DOIN' WHAT COMES NATURALLY

PAUSE A MOMENT

FIND YOUR STRENGTH:

LESSONS LEARNED BY A SQUARE PEG IN A FEW ROUND HOLES

Good morning once more, and welcome now to Pause a Moment. I'm Barrie Barkla.

[You Bring Out the Best in Me – Dru Chen]

I recently reviewed a resumé for a colleague who was trying to expand on her career strategy. She has terrific experience. And yet, as I looked through her CV, I could see a problem with it: she had done so many good things in so many different fields it was hard to know what was distinctive about her.

[La Raya – Eric Serra]

There is something special about you; something you have come to add to the mix

You have a personal magic that could inspire and empower someone else...

What is it?

As I talked with my colleague, it became clear her resumé was the surface symptom of a deeper issue. In an attempt to be useful and adaptable she had said “yes” to too many good projects and opportunities. She had ended up feeling stressed, overworked and underutilized from being stretched too thinly over too many areas, some of which were superfluous to her. It is easy to see how good people end up in her situation:

[You Be the Rock – 19-Twenty]

Capable people are driven to achieve. Other people see they are capable and give them assignments. I'm sure you know the maxim - “Always delegate to a busy person if you want things done”. Capable people gain a reputation as the "go to" people. They become "good old [insert name] who is always there when you need him." There is lots right with this, unless or until......

YOUR POINT OF OPTIMUM CONTRIBUTION

Capable people end up doing lots of projects reasonably well, but become distracted from what would otherwise be their most effective point of contribution, which I define as where talent, passion and the market intersect – that place where:

• what the group you're working with gets what it needs most
• from your blend of talent and passion,
• in order to best service their clients.

When you spread yourself too thinly, both you and the and the group lose out. But, in most cases, it's up to you to make the choices –

• What am I best at?
• How can I best apply my talents and passions to the most effective ends in this situation?
• What is my working style?
• Which working environments best suit my style?

Everyone has his own strategies for working. Some people are not happy unless they’re Independent. Some people actually like working alone. Some even have great difficulty working closely with other people and can’t work well under a great deal of supervision. They have to run their own show. Anyone they cannot get along with, they may even eliminate from the territory they regard as “theirs”.

Yet others function best as part of a group. In stark contrast, they are uncomfortable alone. They are Dependent – they need to have someone near they can refer to, or rely on for some kind of support. Dependent operators fall into two sub-groups – I call the first group's strategy a Cooperative one. The second group manipulate their troupe from within – I call their strategies Controlling.

Co-operators want to share responsibility for any task they take on; they get their jollies from teamwork.

Controllers want to be the sole source of everything. They may leave the hard and detailed work to drones who'll do exactly what they're told, but they line up to cop all the trophies and plaudits when it's all over. Uppermost in a Controllers' style is an unbending need to make themselves indispensable, to be in charge, overtly or covertly, by fair means or foul, and for adulation. Controllers design their own monuments before they die. One of their favourite look-good sayings is – If you want something done properly, do it yourself.

Still others have an Inter-dependent strategy, which is somewhere in between the dependent and independent types. Interdependents prefer to work with other people while maintaining sole responsibility for a task. They are in charge but not alone; they involve others, not just as drones and gophers but as real innovators and contributors. An Interdependent manager surrounds himself with capable people and gives them their head, knowing that the end result will be so much more than just the sum of its parts.

[Getting to Know You – 101 Strings]

There is no particular merit or demerit inherent in any of these styles. In an appropriate setting, each will work. But in a mismatch setting, the results can be disastrous e.g. a Dependent Control Freak in a volunteer organisation is a disaster waiting to happen. The membership will be robbed of initiative, the opportunity to participate at a meaningful level, hence losing zeal and vision, and the zombies who remain on board will go down in a heap of malicious gossip, bickering and half-baked results while the leader keeps minting more medals for someone to pin on him/her.

If you want to get the most out of yourself, get to know your style and strategies, and find the appropriate environment for your style. If you want to get the most out of those you supervise , colleagues, partner or your children, figure out their work strategies ---- the ways in which they are most effective. Sometimes you’ll find someone who is brilliant at what they do, but a pain in the neck to get along with. Maybe she always has to do things her way. Now she just might not be cut out to be an employee, or even a supervisor for that matter. Authority may go to her head. She may be the kind of person who has to run her own solo business, and sooner or later she probably will if – if you do not provide an avenue of expression. If you have a valuable employee like this, you should try to find a way to maximize his/her talents and give him/her as much autonomy as possible. If you make him conform to be part of a team, he’ll drive everyone crazy. But if you give him as much independence as possible, he can prove invaluable. That’s what the new concepts of leadership are all about.

You’ve heard of the Peter Principle, the idea that most people eventually launch themselves a notch or two past their optimum level of competence. One reason this happens is that most people have an inflated idea of their own level of ability; another is that employers, supervisors and co-ordinators are often insensitive to their employees’ work strategies and put them in mismatched jobs. They promote a worthy worker where they have a vacancy, rather than finding or creating a position that best suits that worker's talents, aptitudes and style. 

 

For example.....

There are people who work best in a cooperative setting. They thrive on a large amount of feedback and human interaction. Would you reward their good work by putting them in sole charge of some new autonomous venture? Not if you want to make use of their best talents. That doesn’t mean you have to keep a team person at the same level. But it does mean you should give promotions and new work experiences that utilise the person’s best talents, not throw him/her back onto their weakest ones.

Likewise, many people with interdependent strategies want to be part of a team, and can see how they fit into the big picture, but also need to do their own work alone. They need the proximity and feedback and interaction of others, but they have an inner urge to mentor, train and coach; and the overall vision to call the final strategies.

In any group structure there are jobs that nurture all three strategies – Co-operative, Independent and Interdependent. The key is to have the self-knowledge to know your style and find the position that has your name on it. If you then aspire to managing others, you need the acuity to know how people work best and then match them to a task they will thrive in. That way, everyone wins. Otherwise the Peter Principle applies and no-one wins.

Here’s an exercise you can do right now. It's purpose is for you to get some insight into your own metaprograms. It's a good idea to write your responses down so that you can stand in them for while....

• What do you want in a relationship (or house, or car, or career)?
• How do you know when you have been successful at something? What is your definition of success – it will be a feeling?
• Pick one area of your life – it doesn't matter which one, but preferably an area that occupies your attention right now. Relationship? Finances? Career? Social life? Personal growth? In that area, what is the relationship between what you are doing about it this month and what you predominantly did last month?
• How often does someone have to demonstrate something to you before you are convinced it’s true? What constitutes “proof” for you?
• Recall a favorite work experience. Why was it important to you? What makes it so memorable still?

Watch your inner self closely as you ask these questions. Which questions quietly perked your attention? Did your responses intrigue you, or were you easily distracted elsewhere? 

These are only a few of the questions you can ask to successfully elicit the metaprograms we’ve discussed. If you don’t get the information you need, rephrase the question – maybe to something like this....

Ask yourself: If I could do anything for 8 hours a day for the rest of my life, and money were no object, what would I do?

Am I excited to do what I'm presently doing every day? And if not, is it me, or something else?

[Doin' What Comes Naturally – 1999 Cast – 2:15]

One of the big blessings of living in a democracy is that we have an ability to pursue our own path, and the plausible possibility that anyone can pick him or herself up by the bootstraps and achieve great things. Of course, survival and success are inescapably connected to work, but we have the luxury of deciding how much fun the serious pursuit of our day-to-day work is going to be. Sometimes that comes as a tradeoff for higher pay, but spending half your waking hours doing something you love is often well worth trading higher remuneration for less pressure. I've been around a lot of people who claim to love what they do, but I seriously suspect that what they do is what they dislike least out of what they've tried. And working in radio I meet a lot of people who hang around the business because they haven't seriously worked through where their real talents lie.

Whatever may be the truth of that, I'm convinced that the people who are best at what they do tend to be the ones that love it the most. It's a “fit”, and everyone grows from the experience of being with that person.

The most important thing for me is to feel that every person I work with is excited to show up to work every day, that each is doing what he or she loves. I've worked in places where that is not the case, and it's a debilitating experience. The most amazing and depressing words I've ever heard is one of our presenters say “I don't have anything really special on the show today,” and he really meant it! And he proved to be right! What I'd much rather hear (and I'm humbled to overhear it occasionally!), is, "This is the best time I've ever had." For God's sake, if you're not lit up by what you're doing, how the hell do you expect others to catch fire???

 

I'm not saying anything loads of great thinkers haven't already said. But sometimes it's important to remind ourselves why we're doing what we're doing, and to take inventory of our dreams.

Are you and your dreams still within sight of each other?

[Are You a Dreamer? – Tim Freedman]