Lamenting the difficulties managers have reifying their good intentions, I’ve taken readers on an excursion through the force field that throws managers off—and the ensuing dynamics that have them constantly on edge. I did so believing it’s time people understand why so much managerial misbehaving takes place. I described the daily preoccupations that prevent managers from assuming an other-directed focus. I wanted employees to realize that most of the neglect and insensitivity they receive is performed with no malice intended. It’s largely the result of managers dealing with small crises of their own.
I wanted managers to become more aware of the sources of their constant distraction, and the hollowness of the rationales they use to soothe and reassure themselves. I believed many would see my analysis useful in finding a path that brings them closer to their good management goals. I hoped my explanations would prove a useful perspective to managers reconsidering the priorities they live.
Very important, I wanted to make company leaders, CEOs, and top-tier managers with leadership responsibilities aware of the ever-present concerns distracting the people they count on to implement their plans. As managers of managers, it’s their job to decide the type of managerial mentality they want in their company, and to install processes that put managers on a course to acquiring it. There’s no question in my mind that much of what today’s work culture considers good management behavior lessens the effectiveness of everyone in the chain.
Having said this, I’m aware that we’re at a point where readers want to know if there’s a fix, and, if there is, what’s involved and who has what role in delivering it? Keep in mind we’re talking about much more than replacing a protocol or modifying an established practice. We’re talking about overriding cultural programming, changing mind-sets, and installing processes aimed at getting managers to evolve their thinking.
Breaking out of today’s status quo requires leaders committed to insisting managers’ mentalities evolve. I’ve observed and facilitated many change-management initiatives and have concluded company leaders are the only ones positioned to insist and get this done. I’m not talking about the annual all-hands meeting where the CEO and an assortment of leaders take turns at the podium speaking big-picture abstractions and feel-good platitudes. And it isn’t an assignment that can be delegated to HR professionals, or outsourced to consultants. Evolving a company’s management thinking requires top-tier leaders to stipulate objectives and install processes that force managers out of culturally conforming comfort zones. It also entails providing supports and rewards for managers doing so.
Required are leaders convinced that an evolved managerial mentality will augment their company’s bottom line. This is not to say that’s all they believe it takes to get good results, or that increased profitability is the only benefit good management behavior will yield. But believing bottom-line benefits follow from evolved managerial thinking is essential to leaders persevering when other exigencies compete for their attention. And exigencies always arise.
Company initiatives aimed at changing how managers view situations and interact are always being attempted. Some leaders have insisted upon enormous changes in managerial reasoning, and many of those were accomplished.1 In fact, I haven’t heard an account of a CEO-led initiative failing when top-tier leaders stood shoulder to shoulder insisting managers get it done. But it takes committed leaders, and a committed CEO’s involvement.
Considerable discussion is needed for people leading a change-management initiative to agree on the shifts in mentality they want. Starting out, they know they have differences, but it takes a while to learn just how significant seemingly small differences can be. In my experience, there’s no real agreement or binding commitment until group members fully divulge the personal bases for what they individually assert is essential for good management.
After stipulating a mentality, leaders need to install processes aimed at moving managers closer to the reasoning they want. For example, if they want more other-directedness, they need to make it in a manager’s self-interest to acquire mind-sets supporting that focus. They might establish incentives—rewards and bribes. They might specify specific behaviors and the frequency of their occurrence, with disincentives for failures to perform as requested—penalties and punishments. Far better, they will provide self-motivational processes that allow managers to experience the benefits of an other-directed focus and find their own ways to embrace it. In a moment I’ll relate a case study that illustrates the process I’m out to describe.
What needs to take place is much easier to achieve in small companies. It’s far more difficult to accomplish in large organizations where people feel the need to defend past decisions and current courses of action. In either instance, I find CEO buy-in required. Louis Gerstner2 described how he got every top-level IBM manager’s commitment to the mind-set he was insisting upon after threatening that any hesitation adopting it would cost managers their job. Successful as he was, with that kind of gun-to-the-head approach one should never be confident that people are telling you their true beliefs. Years earlier, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap made saber-rattling declarations similar to Gerstner’s at Scott Paper, and his reputation preceded him when he took over Sunbeam.3 Word out about his ruthless treatment of employees at Scott, droves of essential employees told Dunlap they’d be loyal—up until the moment they found jobs elsewhere and quit.
Relevant to this discussion is my five years of consulting on a change-in-mentality initiative in a 150,000-employee, high-profile, multinational company. It’s a company that spends a gazillion dollars annually on management training and quality-of-work-life enhancements. Even taking into account what I saw in the consortium eras at Procter & Gamble in the ’70s and ’80s, I know of no company whose leaders put more time and energy into establishing an employee-sensitive, consumer-considerate, and societally-contributing management mentality.
My assignment began when several top-level managers with company-wide leadership responsibilities, including the senior HR person, called on me to help them sort through their ambivalences about the company’s reliance on performance reviews.
Decision made to eliminate reviews, I was retained to advise them on matters related to getting rid of reviews and using the absence of them as a means of improving company-wide management.
The initial step entailed getting interconnected systems decoupled from the scores people received on reviews. Up until this point, reviews had been instrumental in determining pay, bonuses, stock options, and career advancement opportunities. I had several pieces of advice: “Pay for the job, not the performance”; “Award bonuses based on work-unit results, not individual efforts”; and “Let everyone in the work-unit team share—either the same amount or the same percent of their salary. Likewise for stock options.” I didn’t want people working together competing for any kind of recognition or remuneration. My rationale: remove any reason people might have to not cooperate with someone needing their assistance. In fact, provide an incentive for being a helpful, considerate teammate. Make sure people working together win together.
As for career advancement and promotion, I recommended open bidding and hiring panels led by the recruiting boss. I advised, “Wherever possible, exclude current bosses.” Jobs would be posted, people could self-assess and apply, panelists would conduct interviews and later discuss and compare. But in the end, there would be no vote, just an exchange of opinions. The recruiting boss would make the selection.
I figured, you can debate individual attributes all you want, but there’s no objective way to determine who’s going to do the best job. What could be accomplished, however, was holding the recruiting boss accountable for the success of whomever he or she selected. Let the recruiting boss choose the individual they felt could best help their unit. Then hold that boss accountable for the selected person’s results.
More generally, I recommended excluding the current boss’s input to remove a possible disincentive for direct reports speaking their thoughts candidly on a daily basis—which I saw as a primary reason for getting rid of reviews.
You see, I believed the mainstream culture had the thinking behind performance reviews 100 percent inside out.4 It had people believing that reviews were necessary in order for employees to receive performance feedback and to learn. I saw them differently. Reviews intimidated employees. They prevented employees from telling managers about the problems their “good management behavior” created for them. Get rid of reviews, modify the structure, and then managers will finally have access to the type of feedback they can learn from—rather than the other way around.
One of the leaders “ran the initiative by ‘Bill,’ ” the CEO of the company, and assured “the leadership group” that Bill was “on board” with getting rid of reviews.
Eventually it was time to get HR operatives involved. The company’s personnel-and-retention procedures and training policies needed revising to reflect what the compensation professionals had worked out. The leaders also wanted HR operatives to work up an implementation plan, alpha and beta test it, and make revisions to avoid glitches discovered in these test runs. HR operatives were also needed to frame internal announcements and manage the logistics for geographically separate, departmentally appropriate roll-outs. The leaders asked me to advise these HR people as well.
I thought it important that roll-outs include a segment that helps people, managers in particular, unlock from the illogic that was used for so many years in justifying reviews, corresponding to the recommendations I made in chapter 7. Debunking would also help managers to see there would be no turning back.
Most managers are accustomed to a self-directed focus and, probably more than they’re consciously aware, rely on direct reports knowing they are being scored. I anticipated that relinquishing this source of dominance would arouse resistances (mental speedbumps) that would need engaging. With reviews no longer in the picture, managers also needed supports for transitioning to relationships that would no longer tolerate the control and intimidating tactics that, formerly, they could get away with. For supports I suggested manager-buddy system pairings and same-level-manager support groups.
The leaders had the big picture. They understood that while the initiative was about getting rid of reviews, the real issue was removing barriers to employees speaking candidly. They saw employee voice as a boost to managers recognizing their “good management” behavior faults, and evolving a more other-directed mentality. Leaders also saw getting rid of reviews as a lessening of manager-caused employee alienation.
The HR people never seemed to get this reasoning. Their focus was on performing the specific tasks assigned them with excellence.
As is often the case with large company initiatives, there were many stops and restarts due to leadership assignments changing, and exigencies of the day taking precedence. There was also a year-long interruption when the initiative was superseded by the roll-out of a CEO-led Core Values and Company Mission Statement to be engaged by all employees worldwide. This initiative was to be reified in quarterly “Performance and Development” discussions where each direct report answered three open-ended questions, with their manager commenting on what they said:
1. What have you accomplished and contributed to the company?
2. How has your work exemplified the company’s mission and core values?
3. Beyond your designated role, what’s been your impact on other people and their success?
To my way of thinking, the core values initiative was anything but an interruption; it was an enhancement to the initiative on which I was assisting. With a couple of procedural adjustments, the two initiatives knitted together extremely well. That’s because the core values initiative provided managers the two types of acknowledgement and credit people need when assuming an other-directed focus. They got credit for their own accomplishments and they got credit for helping others accomplish.
With new levels of employee candor forthcoming, and with managers facing upcoming opportunities to hear what their reports had formerly withheld, I saw the opportunity to promote everyone’s learning by adding a fourth question for both managers and reports to answer.
4. What have you learned about how you have been managing (or operating) that causes you to behave differently now?
Answering this question would allow managers to earn credit for self-critiquing and having their self-improvement efforts noted and gains recognized. It addressed a primary reason for getting rid of reviews.
The performance and development discussions were formatted to be one-sided and hierarchical. It had direct reports accounting, and managers commenting—as is the status quo practice in boss-dominant, hierarchical relationships. For managers to learn, that format needed revising.
Personally, I’ve never been concerned about employees receiving enough feedback, and using what they thought accurate to improve as they were able. But consistent with the accounts I’ve been reporting in this book, there are plenty of reasons for worrying about managers having sufficient incentive to self-question, and to contemplate what’s dysfunctional in their relationships with employees. Absent performance reviews, direct reports would have fewer reasons to hold back.
Instead of just one person taking stock of the other’s performance, I suggested both manager and direct report should self-critique and partner in a “joint learning and improvement discussion.” I recommended they flip a coin to decide who would go first. That person then relates what he or she has accomplished, contributed to others, and personally learned about better ways of managing or operating, and now is looking to do better. The second person listens, makes notes, and waits their turn to likewise self-report.
Following initial presentations, I recommended manager and direct report hold an interactive exchange. This could even include responding to what the other person stated based on their own experiences. With performance reviews gone,5 each could benefit from some no-bad-consequences candid feedback and critique. And, at least hypothetically, as long as discussants each stick to the first-person pronoun, neither should have much to lose by being wrong, or possibly recanting and revising. Each would merely be reporting their thinking in the moment, and referencing their experience and how they interpreted it. There would be little need to pretend agreement; if they agree, they really agree. And, going forward, they would have many opportunities to support and help one another self-improve.
What’s more, each person has several self-assessment and improvement discussions. The boss has like discussions with his or her manager and other direct reports; the subordinate with his or her direct reports. That’s for starters. Over time it all gets modified as personal aspirations, chemistry, and work situations dictate. With performance reviews gone, there’s no gun-to-the-head false agreements. What’s heard is dismissible or useable, as each person decides for themselves.
Now let me ask you, absent the physical presence of a committed leader, what reaction do you think I received from HR professionals for advocating the fourth question and an adjusted format? I’ll give you a hint. It wasn’t a “yes” and it wasn’t a “no.” Good, you guessed it. I got the ol’ noncommittal, “We’ll take it under advisement.” No mystery in my mind as to what that meant.
In comparison, every top-level manager and leader in the company was actively involved in rolling out the CEO-led core values initiative, and there was no one quibbling about the use of those three questions, the one-side-accountable format, and a set date for each quarter’s discussion.
It was time for me to alert initiative leaders that the process was faltering and in need of reinvigoration. Without their active involvement I feared the “getting rid of reviews” initiative wouldn’t realize its mentality-evolving goal. Performance reviews would be removed, but the main benefits would remain unrealized.
It’s not where I started out, and it’s not what I idealize, but it’s a lesson that’s been verified for me time and time again. The management mentality that’s prevalent in a company is the responsibility of the company’s CEO. Yes, the culture at large can be fairly blamed for a good deal of bad management, but it’s the CEO’s responsibility to take stock of the prevailing management mentality and to either own it or work to get it upgraded. It’s a responsibility that needs to be taken seriously, and requires vigilant monitoring. Managerial behavior affects people’s lives and workplace effectiveness far too much to receive casual treatment. That’s why I went ballistic in the “CEO thank-you note incident” I related in chapter 6. No company can afford that type of out-of-touch obliviousness for long.
The CEO doesn’t have to come up with a coherent plan on his or her own, and other top-level leaders can be assigned to lead an initiative. However, the CEO needs to make sure that managers clearly know what’s expected of them, and have processes in place that can move managers closer to the mentality the leader wants acquired. In the aforementioned case, quarterly performance and development discussions are such a process. But if the process doesn’t have the CEO’s wholehearted backing, it’s unlikely any substantial change will occur, no matter who serves as CEO-designated leader.
It’s not unusual for leaders to have strong opinions about which attributes, behaviors, and interpersonal styles are the best ones for managers to assume. What most leaders realize, but seldom mention, is that no single attribute, in and of itself, is ever sufficient. Every positive has a downside, and what’s desirable in one situation can be counterproductive in another. Metaphorically speaking, a kick in the butt never makes anyone’s list of desirables, but situations arise where a well-timed “kick” serves as a tough love–administered wake-up call received.
On the other hand, “intelligence” is always considered a big positive. Yet we’re all familiar with the expression, “That person is too smart for their own good.” Of course, when such a statement is made, there’s usually a bit of “misspeak” involved. The person voicing that opinion is actually referring to their “own good.” Whatever the list of positive behaviors or attributes mentioned, the criteria used mirror the logic voiced by Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart when ruling on what constitutes pornography. Most people believe they know enough about good management “to know it when they see it” taking place.
I see insisting on specific behaviors as a mistake. Doing so allows people to change behavior without changing underlying sentiments and attitude. It’s analogous to how a person conforming to the letter of a law can ignore the purpose the law was conceived to serve. For example, a colleague showed me her list of twenty companies whose management alleges they’ve abolished performance reviews. But each of the companies that I personally knew about still had pay, bonus, and job assignment connected to a managers’ discretionary ratings of employees. So tell me, what did these companies achieve in the way of more candid manager/direct report conversations? I bet little changed in the deferential treatment and absence of candor their managers receive.
I much prefer managers to have experiences that provoke self-reflection and self-questioning than to see them enacting leader-prescribed behaviors. I find it far more effective when leaders provide processes that allow managers, on their own, to experience the benefits of mind-sets conducive to the mentality the leader wants company employees to receive. Since each manager has different skills, attributes, personal proclivities, and blind spots to overcome, it makes sense to leave it to them to figure out how to behave.
I have a starter list of five mind-set destinations that support other-directedness in management. In considering them, keep in mind that I’m merely talking about one dimension of a manager’s job—staging for others to accomplish and succeed. For the foreseeable future, managers who neglect their own accomplishing, or their accountability for work-unit results, will have good reason to feel insecure.
Think of the mind-sets I list as destinations that managers seeking to acquire a more other-directed focus will benefit from visiting and exploring. Think of the processes that leaders provide—and I will mention several of them shortly—as vehicles for traveling to, and sojourning in, those mind-set destinations. Add in recognition that, by nature, people feel compelled to take distinctly different routes. Applying this model, leaders stipulate destinations (mind-sets), provide vehicles (processes), offer route guidance, inquire when they fear the tenability of the route they see a manager taking, and insist on rescuing individuals who seem lost.
When it comes to mind-sets, I prefer leaders to think in degrees, modicums, and enhancements. I don’t like people thinking about mind-sets as absolutes. If you talk absolutes, such as the numbers used in performance reviews, there’s a good chance of a discussion deteriorating to “What do I need to do to get from a 4.7 to a 5.0?” Such conversations quickly become slippery slopes to the ridiculous. Not only do they waste time, they consume precious goodwill.
With all of that in mind, here are five mind-set destinations:
Feeling secure is the bedrock mind-set in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.6 Managers need a sense of well-being—psychological safety and job security—to release from self-concerns so they can focus on the concerns of people they’re supposed to assist.
I’ve already discussed many of the perils managers face that are caused by work-culture expectations—the pretense needed for maintaining image, the vulnerability incurred in doing so, and the feelings of insecurity that follow. I’ve also described the importance amassing a record of tangible accomplishments serves in allowing managers to feel secure—safeguarding feelings of vulnerability and documenting their worth. Herein lies the crux of the problem befalling managers. Other-directed efforts don’t yield tangible accomplishments. They don’t make managers feel more secure. In fact, it’s the opposite. There’s little immediate output; the relationship-building transaction costs are high; and what’s documentable is usually hearsay, fleeting, and intangible.
People feel secure when they think they’re performing high-quality work, and believe key others see them as essential contributors. Two sources of affirmation are involved. The first is self-valuing of the work performed. The second is having key others—company leaders and a person’s boss—value the output, and whether the performer sees these people as having a valid basis for what they positively conclude.
Leaders wanting more other-directedness need processes in place that acknowledge the value of efforts and contributions made. That’s what the four questions in the case study were aimed at establishing. The first three—“What have you accomplished?”; “How have you supported company values?”; and “What have you helped others to accomplish?”—acknowledge other-directedness delivered. The fourth question—“What have you learned?”—credits managers for acquiring the personal resourcefulness that makes yet higher-quality contributions possible. It’s all process. If managers weren’t provided this process, what evidence would they have that the time consumed assisting others was productively spent?
The easiest and most natural way of promoting a mind-set of authenticity and integrity is by leaders walking the talk, being their natural, open-spirit, flawed, and highest integrity, authentically expressive selves. Notice I didn’t include adjectives like self-centered, self-indulgent, or narcissistic. That stuff should be left on the golf course. At work people look to leaders as exemplars, and need their other-directed focus and support to work their best.
For managers to drop their guards and be their authentic selves, they need to believe that what’s revealed won’t be used to diminish them. It’s not that managers should expect others, especially leaders, to overlook their faults, miscues, and imperfections, it’s that they need to believe that owing up won’t disqualify them, or cast aspersions on the value of what they contribute and competently perform.
In chapter 7, I spoke at length about the integrity demonstrated when leaders admit short-sightedness, and own up to mistaken reasoning. For leaders who thrive on hierarchy, I recognize this can be asking a lot. Everyone acts defensively when facing the consequences of an error. Why not merely correct and move ahead? Because admitting error, and repairing what was damaged, communicates far more than any words one can speak. I’m talking about two-sided, leaders-included, lessons-learned accountability. Processes like these make authenticity and integrity possible.
Far and away the most impactful way I know for leaders to support an authenticity and integrity mind-set is by insisting people use the first-person pronoun. Teaching I-Speak to students, and advocating its use with clients, I’ve heard many accounts of transformed relationships. Saying something as pedestrian as, “Let me tell you how I see it . . .” immediately does away with false objectivity. Speaking in the first person, an individual is never wrong. Unless too intimidated, the other person is free to say, “I see it differently.” If that person doesn’t, it’s a goodwill courtesy to inquire, “How do you see it?” I-Speak allows a manager to be high-integrity and authentic, even under the most challenging conditions.
In chapter 3, I spoke skeptically about the “senior leadership team” and the reluctance I’ve seen top-tier managers have to assuming a company well-being mind-set. In chapter 5, I spoke about managers’ fear of cohorts and the self-protective routines used to keep cohorts at bay. Now I want to acknowledge the beneficial results possible when managers see one another looking out for their interests, and feeling sufficiently secure to assume a “one for all and all for one” systems-view mind-set. That’s the paramount tool any CEO needs to take a company forward.
It’s time to accept that self-interests are inextricably inter- twined in all work agendas, and it’s across-the-board ineffective that most people find it necessary to pretend otherwise. It’s a fact that needs acknowledgement and to be made an organization-wide “discussable.” When someone doesn’t under- stand where another person is coming from, they should feel free to inquire. It provides agenda-seekers cause for self-discipline, and it provides agenda-questioners an opportunity to correct what they misinterpret. Keep in mind the presence of self-interests does not equate to unrelenting selfishness or uncompromising competitiveness. Couple this fact with acceptance of another: an organization is a system in which any work unit–initiated activity is likely to impact other work units and their operatives.
A systems-view mind-set obligates managers to notify affected parties of their agendas and activities, and inquire into anticipated ramifications. It provides the motivation for envisaging ripple effects, and negotiating modifications prior to problems being unleashed. And when the unanticipated occurs, this mind-set obligates problem-initiators to make themselves part of the solution. Likewise, when managers see people in other jurisdictions taking action that impacts their work units, the systems-view mind-set provides the rationale for making their agendas known.
The systems-view mind-set obligates managers to align all agendas pursued with company-first outcomes. Of course, this is what everyone pretends, but it’s different when personal agendas are explicitly known. Other-directed thoughtfulness should extend to the needs of every part of the organization. Hearing about problems faced by others should evoke empathy, a willingness to lend a hand or to contribute an idea, and receptivity to those who offer. Interconnectedness should be sought when silos are noticed and communication problems in other areas become everyone’s pressing concern.
Of course, the more information bearing on marketplace conditions and strategic issues facing the company that managers have, the better job of teaming up and coordinating they can perform. As much as any other-directed preparatory mind-set, this one benefits from leaders sharing as much strategic information as prudently possible.
Here’s a mind-set that saves enormous time and prevents needless upset. Assign managers to manage themselves, including taking charge of their own development. Then, as rigorously as possible, hold them self-accountable for performing these functions. By self-accountable, I mean, “Leader, resist seizing the authority.” Inquire when you have doubts. Keep current by asking managers what they’re doing. Tell them your worries. But no heavy-handed stipulating that undermines the authority you’ve delegated. If it becomes necessary, throw out the baby (manager), not the bathwater (process). You’ll need that process for dealings with other managers. Of course, I’m talking destinations and vehicles.
Situation permitting, I find the criterion no surprises without equal in supporting managers’ adoption of a self-managing mind-set. It’s relatively straight-forward to communicate, and easy to monitor. Immediately it makes the manager the responsible party for getting positive results. If the manager needs information, additional resources, or even a sounding-board adviser, it’s that manager’s responsibility to communicate what’s needed and get it accomplished. If a manager tells their boss something is going to happen, that boss should assume it will until an instant after the manager believes differently. At that point, everyone who needs to know what’s tenuous, or needed for a repair, should receive a heads-up notice. If that doesn’t happen, talk about the missing notification, not the repair. Support the process.
Whatever the end result, relevant people should see it coming. If there’s a surprise, the manager stands lessons-learned accountable to themselves. In the early 1900s, Frederick Taylor coined the term “management by exception,” and wrote about the efficiencies of low-keying management when operations are running smoothly.7 What I’m describing entails more communication than what Taylor advocated, yet it captures the efficiency of doing away with needless oversight.
The self-managing mind-set puts managers in charge of their own development, self-assessing and responsible for learning what’s needed to personally progress. If a manager wants a leader’s opinion, or anyone else’s, it’s their responsibility to access it. And if it was me that a manager consulted, I already know what my response would be. It’s the way I always respond. I ask the “How do you see it?” question. People live complicated lives, and even when I think I know enough about the next improvement a person needs to make, it’s unlikely I’d know that individual’s priorities and capacity for learning about it.
Much of the bad behavior I’ve been describing results from managers’ insensitivity to direct reports, self-protective defensiveness with cohorts, and generally treating of people as a means to an end—turning on social niceties as their personal agendas require. Too many friendships are relationships of convenience where friends aren’t actually friends. Try this question: Who in the company treats HR people as “friends”? Answer: “Everybody.” Question: When those HR people are not in the room, how many friends do they have? Answer: Not nearly as many. Get my drift?
Managers may refer to their reports as teammates and partners, refer to cohorts as colleagues, and call everyone in the company their friend, but don’t fall for the rhetoric. Most people get dealt with instrumentally, as collaborators and allies of convenience, not spoken to authentically or treated as “I’ve got your back” friends. I’m not talking about all managers, or many managers every time out. But I am talking about enough most of the time, and I have many reasons for believing this.
Too seldom do managers value the people with whom they work for the affiliation, friendship, “we’re in it together” learning, and feelings of intimacy afforded from just associating with good people. Few give much thought to accessing human-richness qualities. When I ask in the continuing education classroom, I find most managers inclined to slough off what I’m intimating on the grounds that their days are full and they lack time for anything more. And many don’t seem to have any idea of what they might gain until I give them a questionnaire8 and exercise for experiencing the essence of another person, as I do with scores of people annually. Many are amazed by the humanity they experience in a mere hour-long conversation with others. And they are equally amazed by the humanity it draws out in themselves as they learn to connect with someone on a more intimate level.
How to account for managers not realizing the preciousness of the humanity around them? Is it fear of exposure of the pretentious and self-interested actions one takes that, in a straight-talking relationship, would immediately be made apparent? Is it for lack of knowing how to approach people, and the possibility of suffering a rejection? Perhaps it’s out of anticipation of eventual loss when they, or someone with whom they’ve bonded, moves on. Perhaps it’s for lack of family role models and not having experienced the type of intimacy to which I’ve been alluding.
Whatever the reasons, I find most of the pretentious, manipulative, and instrumental relationships taking place at work to be missed opportunities. Lack of an other-directed focus becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Managers don’t look for more; they don’t receive it; they don’t know what’s there; and they don’t even realize they’re missing out. That’s why this mind-set is needed.
I know of no sure-fire way of getting leaders to commit the thoughtfulness, energy, and company resources required for evolving the managerial mentality in their company. Clearly they have the means. Where do they get the will to use it?
Managers entrapped, entangled in cultural pretense, fearful of being exposed and criticized; operatives entrapped, at their peril to authentically express their thoughts and feelings. What can an individual do?
I believe there are actions any concerned party can take in prodding leaders to take ownership of the management mentality that prevails in their company, and to take steps in making it what they want. That’s what I’ll be describing next.
1. Jack Welch did it with a three-week management school at GE; Neil McElroy did it installing a brand-manager mentality at Procter & Gamble; Mark Shahriary did it leading a three-company consortium to put an Internet in the sky that was put on hold when the tech bubble burst in 2000.
2. L.V. Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? (New York: Harper, 2002).
3. A.J. Dunlap, Mean Business (New York: Random House, 1996).
4. S.A. Culbert and L. Rout, Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop the Intimidating, Start Managing, and Focus on What Really Matters (New York: Business Plus, 2010).
5. Recall, interlocking systems had been removed.
6. A.H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper, 1954).
7. F.W. Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998).
8. See Appendix A in S.A. Culbert, Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).