Our Perception Isn’t Reality
Humans are mostly awful at understanding the facts of a situation. Most of us appear to be hard-wired to believe that our gut, or intuition, is a good predictor of what is fact. In reality it’s not.
Our intuition is highly biased by our past history, upbringing, personal confidence in our own abilities, environmental experiences, etc. Many times we’ll simply stop doing the work when we receive these signals, rather than (more appropriately) using that intuition as a guide to learn from and steer our actions in a better direction.
its dangerous to think we know the facts
Let’s say that I put someone on a performance improvement plan (PIP). As I deliver the goals of the PIP to the person, my mind is replaying on auto-repeat the story that “I’m going to eventually have to fire this person. There’s no way they can pull themselves out of this PIP!”
The moment that I, as the manager, believe that they can never change, then they never will. At least not in my eyes they won’t. In this example, I’ve already made a decision.
When we are faced with making a decision, multiple neurons in our brain fire to help us evaluate all the possible outcomes. The complex neural circuits within our brains evaluate, channel and route these possible outcomes through a complex, multi-layered workflow. Eventually the final decision pops out — and it’s a winner take all scenario.
This decision we’ve made, that the person will never overcome this PIP, unconsciously drives all our future interactions with that person.
We won’t ask all the questions that would have challenged them. We won’t have the empathy we need to adequately support them.
So, here we are. Putting a person on a PIP. Assuming they will fail. Yet we are the one who has really failed in this moment. We have failed to effectively lead.
What might be possible if we simply suspended disbelief and instead assumed they would succeed at their goal?
challenging our own assumptions
The moment that we see other people as static entities that can never change, we have failed them. People are extraordinarily capable of making major life changes in the matter of days or weeks. For some, the growth cycle can happen in an instant.
When I discover myself seeing people as static, I immediately ask myself “where am I lacking the confidence in myself to steer this person productively forward to again become a solid contributor to the team”.
What if I suspended all disbelief, and instead simply supported them to create an effective action plan for themselves? What if I simply pushed them (lovingly and empathetically) to grow? What might happen if I assumed they would move through the PIP successfully and embrace growth and change?
What if I measured my own success as a leader based on my ability to successful help someone to embrace and move successfully through a PIP?
people are not static
Recently an engineering leader mentioned that someone in their team was not “management material”. The team member had requested to be put onto a management track, and the engineering leader felt they would just be following the process through to the inevitable end.
We can’t just decide someone isn’t management material because we’ll end up setting out to prove it. We will manifest that outcome for that person — not because of their actions — but because of our own.
When we pre-decide an outcome for another person, we are taking the cowardly way out (sorry, not sorry). It absolves us of all responsibility for having to be a leader, coach, and mentor. It absolves us from having to be responsible to move outside of our own comfort zone — to push ourselves to grow.
get out of our own comfort zone
At some point, somewhere in our careers we were ALL not management material. Then someone put trust in us because they saw our potential.
Then they mentored us (whether we realized it or not) to move past whatever roadblocks that we were experiencing and somehow we became a passable manager. Several years later, after trying and failing at multiple leaderly things, we hopefully become a good leader.
What if, instead, you worked under the hypothesis that there IS something valuable this person has to offer as a leader that we simply just haven’t recognized yet? What if we pushed ourself to do everything within our power to help this person become the best manager that they could be?
If they don’t make it after that, then so be it. At least they were given the opportunity and didn’t have people actively working against their progress.
And at least we learned a little more about what it takes for ourselves to become better leaders.
