Ditch the Workplace Drama and Turn Excuses Into Results

New Yorkers are no strangers to drama. Ranging from political scandals and unexpected weather to sports rivalries and transit woes, the citizens of the city with the largest metropolitan economy in the world are familiar with the turmoil of daily life.? While we can’t do much about those day-to-day interferences, we can lessen the drama at work!

The purpose of #Vistage is to enhance #leadership development, increase effectiveness, and improve the lives of #leaders. To better help us achieve those goals, I recently invited Alex Dorr to speak to my members.

Alex envisions a world where work is effortless and teams are drama-free. Everything that Alex does is designed to help people understand that success and happiness are their natural state as human beings—once the drama is gone. With this core belief, Alex’s passion is revealing to those he works with that once people carve away drama from their lives, the same job they found themselves upset with today becomes the job they look forward to and love tomorrow.

Alex has worked with NY Times Bestselling author and thought leader Reality Based Leadership | Cy Wakeman since 2015 as a speaker and trainer for organizations and leaders globally to help them ditch the drama from the workplace and turn excuses into results.

Their research has identified that there have never been so many resources and investments in leadership development. At the same time, people are reporting that work-place drama—defined as mental and emotional waste—has increased to over two and a half hours a day!

Gallup recently reported that 50% of employees were not engaged in 2023. Given these numbers, they focused on figuring out why with so much leadership training, leaders haven’t been able to reduce drama and increase engagement.

?“The age of the human (Millennials or Baby Boomers) became the focus that was causing all the issues, like a generational integration issue, and what we found as we dug deeper was something really important for leadership as a whole. This wasn’t about the age of the human, it was about the human condition, which is what unites us all. What we know about the human condition is that when someone is asked to do a little bit more with less, when they are asked to deliver aggressive agendas with limited resources and very transformative times—also known as every single day at work—they all tend to default in very predictable ways. Those defaults are actually the sources of drama that we’ve been able to identify and once we can recognize these defaults we can rise above and move forward. That becomes process of no ego and reality-based leadership.”

Given that…

Every day, we have to deal with unpreferred realities, and work is no exception. Clients don’t return calls, sales staff doesn’t fill orders correctly, resources are lacking, and demands exceed capacity. People in the workplace often have unrealistic expectations and fall into fantasizing that specific changes (different software, more pay, other benefits) would eliminate these unpreferred realities. That often is not the case. Whatever the challenge, leaders need to focus on accountability and avoid fueling a codependent relationship.

There are simple leadership techniques that help empower employees to self-reflect and find solutions.

This aligns with Marcus Buckingham’s work and his belief that we shouldn’t give feedback telling people how achieve certain results. We have to allow them to identify the solution that they will actually engage with and believe in.

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Quick takeaway!? When an employee brings a complaint to you that stems from an unpreferred reality (for example, “I sent an email and no one responded”), take the opportunity to create a moment of reflection. Affirm the frustration that they are experiencing and ask, “Given that…what can you try?”

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SBAR

An essential part of leadership is managing energy away from why we can’t to why we could. A great tool for avoiding venting, increasing accountability and facilitating engagement is writing down the following:

• ?he Situation,
• the Background,
• an Analysis and
• two to five Recommendations with the cost/benefit for each idea

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Leadership should be simple and predictable, focused on fully utilizing existing tools and processes before seeking new ones. SBAR is one of the best ways to guarantee that your employees always know how you will respond to “Do you have a minute?” As long as they’ve written down the responses to SBAR, then make the effort to give them the time to go through the process.

Quick takeaway! Venting is a common part of the work experience. It stems from the desire for support and social connection but often devolves into the ego’s need to be superior and is a barrier to problem solving and creates a cycle of negativity that can be avoided through self-reflection and accountability. SBAR allows leaders to validate feelings without feeding into venting that doesn’t actually make anyone feel better.

Change is Only Hard for The Unready

People usually divide into three mindsets in reaction to change: resistance, maintenance, and visionary. Visionaries are essential for change, but resistant employees can hold back progress, so it's important to focus on the willing maintenance group to drive positive change in the workplace. Clear conversations and performance management are fundamental in creating an inclusive and high-performing work environment.

?Quick takeaway! Thinking inside the box—the limits of your resources and budget—and acknowledging those constraints when developing solutions helps avoid the pitfall of arguing with reality.

Conclusion

Alex invites us to believe that success and happiness at work are not dependent on external circumstances but rather on factors such as ownership, resilience, and continuous learning. I agree with him and encourage you to consider implementing some of his tools and learning more about reality-based leadership!?