If you want people to listen to you, use their own agenda, their language, their motivators.
If you want people to act, show them yourself.
If you want people to change, help them reflect and find their way.
There’s this idea that bossing people around is effective. It’s only partially true. You might get people to listen, to act, to change by commanding them, but that’s never going to stick.
They are the heroes to their own story. At most, you can be the guide.
Relationships are hard work. All relationships.
That’s mainly because in a relationship we are asked to take something into consideration that we are incapable of understanding: the other party involved.
It takes a lot of work to just accept this simple fact. That understanding is not the basis of a relationship.
Caring is.
There have been studies before, and there will be more in the future. And this one is yet another confirmation that companies get most of employees motivation wrong.
What people seek is a sense of autonomy (I can choose the work I do), relatedness (I belong with my colleagues), and competence (I master what I do). If you’re not working to ensure your people get to experience these, you are missing out, and your company is just one of many.
Good luck!
This one here from The New York Times is a cautionary tale.
It’s about never trusting the glamour and sparkles you see on social media. Even when they seem to be selfless and well-intended.
And it’s also a tale about not confusing the object with the subject. Just because the latter is rotten, doesn’t mean the former is as well. That is to say, it is still possible to pay a fair wage to your employees, build a good company, and not be a total asshole.
This other one from The Guardian is also a cautionary tale.
It’s about the inevitability of being caught at fault when you are a public figure. It’s about the fascination of newspapers of any kind and size for stories which are not stories. It’s about the need to accept that the better you are at what you do, the more others will try to take you down with frivolous items, leveraging both the inevitability and the fascination described above.
And it’s also a tale about letting all this wash over you and continue on your path.
To be a good leader, you need to master emotions. Yours and others.
Yours, because you need to be in touch with them, be aware of them, be labelling them. And yet, you need not to be too attached to them. For example, when making decisions. In a way, you need to manage your emotions with some sort of detachment.
Others, because you need to be able to appreciate them and embrace them. You need to allocate time for others to express them, you need to be able to take them into consideration, and you need to be able to give the chance to release them.
Most leaders ignore emotions completely.
Some master theirs or others.
Few master both.
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