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Crabby bosses produce crabby workers

More than Work: Supervisors worried about employees’ attitudes should look at their own.

People often ask me when I became interested in workplace values, spirituality and ethics. My glib, but painfully accurate, answer is “too late.”

Tim McGuire
United Media Syndicate

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=052904&ID=s1524594&cat=section.business

In truth, it was a long, slow process germinated sometime in 1993 by an organizational development consultant named Corty Cammann. Corty was working with our company on a change program. Corty is good at his job because he listens more than he talks.

One day he was patiently attentive as I complained about the obnoxious behav
ior of some employees. When I finished my rant, Corty calmly, but firmly, turned my world on its ear. Corty said if people acted like jerks I was doing something to create that behavior.

Their behavior was my fault? That charge did not settle well at all with me and I resisted it with a fury. How could employees’ behavior be my fault? I was on the side of the angels. I wanted to create a better workplace. I wanted to create a better product. My intentions and my actions could not be questioned.

Corty just looked at me and let me stew in my own mess. It didn’t take long for me to realize the ludicrousness of my position and the wisdom of his. I was not blameless and while I did not create the culture by myself, I presided over it. If it was going to get fixed, that responsibility rested with me.

My conversion to the belief that leaders are responsible for how employees behave didn’t rest easily with other leaders. It is far easier to think that discontent is “just the way it is” or that employees are “like this everywhere you go.”

Many leaders want to believe they are great even if their employees don’t follow so well. We convince ourselves we are ever-so virtuous and if they don’t follow it’s their problem and not ours.

A remarkable book called “Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box” (Berrett-Koehler, 2002) by the Arbinger Institute crossed my desk recently and made me think about Corty Cammann and his profound lessons.

The premise of the parable-based book is that we all create our own problems, and then we’re unable to see that we’re doing that. We then make everything worse by resisting any attempts to help us stop creating those problems.

The simple ideas behind the Arbinger Institute’s thinking are that we constantly commit acts of “self-betrayal” when we don’t do what we know we should for one another. Then we start to self-justify our self-betrayal and before long we convince ourselves that we are incredibly virtuous and justified, and all the problems in the world are created by the “other people,” such as a spouse, child, co-worker, boss or subordinate.

Most of us live there. We look at life through a “me” prism. We fail to celebrate and appreciate people as persons. We convince ourselves that we’re just fine, but those other people don’t appreciate our goodness. They don’t understand just how mean they are.

The moment we start to entertain such thoughts the red flag needs to come out. We need to lose the self-justification and understand the harsh truth espoused by the Arbinger Institute and Corty Cammann that our behavior shapes the behavior of others.

Every time we behave like jerks people react in a negative way to us, and soon there is a pattern of behavior and response that makes our family life and our workplace extremely difficult. We can change the equation dramatically if we appreciate that our bad behavior has a direct impact on the behavior of others. And just as importantly, our good behavior affects others, too.

In other words, judge thyself before you judge others.

Tip for your search: Concentrate on how much you blame other people for your own problems. We all do it all the time. Start becoming conscious of it, and see if you can become more honest with yourself.

Resource for your search: “Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box” by the Arbinger Institute (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002).

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