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Carlos is a very confident CEO. But he has a bad habit of verbalizing any and every internal monologue in his head. And he doesn’t fully appreciate that this habit becomes a make-or-break issue as people ascend the chain of command. A lowly clerk expressing an opinion doesn’t get people’s notice at a company. But when the CEO expresses that opinion, everyone jumps to attention. The higher up you go, the more your suggestions become orders.
The staffers outside her inner circle thought she was encouraging sucking up. Sharon is guilty of Habit #14: Playing favorites.
But here is also a place where you can be a success in spite of some gaps in your behavior or personal makeup.
My job is to help them—to identify a personal habit that’s annoying their coworkers and to help them eliminate it—so that they retain their value to the organization.
I help them apologize to everyone affected by their flawed behavior (because it’s the only way to erase the negative baggage associated with our prior actions) and ask the same people for help in getting better. I help them advertise their efforts to get better because you have to tell people that you’re trying to change; they won’t notice it on their own.
Then I help them follow up religiously every month or so with their colleagues because it’s the only honest way to find out how you’re doing and it also reminds people that you’re still trying. As an integral part of this follow-up process, I teach people to listen without prejudice to what their colleagues, family members, and friends are saying—that is, listen without interrupting or arguing.
Successful people literally believe that through sheer force of personality or talent or brainpower, they can steer a situation in their direction.
This is the classic definition of self-efficacy, and it may be the most central belief driving individual success. People who believe they can succeed see opportunities where others see threats. They’re not afraid of uncertainty or ambiguity. They embrace it. They want to take greater risks and achieve greater returns. Given the choice, they will always bet on themselves.
One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I am successful. I behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way!” The challenge is to make them see that sometimes they are successful in spite of this behavior.
When I surveyed executives about why they felt overcommitted, none of them said they were trying to “save a sinking ship.” They were overcommitted because they were “drowning in a sea of opportunity.”
Successful people believe that they are doing what they choose to do, because they choose to do it. They have a high need for self-determination. The more successful a person is, the more likely this is to be true. When we do what we choose to do, we are committed. When we do what we have to do, we are compliant.
Unfortunately, getting people who think “I have chosen to succeed” to say “and I choose to change” is not an easy transition. It means turning that muscular commitment on its head. Easy to say, hard to do. The more we believe that our behavior is a result of our own choices and commitments, the less likely we are to want to change our behavior.
Harry acknowledged that other people thought he should become a better listener, but he wasn’t sure that he should change. He had convinced himself that his poor listening actually was a great source of his success. Like many high achievers, he wanted to defend his superstitious beliefs. He pointed out that some people present awful ideas and that he hated cluttering his fertile brain with bad ideas. Bad ideas were like brain pollution.
“I don’t suffer fools gladly,” he said, with a little more pride than patience.
But then Harry went into defensive reaction number two: fear of overcorrection.
I pointed out that the danger that a 55-year-old man who had been a bad listener for his entire life would overcorrect and suddenly become excessively interested in other people’s opinions was extremely remote.
Couldn’t your people think better for themselves if you were steering them in the right direction and showed them how you think?
Then there’s the arrogance, the feeling that “I can do anything” which develops and bulges like a well-exercised muscle in successful people, especially after an impressive string of successes. Then there’s the protective shell that successful people develop over time which whispers to them, “You are right. Everyone else is wrong.”
Having achieved these goals, they turn to higher-level goals, such as “leaving a legacy” or “being an inspiring role model” or “creating a great company.” If you look for the hot button of self-interest, it’s there.
Try this: For one week treat every idea that comes your way from another person with complete neutrality. Think of yourself as a human Switzerland. Don’t take sides. Don’t express an opinion. Don’t judge the comment. If you find yourself constitutionally incapable of just saying “Thank you,” make it an innocuous, “Thanks, I hadn’t considered that.” Or, “Thanks. You’ve given me something to think about.”
If you can’t self-monitor your judgmental responses, “hire” a friend to call you out and bill you hard cash every time you make a judgmental comment.
In an environment where everyone’s preaching the value of teamwork and reaching out in the organization, what happens to the quality of teamwork and cooperation when we stab our coworkers in the back in front of other people? It does not go up. And I wanted the business to succeed.
Destructive comments are an easy habit to fall into, especially among people who habitually rely on candor as an effective management tool. Trouble is, candor can easily become a weapon.
Telling the world how smart we are
Being smart turns people on. Announcing how smart you are turns them off.
After all, if you can resist the urge in a really comfortable moment when you are in a dominant position, you will certainly hesitate in other situations when you are not so dominant and comfortable.
The next time you start to speak out of anger, look in the mirror. In every case, you’ll find that the root of your rage is not “out there” but “in here.”
But in this case, the more revealing clue would be to take a personal inventory of how your colleagues deal with you. How often do they come to you with helpful suggestions—without you having to ask?
How do you stop withholding information? Simple answer: Start sharing it. That’s what my friend did. He made sharing information a higher priority in his busy day. He scheduled time to debrief his assistant on what he was up to. And he made that time inviolate. It couldn’t be cancelled or postponed or interrupted by a phone call.
But there’s a difference between being an achiever and a leader. Successful people become great leaders when they learn to shift the focus from themselves to others. One of my clients taught
The next time you hear yourself saying, “I’m just no good at . . . ,” ask yourself, “Why not?”
Stop blaming others for the choices you made—and that goes with double emphasis for the choices that turned out well.
The net result is manifestly obvious. You’re encouraging behavior that serves you, but not necessarily the best interests of the company.
The reality for leaders of the past and leaders in the future is that in the past very bright people would put up with disrespectful behavior, but in the future they will leave! When
No matter what someone tells him, he accepts it by reminding himself, “I won’t learn less.” What that means is when somebody makes a suggestion or gives you ideas, you’re either going to learn more or learn nothing. But you’re not going to learn less. Hearing people out does not make you dumber. So, thank them for trying to help. If you examine the alternative, you’ll see that almost any response to a suggestion other than “thank you” has the potential to stir up trouble.
Passing the buck is the dark flip side of claiming credit that others deserve. Instead of depriving others of their rightful glory for a success, we wrongfully saddle them with the shame of our failure.
The irony, of course, is that infallibility is a myth. No one expects us to be right all the time. But when we’re wrong, they certainly expect us to own up to it. In that sense, being wrong is an opportunity—an opportunity to show what kind of person and leader we are.
When I talked to Candace’s colleagues, no one was willing to fault her powerful ambition. They praised her for the fact that she set very clear goals for herself. She wanted to be a “superstar” in her field—and she was well on the way to achieving that goal. But that goal obsession had worn away some of the warmth in Candace’s otherwise sunny, optimistic personality. She was becoming hard and cold to her subordinates. As one staffer told me, “You could chill a six-pack of beer next to her heart.”
She could learn to accept that their triumphs said something positive about her as a leader.
“What have I done?” He was so focused on his goal—build the bridge—that he forgot the larger mission was winning the war.
The solution is simple, but not easy. You have to step back, take a breath, and look. And survey the conditions that are making you obsessed with the wrong goals. Ask yourself: When are you under time pressure? Or in a hurry? Or doing something that you have been told is important? Or have people depending upon you?
Study the twenty annoying habits and you’ll see that at least half of them are rooted in information compulsion.
Sharing or withholding. They’re two sides of the same tarnished coin.
Semantic variations are permitted, such as, “What can I do to be a better partner at home?” or, “What can I do to be a better colleague at work?” or, “What can I do to be a better leader of this group?” It varies with the circumstances. But you get the idea. Pure unadulterated issue-free feedback that makes change possible has to (a) solicit advice rather than criticism, (b) be directed towards the future rather than obsessed with the negative past, and (c) be couched in a way that suggests you will act on it; that in fact you are trying to do better.
The interesting stuff is the information that’s known to others but unknown to us. When that information is revealed to us, those are the “road to Damascus” moments that create dramatic change.
“Oh my,” he thought, “Peter, who has the power to block some of my initiatives, hates my guts.” “Until that moment,” Barry told me, “I had no idea. I thought we were colleagues. I thought we worked well together.” I submit that the subtle signals Barry picked up qualify as significant feedback.
In one of those odd bits of reverse psychology, it seems that the stuff people boast about as their strengths more often than not turn out to be their most egregious weaknesses.
The same could be said of each of us. We should be on high alert when we hear ourselves make self-deprecating remarks—because they might be giving us feedback about ourselves.
It’s simple. You committed “one, two, three, seven.”
knowing what you want to say and then repeating it with extreme discipline and near-shamelessness, until it sinks in.
