As usual first things first: Thank you to everybody who challenged my thoughts on my previous article. I truly appreciate it.
Talking about getting personal within an organisation is a tricky topic. So let me say this upfront:
This is not about getting involved in the personal lives of others (be it managers or employees) within the organisation. It’s not about privacy invasion or in any way about getting to know information on any person in the organisation. Full respect of peoples privacy and wishes. Period.
What this article is about however, is valuing any person and truly taking into account what they think or indeed feel provided they share that information by themselves. I fully understand that there are situations where some people don’t want to share that – and that’s totally fine – indeed by respecting it this is actually already valuing them and does take their wishes into account.
So let’s dive into this tricky topic.
Getting personal within the organisation
I think this starts even before someone actually enters an organisation. Think about who you are looking for when hiring….
There are two major dimensions in my mind when choosing people for an organisation:
- Performance
- Loyalty/Agreeableness
with each dimension going from low to high.
It’s probably no surprise that everyone wants all high performing, high loyalty/agreeable people for their organisation. No surprise also that everybody wants to avoid low performance, low loyalty/agreeable in their organisation.
One tricky thing is that – surprisingly – exactly the low/low type many times manages to impress in interviews. Maybe it’s not that surprising after all, as people know they have to be seen as very high performers if they can’t demonstrate the loyalty/agreeableness dimension. In some cases they get as good in this as to even demonstrate themselves to be high in all dimensions – again no real surprise, when loyalty/agreeableness and in turn truth isn’t that high on a persons agenda.
The other tricky thing is that nothing is constant, I believe it was Churchill who said something like ‘Failure wasn’t futile, success wasn’t final’. Basically this means that any person has their highs and lows on the performance side. The loyalty/agreeableness side however tends to stay constant if and as long that person feels valued, respected and through eventual lows experiences loyalty towards them. When these attitudes in a person in an organisation change it’s actually time to look into the organisation. I’m not talking here about an instance where these attitudes quickly change after the person entered the organisation (a few weeks to possibly a year) – if it’s that quickly chances are that something got demonstrated in the hiring process that wasn’t there in the first place – but after the initial time of getting to know that person.
Which brings us to the final point in this. In order for the organisation to thrive and grow itself the second dimension is actually more important, in my mind, than the highest performance. Low loyalty/agreeableness may influence other members of the organisation over time leading to less performance and – even worse – a loss in loyalty/agreeableness by other members of the organisation. Something to especially bear in mind when looking for “leaders”, their highest performance is inspiring loyalty/agreeableness as well as performance in others and rather not their performance in their teams tasks.
Every organisation also changes and evolves over time. Managing this process is very significant. If the organisation changes, what changes below is what members of the organisation are loyal to and what they agree with. It’s important to understand feelings and attitudes of members in the organisation in that process. Leading through change requires a lot of empathy and the second dimension of loyalty/agreeableness becomes even more important in the manager leading the change while day to day performance goes further to the background. The same person will not be able to put pressure on performance while managing change because they can’t provide the leadership required in that moment – simple as that. Probably not exactly what you wanted to hear.
This also doesn’t mean that after significant change every member of the organisation will be able to still agree with and show loyalty to the organisation. However that still requires respect and valuing that person in order to successfully perform the change for the organisation as a whole. Always be aware that the other members in the organisation are watching how this situation is handled and that they will come to their own conclusions.
My final point in this, is what is probably the most difficult thing to do: Actually being interested in the ups and downs of members of an organisation as a manager even under the pressure of day-to-day performance. It’s so very tempting not wanting to know what members of the organisation go through personally but my strong advise would be that if they share it, feel hugely valued because it’s not normal and shows the highest form of loyalty/agreeableness as well as trust in the organisation. You might just have the next big thing missing for your company if that person leaves and finds a new – possibly even higher – high somewhere else.
These are some of my thoughts on getting personal within organisations or indeed more personal than in the past. As always I’m interested in what you think and whether you agree or disagree with this take.
If you want to discuss in person and find out what I could do for you and your business just get in contact me to schedule an initial call. Transformation and change very much benefits from an outside perspective.