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Preface: Martin Prouix, President of Pyxis and an organizational coach, posted this article on his blog, Analytical-Mind.com, this past fall. For years, I have asked students, people I coach, and sometimes even myself whether they would rather be right or effective. Martin poses essentially the same question by asking, “is it better to be right or to be helpful.” His example on what can go wrong when trying to build effective relationships is worth sharing.
Jean
Steve Jobs was one of my heroes. Clad in his trademark black shirt and blue jeans while presenting the latest Apple product, he gave the impression of being an authentic leader, quintessentially himself without subterfuge.
His death saddened me tremendously, even though I suspected it was eminent. As one of the millions in mourning because of his transition, I was drawn to a recent article entitled, “Why Is Everyone So Upset by Steve Jobs’ Death?”
When you see the phrase “motivators at work”, what do you think? Most people may think of things like pay or time off from work. These are external motivators. Others may think of personal characteristics such as work ethic or drive for success. These are internal motivators.
In previous posts, I described the lessons in integrity, self-regulation, and deferred gratification that Morgan, my seven-year-old granddaughter, is learning. She is developing these internal motivators through her participation in National Lemonade Day, a national event designed to teach children entrepreneurial skills and help them develop positive character traits.
Week after week, a manager complains to her staff about missed project deadlines. Usually, only one or two completely finish the tasks they were assigned. The others make some progress toward their weekly goals or none at all. She lectures them about taking personal responsibility for the team’s success.
An instructor gently chides students in his class for not participating more in class. As he stands in front of the classroom, looking at the 20 students clustered in rows in front of his desk, he says, “This is such a small class. We could have excellent participation if only you would talk more about the readings. If you want to advance in your careers, you need to learn to take more individual responsibility.”
A parent yells at her kid for dumping his books, jackets, and lunch box on the floor right by the door when she comes home from school every day. “This is your home,” she explains with exasperation in her voice. “When are you going to learn to take responsibility for how it looks?”
The concept of “leading consciously” implies individual responsibility — people willingly assuming conscious awareness of thoughts, emotions, and actions. Yet, individual responsibility alone won’t get us where we want to go if situational factors work against us. And lecturing others about individual responsibility is equally doomed to failure if their environment is compelling them in another direction.
I have been eagerly devouring the news bulletins on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — delighted beyond description that the repeal finally passed with bipartisan support and is now signed into law.
The similarities between this repeal and the march toward civil rights in the 50s and 60s are uncanny to me. I remember sitting on my uncle’s knee as a child, listening to him talk about serving in a segregated unit during World War II. I was too young to fully understand what he was saying, but he, my parents, and their friends all talked about what an injustice it was. He and other brave Negro (as we referred to ourselves at the time) soldiers were willing to die for their country, yet their country denied them equal rights under the law. They had separate units, inferior equipment, inferior assignments, and were routinely insulted and harassed.
As I recall, my uncle had lost hearing in one ear during the war. The outer ear was permanently numb, he said, although now I wonder if this was a bit of exaggeration. In any case, he would allow me to stick pins in it (very gingerly, of course) to see if he would flinch and he never did.
His lost hearing and numb ear were symbols to me of the sacrifice he was willing to make to defend liberty in a foreign land. Liberty had something to do with the Pledge of Alliance — as a young child, I knew that much.
I also could recite the Pledge of Allegiance by heart, having said it in my primary school daily since kindergarten:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
At that young age, I might not have fully understood liberty and justice, but I did understand segregation. To me as a child, segregation was epitomized by filthy bathrooms in the stores downtown. Every time my mother took my sisters and me downtown to shop, going to the bathroom was an ordeal. Often located in the basement of whatever store we were in, the bathrooms for “coloreds” were always nasty in stark contrast to the gleaming, clean bathrooms that we could peek in as the White patrons walked in and out.
Our teachers worked hard for us to grow up believing that segregation was an injustice — something that one day would be corrected and definitely not something we deserved. They proved to be correct on both counts as court case after court case and then the Civil Rights movement supported our advance toward legal and civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed everything for us. Legal and civil rights became the law of the land.
When “don’t ask, don’t tell” was first suggested by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the arguments pro and con were eerily familiar to me — references to holy books, “God’s will”, “unnatural acts”, and public opinion adamantly against integration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBTs) Americans into the military. Each of these arguments had been used decades before to keep my uncle and other patriotic Americans in segregated military units.
Even so, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an actual improvement over the outright ban that had existed before. Since LGBTs could “cover” — conceal their sexual identity, they were permitted to remain in the military as long as their sexual identity remained hidden. For centuries past, an unknown number of African Americans have also “covered” — passing for White. During my uncle’s day and before, those who passed and joined the military served under a tacit “don’t ask, don’t tell” injunction.
The fervent opposition to segregation that my parents and teachers instilled in me as a child has now expanded to my equally fervent support as an adult for full human rights for all. While I may get discouraged whenever the latest legislative or court initiative is set back, my spirits are immediately lifted when I look at the historical progression of human rights over time.
Year by year, decade by decade, century by century, human rights have been expanding for group after group. Slavery and indentured servitude have been abolished. Women and people of color have won the right to vote and been integrated into the military. Segregation and laws against miscegenation have been overturned. It is no longer fashionable or even acceptable to declare oneself as a racist or sexist.
Achievement of civil and legal rights for each group hasn’t been fast, and it hasn’t been a straight road, but the march toward liberty and justice for all continues onward, nationally and internationally.
Specifically with respect to gay rights, many companies have adopted policies that protect domestic partnerships, yet marriage equality is still a promise in most states. Some organizations, including the University of Houston where I am a Professor Emeritus, have included sexual orientation in their equal opportunity provisions, yet there is no federal law guaranteeing it. Even so, another sign of the changing times is that some House and Senate members who opposed repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” avoided any offensive implication that gays were inferior or “unnatural”. Rather, they claimed that their opposition was based on concern about the morale of the troops.
Attitudes are changing and as they do, so will the laws. In Reframing Change, Chapter 6, we emphasize the importance of celebrating small wins to keep up one’s spirits. Liberty and justice have not yet fully implemented for all Americans, there is more to be done, but the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a “Big Win” that I am delighted to celebrate with millions of others.
What a wonderful start for the New Year!
Happy holidays to all of you,
Jean
References:
1. Reframing Change, Chapter 6, Initiating Change
2. Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering : the hidden assault on our civil rights (1st ed.). New York: Random House. See also http://www.kenjiyoshino.com/articles/pressure_to_cover.pdf
Preface: Workplace Undercover will be a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant. The scenario below was written by Eillen Bui, our research associate. Mary Harlan of Harlan Consulting is guest consultant for this scenario.
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The scenario: Carina was recently promoted from Operator Technician to Engineer after working at TLC Co. for 15 years. To Carina, this promotion was bittersweet. She knew that she deserved this position, but felt it should have happened long ago. She was already doing everything the Engineer’s job description entailed years ago and was very experienced. The only thing was that she never earned a degree in engineering; everything she knew, she learned from working at the company.
Tom, the engineer she worked under, would assign Carina his tasks and then would take credit for her work. He even received a raise because of all the work that he was supposedly putting out. Carina would work in the background, believing she never received the credit she deserved.
Carina had many reasons for not wanting to bring up the situation to the partners of the company. She felt that as a female, she would never be considered for the position since only males held that title in her company. She also feared that she would be perceived as a weak, emotional female that would complain whenever she felt a “perceived injustice”.
As a first generation Filipino American, Carina was not as fluent in the American language as she wanted to be. She felt that if she brought up the subject, she would not be able to communicate her point to the partners effectively and that Tom would take that opportunity and discount her.
Carina would fume in the background, thinking that the partners surely knew she was the one who was doing all the work and was just turning a blind eye since Tom had seniority and was a white male, just like them!
The day after receiving her promotion, Carina began wondering whether she could now tell the partners how she had suffered in silence all these years, now she had had more of a voice in the company. She suspected what had happened to her was happening to another woman in the company and she thought the partners should know what was going on in their own company. Also, she just couldn’t bear to stay silent any longer.
But would she hurt her career by speaking up? And if she did tell them how she felt, what should she say and how should she say it?
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Today’s Response by Mary Harlan:
Carina, first of all, congratulations on a well deserved promotion! Yours is a difficult and complicated situation. It’s difficult because you must weigh the immediate emotional release you expect to get by speaking up against the longer term potential for backlash if do you speak up. Both options, particularly the potential for backlash are somewhat laden with assumptions. Consider the possibility that you could find a way to share your experience and your perspective in a way that provides insight rather than accuses.
Your situation is complicated because part of it is emotional (the accumulated years of hurt, betrayal, and resentment) and part of it relates to what you experience as fair or just in your work setting.
I would encourage you to work through your emotional charge on this before you do anything. A first step you might take is clearing your emotions to the point that you can sincerely appreciate where people are in the organization and how they have possibly and unconsciously acted out of their cultural conditioning – the way things have always been done in their organization . This could release you from having an emotionally driven agenda with your decision.
Once you have cleared your emotions, if you decide to say nothing, you will be okay your decision. If you decide to speak up, you will be able to do so with clarity of purpose. This clarity will increase the likelihood that your speaking up provides insight and has a positive outcome for others…and decrease the odds that you are perceived as a “weak, emotional female that would complain whenever you felt a perceived injustice”.
When (and if) you share your experience, two points are important to keep in mind:
Both of these points can be positive for the other person to hear. Hearing that you don’t think they intend to be hurtful can mitigate the reaction that they could have of feeling falsely accused.
Hearing that you’re aware of your perspective can support their openness to understand much more personally and poignantly how their behaviors impact people in the organization and ultimately performance.
Can you imagine sharing with them your experience in such a way that they thank you and ask you to further share with them your experience and perception? This is the possibility available with cultural understanding, accountability (not blame) for our own history, and forgiveness (both for yourself and others).
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Mary Harlan, President of Harlan Consulting, is a consultant and coach, specializing in change management, cultural competence, diversity, leadership, and teams. For more information, see www.harlanconsulting.com. Mary is also a practitioner with Leading Consciously.
Preface: Workplace Undercover is a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant. This scenario was written by Carole Marmell. Jennifer Joyce, cofounder of LeadershipSmarts, responds. This is the second of a three-part segment.
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In the previous post, Molly, a young bank employee, had expected supportive feedback from her manager during her yearly performance appraisal. Instead her manager strongly criticized her and accused her of acting arrogant and believing she is smarter than everyone else. What can Molly do?
Jennifer Joyce responds:
In this scenario, it may be easy to find problems with how Molly’s supervisor and the appraisal committee are providing feedback. The feedback doesn’t appear to have a strengths-based approach or include positive feedback. It is entirely negative. The information is not specific and is full of judgment (“arrogant”) and assumptions (Molly thinks she’s smarter than us). And it sounds as though there may be issues around Molly receiving the direction and guidance she needs to do a good job on unfamiliar tasks. Finally, Molly is blind-sided by the information as she is expecting a glowing evaluation.
Nonetheless, making a case for “poor Molly” would take Molly down the path to powerlessness. Handled well, the situation could prove to be a gold mine for developing interpersonal skills, building more trusting relationships, and gaining new self-awareness about blind spots that have been undermining her success at work. To turn this situation into a positive career win, Molly should focus on three things: engage in self-management, “be in the question,” and “uncollapse” the issues of personal effectiveness from quality of work.
Any of us could easily be knocked off our center when receiving critical feedback, especially when we’re not expecting it. Molly doesn’t appear to be too emotionally triggered, so she has a good chance of managing herself well during the interaction. Nonetheless, she is struggling with how to explain her side of things without sounding defensive and questioning her own sense of reality and belief in herself.
During the discussion, Molly needs to have two main goals: to stay calm and to stay curious. That could be difficult if, like most of us, her natural inclination is to defend herself.
Molly needs to buy a little time to center herself and access her self-management skills. To release her stress, she might want to take a few deep breaths, relax back in her chair, and review the points that her supervisor brought up.
It’s always a good idea to take notes in a feedback discussion, as this will help catch the most important points for review later. In addition, reviewing her notes in the meeting would help Molly buy a little time to think through how best to respond.
Like many of us, Molly may feel pulled to “be in the answer,” which means she will stick with her own assessment of the situation that makes Molly right and others wrong.
But if Molly uses that strategy she loses on many counts. First, she will damage her relationships and her reputation as people will not only see her as arrogant, but also as unwilling to take feedback and make necessary changes. More importantly, she will miss the gift that feedback could provide: the chance to see things about herself that others see and she doesn’t. Without that outside-in view, she could continue to go through life not getting the results she wants and never understanding why.
The way through this dilemma is for Molly to “be in the question,” which means setting aside assumptions in order to become curious about everything that is happening. “What is it that causes people to see me as arrogant?” “What behaviors could they describe to give me a clue about how they experience me?” “Could they give me an example of a negative appraisal I made that seems out of line?” These questions would help her supervisor provide more specific quality feedback.
Molly could act as her own personal anthropologist trying to understand the world through other’s eyes. If she can stay “in the question,” she will jump start new levels of self-awareness that could lead to tremendous personal growth. She may be able to begin changing assumptions and behaviors that are undermining her effectiveness and begin an upward spiral in her professional development.
Molly’s biggest concern is that that her team might consider her work substandard. That would be awful for Molly as she takes great pride in producing high-quality work. It’s an important value of hers.
However, if Molly reviewed her notes, she would realize that her supervisor said nothing about the quality of her work. Rather, the feedback is about the quality of her interpersonal effectiveness. She needs to address the two issues separately: first the interpersonal effectiveness issue, and then the work quality issue.
If she was able to be “in the question” when she received that feedback, she is well on her way to addressing the first issue of interpersonal effectiveness.
But that still leaves Molly worried about perceptions about her work performance. Now that she understands the interpersonal issues, she can ask her supervisor to give her feedback on the quality of her work.
Again, she must stay in the question so she can truly hear what her supervisor has to say. She can use the same skills and ask for specific examples to help her understand the feedback, which may be quite good. She can help her supervisor uncollapse the issues by asking “Now that I understand the concerns regarding my interpersonal effectiveness, could we spend a few minutes reviewing the quality of my work?”
Summary. Here are three steps Molly might take:
But what about the bank’s role? How might the bank as an organization support Molly and her supervisor in giving and receiving more effective feedback? This will be discussed in the next post.
References: Reframing Change, Building Effective Relationships, Chapter 4
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Jennifer Joyce, cofounder of LeadershipSmarts.com, is a leadership development consultant and coach. She specializes in diversity, continuous quality Improvement, team effectiveness, change leadership, strategic planning, meeting design and facilitation, leadership development and executive coaching. For more information, see www.leadershipsmarts.com
Carole Marmell, LMSW-IPR, C-SWHC, is a hospice social worker.
Preface: Workplace Undercover is a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant. The scenario below was written by Carole Marmell. Jennifer Joyce, cofounder of LeadershipSmarts responds. This is the first of a three-part segment.
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Molly is a 30-year-old bank employee. The bank has a very structured environment, with formal performance appraisals after every project as well as every year. The appraisals go both ways, for supervisors as well as line staff. All appraisals are done by committees consisting of supervisors and line staff. In addition, the supervisors have procedures for providing coaching and feedback to all line staff to help them advance step by step.
In practice, Molly feels she does not receive appropriate coaching and feedback from her immediate supervisor and project manager. She feels that they assume she knows more than she really does, simply because she is so good at figuring things out for herself.
Molly is fairly confident of her approaching yearly appraisal. When her supervisor decides to provide an advance heads-up, Molly believes she will receive supportive feedback for her hard work. Instead it is barely mentioned. She feels her supervisor is telling her she is not conforming to expectations that she didn’t know existed.
“The perception around here,” says the supervisor, “is that you are a bit arrogant and feel you are smarter than everyone else. Your appraisals of others are more negative than we expect, and we worry this is an indication that you are not able to work well with others.”
Molly is not upset with her supervisor; she is actually relieved to hear this feedback before going in front of the whole committee. For that matter, she feels that this supervisor, who is new, is much better at communicating than the previous one. However, she now worries whether her work is considered substandard, rather than high-quality as she assumed. She has totally lost confidence in her own judgment.
What can Molly do now?
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Jennifer Joyce responds:
In this scenario, it may be easy to find problems with how Molly’s supervisor and the appraisal committee are providing feedback. The feedback doesn’t appear to have a strengths-based approach or include positive feedback. It is entirely negative. The information is not specific and full of judgment (arrogance) and assumptions (Molly thinks she’s smarter than us). And it sounds like there may be issues around Molly receiving the direction and guidance she needs to do a good job on tasks with which she is not familiar. Finally, Molly is blind-sided by the information as she is expecting a glowing evaluation.
Nonetheless, making a case for “poor Molly” would take Molly down the path to powerlessness. Handled well, the situation could prove to be a gold mine for developing interpersonal skills, building more trusting relationships, and gaining new self-awareness about blind spots that have been undermining her success at work. In order to turn this situation into a positive career win, Molly should focus on three things: Self-management, “be in the question,” and “uncollapse” the issues of personal effectiveness from quality of work.
[to be continued in the next post]
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Jennifer Joyce, cofounder of LeadershipSmarts.com, is a leadership development consultant and coach. She specializes in diversity, continuous quality Improvement, team effectiveness, change leadership, strategic planning, meeting design and facilitation, leadership development and executive coaching. For more information, see www.leadershipsmarts.com
Carole Marmell, LMSW-IPR, C-SWHC, is a hospice social worker.
In the last few months, I have gotten into friendly debates with others about whether it is appropriate for local school boards to ban candy and soda from their public schools in light of the alarming increase in childhood obesity.
A recent Rasmussen Reports public poll shows how controversial an issue this is. Results indicated that 52% of the public favors the ban and 40% oppose it. This is a case in leading consciously.
On the one hand are the advocates of personal responsibility. They contend that instead of banning candy and soda from school vending machines, schools and parents should teach children proper nutrition.
On the other hand are those who emphasize changing systems, not just individuals. These advocates base their opinions on a growing body of behavioral science research on how we as human make choices. The evidence is emerging that our environment influences our behavior more than most people imagine.
All of this was brought to mind when I discovered a wonderful website that succinctly summarizes research studies about how heavily influenced we are by subconscious thoughts and the environment in which we live and work.
The website includes a publication entitled MINDSPACE, an acronym for influences on our behavior. Quoting directly from the website:
In short, most of our day-to-day behavior is influenced by what feels good in the moment, what others are doing around us, and the habits we have formed. Our habits are made by strong neural connections in our brains from one thought to the next. The stronger the neural links, the more automatic the behavior.
With regard to fatty foods, though, there is even more to it than bad habits. Recent research has found that our body has fat receptors that respond to how much fat we take in. Once our body gets used to having a certain level of fat, reducing the fat intake causes the body to crave more fat.
To illustrate how difficult it is for children to resist sugary snacks and soft drinks, one university nutrition researcher showed a photo of children sitting in a snack room at a table surrounded by huge vending machines filled with soft drinks and junk foods.
Let’s enter the subconscious mind of Little Johnny, age 10, sitting around a table with his friends in the school’s snack room layered by vending machines along the walls. Using, the MINDSCAPE acronym, what influences Johnny’s decision to either buy soda and candy from the vending machines or to eat the homemade muffin and orange juice his mother packed for him in his lunchbox?
Most people I know highly value their right to choose. Yet MINDSCAPE reminds us that as human beings, we are prone to mindless behavior — to take the path of least resistance. As a friend of mine likes to say, the advertising industry is betting trillions of dollars that we make choices based on environmental influences whether we believe it’s true or not.
It’s hard to override our subconscious mind if we are unaware of what influences our behavior. When we become aware, we are prepared to lead consciously — to intentionally choose among alternatives so that the choices really are our own.
Even if Johnny’s school enacts bans on soft drinks and soda within school boundaries, he and his parents still have the responsibility to make sure that he chooses his foods wisely. Yet to break mindless habits, it helps to set up the environment so that desired behavior may occur with less effort.
If anyone offers an example, we can analyze it through the MINDSCAPE lens.
In the previous blog entry, I asked, is it is feasible for organizations to pay attention to their employees’ happiness and still produce results considering the tremendous pressures most organizations are under to show growth and cost savings in this economic climate.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, an online shoe store, says he wouldn’t have it any other way. I have long been a fan of Zappos, ordering most of my shoes from them for several years now. Read the rest of this entry
A recurring conversation among my friends and clients is the staggering amount of work hours that people are now putting into their jobs. I talk with people who arrive at work by 6 or 6:30 a.m. and leave by 7 or 8 that evening. Add challenging workplace dynamics to the equation and they feel burned out at home and at work.
Yet with all this economic uncertainty, most are grateful to even have jobs. Their overwork is an undiscussable they wouldn’t dream of surfacing. Read the rest of this entry
