One morning last fall I contemplated the blog topic, “People don’t change.” For several months, I had been enveloped in negativity about my working life, and I was convinced that this was a leadership stone that needed to be shared. As I began to write, I realized that I had plenty of experiences where people HAD changed, so I decided to write two separate blogs with seemingly contradicting theories. These leadership stones explore the assumption that sometimes people change, sometimes they don’t—and managing that fact.
Let’s start with people not changing—in this case, me. For many years I have struggled with remembering people’s names. It wasn’t that I’d blank on a name entirely; instead I’d simply call a person by the wrong name. I had other retrieval problems as well: my mother thought I was colorblind when actually I simply said “red” for “green.” I appeared directionality challenged because I switched “north” for “south.” I remember one of my students, when I corrected myself, said “I knew which direction you were talking about. I just made the switch for you.” <smile>
Fast forward to advanced adulthood: I still make these mistakes today. I’ve learned to be cautious about saying a person’s name definitively, and I sometimes remember to pause before labeling a cardinal direction. But the fact is that I’m not appreciably better at word retrieval than I was 50+ years ago.
What do I do with that information? Sometimes I share it. I say, “Sorry I got that wrong. I’m challenged by word retrieval.” Sometimes I just laugh and move on. Sometimes I say nothing, for fear that I will make a mistake, or I use a coping strategy. “Hi, this is my husband Chris. Have you two met before?” --hoping the other person will introduce him/herself. I’ve made peace with my shortcoming.
I once worked with a team where one member’s greatest motivation was self-promotion. He did this using a variety of tools: physically positioning himself in front of the “important” people; manipulating the conversation to make others look bad; actively attacking others’ ideas without adequate information or any ideas of his own. It took me a while to understand not only that this was a driving force for this individual, but that anything I said or did to change his behavior was futile. My logical next step should have been to develop strategies to manage my behavior with him and to find other resources to get my work done.
I was often the victim of this person’s behavior, and I wasted a lot of time trying to manipulate the situation and make myself look better. I learned a lot about myself through this process, foremost that it takes a lot of energy to manipulate others and that I am not at all good at it. I suppose that’s a good thing, but the point here is that I was trying to change this individual, and I could not. His behavior was entrenched, and it had apparently served him well. And there were two byproducts of my own efforts: I wasted time and energy, and I looked bad in front of other people. Once I came to my senses, I realized I should carefully evaluate the payoff of trying to change another person. In this case, it was definitely not worth the effort.
It turns out that my motive for changing this person was off, too: I was motivated by the self-righteous idea that I was better than him, that my angle was better than his, that his behavior was bad and needed to stop. But none of these assessments made the least bit of positive difference in my own quality of work. In fact, they detracted from it. I’d like to get back some of the time and emotional energy I put into trying to get something different from this relationship.
Eventually I shifted my thinking and my behavior. I asked others to meet along with the two of us. I ignored bad behavior, and calmly redirected the conversation when this person tried to throw me under the bus. I looked for allies to help me overcome barriers this person created. While I never got it completely right, at least I wasn’t waking up at 3 am each day, my heart pounding with dread about the coming workday.
A favorite quote I return to again and again is, “you cannot enlighten the unconscious.” It’s best to recognize futility and move beyond it—to focus on oneself and others who warrant the time and effort that relationship- and team-building requires. Whether you’re the manager, the colleague, or the subordinate, accepting, working with, or rejecting others’ strengths, limitations, and behaviors is just part of the job.