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COACHING TIP: Tell people they’re valued.
One of the best ways to attack the “I’m not valued” view is to say, “I value you. What can I do to encourage you to stay?” Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans offer great tips in their book Love ’Em or Lose ’Em.
TECHNICAL NOTE: In our research, people are accurate in identifying the cultural stage of others. In fact, they are almost as accurate as trained observers using surveys, focused interview questions, and sociograms (methods of graphing relationships). There is one exception: people give themselves a two-stage bonus. People at Stage One think they’re at Three. People at Two think they’re at Four. How can you tell if you’re in Stage Two or Four? Look for power: do your words create change in the organization? Are your relationships connected by core values? What bonds you to your tribe—a common
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What holds them in Stage Two is the belief that “I’ll be great soon.” Ironically, if the person were just to shift “soon” to “now,” he would be in Stage Three, since language creates the stage.
COACHING TIP: Work one-on-one rather than addressing culture-wide concerns. There’s standard advice in management: if you take people’s concerns seriously, they will feel empowered. This advice is reliable only for late Stage Two and above.
There are three keys to nudging people out of Stage Two. First, communicate only one stage above. This principle holds for all five stages (except for Five, which we’ll discuss in Chapter 12). In the case of a Stage Two tribe, leaders should talk the language of Stage Three—“I’m great.”
We call the ability to speak cultural languages “amplitude,” so if a person speaks only Three and Four, we say the person has a two-stage amplitude. Tribal Leaders, almost without exception, speak all five languages. Remember, this book is about language and relationships, so it’s not enough to understand Stage Two or form opinions about it. As a Tribal Leader you need to speak the language as an insider. Only then can you build trust with a tribe at this stage and use leverage points to advance it.
Second, spot and work with the few members of Stage Two who want things to be different—those people at late Stage Two—and work with them one-on-one.
COACHING TIP: Use the power of three. “Bank shot” people at Stage Two to Stage Three by finding a person they trust who is at Stage Three, and set up a three-person meeting. If the trusted person is seen to “have the back” of the person at Two, the meeting will have a stronger degree of trust from the outset.
The third leverage point is to encourage him to form dyadic (two-person) relationships.
I’m just another commodity here, a replaceable faceless item.
Along with 48 percent of American professionals, Koyle is operating at Stage Three in a Stage Three culture, the zone of personal accomplishment. Like almost everyone in this group, he feels that he is putting more in than he’s getting out,
The essence of Stage Three is “I’m great.” Unstated and lurking in the background is “and you’re not.” Ask people at this stage how they see work, and you hear: “I’m good at my job,” “I try harder than most,” “I’m more able than most,” and “Most people can’t match my work ethic.” The key words are “I,” “me,” and “my.”
Koyle reflected a common theme from our interviews: a desire to work with people like themselves—gifted, hard-working people.
People entering Stage Three express insecurity with their positions, their gifts, and their colleagues, which is a leftover from Stage Two.
Imposter Syndrome!?
COACHING TIP: Don’t call someone Stage Three.
Three). It’s not an orange person; it’s a person who is exhibiting the characteristics of orange.”
The essence of moving up stages is taking everything from the previous level and reconfiguring it. Stage Three, especially at the early point, shares many of the characteristics of Stage Two. The key difference is an emerging passion for personal success, which overcomes the person’s sense of powerlessness. An increased sense of self-reliance forms, which becomes the center of the person’s language screen.
Some environments are set up for people at Stage Three, and this behavior leads to organizational success. Spiral Dynamics author, Don Beck, echoed this theme when he said, “The first question to ask is, ‘Does the job require [Stage Three]?’ ” Coaching people to drop behavior that is required by the system is harmful to everyone.
Increasingly, the needs of business require a level of collaboration impossible at the “I’m great” level.
If you feel your business would be better served by migrating your corporate tribe’s dominant culture to Stage Four, we suggest you begin that effort right away.
Inherent in Stage Three is the view that people are where they are because they worked for it, and others aren’t there because they gave up.
The more the person can accept help from others, the more he will see that help from others is not only helpful but necessary to his becoming a fully developed leader. Once he begins to form strategies that rely on others, and in which others rely on him, he will have taken a big step into Stage Four.
The solution was to train a new generation of workers by teaching them inside a system that looked a lot like a factory. In school, bell rings, go to class; bell rings, recess; bell rings, go back to class; bell rings, eat lunch; bell rings, go home. At school, children with the “right” answer get a gold star, then an A. A star pupil is one who does the homework and has the right answers. This new system undid the classic liberal education, which said that the value was in the well-designed question, and this shift in focus made the worker exploitable, often consigning him to a Stage Two or
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While the system of education is changing, critics (including us) believe it’s happening too slowly and that the new approach needs to build Stage Four thinking, not Stage Three addiction to personal success.
COACHING TIP: Point out that gifts are different.
Companies that are run by people who all have the same background, temperament, personality, IQ, and learning style become easy targets for competitors because the leaders all share the same blind spots,
politics. In universities, we heard statements like these: “My work in the business school is more important than public policy because business runs the world,”
It’s no more substantive than a presidential debate, each making himself great by showing that the other is less great—a common characteristic of Stage Three.
It was a perfect Stage Three moment: all were members of the same tribe, and they showed respect to others with the same gift, but in the end, the message of each was “I’m great and you’re not, and I have the statistics to prove it.”
COACHING TIP: Point out the superior results of Stage Four tribes.
People at the middle of Stage Three notice that rising stars in the organization aren’t treated well.
Many people stay at the middle of Stage Three for their entire careers. Increasingly, though, as middle age hits, because of the demands of the newest generation of workers, and as companies become more complex, people are moving to the last part of this stage.
COACHING TIP: In tribes with a dominant Stage Three culture, gain credibility in areas that matter. The key here is to know what counts in that group.
In many ways, Stage Three is the focus of this book and our work.
While we don’t want to take anything away from the success of people at Stage Three, it’s important that they see its cost,
People who present themselves as Stage Four, but who have not owned Stage Three, come across as weak, often backing down from a fight the tribe needed to win. Tribal Leadership can never emerge out of weakness. Before moving out of Stage Three, it’s important to own it, to the point where you’re done playing the game this way—not because it’s hard but because you’re ready for what’s next.
Although people at Stage Three often feel treated as a commodity, the truth is that they treat others that way, as well.
Likewise, those at Stage Three tend to hire employees who are at Stage Two. The moment a job candidate looks more intelligent, ambitious, or promotion-worthy than the boss, they are nixed from consideration.
Stage Three. The person needs to retreat to Stage Two and use the coaching tips in that chapter to see what’s behind their feeling that their life sucks. The key is for them to notice ways in which they are powerless and to dissociate from those. As they do they will be able to progress to Stage Three, this time owning it, getting to the point where they are done with it, and advancing to Stage Four.
Although they often don’t hear it, people at Stage Three use language that is “I” focused. In their grammatical structure, they are the mover, the actor, the dominant one, and others are the recipients of action or the provider of services.
are nonstop references to personal accomplishments (for example, “I went to Harvard” and “I have my PhD”) and perks
To make the point that these costs are personal, we’ve phrased them in “you” language. We’re not assuming you are operating at Stage Three, but the tone of this section, we’ve learned from experience, needs to be personal. See if they fit.
First, you form a series of dyadic (two-person) relationships, so that if we were to graph your network, it would look like a hub with spokes.
The most important part of this tip is get the person to own why she’s at Stage Three. At first, it will probably seem like good news—“Wow, I am addicted to achievement!”—but over time, she’ll see the limitations of behaving this way.
Second, you hoard information. At Stage Three, knowledge is power, so the way to remain on the top is to know more, and disclose less, than others.
Third, you try to keep your “spokes” (the other person in your dyadic relationships) from forming relationships with one another.
The only way the Stage Three system can maintain itself is by creating blind spots, which is why so many people at this stage react so angrily to the accusation that this reflects them.
Fourth, you rely on gossip and spies for political information.
Fifth, you might (especially if you’re male and working in a macho culture) talk using military or mafia language.
