A: Ha! Trick title. People who don’t like you don’t work with you. They tolerate you.

Out of a lack of options.

Until a better option comes along.

In fact, the only thing that keeps them engaged with you is the fact that—while unlikable—you’re at least predictable, and they’ve figured out how to get what they need from the relationship… more or less. Eventually, they’ll give you the boot. And the more self-confident they are, the sooner that boot will come.

You know why?

Because they don’t like you, Silly!

Beware: the context in which you work affects how your unlikability will impact you:

If you are an unliked manager…
You actually may be OK, as long as your abilities are respected and the results are there. In a role of formal power, we need to distinguish between personal like, which is almost irrelevant in this case, and professional like—a.k.a. respect—which leads to loyalty, peace of mind, and, ironically, personal like. We must also distinguish respect from fear, as the two are often confused at a practical level. Fear occurs when respect for your power outlives respect for your ability to wield it responsibly, and it is unhealthy on many levels: it closes off lines of communication, it sends your best people looking for new jobs elsewhere, causes people to start “going through the motions” at work (you know how some people just won’t invest personally, won’t quit, and won’t say anything about what they need or want?).

There’s a colorful term for how people treat a boss of whom they’re afraid, which is NSFW (not safe for work). It’s a compound slang word. The first half is “grin.” Let’s just say the second part rhymes with “ducking.” Rest assured, this technique creates miscommunications galore for a boss.

If you are an unliked subordinate…
Your options are limited. You may be the world’s greatest at your job, but that’s all you’ll ever be, because once you hit the management ranks and find yourself in need of relationships with clients, peers, subs, bosses, and vendors for advancement, you’ll find yourself with nothing.

And if you’re an unliked salesperson…
You’re toast.

So how do you know if you’re liked? It really doesn’t matter what people say, and it really doesn’t matter what you think. The only thing that matters is how people act, especially in that split second after you’ve said something, before the controlled, practiced, purposeful reaction takes over. Watch for that slight hesitation before a smile, a smile that you could swear starts off like a sneer, or fidgeting of any kind that doesn’t precede interactions with others. (You’re not dumb. You know when someone doesn’t like you. You’ve known how to pick up that vibe since junior high. Trust yourself. If you need help, read Paul Ekman’s research on micro-expressions.)

Here’s a three question likability quiz:

• Do I take genuine interest in others, or are people a means to achieving personal goals?
• Do I enjoy helping others, or are they lucky enough to know me?
• Do you live in a good world, or a brutish world in which it’s kill or be killed?

How do you get liked? Work on your world view (until you find you take a genuine interest in the people around you, enjoy helping them, and see the world as filled with more good than bad… I’ll even cut you some slack, and say you really only need to be deep in two or maybe even just one of these areas). Regardless of how smooth you think you are, the way you see the world will reflect outward. Like you, people aren’t stupid. They may not call you out on bad behavior, they may excuse it for you, they may lack the self-confidence to stand up to it, or they may not care about it, but they see it.

And eventually, they’ll have seen enough.

Posted under Q&A, Coaching & Consulting, Team Dynamics

“Teamwork is the glue that bonds losers together.”

So reads the inscription on a gift made by the founder and CEO of a major publishing house to one of his employees.

In in a world of gridlock, gridlock, and more gridlock, it can be tempting to want to find wisdom in those words… it can also be enlightening.

The Fallacy of Teamwork is a great site devoted to the myth that people work better when working together… the truth is, human nature—with all its virtues and also all its shortcomings—is still alive within the context of a team. Teamwork can be great, as this site acknowledges: “teamwork, in theory, is a wonderful concept.” But it can also be a disaster: “As practiced by many organizations, what passes for teamwork is extremely flawed, poorly executed and actually detrimental to success.”

Amen.

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Team Dynamics, How to Self-Destruct

OK, you just read the title of this post. Did it make you think:

1. Excellent, the world could use a little more peace and joy!
2. RUKM? When did this turn into one of those fruitcakey, nouveaux age kumbaya-hoo blogs?
3. Uh, is this post serious? Or is he being sarcastic?

BTW, Urbandictionary.com is your best friend for unknown acronyms which, you should know ahead of time, are generally not scrubbed for polite company. (As you may have noticed, manners are out of fashion today.) Above, RU stands for “are you” and KM stands for “kidding me.” Sometimes people stick an F in the middle, which I understand to be for “fantabulous.”

But I digress.

Rest assured, I’m being totally serious on this point. The world can use more peace and joy, and not just the surface level, feel-good Disney-flick kind of joy. I mean the deep-seated, I’m-in-a-good-place kind of contentment that crowds out fear and let’s you take life by the horns. Too often, people are filled with fear, and all the negativity that fear breeds, such as contempt, jealousy, and frustration, to a level they are not even aware of. Yesterday I wrote about one of the sources of that negativity and the need of managers to account for this when engaging their teams. (I had a comment on HRMToday that suggested maybe some found the post useful… and a comment on this jasonseiden.com that suggested less than 100% penetration.)

So how do you make your workplace “better”?

Let’s assume that of everyone reading this, 1/3 of the people are positive (and chose answer #1 above), 1/3 are negative (and chose #2), and 1/3 could go either way (and chose #3). And they all work for you. How can you successfully engage such diverse groups and bring them all along to a better place?

Here are some suggestions, from holistic to tactical:

1. Recognize that not everyone comes in at the same place. This is critical. You can’t expect everybody to have a good day just because you want them to, emotions don’t work like that. Give people permission to be who they are, and take care to distinguish a passing mood from a sour personality. Cheering someone up is easy, de-bitterifying someone is not. Do what you can, and expect of others as much as is possible, but no more. Ultimately, you’ve got to let others be themselves, and you need to stop yourself from letting your lack of control over others stress you out.
2. Get in front of your own emotions. When you find yourself saying things like “you doesn’t understand,” “you’re not listening,” or “don’t tell me what I’m thinking, nobody knows me better than me,” stop. The problem is you, and you need to walk away for a bit before re-engaging. If this sounds frustrating, trust me, it is. If it sounds like baloney, trust me, it isn’t. Smarter people than I have cracked the code on this one, and the results always come out the same way. What’s got you frustrated isn’t that other person doesn’t understand, it’s that you haven’t done a good enough job articulating the alternative.
3. Identify where people are emotionally on a day-by-day basis. For intuitive people, this may sound like a no-brainer… but for people who lack empathy, this may sound like a big waste of time. Managers: the act of trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes does not mean you automatically agree with them, it means only that you’ve taken the time to listen and understand them; tracking their moods is not synonymous with giving credence to every little ticky-tack he said/she said issue, it means only that you recognize the humanity of the situation. If you do this much, what you are showing is respect, and the other person will pick up on this and will likely respond in kind, even if you ultimately tell them to “knock it off.”
4. When other people seem to be acting crazy, it’s generally because you no longer have any idea what’s really going on. Too often, we pay attention to what others do without realizing that they are sometimes responding to what they see in us. (I had a 360 in which a bear of a manager got glowing reviews from subordinates but got dinged by his peers. I had to explain to him that his subordinates were blowing sunshine at him because they were afraid of what would happen to their jobs if they said anything differently—their responses weren’t genuine, they were reactions to him. Not an easy conversation.)
5. When your directions don’t get followed, assume you communicated poorly and go from there.
6. When using humor, let everyone in on the joke by pointing the finger at yourself.
7. If you find a talented individual being teased and stopping it is beyond your control at the moment, turn the teasing to the positive. “Do you know why you’re catching grief for this? You’re the only person around sometimes who doesn’t seem to know how good you are! How do I convince you that you’re underutilizing your talent?!”
8. Don’t immediately assume that the problem is that people don’t know what to do. Usually, the issue is that people don’t know how to do what they need to do. Remember the story of the Tower of Babble? It didn’t fail for want of engineering expertise! (Can’t you just picture all those project managers haranguing the brick layers on proper technique, when what they needed was an interpreter?)
9. Ask people about them and focus them on the positives. You can talk about work, life, whatever; you’re goal is to take an interest in the person and draw out a talent of theirs. This is called connecting with others. It’s one of the building blocks in a little thing we like to call loyalty.
10. Show optimism and energy.
11. Be honest. Not mean, but honest.
12. Just do. Older generations seem to have grown up in a world where it was expected that a person would have a public persona and a private persona. When discussing issues, it’s not uncommon for Boomers to go through a bit of preamble, during which they seem to be re-establishing the ground rules for dealing with an issue… that’s a communication style wholly unnecessary when dealing with younger generations, who—thanks to TMZ, Facebook, Star Magazine, etc.—have been watching the guy behind the curtain their whole lives. Let your actions speak for themselves. All that preamble does is make you sound like you’re hiding something.
13. Take all blame, give away all credit. If you’re the boss, your team already thinks their smarter than you… and don’t people love it when you agree with them! Giving your team credit shows that you agree with their assessment of you… and costs you nothing. They’ll love you for recognizing their brilliance.

These tips for injecting some positivity into your work environment may sound simple, but implementing them can be incredibly tough. Don’t try to do them all at once. Don’t try to do more than one or two at once! Let me know if it’s worth expanding on one or more of them…

Posted under Team Dynamics, Leadership, How to Self-Destruct

Three times in the past three weeks, I spent time with people who are very good at their jobs as individuals, but who didn’t operate well as a team. In each case, the issue was that no one asked any questions. Instead, team members would say things like:

“Let me try to explain this to you…”
“Oh, that’s because…”
“Yes, but…”
“No, see, you’ve overlooked something…”
“I’ve already done that…”

Guess what: I don’t need you to explain it to me again; if I didn’t get it the first time, I probably won’t get it the second time, either, regardless of what decibel you use to inflict your explanation on me. I certainly don’t want you to explain it again.

Guess what else: I understand the drivers behind what you did. I don’t care! I don’t doubt that your intentions were good… our problem isn’t with what you tried to do—as noble as the image in your head may have been—it’s with your execution.

Wait, guess what else else: don’t “yes, but…” me. The “but” negates the yes and highlights the fact that you are are trying to pander to me. Telling me I’ve overlooked something implies that you haven’t overlooked anything… and if we disagree, chances are, I think you’re the one who missed something. I’m not very likely, in the heat of the moment, to disagree with myself, so stop pretending like you are so magic that you can make me choose to agree with you over myself, who I know much better and like much better, thank you very much.

So how do you get out of the vicious cycle you’re in with your team? Maybe you saw this coming from the title of the post, but start by ASKING QUESTIONS. From today forward, you are an eternal Jeopardy! contestant: everything you say should be in the form of a question. Second, always paint yourself as the one who needs help. And third, CARE. You can’t fake this stuff: a question wrapped in an air of disdain is just as bad as a statement. No, it’s worse, because it leaves you with the illusion that you actually tried, when you didn’t, you just made it so you could pretend like someone else wasn’t listening when the problem was actually your attitude. Way to make things harder.

Good questions to replace the above statements include:

“OK, obviously I did a poor job explaining this. Replay back to me what you heard and I’ll see where I need to fill in the blanks to cover what I missed the first time.”
“I need to think about that… I was trying to have a particular impact, but from your reaction it’s clear that I missed my goal… what impact did I have?”
“Yes, AND…” (feel free to disagree at this point, as in, “Yes, I do like waffles, and you know what breakfast food I really love? Pancakes. I love pancakes so much that given the choice between pancakes and waffles, I always choose pancakes. Always.” Or, “Yes, bribing our vendor could probably lower our costs, and, since it’s illegal, it probably comes with that added thrill of doing something dangerous, you know? I wonder who we go to for approval for something like that.” Or, “Yes, I love meetings, and I especially love when they finish early.” Or don’t disagree: “Yes, that sounds interesting, and I’d like to hear more. I have a few questions that jump to mind.”)
“Interesting… have you considered…?”
“How would that suggestion differ from the program I ran with ___ last year?”

Ah, I can feel everyone getting along better already.

Posted under Team Dynamics, Communications

I had a terrific conversation yesterday with Tom Riley, a former big company guy who now heads up Business Development for a hungry, fun, and smart online design/strategy shop called Closerlook. Tom’s a sharp guy with keen perspective on corporate life.

One the thing from our talk really stood out: it was a comment Tom made in describing big company decision-making: “I couldn’t get a yes, and I couldn’t get a no.”

That an organization wouldn’t want to take the risk on a revenue-generating opportunity is not a news flash; at a personal level, for the decision makers, the dangers of making a mistake are often far greater than the upside of a win. In one poignant example, Tom told me how he had once been asked to reframe a revenue-generating proposal as a safer-sounding, cost-saving initiative. We laughed about how, when weighing his project against others that “guarantee” cost savings, executives had even asked him if he could “guarantee” his results, too. (Guarantee sales? Wouldn’t that be nice!)

It was the story about how an executive committee refused to kill a proposal for six months, after letting it languish, unapproved, for 16 months, that really got me. Turns out, the problem wasn’t with “approval,” it was with “commitment.” Saying no would have closed doors and could have created political risk—no one wanted to put themselves in a position to be painted as the person to kill the golden goose.

And so it was, a major company let a proposal sit for nearly two years, unapproved, unkilled.

If you read this and find it appalling, unethical, and terrible, relax. It is what it is, and “fixing” the human condition is beyond your scope. Accept it, and move on.
If you read this and don’t understand the inherent problem, THE PROBLEM IS YOU. Just like how the government puts fluoride in our water, corporations put perks into your life, and you never noticed your growing addition, did you? That’s the thing about growing numb: you don’t feel it happening. It’s easy to miss the slide into becoming one of those overfed, puffy-looking teddy bears sitting up in first class, completely indistinguishable from one another, basically serving as human in-baskets who hold ideas for awhile until other people decide to take one and do something with it. Yet there you are, in seat 1A. You, like Tom’s proposal, are neither alive nor fully dead… my guess is that you have a great golf game, a secret fascination for the gizmos in SkyMall that promise to make your life even easier, and almost no idea who your kids are.
If you read this and wonder how to break through this kind of culture, it’s time for a little group therapy, because you don’t. Decision making cultures like this start at the top. They are a function of the people in the highest jobs, and no amount of structural changes, re-organizations, or compensation plan tweaks can change anything unless the people at the top have the willpower to bind themselves to an arbitrary set of outcome and process goals. Short of accountable leadership, nearly every penny of OD spend you make will merely cause the pieces on the same game board to shift around, without changing anything.

Posted under Coaching & Consulting, Team Dynamics, Leadership