The Man in the Mirror

I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change
His Ways
And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
(If You Wanna Make The
World A Better Place)
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change
(Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change)

-          Michael Jackson in ‘’Man in the Mirror’’

A participant in a workshop I facilitated a few months ago narrated the ordeal of having a Manager who did everything to frustrate her work. And as some of the heads in the room shook, you could tell that this participant’s story was not made up. In fact one of the human resource officers in the room confirmed the story and looked straight me with this question ‘’now how do deal with such a situation?’’.

I tried to generate options from the rest of the participants by asking ‘’how can we use any of the skills or tools we had discussed so far to help in such a situation?’’. People offered a number of suggestions but there were the two or three who felt this Manager was not going to change or felt we needed t come with some stronger prescription. And just a few days ago we ran into similar sentiments – this time from a couple of middle managers from a local institution. ‘’Our bosses should have been here!’’, the real problem lies up there’’.

This idea that if we could just change our supervisors’ life will be a lot better misses the point about the responsibility that we have to take charge of our career and partner with Managers to deliver great value daily. It is not about how bad your Manager is but how well can we work together. Followers are not some reactive bystanders in the relationship between leader and the led. As Dee Hock, founder of Visa International and author of the book ‘’The birth of a Chaordic Organization’’;

‘’ Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. Nor is the relationship materially altered if both parties accept dominance and coercion. True leading and following presume perpetual liberty of both leader and follower to sever the relationship and pursue another path. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound, they are no longer leader or follower. The terms leader and follower imply the freedom and independent judgment of both. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, management/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave. All such relationships are materially different than leader-follower’’.

So maybe most of what we have encountered in the earlier two examples are relationships based on the master servant or superior/subordinate model. But even in that case, both parties are making a choice to have a poor relationship. And I believe we may have said as much in the one of the workshops. But can followers truly be in charge of the relationship with their Bosses? Will this work in our market? (Usually a euphemism that a particular participant used to indicate that ideas like about a self directed follower is unusual locally).

As a young consultant at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) on Xerox account in the late Nineties, I worked under one such leader. This leader felt that my productivity did not correlate to the compensation I was getting. So I asked for his help. What I got, among other things was a suggestion to write down my list of accomplishments on a daily basis. It did not take long for me to realize that It was time to look for another leader.

Now, some may say that we may not all have that luxury, that given the ‘’high rate of unemployment’’, very few people can make that choice. But in the contrary, we all have the choice to follow ‘’those who will behave in that manner. It comes down to both the individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led. Where a community will be led is inseparable from the conscious, shared values and beliefs of the individuals of which it is composed’’ to quote Dee Hock.

Like Michael Jackson sang, if we want to make the world or your world a better place, then we must look at the man in the mirror to change. The man in the mirror must take responsibility on the principles of choice, personal accountability and a sense of vision to write the scripts of their life. To continue to suffer under the tyranny of a supervisor is to play victim and we know the kind of results we get when that happens.  As the authors of the OZ Principle remind us ‘’Only when you assume full accountability for your thoughts, feelings, actions, and results can you direct your own destiny; otherwise, someone or something else will.”

How about leaders, do they get a free ride? No. In my experience, leading other people is a sacred responsibility that we should rush to accept. As I learnt from a former colleague of mine – Sergey Tulyakov – when asked to lead a small group of UNIX engineers, ‘’I don’t want to lead anybody but myself first’’. We must do the homework of leading ourselves before we set out to set direction, get alignment and commitment from other people. ‘’True leaders’’, to quote Dee Hock, ‘’ are those who epitomize the general sense of the community — who symbolize, legitimize, and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community — who enable its conscious, shared values and beliefs to emerge, expand, and be transmitted from generation to generation-who enable that which is trying to happen to come into being’’

To do this effectively, leaders must see that everyone comes to the table with innate greatness and it is the leader job to unleash that greatness. Infact, Dr. Stephen Covey said the job of the leader is to ‘’to release the talent and passion of our team toward our highest priorities’’. Leaders do this through three crucial conversations among other things; first understand the contribution each person is trying to make, second establish performance conversation to ensure that we are on track and lastly leaders must make themselves available to remove any constraints that hinders that contribution from happening.