Living With Polarities

Today anywhere I go I hear companies talk about problems around people. Fitment, culture, scaling, performance, motivation, change, young leaders, old leaders, conflicts and the list goes on. In my opinion, these problems are more about expectation, ones which keep changing like a kaleidoscope. Most people have limited strengths and abilities. Most orgs and managers are not attuned to picking them up.

Humans have a continuum of abilities and specific way in which they think and act. Over time, given situations, job function and work demand we sharpen these abilities better and come to be known for them. Hence, entrenching our self-images and successes with them. We get promoted for these reasons, we are made managers, given reward and recognitions. We further solidify our self-belief of saying, “yes! I have figured it out, this is the way to be!”. All is fine until you suddenly find that the new role demands something completely different! Almost opposite of what made you successful in the first place! Suddenly, it doesn’t look like you have it all figured out and you do show some external signs of exasperation that you are out of depth.

Well here is the psychological construct of the situation! People are born with a certain disposition, they act, behave and think in a certain way given their temperament and personalities. No employee can be everything. It’s a fallacy to think you will hire an employee out of college coz he is extremely detail oriented and a couple of years later expect him to start delegating and assume broad range of responsibilities. It won’t happen! While you need the employee to scale you will still need to remember that you have to give him the right motivation and incentive to change the most fundamental way he operates or thinks. And that too this change is extremely gradual. Delegation and detail orientation are after all two ends of a spectrum.

Take another example, the case of impulse control and innovation. For most people who practise any degree to control know that it is a matter of training the thoughts and mind to achieve mastery over the impulsive and selfish self (ID). Innovation on the other hand is about letting the mind free. Allowing it to explore, challenge, think out of the box etc. That is why organisations want young blood to come in and innovate as their old crop is already tamed to ‘control and discipline’. But guess what? You want the exact same youngsters to fall in line not so long after they have given you some innovation. But sorry, these are two ends of a spectrum. Suddenly you have a problem child at hand!

I’ll take one last example. Humility and self-esteem. Surprised? Well, think about it. Humility allows us to accept mistakes, allows us to acknowledge that we don’t know everything after all, we are students all our lives. Self esteem on the other hand allows ego to build, creates psychological righteous ideologies we believe should be protected and fight for them. In the process we loose perspective and create learning barriers.

We live with polarities. Organisations need to accept that. It is not in any corporation’s best benefit to constantly try and change individuals (ask the wives!). A much more non-invasive and effective route to getting employees to accept new responsibilities is to harness their strengths and way of thinking to accomplish org goals. Provide the psychological incentive to individuals to scale (not change). The process becomes empowering, autonomous and is self-sustaining.

I have a few ideas of how this can be done but feel free to improvise:

1.      Train front line managers to understand personality constructs of their team members and hence know individual motivation

2.      Invest in strengths. Certainly, there is Gallup but do check out Martin Seligman as well.

3.      Invest in coaching your managers. Most employees struggle not with actual scaling but just the sheer concept and magnitude of what needs to be achieved. Help them break down their psychological barriers to performance

4.      While hiring, keep org value alignment as a priority. This goes a long way in retaining (once someone is hired)