Interesting question, isn’t it?
Especially in the workplace, we ask this a lottt.
“Why is he like that?”
“What does she think of herself?”
“Why does he chicken out at the last minute!!”
Mostly, the answers are generic:
“entitled” “power hungry” “rude” blah blah…
A better answer lies in this circle:
Before we get to the answer, a little bit of context.
Many organizations run background checks before making a decision to hire someone.
It is the usual routine of identity, work history, police records, etc.
Once the new hire is onboard, there is no effort to know them better. (“But what about those annual retreats?” If you still believe running a large-scale 3-day retreat/workshop is the answer, pls reconsider by observing around. Are you sure?)
Going Micro
The background check at the entry point is a macro one.
What helps, in the long run, is the micro one. On the lines of what I’ve talked about self-organizing units in the seductive urge to manage people.
Do people who work with one another get to understand each other better?
Do they have a slight idea about how they grew up and what kind of background they come from? Not a guess, but a genuine conversation?
This one-on-one, high-trust, small group conversation is the micro background check. Everyone knows who they’re dealing with. This kind of conversation provides an important piece of the puzzle: their conditioning.
Conditioning → Conduct
All of us run on autopilot. Programmed by our conditioning.
In general, our conditioning includes:
- Our upbringing
- Our education and training
- Our beliefs
- Our sub-conscious
Conditioning directs our conduct. That means how we show up in the world. How we talk, react, listen, walk, and whatnot.
But there’s a catch
We are not robots. We have consciousness. Kind of half-autopilot mode.
Our consciousness filters out unnecessary effects of our conditioning and delivers the conduct in the outer world. That’s why you don’t want to laugh at an inappropriate time, you know you’re in office.
Low and High Consciousness
You’d have noticed two types of people.
Low consciousness and high consciousness people.
There’s a reason why we say that some people act without thinking. Because they indeed have under-developed consciousness = self-awareness.
A thin layer of consciousness barely filters unwanted elements of conditioning |
A thin layer of consciousness barely filters unwanted elements of conditioning
A thick layer of consciousness acts as a good filter for unwanted elements of conditioning |
A thick layer of consciousness acts as a good filter for unwanted elements of conditioning
The Practical Use
In the end, the question is: how do we use this conditioning → consciousness → conduct understanding?
A few thoughts:
- We have talked about cultivating the capacity to give up on people, it provides a very useful barometer to set our expectations. If your colleague is repeatedly late on every occasion and you’ve understood his story, it is unlikely that any number of rewards or punishments will alter the behavior.
- If a behavioral problem seems to be solvable, and the individual is willing to work on themselves, some form of self-reflection and repeated one-on-one mentoring can do wonders.
- One practical use I have found is accepting that what we see is always a filtered version of people. And that’s okay. This saves us from idealizing people. Because we know, we truly understand that they have to work hard to filter so many of their flaws in public interactions. And they’re willing.
In general, keeping this understanding helps in all aspects of life. It makes us kind.
And kindness has all sorts of use in this world.
Right?
So, Reader, how does your organization enable people to know one another? Which strategies have helped you develop a better understanding of your colleagues?
Hit Reply and share with me. Also, mention whether you want me to share it with the rest of the readers with your name.
Reads of the week:
34 years back, Brazilian CEO Ricardo Semler wrote this article for Harvard Business Review. And it is still fresh. In fact, with the advent of the internet and real-time communication, Ricardo’s vision of creating a managerless organization is very much aligned with what I consider to be
​New World Rules. While our culture celebrates Steve Jobs and Ambanis, it is too afraid to highlight Ricardo’s Maverick style. Probably, because there are no prescriptions.
​
In this candid and courageous Time magazine article, Simon Shuster narrates his experience of accompanying Zelensky in and out of the US. As we already know and confirmed by the article, his Western puppeteers have left him, and there are no trained military-age men left to send to the Russian meat grinder.
If TIME is publishing this story, that means the stage is set for Zelensky’s ousting and his vacation to the South Americas.