The tai-chi of management

This week during one of my early morning tai-chi sessions in the park next door, I realized that there were many similarities between martial arts and management. I have been practicing martial arts since I was a teenager and had leadership roles very early both in my personal and professional life.

One of the strongest values I found in all martial arts is respect. That was the first lesson I learned as a kid when learning judo. Our judo master, which was also the priest of the village, insisted that we respected the other students, our teachers, and the rules of the dojo. I wonder for a long time if that was really his martial or religious teaching, but I got the same lesson later in my life when starting kung-fu. Respect is so strong in martial arts because it allows everyone to learn without hurting each other. When you endeavor not to hurt your partner, he will do the same and the occasional bruises will be understood as accidents.

Respect is also essential for managers, as a recent Gallup report shows that managers are responsible for 70% of the lack of engagement at work. As a leader, showing respect to your team would be the starting point for them to respect you as well. Consider the human within your employee even if you must adjust a professional performance. No matter how many times my judo master would make me fall, he would smile at me and help me stand again until I mastered the technique. You can deal with a professional issue without affecting the dignity of your employee. Two martial opponents will salute before and after fighting, as a way to thank the other student for the occasion of learning and practice. Even if you won, you learn humility by being grateful and not bragging at the expense of your partner. I like that image when I am providing feedback: it’s not about the person but the technique.

The real fight in martial arts is not with your opponent but with yourself. You will practice consistently to improve upon yourself, master a new technique, better control your mind and body…. I remember that when I started kung-fu I was very keen to learn kicking techniques. I was very quickly able to learn the techniques from the advanced students, but I soon understood that I was far from mastering them. I was lacking the strength, the flexibility, and the balance that would make me efficient in combat. It took me several months of coaching and specific exercises to start seeing some improvements. One of the key exercises was to slow down. By slowing down, like in my current tai-chi practice, you get to be more conscious of your balance, your breathing, your body posture, your strength, and your chi. And that consciousness allows you to little by little adjust your technique and progress each day.

Management also requires consistent practice. You might be a recently promoted manager, you might even have learned some cool techniques in books or videos, but you still need to learn the subtility of people management. Simply because you are not managing robots, but people that have different backgrounds, cultures, values, and expectations. Challenges will arise as time goes by and all will not show up on the first month of management. You will develop more flexibility to adapt to the needs of your team: this employee requires more or less guidance, more or less encouragement… Hiring, developing, training, terminating will not happen all in the first week and would be different for each person involved. You will need to balance expectations, results versus the work environment, urgent versus important... ?So be patient and look at each situation as a new opportunity to learn the subtilities of management and improve upon yourself.

Finally, it takes a lot of courage to go into a fight. When you are a new practitioner, it is very impressive to start a combat with a more experienced fighter and your natural tendency would be to fly the fight. But by doing so you will soon find yourself cornered against a wall. The only way to progress is to face your fear and move towards your partner so that you can apply a technique that you learned. In the beginning, you are most afraid of getting hurt, but as time passes by and you master dangerous techniques you start to be afraid of applying the techniques. It takes courage to resist fight and choose a path of non-violence when you can solve an issue differently.

It takes courage to be a manager. You will have to handle difficult conversations on performance, work ethic, conflicts. It is important to tackle them quickly before you get yourself cornered in more complicated situations. But remember that you are not fighting your employee, you are fighting an issue. Actually, working alongside your employee might actually be the best way to fight the problem at hand. You will also need the courage to manage up, manage expectations on time and results, or simply say “No”. A lot of new managers struggle to say “No” and end up having to fight with conflicting priorities and workload issues. So use the aikido technique of deflecting the strength: “No” can turn into “not now”, or “yes, but later”…

To conclude, in management as in martial arts, you require respect, continuous practice, and courage. And although martial arts involve codified “confrontation” with other people, in management the fight is really against yourself to progress as a leader and against the issues to improve performance; never against your employee.

Remi Vogel is currently VP of Finance for Peninsula Employment Services in Canada. He loves coaching, mentoring, and nurturing finance, accounting, and administrative professionals into managers. He has successfully done so for 20 years in 8 different countries.