're already working so hard before the goal even came up.

Let's look at each of these in turn:

1. They don't want anything in that part of their life.

There might be two reasons for this.

The first reason is that although the people might care passionately about some things, these things just aren't related to work. It's not that these people aren't motivated--these people are plenty motivated. They're just motivated by things besides work. They like to spend time with their family, they like to pursue their hobbies, they like to do other things.

A person like this might not care so much about how they look at work or what loss percentage their store is hitting--they're more concerned about the other priorities they have in their life.

For these people, finding motivating goals mean finding things that they can make happen at the office that will benefit the other things they're passionate about. For example, by keeping ahead of office tasks, it could free up their manager to be more flexible in scheduling to allow them more time to do the things they care about. Or getting a bigger bonus might mean more money to spend on their hobby. Or, increasing their skills so they can become more valuable to the company might mean a shot at a bigger salary increase come review time. Or, if they want to one day start their own business, helping them understand the principles of your business might help prepare them to become more capable of starting their own business.

Notice--none of these things are about what's good for the company or about what's good for the manager or about what's good for anybody except the employee. For a person to care about a goal, the goal has to be something they really and truly want, not just something we want, or something we think they should want.

The second reason for someone not wanting more out of work might be that they're just not interested in getting better in any area of their life.

Some people just don't think about the things they want. It might be because they're pessimistic and don't believe they could get it anyway. It might be because they've been taught that wanting things is greedy, and they should only think about other people. It might be that they're so stressed out by their problems that they don't even know how to start thinking about their problems, let alone thinking about solutions.

Notice what I did not say. I did not say it was because they were lazy. That's not to say that people aren't lazy. There's just usually a reason that they're lazy. Sometimes it's that they're lazy because they think someone else will always take care of them, so they don't have to try hard. But usually the reason is more personal and emotional, related to fears about what they cannot accomplish.

It's usually not that they're lazy, but just that they're looking for escape because of hard things they're going through.

People in this category might be motivated by goals that promise relief. For example, they might be motivated to take on projects that would mean less work for them later.

However, these people also need to be given hope that things can be better. That by applying a little bit of effort in the right areas, their life can get better.

Denis Whatley, a motivational speaker, says, "Losers try to escape from their fears and drudgery with activities that are tension-relieving. Winners are motivated by their desires towards activities that are goal-achieving."

For a person like this to start to be motivated by goals, they need to start focusing on what they want instead of about what they're afraid of.

2. They're afraid they'll fail at the goal.

This is a category I, personally, fall into a lot. Often, I'm afraid to make a goal not because I don't care about it, but because I care about it so much. If I try the goal, and it doesn't work, it would crush me. So I don't try, because on some level, I'd rather have the hope that I might do it some day then the crushing blow of having already failed at it.

This is often what keeps people from asking that cute person out on a date, what keeps people from starting that business they've always wanted, and what keeps people from writing that book they've always thought about writing.

Or, it might not be that the blow would be so bad for them, personally, but they're afraid of how it would look to other people. What would my boss think of me if I told him I'd hit a goal and then I didn't do it? What would my wife think of me if I didn't follow through on the goal she knew I made?

What's worse is that even when these people do try at a goal, they often go at it hesitantly. They don't really try hard, or they delegate as much as possible to other people. That way, they won't feel as bad or look as bad if it fails.

Worst of all, they actually, on some deep level, are almost glad when a customer or employee lets them down, because it gives them someone to move responsibility to, so they don't have to feel as bad or look as bad. These people will usually make mental notes about what people, things, or circumstances didn't come through, not so they can figure out ways to overcome them, but so that they can point the finger somewhere else if things aren't going right.

Literally, they stop focusing on achieving results, and start focusing entirely on their own feelings and how they look to other people.

These people need to follow the same solution as we talked about above. They need to concentrate on what they want. They need to concentrate on why they absolutely have to have it. If they can't get excited enough about the goal, then they need to pick a different goal that does motivate them like that. What is it that you want so bad, that you're willing to give it your all, even if it means you might fail? Focus on that thing. Focus on it so much that the thought of being without it becomes painful--that you can't bear the thought of not getting it.

"We change when the pain of same becomes greater than the pain of change."

We stay the same weight until the pain on our back or knees becomes to great, and then we start trying to change. We keep treating our spouse the same until they threaten to leave us, and the thought of losing them is too great and we change.

We can either wait until life or circumstances makes staying the same too painful, or we can create the motivating pain ourselves by focusing on what we truly want and how good things would be if we got it.

In other words, we will finally do the thing we're afraid to do only when we feel it is more painful not to do it than it would be to fail at it.

3. They believe they could succeed at the goal, but it would just take too much work.

Again, folks like this aren't so much lazy as they are unmotivated.

You've seen people on TV eat bugs, jump in water that might kill them, face life-long fears, even sing in front of Simon Cowell, all for the chance at money or fame or both. People will do incredible things they never thought they could do if the reward is right.

So it really isn't that the thing is too hard. It's just that the thing is too hard for what they feel they're getting out of it.

"It's not worth it to do the extra work. My manager doesn't notice. My manager only notices when I do something bad."

"It's not worth it to do the extra work. I don't get any credit for it anyway."

"It's not worth it to do the extra work. My store never bonuses anyway, so it's not like I'm going to get anything out of it."

Again, the problem here is that they've been disconnected from their true goals and desires.

It's not that they don't want to work. It's just that they don't want to work for what they feel they're getting out of it.

If you've ever had a case where either you or an employee used to feel excited about the job or really excel at the job, but then seemed to have lost the fire, this is probably the reason. There was something you or that person used to be getting out of the job, that you or that person just doesn't feel is there any more.

Most of the time, this thing is praise, recognition, and genuine appreciation for the work that they are doing, and the most common reason for this is that their work is not being seen on its own merits, but is only being compared to what they used to do. Since they're not being praised as much as they used to be, they're not working as hard, and since they're not working as hard, they're not being praised as much as they used to be.

See the cycle?

But of course, either person can break the cycle. The employee can resolve to step up and do more. Or, the manager can find ways to show appreciation to the employee again.

Which one should go first? Whichever one you are.

Summary

So for goals to work, they have to be related to desires of the people who have to accomplish them.

This means that managers should help employees make their own goals, and should know their employees well enough to know what desires their employees have, and incorporate those desires into the business's goals.

At first, figuring out goals your employees will care about can be as challenging, to a manager, as figuring out how to accomplish the goals.

However, as your employees see that you're trying so hard to make things happen that aren't just good for you, but are also good for them, they'll be more anxious to try even for goals that aren't so much about them, because they'll come to trust you, and trust that you are keeping their wants and needs in mind when you're making decisions.

In fact, the more you do this, the more your staff will feel genuinely invested in the success of the business in general.

So if you're meeting resistance, either from employees or in yourself, don't try to find the answers by trying to convince yourself or them how good goals are. Instead, do it by listening to yourself or to your employees, and figuring out what it is that you or they truly desire out of work. What they truly desire out of life.

As in so many aspects of life, the answer is in listening, not in talking.

Hope this helps.

How To Manage People -- The Blog

2007-11-27T17:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the blog about managing people.

Here, we will be exploring ideas, blogs, books, and other topics related to dealing with people. All kinds of people. Motivated people and unmotivated people. Shy people and emotional people.

But above all, real people.

Because that's what this is really all about.

This blog's philosophy is that everyone, in every position, in every organization, is a vital part of that organization. And by realizing and acknowledging the contributions of everyone at every level of the organization, not only can you increase loyalty, but you can make a difference in people's lives.

Most companies have already woken up to the fact that there's real money to be made in meeting the very real needs of their very real customers.

It's time that they came to the same realization about their employees. By partnering with employees the same way they'd partner with a client or a customer, they will not only see greater results for themselves, but they can make a real difference in people's lives.

Now's your chance to build your own business while making a real difference in the lives of the people who are helping you do it.

I look forward to talking with you.