Nancy Kline in her superb book Time to Think describes a conversation with a senior civil servant whose department was going through wave after wave of changes to the way work was done and how things were structured. When asked how his managers were coping with all of this, he responded, ‘I have no idea. I don’t ask them.’ When asked ‘Why?’, he said, ‘They might tell me. We couldn’t have that.’ As Nancy goes on to explain, what he was really saying was that “he couldn’t handle that”.
How common is it for managers to shy away from facing up to the reality of what is going on around them, particularly when it might involve a face-to-face conversation with someone? Very common, in my experience. Confronting bad news, delivering home truths, providing feedback on performance, addressing inappropriate behaviour, or challenging resistance to change. All of these scenarios present managers with situations which they either feel ill-equipped to handle effectively, or they ignore.
When managers fail to recognise an under-performing member of their team, there can be any number of underlying thinking errors or limiting beliefs at play.
For example:
- They don’t want to admit they have someone under-performing as it may reflect badly on them
- They don’t want to face the issue directly (it’s not in their nature), and they’re worried about handling any conflict that facing up to it might cause
- The work is getting done to an ‘adequate enough’ level. Even though the individual is not adding as much as they potentially could, everyone’s reasonably happy – so why rock the boat? (I dealt with this specific case in more detail in a previous post called Are you prepared to upset the Apple Cart?)
- The individual is reasonably effective in some areas, so why not overlook or downplay issues in other areas where things could be better?
- It is just a fact of life that some individuals are weak in certain skills or habits. We can’t change that.
- The manager has been ‘friends’ with the individual and they’ve worked together a long time. They find it hard to confront them with hard messages.
- The individual is a “nice” person, and it would hurt them to come down too hard on them
- The individual is “slick” in that they always have a reason/response to issues raised with them, it’s just not worth the hassle of bringing up problems. After all, we’ve always managed to work round them in the past
Holding back, and not acting with complete honesty or sincerity does not create or encourage learning and improvement? It does not prepare people for the future and help them adapt to change.
Fundamentally the approach to overcoming this type of ‘limiting thinking’ is simple….. Continue reading
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