A trap is a trap only for a creature which cannot solve the problems that it sets. Man-traps are dangerous only in relation to the limitations on what men can see and value and do. The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped. To describe either is to imply the other.
Geoffrey Vickers1
I see managers ensnared in a work-culture-set trap. Having internalized what the culture falsely stipulates, lacking incentives to reason otherwise, managers are unaware of the problems their culture-stipulated “good management behavior” creates.
It’s not their intent to act badly. Pretense prevents them from connecting the dots. To be intentional, managers would have to connect what they don’t see themselves doing to effectiveness problems their reports won’t tell them they are having.
In their minds they’re practicing good management. That’s why I’ve been calling their dereliction and bad behavior “inadvertent,” caused by “limitations on what [they] can see and value and do.” I like the way Vickers depicts it: “The nature of the trap is a function of the nature of the trapped. To describe either is to imply the other.”
The culture has managers pretending to be objective, ever-collaborative, company-first thinkers and action-takers. Deep down, managers know they’re anything but that. But owning up is self-incriminating. Intimidated, insecure, and pretentiously thinking they should be what they are not, most managers lack the means to be authentically expressive. Once people interacting with them spot their duplicity, there’s no way to earn their trust.
I find managers standing too close to the screen to take in what they effect. They need to step back and view the entire picture to realize they haven’t been doing nearly as well as they’ve been telling themselves. Their direct reports are on to their duplicitous ways—and taking the dereliction quite personally.
Reports shouldn’t take it personally. In most instances, it’s the system staging the dramas and writing the scripts managers enact. What’s transpiring is the result of how managers feel forced to act. But employees do take it personally. What’s transpiring affects their lives and their dreams. It’s natural to resent the manager whose inaction deprives them of so much of what they want and need.
Ensnared in vulnerability, operatives are also trapped. They sign on thinking they’re going to work for a company. They come with ideas of contributing, and expectations of getting ahead for doing so. Eventually they figure out their employer is not the entity writing the checks: it’s a self-focused manager. Their job is accomplishing what this manager self-interestedly alleges the company needs, and in the way that person wants it performed.
At some point operatives try to discuss the negatives, but nothing of substance gets altered. Gradually, operatives lose hope that their problems will ever count. Knuckling under to authority, they mute their voice.
Lacking power, operatives become preoccupied with concern for how they are being viewed. Viewed by the company? No. By the manager to whom they report. Everything they produce, and every interaction, seems to bear on future prospects. It all seems to hinge on one individual’s portrayal of the work they produce, and too often that seems to depend on whether that individual likes them.
By this time, most operatives realize they’re on their own, and feeling vulnerable because of this. They’re imperfect, lack voice, in need of guidance, coaching, and support, and hungry for a sign of appreciation for what they’ve been knocking themselves out to produce. Most of all, they need what the system seldom provides: a manager with an other-directed focus helping them get ahead. That’s what they took the job expecting. The advertisement attracting them to apply didn’t include “self-preoccupied manager” on its list of benefits.
The point has been made: without company leaders involved, people aren’t going to receive the other-directed, good management behavior they need. Yes, some will get it, and some will get along much better than others without it. And while everyone would be better off receiving more, the majority won’t get much.
While most leaders acknowledge the importance of what I’ve labeled an “other-directed managerial focus,” few leaders find the benefits sufficiently attractive to commit to a process for evolving it. To commit, a leader would have to believe the time and energy required would net big bottom-line payoffs. Few leaders hold such a view. For one thing, where would they acquire it? Certainly not in school. I don’t know a single finance professor who stresses anything like the bottom-line impact of other-directed, good management behavior.
How about personal values as the driver? Would work-life enrichment for everyone in the company be sufficient motivation for leaders to devote themselves to the process? Personally, I can’t imagine many going for this, particularly with the uncertainties involved. But we don’t really know, so let’s leave this an open question. In any event, I find it unfortunate that having someone at the top leading a change-management initiative is far and away the best course to take in getting managers to evolve. Given the stakes, I don’t like the odds.
Stepping back, I see an unfortunate mismatch. Top-level leaders have the means, but most won’t see sufficient gains to justify the effort required. The economy has turned around, their companies are profitable, and people burdened by bad management behavior are neither loudly complaining nor defecting in numbers that cause them much angst. And what about the people who know what they have to gain? The people who believe everyone’s effectiveness and well-being would be greatly enhanced, with big bottom-line payouts following. Well, they lack the means. What can people do besides look out for themselves and grumble?
I wrote this book thinking that enhanced awareness of the cultural forces perverting good management behavior, and the false premises on which those forces are based, would prove useful in helping people cope with what is not in their power to change. I also saw a good amount of self-enabling that people at any level of hierarchy can perform—and at least two very constructive purposes served by their doing so: first, for-ease-of-mind comfort and enhanced self-effectiveness; second, for communicating their company experience in sufficiently compelling terms to incentivize leaders to use their means. Along these lines, I have two approaches to suggest.2
Each approach begins with self-reflection on the discordant feelings provoked by a specific managerial action. The first entails raising one’s awareness of the specific causes of those feelings—messages received, sensitivities evoked, symbolism involved, mentalities inferred, et cetera—for purposes of catharsis, and enhanced personal functioning going forward. The second approach entails exchanging insights with friendly cohorts for purposes of heightened awareness, bonding, and, eventually, to spur leaders into thinking about the management mentality in their company with the idea of getting involved. The task is not formulating the ultimate argument that no leader can resist. It’s unlikely any mortal could accomplish that. The task is to participate in a process that makes management actions discussable, and creates enough buzz that top-level leaders take notice and eventually feel the need to get out in front leading a mentality-evolving effort.
Approach #1 takes the discordant feelings as prima facie evidence of a person’s alienation. Through the use of inductive reasoning, the individual seeks to identify what was communicated by the specific action that evoked those feelings, and, perhaps, more generally communicated by the management mentality represented by that action. Minimally, the managerial action alienated the person experiencing discordance; possibly that action signifies a mentality that would alienate a preponderance of like-stationed individuals; and maybe what’s communicated by this specific action is also communicated in other similar in-character managerial actions system wide. This approach seeks to identify what is being communicated and the extent of the impact it has.
Whatever the specifics, consider two types of provocation. In type A, management expects something—an action, attitude, thought process, or identity—that the individual finds inconsistent with his or her inner nature, temperament, and/or goals and self-interested pursuits. Alternatively, in type B, management disapproves of and/or actively censures a way of being, or performing work, that seems self-appropriate and congruent with one’s inner nature. An example of the former is found in the story about the manager whose home life was being eaten away by what he thought it took to prove himself worthy at work (described in chapter 1). An example of the latter is the story about the applicant who received the dressing down that shook his confidence for ten years and running (also in chapter 1). It’s a shame neither of these men were able to grasp the impersonality of the events causing them so much alienation, or to learn how experiencing events like these is part and parcel of their indoctrination in a management mentality that unleashes situations like the ones that upset them.
Now decide: A or B? This is the first step in clarifying what’s askew in the management mentality that negatively impacts on your well-being.
Then reflect: Is this a message you’re likely to encounter in the actions of other managers, or is it unique to your interaction with the manager involved in this specific situation? If it’s this manager and not others, it could be due to differences in temperament, bias, chemistry—there could be any number of causes. That should be relatively easy to determine. Once determined, you can decide what action, if any, to take with respect to this specific occurrence. It could be setting someone straight on a misperception of you; it could be apologizing for overreacting to a sensitivity created by interacting with someone in your past (personal baggage).
Most often, what’s bothersome is widespread in the prevailing managerial mentality and causes alienation in other like-situated people. It could be any type of alienation: feelings caused by having one’s opinion dismissed, lack of fair play, not being consulted, something prejudicial or discriminatory, being lumped in a category, or just about any managerial action that rubs you the wrong way. Next, consider what about the way managers think puts you, this time, and others at other times, on the defensive. See how precise you can be in naming the message implied by the specific action that bothered you.
The second part of this consciousness-raising approach utilizes inductive reasoning to further analyze what you’ve uncovered. It’s analogous to examining fossil DNA scrapings for the purpose of reconstructing the dinosaur from which they came. One reflects, “What does this incoherent event reveal about the prevailing management mentality in the company?”
Inductively, one performs what I term “Why, This, Now” investigative work.3 What’s just been identified serves as the “clue”; now the task is to learn about the system that produced it. One inquires, “Why is this message being sent out now?”—with now being the situation or circumstance that prompted it. See how many specifics you can reasonably induce. Reflect: What purpose was this discordance-arousing message intended to serve? Who benefits, and how? What forces bear on the person initiating it? What assumptions are being made about you and your role, and which of them are inappropriate? Who and what are allowing what’s wrongly assumed to endure and continue managerially unnoticed? If messages like this weren’t being sent, what would be missing in the way managers operate here, and how would that gap be filled? If some modifications were made to correct it, what fears might be evoked, and from whom? Ask any question that seems relevant to teasing out implications from what you just put under the microscope.
Do you need examples? Think about the discordant feelings evoked by managerial actions we’ve already discussed. Discordant feelings from operatives having to work off-the-clock so their manager can bring a project in on budget (chapter 1); from being in a meeting where the CEO asks someone to mislead the client because the company needs the additional income (chapter 2); from watching a manager defer on training replacements for retiring engineers in order to ensure bonus-deserving numbers (chapter 2); and from observing top-level managers engage in self-protective routines like the ones mentioned in chapter 5. And I haven’t even touched on all the waste-of-time meetings or the time-consuming reading of emails sent by individuals fearful of offending by putting people in an information loop that holds little value for them. Keep in mind I’m talking about other people’s situations. Try this approach on a gut-gnawing situation in your work life today. You’ll be amazed. It’s like going out fishing and having the fish jump into your boat.
What if people experiencing self-focused management stood their ground and spoke forthrightly about aspects of the managerial mentality that negatively impact their effectiveness—and intrude on their lives outside of work? What if, when the emperor appeared with no clothes, someone had the gumption to blurt out, “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, your shirt needs tucking in the back.”
Company leaders need to know what people think, whatever it is, and people need to express it—if only to provide the leader an opportunity to set them straight and get them back on course. Most of all, leaders need people to hold their ground when they push back. They almost always push back. Personally, I believe providing one’s differing beliefs to people with power is a profound act of loyalty that shouldn’t come at personal risk. But it frequently does, and people feeling they lost out by doing so often resolve, “Never again!”
Leaders need to hear about management problems often enough to realize that the company’s management mentality is an issue that’s not going away. The more accounts they hear, the greater likelihood they’ll get the point. They know that leaving obvious flaws unaddressed threatens their credibility. They also realize that single-point solutions seldom get the underlying issue resolved. Their need to do what’s right, combined with concern for maintaining a positive image, will be enough to motivate most. Now, how do we get people to reveal their bad management experiences without jeopardizing their relationships with the managers perpetrating them?
Two tasks are involved. First you must frame a message sufficiently compelling that most people hearing it, leaders in particular, feel a need to engage it as serious. The second is finding the means to not back down when a leader pushes back. The latter is a tall order for people who fear being seen insubordinate, or labeled “negative.”
Approach No. 1 allows you to identify others whose effectiveness you believe is similarly hampered by the mentality issue troubling you. Of course, each individual possesses unique skills, background sensitivities, et cetera, so expect the negative impact it holds for another person, and the feelings of alienation provoked, to inevitably be somewhat different than they are for you. Contrasting experiences, sharing insights, and dialoging should deepen your understanding. It almost always will sharpen your thinking and improve your articulation of the issues commanding your attention. It’s also an opportunity to dry-run how you’ll want to portray your thoughts when an opportunity occurs to describe them to a leader.
The very good news is that no one has sole responsibility for advancing any viewpoint, nor does it depend only on one person’s awareness. Everyone in a company has a stake in the management mentality evolving, even managers whose current behavior is a source of discordance. Others also read management books, and ardently reflect on management events.
It takes time for any new way of looking at managerial behavior to take root. Most people feel the need to sort things out for themselves. Some will rerun their tapes of past events to see what their new awareness reveals, and whether their reactions now make more sense. Many will be wanting to see if and how their new awareness makes ensuing events more understandable.
One last bit of practical advice: I urge caution in choosing “friends” for sharing. Until the management mentality in a company evolves, there will be insecure-feeling people who, when representing someone’s words and sentiments to third parties, will do so in a way that reflects their in-the-moment competitive motives more than the character and intent of the person who told them. It’s going to happen, and you’re not going to be present to correct them. When you get wind of it, set the record straight as best you can without criticizing the person misrepresenting you. Even when angry, do your best to speak respectfully about everyone, not just those in the room.
I’ve already provided the best means I know for an individual to stand their ground and get their views across: I-Speak. Using I-Speak allows a person to matter-of-factly tell anyone their views and reactions, and the meaning they extract from what they see transpiring, without appearing disrespectful.
There are a few caveats here that I believe a person prudently should keep in mind. Keep your comments to issues, not people. Remember that the problems you’re having stem from the prevailing mentality, and this time it just happens to be imperfect person X reifying it; next time it’ll be imperfect person Y; and you could be imperfect person Z. In other words, speak about the virus, don’t assail the virus carrier. If there’s bad behavior or unfairness, keep your comments to the system that provokes it and tolerates it. People will get defensive; you can’t prevent that. But there’s no need to pin the problem on an individual. Besides, once your ideas about the virus, sink in, you’ll want everyone, including today’s virus carriers, helping to eradicate it.
People have many options for sharing their insights, and many serendipitous opportunities to speak them. Whatever you decide, be sure to check whether the individual you’re addressing is in a listening mood. That person won’t be if they are preoccupied with another agenda, or hold strong views they feel compelled to defend. Since you already know what you want to say, why not let the other person speak first. Start by asking how he or she sees the issue. Then speak in terms that correspond to the words and issues the person just expressed. If you think you already know, I recommend inquiring anyway. You might begin with, “Here’s how I understand your views; set me straight on what I have incorrect.” Afterwards, it’s enough to say, “I see it differently, and I’d like to tell you why.” No need to get argumentative; use a friendly tone that invites the other person’s interest.
If, after you’ve presented your views, that person decides to set you straight, it’s best to listen without interrupting. If you disagree and don’t think you can make progress pressing your views, there’s no need to counter. Your silence lets them know they didn’t prevail. Take your best shot and leave it at that. You’ve shared your reality, and the other person now knows what you believe. People remember differences in opinion and tensions much longer than they remember agreement. That’s an established fact.4
I find managers and leaders self-deluding when they think they and their companies have access to most of the critical issues weighing on people’s minds. Most will say they want to hear more, and I believe them. But how can they reasonably believe they know what concerns individual employees given the systems they have in place?
I’m always looking for ways to remove the system roadblocks to leaders and managers hearing the real concerns on people’s minds. I’ve been mentioning them throughout this book. Get hierarchy out of relationships, and insist on no surprises; get rid of performance reviews, and remove the intimidation; stop the punishing, and implement lessons-learned accountability; reward other-directed management behavior; ask managers what they learned, and, then, what blocked them from knowing it sooner; when making an improvement, acknowledge the faulty logic formerly used; promote and provide supports for straight-talk relationships; maximize transparency; make it possible for people to be up-front with their agendas; conduct political vying in the daylight; make the system fair, irrespective of personality—I can go on mentioning what systemically impairs employees sharing perspectives and facts their leaders and managers should know.
Without knowing what others truly think, managers and leaders can’t do what’s right for themselves, let alone for the people they rely on for getting company work accomplished. And, as I’ve already mentioned, the work culture at large is full of obstacles that prevent leaders from finding out. The person who can help the most is that leader, once they figure out how important it is to know. Recall that my reason for getting rid of performance reviews wasn’t just to save time and prevent resentment. It was to enable managers to hear what others truly think and to learn lessons needed for bettering themselves as managers. Why am I optimistic that company leaders will realize this and eventually reverse course? Because once they open their eyes, their good intentions will push most of them to do what’s right. When not on the defense, goodwilled people look for opportunities to self-improve and do good turns for others. That’s a wonderful part of human nature. Lots of people come with this type of character and integrity.
Now let me put it to them directly. Ms. Leader, Mr. Manager, if you really want to know what’s going on, make it possible for people to tell you. You don’t have to have a fix. You just have to do your best and show appreciation when people are forthright in telling you. Respect message carriers; don’t get stuck only thinking about what they stand to gain. Be open about your limitations. The big opportunity is allowing messages to get in. You’re ahead just by knowing what’s going on in the lives and thinking of people. Afterwards, you’ll have plenty of time to figure out the response you want to make.
When listening, try to dig down from specifics to figure out what’s going on in the system that produces symptoms like the ones people are telling you about now. That’s where the opportunities lie. Think about the CEO of Volkswagen,5 who didn’t know his company’s engineering managers were outsmarting US government regulators. He alleges no one inside the company told him, and that he found out the same way the rest of us did, watching the news. While I didn’t believe that, I did believe him when he said he wished he had known it in time to stop it. Why didn’t he know? Why did it happen? Probably because he set internal goals that people couldn’t meet without cheating, and they didn’t feel free to push back and tell him that.
I’ve observed many companies try processes aimed at ensuring leaders and managers learn what lower-down managers and employees think. Noteworthy for me is what the Home Depot founders created by assigning board members a quarterly quota of store aisles to walk—holding confidential discussions with employees encouraged to tell them everything that mattered. Formulating what they learned as system issues, board members held top-level managers responsible for getting the systems that created the problems they heard about appropriately revised and fixed. This intelligence-seeking paid off when the corporation was hit with a women’s equity, class-action law suit.6 No one was surprised, and management was ahead of the game, having documented several ameliorating actions taken.
I saw a good system for sensing what was on people’s minds used by Procter & Gamble engineering managers in the 1970s. It’s one I’ve helped managers in other companies adapt and implement. Engineers wrote bimonthly white papers on topics pertinent to productivity and quality of work life. Institutional learning was promoted by each manager being asked to write reports detailing what they were personally contemplating based on reading, and sometimes discussing, the concerns and effectiveness issues on the minds of their reports. In turn, these papers were forwarded up the chain for total management awareness and possible discussion.
Last, I’d like to mention instances where either a company outsider like myself, or an HR person with counseling skills, was asked to third-party-broker a disagreement, or to instruct someone in need of additional interpersonal and/or managerial skills. Many companies call this “coaching” and engage in such activities on a wide-scale basis. It’s a practice about which I have reservations—not about its usefulness to the individual but its usefulness to the system. I find it valuable when coaching includes a means for upper-level managers to learn what’s systemically off that, this time, caused the difficulties necessitating coaching for an individual. In other words, I think every intervention should be scanned for institutional DNA and brought to the attention of company leaders to insure the system benefits from what individuals realize.
I find a preponderance of company leaders falsely impressed, content with company results mainly because they measure up to expectations. I see too many leaders uninterested in what their companies might additionally accomplish from underutilized or mismanaged human capacities. Most leaders conceive their mission as growing their company profitability. They see themselves as strategists, opportunity seekers, problem-solvers, and obstacle-avoiders. They look for facsimiles of themselves in the top-tier managers they employ and don’t realize that the biggest internal limitations come from the self-directed ways they and other managers think and behave. Leaders need to accept that it’s their job to get this noticed and changed, and I see everyone having a role in helping them figure this out.
No grand solution forthcoming, I’ve offered a strategy for getting partial solutions and progressing forward from those. I see problems caused by what needs to be addressed but can’t be, at least not without wider-ranging awareness. To that end, I’ve shared my view of the force field in which managers find themselves, and the ensuing dynamics that bog companies down. I hope doing so will make it easier for everyone to more effectively pursue personal and entity goals. I want readers to realize how much rests on a leader’s active involvement in getting managers to assume a company-appropriate management mentality. I see everyone’s well-being connected to that.
I believe people being forced to pursue their self-interests clandestinely is wrong. I find it an oxymoron when people who have to pretend their interests aren’t involved are expected to express themselves authentically. Put self-interests on the table. Make it easier for others to discern whether the enterprise is getting all that it needs. Create the means for people to negotiate their differences. That’s what people need to make the most of their companies.
Make it possible for people to be above-board in seeking out win-win-win solutions, where the third win—enterprise accomplishments—is the one that’s least compromised. Give people positive reasons to need one another’s support. I’ve seldom heard someone working in a highly successful organization talk about a lack of teamwork, or complain about competition in the ranks. Show me a failing company and I’ll bet it’s a lack of teamwork that insiders fault most. Get the pretense of objectivity out of daily discussions and all parties will benefit.
Starting out writing this book, my primary goal was to enhance reader awareness. I didn’t intend to give nearly as much advice as I eventually did. Going along, I began thinking that readers wanting to involve themselves in a fix could use more guidance. With so much change needed, it’ll take every able-minded person to get it done. I see every employee a stakeholder, and every stakeholder interest served by good people realizing more of their good intentions.
When managers evolve their thinking and interact with one another accordingly, work relationships will reconfigure. Interactions with greater authenticity, openness to engaging other people and their different mind-sets, open-minded learning from one’s experience, and empathy extended to others—all impractical activities today—should produce additional insights leading to further shifts in mentalities. Then, perhaps a new paradigm for team-play and people being their best will emerge.
1. G. Vickers, Freedom in a Rocking Boat (New York: Basic Books, 1972).
2. Both approaches follow tenets outlined by Paulo Freire in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury, 1970) and elaborated in a book I authored, The Organization Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
3. Also outlined in my book, Beyond Bullsh*t (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008).
4. Termed the “Zeigarnik Effect” after the Russian researcher Bluma Zeigarnik, who performed the initial experiments, and defined in the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary as “the psychological tendency to remember an uncompleted task rather than a completed one.”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/Zeigarnik%20effect
5. Martin Winterkorn, who resigned September 24, 2015.
6. Butler, et al. v. Home Depot Inc. No. C-94-4335-SI, 1996, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3370 (March 25, 1996).