It’s Not My Fault… Is It?

Recently I had the pleasure of delivering an invited talk at an international conference on leadership. After the talk someone from the audience asked me: “what are some similarities and differences you’ve observed between coaching parents and leaders?” After thinking for a few seconds the answer seemed obvious: They both find ways to blame the very people they are meant to influence; leaders blame their workforce and parents blame their kids. The simple truth although a bit alarming, isn’t surprising once the facts are considered.

Most of us learn how to read and write, add and subtract simple numbers, and even drive a car by the age of 17. How is it that learning to be a good leader can be missed in all of this? The truth is it’s rare for anyone, including parents or business leaders to have any formal training in behavior.  A basic understanding would likely increase the chances of having a meaningful impact on the people we care most about. As parents and leaders, we are the consequence providers. We manage the environments that others live and work in and we have more influence than we think.  People who have success influencing others aren’t innately better leaders, they’ve just learned to be.

Passive-Aggressive Behavior: Does it Deliver at Work?

Recently, I was coaching someone and suggested that she come up with a list of subtle things she could try to shift the environment in a frustrating situation. Although the things she came up with at first seemed subtle, they were also passive-aggressive, so probably not a good idea. This made me think a bit more about clarifying the difference between being passive-aggressive and being a positive agent of change.

To me, being passive-aggressive means you want something, but you aren’t saying so; it’s dishonest. It’s also about causing harm rather than making improvements. Passive-aggressive behaviors usually deliver subtle forms of punishment or extinction. For example:

• Purposely delaying in a decision
• Not providing all of the necessary information
• Making excuses for not doing things that would be helpful
• Being chronically late in order to cause harm
• Being chronically forgetful in order to cause harm
• Loud sighs during meetings
• Saying, “do whatever you want” when you actually want something specific

Passive-aggressiveness seems to be born out of fear and lack of skill. It’s easier and less scary to be passive-aggressive and makes us feel a tiny bit better in the moment. It’s not the behavior of a real leader, though. Doing the right thing takes courage.

The result of passive-aggressive behavior is that it creates negative feelings and resentment and the underlying issue doesn’t get addressed. It won’t move the relationship or the situation along in a positive direction; it often does the opposite.

The Alternative
When we find ourselves in a scary and frustrating situation, there are other options to move it in a positive direction, including subtle changes to improve the environment. These kinds of techniques should be based on positive reinforcement and feedback strategies. Some examples of more positive change strategies include:

• Asking a question
• Stating the time at the end of a meeting about to run over
• Providing an example of someone doing something really well
• Sitting in a different chair
• Offering a gentle suggestion
• Role-modeling the desired behavior

More subtle forms of feedback call attention to the current environment without having to make direct, scary statements about it. Even something small like sitting in a different seat than you normally would in a meeting can make people notice the current environment more, because something in it changed.

Sometimes more subtle approaches to shifting the environment are not enough, but it’s best to start off with something small and easy that may impact behavior in a gentle way and then slowly move up the continuum of potential responses if the previous ones don’t work. This kind of progression gives you increased confidence to try something more direct and it also gives the other person the opportunity to make a change without feeling like you are being confrontational.

Most importantly, the end goal is to help others and to improve the current environment. The next time you respond to a frustrating situation, ask yourself: will this just make me feel better or could it improve the environment for everyone? If the answer is the former, rethink your strategy.

Careless or Attentive? It’s your choice.

A worker shows up at my house to fix the cable TV and while he’s working my pre-school aged son takes it on himself to bring the worker a bottle of water from our pantry.  The cable guy thanked him and smiled, it was a nice thing to do.

Being a curious behavioral psychologist, when the worker left our house I asked my son why he brought the guy water.  Pushing him a little bit, I said, “Isn’t he paid to do this work?  Shouldn’t he bring his own water?”  My son said, “He’s doing a lot of work for us and he might get thirsty for some water.”

That exchange got me thinking a bit about the inverse actions that we sometimes see in business.

The argument goes something like this:  An employee is not meeting expectations on the job.  We suggest that perhaps the business hasn’t created the right conditions for success.  A manager stands up and says, “All of this hand holding is getting to be too much for me.  When does it end?  Do you have to reward every person for every little thing they do?  Their paycheck ought to be enough!”

Let’s stop, take a deep breath, and think this one through a little more carefully.  What if you used the same logic for:

• your children?   …They ought to go to bed on time because I said so…
• your spouse? …She ought to do the laundry because it’s always been that way…
• your friends? …They ought to accept me because that’s what friends are for…
• your boss?  …She ought to want me to work on those valued projects because I’ve been here so long…

What these scenarios do not take into account is your role in creating an environment in which the other person (or persons) would ever want to do what you’re asking them to do.  We’ve all seen people in businesses treat their vendors, employees, customers, and even families, carelessly.  Behavioral science would predict these kinds of patterns in some situations, especially when we become too busy.  However, it seems to defy logic: These are the very people we rely on to deliver our key results at work and in our personal life and yet we sometimes don’t treat them with the care and attention they deserve.  We sometimes rely on people to simply do what they ought to do, without thinking about what it feels like to be them.

In most cases, a little bit of forethought on your part is all that is needed to make others feel good about what you hope they’ll do for you or the business.  This is perhaps why being too busy is a principle cause in the lack of prudence I am describing – when we’re too busy, we often go on ‘autopilot’ and stop thinking about things carefully.

A paycheck, contract, agreement, formal power or job role is usually not enough to bring out the best in people – these are just some threatening ways to keep people in line.  We all know that threats tend to bring out compliance more so than excellence.   Your job as a leader, spouse, parent, etc. is to try to arrange things so that the people who interact with you are happy to be doing so.

Perhaps you can take a few minutes to think about some of your key relationships and consider how well you’ve set yourself and your partners up for success and happiness?

When is the last time you “brought someone a bottle of water”?