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Carlos thinks he’s merely tossing an idea against the wall to see if it sticks. His employees think he’s giving them a direct command. Carlos thinks he’s running a democracy, with everyone allowed to voice their opinion. His employees think it’s a monarchy, with Carlos as king. Carlos thinks he’s giving people the benefit of his years of experience. His employees see it as micromanaging and excessive meddling. Carlos has no idea how he’s coming across to his employees. He is guilty of Habit #2: Adding too much value.
Sharonistas,
sycophancy
Martin thought he was winning over the titan with overwhelming evidence of his financial acumen. The titan was thinking, “What an egotistical jackass. When’s he going to ask what’s on my mind? I’m never letting this fellow near my money.” Martin is guilty of Habit #20: An excessive need to be “me.”
they have no idea how their behavior is coming across to the people who matter—their bosses, colleagues, subordinates, customers, and clients. (And that’s not just true at work; the same goes for their home life.) They think they have all the answers, but others see it as arrogance.
They think they’re contributing to a situation with helpful comments, but others see it as butting in. They think they’re delegating effectively, but others see it as shirking responsibilities. They think they’re holding their tongue, but others see it as unresponsiveness. They think they’re letting people think for themselves, but others see it as ignoring them.
Why does this happen? More often than not, it’s because people’s inner compass of correct behavior has gone out of whack—and they become clueless about their position among their coworkers.
proprioception, of how you know where you are and where you’re oriented?
People who do one annoying thing repeatedly on the job—and don’t realize that this small flaw may sabotage their otherwise golden career. And, worse, they do not realize that (a) it’s happening and (b) they can fix it.
told the CEO, “I might be able to help.” The CEO sighed, “I doubt it.” “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll work with him for a year. If he gets better, pay me. If not, it’s all free.”
Ph.D. in organizational behavior from UCLA
My job is not to make them smarter or richer. 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. My job is to make them see that the skills and habits that have taken them this far might not be the right skills and habits to take them further.
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.
I teach people to listen without prejudice to what their colleagues, family members, and friends are saying—that is, listen without interrupting or arguing. I also show them that the only proper response to whatever they hear is gratitude. That is, I teach them how to say “Thank you” without ruining the gesture or embellishing it. I am a huge apostle for thanking. Finally, I teach them the miracle of feedforward, which is my “special sauce” methodology for eliciting advice from people on what they can do to get better in the future.
an ad some years ago showing a powerful grizzly bear in the middle of a roaring stream, with his neck extended to the limit, jaws wide open, teeth flaring. The bear was about to clamp on to an unsuspecting airborne salmon jumping upstream. The headline read: YOU PROBABLY FEEL LIKE THE BEAR. WE’D LIKE TO SUGGEST YOU’RE THE SALMON.
the most realistic people in our society are the chronically depressed.
the very positive interpretations that successful people assign to (a) their past performance, (b) their ability to influence their success (rather than just being lucky), (c) their optimistic belief that their success will continue in the future, and (d) their sense of control over their own destiny (as opposed to being controlled by external forces), and you have a volatile cocktail of resistance to change. Four key beliefs help us become successful. Each can make it tough for us to change. And that’s the paradox of success: These beliefs that carried us here may be holding us back in our
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Successful people never drink from a glass that’s half empty.
If you asked your colleagues to estimate their percentage contribution to your enterprise, the total will always exceed 100 percent.
If you ask successful professionals to rate themselves against their peers (as I have done with more than 50,000 people in my training programs), 80 to 85 percent of them will rate themselves in the top 20 percent of their peer group—and 70 percent will rate themselves in the top 10 percent. This number goes even higher among professionals with higher perceived social status, such as physicians, pilots, and investment bankers, 90 percent of whom place themselves in the top 10 percent.
Successful people literally believe that through sheer force of personality or talent or brainpower, they can steer a situation in their direction. It’s the reason why some people raise their hand and say, “Put me in, coach” when the boss asks for volunteers to solve a problem—and others cower in the corner, praying they won’t be noticed. 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.
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Successful people tend to have a high “internal locus of control.” In other words, they do not feel like victims of fate. They see success for themselves and others as largely a function of people’s motivation and ability—not luck, random chance, or external factors. They carry this belief even when luck does play a critical role.
We tend to believe that success is “earned” through an individual’s motivation and ability (even when it is not).
Serious lottery players tend to believe that any success is a function of luck, external factors, or random chance. (This is the opposite belief of most successful people, and why you rarely see millionaires scratching tickets.)
Successful people trade in this lottery mentality for an unshakable belief in themselves. And that presents another obstacle for helping them change their behavior. 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.
It can be difficult for an ambitious person, with an “I will succeed” attitude, to say “no” to desirable opportunities. The huge majority of executives that I work with feel as busy (or busier) today than they have ever felt in their lives. I have never heard one of my clients say, “I don’t have enough on my plate.” And this busy-ness is not because they have so many problems to deal with. 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.”
The danger with this, of course, is that, unchecked, this “we will succeed” attitude leads to staff burnout, high turnover, and a weaker team than the one you started with. His biggest challenge as a leader was avoiding overcommitment.
Overcommitment can be as serious an obstacle to change as believing that you don’t need fixing or that your flaws are part of the reason you’re successful.
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.
Successful people have a unique distaste for feeling controlled or manipulated.
I have now made peace with the fact that I cannot make people change. I can only help them get better at what they choose to change.
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.
cognitive dissonance.
the disconnect between what we believe in our minds and what we experience or see in reality.
These four success beliefs—that we have the skills, the confidence, the motivation, and the free choice to succeed—make us superstitious.
In many cases, the higher we climb the organizational totem pole, the more superstitious we become.
superstitious behavior comes from the mistaken belief that a specific activity that is followed by positive reinforcement is actually the cause of that positive reinforcement.
and recognition will come their way because of it. Superstition is merely the confusion of correlation and causality. Any human, like any animal, tends to repeat behavior that is followed by positive reinforcement. The more we achieve, the more reinforcement we get. One of the greatest mistakes of successful people is the assumption, “I behave this way, and I achieve results. Therefore, I must be achieving results because I behave this way.”
are you doing this intentionally for a legitimate purpose? Or are you justifying it after the fact because that is who you are and you refuse to change?
People will do something—including changing their behavior—only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.
Every choice, big or small, is a risk-reward decision where your bottom-line thinking is, “What’s in it for me?” None of us has to apologize for this. It’s the way of the world.
It’s the reason people will turn down a better-paying job because they sense the new situation will not make them happier. They’re asking what’s in it for them, and concluding that they’d rather be happier than richer.
“Your plan is nice in theory. But what you are asking is not connected to what he values,” I said. “Let him be. He’s happy. He’s not going anywhere. Why scare him away by turning him into someone that is just not him?” This fellow was the exception—an aberration.
If you press people to identify the motives behind their self-interest it usually boils down to four items: money, power, status, and popularity. These are the standard payoffs for success. It’s why we will claw and scratch for a raise (money), for a promotion (power), for a bigger title and office (status). It’s why so many of us have a burning need to be liked by everyone (popularity). The hot button is different for each person. And it changes over time, but it’s still guided by self-interest. My personal coaching clients have money, power, and status—and most are popular. Having achieved
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Take a look around you at work. Why are you there? What keeps you coming back day after day? Is it any of the big four—money, power, status, popularity—or is it something deeper and more subtle that has developed over time? If you know what matters to you, it’s easier to commit to change. If you can’t identify what matters to you, you won’t know when it’s being threatened. And in my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.
“We spend a lot of time teaching leaders what to do. We don’t spend enough time teaching leaders what to stop. Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.”
Everything in an organization is designed to demonstrate a commitment to positive action—and couched in terms of doing something.
avoiding mistakes is one of those unseen, unheralded achievements that are not allowed to take up our time and thought. And yet . . . many times avoiding a bad deal can affect the bottom line more significantly than scoring a big sale.
Get out your notepad. Instead of your usual “To Do” list, start your “To Stop” list.
Given the choice between becoming a nicer person and ceasing to be a jerk, which do you think is easier to do?
