believing and non-believing management

 

people management psychology believe do business

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Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

 

e.e. cummings

 

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“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.

Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”

 

Golda Meir

 

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Today I am rambling about the psychology of managing employees … specifically an aspect of managing that I would call “believe and non-believing management.”

 

No.

This is not about motivating employees.

 

free employees of themselves believeThis is more about unlocking employees – unlocking potential.

 

This is more about that seemingly nonstop discussion you have with employees where you curb the overreaching confidence in some … and instill some confidence in others. In my mind … this is the ongoing discussion you have with your employees with the intent to set the best version of themselves free.

 

To be sure.

 

If you talk with enough people who have managed groups & companies and you will notice that at some point someone will bring up “I have to be a psychologist.”

 

To be clear.

 

Do business managers have to be psychologists to be effective? No. not really.

But being a psychologist on occasion certainly doesn’t hurt.

 

I am fairly sure what I am discussing has some high falutin’ organizational behavior ‘management principles’ published and formal white papers with long esoteric discussions on employee personality types and some personality testing voodoo.

 

I am also fairly sure, okay … certain, it is possible to be a competent if not good leader without understanding all that personality crap. in fact … I could argue, and I have argued, that personality tests trap individuals into some defined box in which if any of their behaviors don’t fit that box from that point on they will be mismanaged because … well … they aren’t doing what the box said they would do.

 

Anyway.

 

Most good managers clearly understand that different people are motivated by different things and that different things can inhibit the potential of each employee.

 

Suffice it to say, in my mind, it really all comes down to one basic management principle: possibilities & pragmatism management. Unlocking each employee’s potential is almost always a balance of pragmatic doing and getting them to employee believe non believe business lead manageenvision what they are possible of.

 

Simplistically your objective is always to free your employee to be their best and do their best. But in order to achieve that … well … sometimes this means stripping something away … and sometimes this means adding something.

 

And that is where my whole ‘believing & nonbelieving management’ comes into the discussion.

 

More often than not while you are teaching & coaching skills and pragmatic ‘here is what you need to do’ crap you will find yourself facing an employee who is either bursting with belief in themselves and their abilities or semi-frozen in an ‘unsure of what to do and if I can do it’ attitude.

 

Both need some attitudinal adjustments.

 

The ‘belief’ employees run the gamut from the young employee who is sure they are smarter and better than you <or others around them> to a senior sales guy who hasn’t met a sale he couldn’t make <doing it his way if only the company would get out of the way>.

 

The ‘nonbelievers’ also run the gamut from young & inexperienced to older doing it for the first time or even mid level employees dealing with something completely unrelated that has pricked their confidence bubble in some way.

 

And, no, I certainly do not consider any of this ‘cheerleader engagement.’ In fact … I would suggest that any manager who does needs to rethink their thinking.

 

Managing people certainly can contain some aspects of ‘enthusiasm management’ but one of the most basic manager self-survival techniques you learn <or die> is how to manage without too much investment of self. Therefore I have always viewed this aspect of employee management as simply assessing work together believe employee talk leadtheir ‘believe level’ and adjusting appropriately to enable the true potential to be there when it counts.

 

As a manager you always hunker down on the pragmatic aspects of what needs to be done first.

Always.

 

It is kind of your heuristic trick to assess any attitudinal challenges to getting the frickin’ pragmatic aspect done.

 

But you always keep an eye, and an ear, open during the pragmatic assessing the ‘possibilities of whether the shit will actually get done … and done as well as it can be done.’

This is the place where you look at the employee and assess the ‘belief factor.’

 

Some are easy to read. Some are a little more difficult. And, no, I cannot offer some trite generalism here.

 

Exuding belief believers can come in all shapes & sizes & behaviors.

Nonbelievers can come in all shapes & sizes & attitudes.

 

And it can get even trickier.

 

Tricky because the same employee who was bursting with blind belief one day will be the same employee sitting in front of you the next day discussing a completely different project or task … semi-frozen in non-belief.

 

Look.

 

The fundamentals of effective management are pretty much the same everywhere.

But this ‘possibilities & pragmatism management’ thing I am discussing takes some commitment. It doesn’t take being a psychologist … you just have to be committed to managing the individual ‘believe’ gauge. And this means being committed to both stripping away some unnecessary <or risky> belief and bolting on some belief where needed.

 

Unfortunately this can sometimes take a fine subtle touch … and most of us everyday manager schmucks aren’t always subtle. Nor are we particularly talented at balancing both possibilities & pragmatism.

 

I imagine I wrote this not to offer any “how to” guide to anyone. I wrote it because I just faced it and thought about it.

 

In one day I had to ponder the talented more senior sales person almost blinded with belief charging ahead <not particularly aligned with what the company thought was best practice> and an extremely talented younger person threaded with the burden of nonbelief.

 

In one day I had to ponder how to deftly encourage a little less blind belief and thrust some belief upon another.

 

And that is most likely a typical day for a manager.

 

I didn’t care about personality type.

 

I didn’t confer with any HR people.

 

I didn’t go online searching for ‘communications techniques.’

 

I didn’t do so not because I didn’t want to … but because managers mostly don’t one on one employee believe business managehave time for that shit.

 

You gotta deal with what is in front of you and get shit done and get the best out of your employees.

 

Believing and non believing management.

 

Possibilities and pragmatism management.

 

Kind of two sides of the same management coin.

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Written by Bruce