By Chally Kacelnik
Maybe you’re the same as me: I often struggle with the gap between people’s actual behaviour and what I think of as universally understood appropriate behaviour. The reality is that not everyone has the same idea of what values are attached to particular kinds of behaviour, and also that people have limits on their capability and capacity. That extends to me also, of course.
In our leadership programs, we ask participants to complete time capsule surveys. These are surveys we ask them to complete at the start and end of each program, using a consistent set of measures and a few accompanying questions. This enables them to track how they’ve grown and changed as leaders, and to identify what they’ve found particularly useful in the programming. One of the measures is “I am always honest with my team”. It tends to be one of the higher scoring areas at both the start and end of the program, and one with a relatively low level of change between the start and end of the program. (If you’re interested, here’s an analysis I did of a sample range of participant responses; it’s about 4 years old but still holds: What We’ve Learned from 77 Participants in Our Leadership Programs – Part 1 (Highs and Lows), Part 2 (Changes), and Part 3 (Improvements).
That being said, there are people who identify honesty as a real area of improvement for them as a result of our leadership programming. It takes real clarity and humility to identify and speak to something like this, and I respect people for sharing this with us. It’s also been something I haven’t readily been able to understand: what’s the utility of being dishonest at work, and developing a reputation for dishonesty? The truth is that this is often coming from a generous or self-protective place. People say yes to the piece of work they don’t know how to resource, and then struggle to deliver at the promised time. People are avoiding giving information to unscrupulous colleagues who can weaponise it. Sometimes, people are serving their immediate self-interest at the expense of others or the organisation, but they also recognise when that comes back to bite them.
The challenge for me, and perhaps you, is to exercise a little generosity of spirit, plus a spirit of enquiry, when it comes to interpreting others’ behaviour. This applies for even obviously intentionally poor behaviour, because it helps to take out the sting. Framing this behaviour as “this is because that person has real capability limits when it comes to interpersonal dynamics” rather than “this is because that person is a huge jerk” deflates the space that the behaviour takes up. I’m not suggesting that you be the bigger person as an act of moral superiority: I’m suggesting it as a mechanism to save some energy and mental space, as well as flex your muscles when it comes to interpreting human behaviour. Give it a shot.
At LKS Quaero, we help people to better understand human behaviour. For more information, visit us at lksquaero.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook.
