The next thing to learn to reverse is the process of overcoming problems. Most managers believe that overcoming problems is their whole reason for existence. They come to work looking for them and if they don’t find them, their superiors soon will. Especially if those superiors are old-school, hands-on micromanagers.
But there’s no benefit in trying to solve a problem by focusing exclusively on overcoming it. One must be willing to first look at the bigger picture, the whole system.
The world of micromanagement today has an opposite and dysfunctional approach. Most managers judge their people on noncompliance with the rules, or noncompliance with the dress code, or noncompliance with the amount of vacation time or the amount of work they should have done by the end of the day. It pigeonholes people into a very structured, manipulated, and controlled environment. They do this to get the best out of their employees. But they’re getting the worst instead. They are imposing a lockdown mentality in the workplace.
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It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is nostalgia, and the other is paperwork.
—Frank Zappa
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To truly get the best out of your people, you want to get your hands off their lives. You want to let what’s naturally in them come through, not force them into compliance with a predetermined program.
Better communication at work
We enjoy being with people when they’re comfortable, natural, and spontaneous. Not when they’re trying to be something they’re not. We like seeing the real person there.
People who are themselves bring the best out in you. You connect to that relaxed vibration and all of a sudden it helps you be yourself. Because when someone else is putting on airs, you get a little defensive and start to think, “I wonder who I should be?” And then there are two false and competitive egos clashing. But when somebody can relax into the pure being of who they are, it helps you relax into who you are and it creates a great relationship. The workplace settles down. You look forward to coming in.
When you’re in alignment, you have come to know who you are in the bigger scheme of things. Your company is no longer an alien object because you have come to know what your company values. You know who your company wants to be in terms of the product it delivers. You know the reputation it has for customer service. So you’ve already established that principle in yourself. Not a goal to get to, but an inner principle from which to operate. You now have a direction and set of values that define who you are as a person and a company.
From this position it’s easy and natural to evaluate work projects skillfully. You endeavor not so much to analyze whether a project is good or bad, but whether it’s a fit. You look to see if something is in alignment with what you and your company stand for.
Again, the company Duane works for is about creating midrange to upper-end housing in quality areas. It has become a principle and a place from which to operate.
“We know what we’re about,” Duane says, “so it is easy and natural for us to look to see what kind of projects might fit into that category. We can make our professional lives about looking to see what we align with. Not what’s wrong with things.”
That’s another reason it’s so important to discover and understand who you really are as a team. Because if you don’t know that, it’s hard to find out what you align with. You don’t know what is or is not the best fit for your company’s culture.
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Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
—Arthur Koestler
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Just start giving them your time
Many of us in this society grew up learning about the concept of tithing, the idea that if I give 10 percent of my income to good causes I will actually have more. But you can’t make that work on an adding machine! You can’t make that work out analytically.
Yet our experience has been that when we are generous and giving, we do somehow seem to end up with more instead of less. That’s a true principle of life. But it will not work analytically. It will only work as an inner awareness. But most people go through life on guard. They go through life with a need to protect themselves. They try to limit their risks and watch out for who’s trying to hurt them. That’s their barrier to this hands-off process of discovery. They don’t know how to let the world communicate with them to show them what’s inside themselves, because they’re too busy protecting themselves from the world.
This is even more true in companies. I was recently coaching employees at a Fortune 500 superstar company, and most of the people I spoke to thought the company itself was the enemy. They started their sentences out with “This company doesn’t…” or “This company never....”