If You're Not Changing It - You're Choosing It

A short message from me before we get into today’s edition:

I apologise, it’s been a while since the last edition - great to be back and I am hoping to be back in a bigger way this time. I found it difficult to keep up with weekly as projects and workshops start to pile on. So for now I will be trying out a more sustainable schedule and cadence, starting once every 2 weeks and seeing how I fair with that!

I also understand that the messaging around the newsletter has changed over time, so if you are no longer keen on what we talk about, feel free to clean up your inbox and unsubscribe (it’s okay I won’t get offended!).

Okay, back to your regular programming with today’s title.

If You’re Not Changing It - You’re Choosing it.

We often joke that complaining is a Singaporean’s favourite pastime. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, it’s a bit of fun most of the time. But where is the line in the sand where we need to start taking responsibility for the very complaints we have?

I’ve come across hundreds of managers in the last few months with countless complaints. About coworkers, managers of other departments and divisons, team members; over a large range of reasons - work ethic, working styles, unfairness, or bad behaviours etc. and looking for advice on how to deal with these people. Typically when I listen to complaints (after letting them ventilate for a while) I follow it up with a simple question:

“Have you told them what you’ve told me?”

As you’ve likely guessed, the answer is often (always) “No”.

Accountability & Responsibility

How can we expect things to change if we have not taken the step to communicate our complaints? You can’t, really. So it begs the question, if you’re not doing anything to change the situation - aren’t you choosing it?

Inaction Is An Action Too

So as leaders, choosing not to take action is a conscious choice too. It is not a particularly proactive action, but an action nonetheless. You make the choice to avoid the discomfort of having to be part of the solution, avoiding the difficult conversation, the potential conflict, but remember - that when nothing gets better that was our choice and (partly) our fault.

Taking Action

I get that taking action is hard. One of the most common reasons (or excuses) I’ve received from managers who avoid taking action is the lack of confidence.

They’re not confident of what action to take, how to initiate, how to manage the conversation once initiated, and confident that they’ll be able to drive the right outcome.

Understandable. They haven’t done it enough.

This is going to be crappy advice, but the realest advice I can offer - Just do it.

How many things can we confidently say that we do a couple of times a year and are good at? It’s just not possible. Having confidence and competence to do something well requires a certain frequency, dealing with people is no different.

So have that difficult conversation, give that bit of difficult feedback. Chances are it is going to be difficult, uncomfortable, messy, and that you might fail miserably. But commit to doing it again and again and again.

Getting More Comfortable

When we do it again and again, a couple of things happen.

1. We get better at it

We start to learn from our mistakes, tweak our approach, find techniques that worked and ones that didn’t. We get better at having those conversations and that makes them easier to have - we might even see some success.

2. Everyone gets more comfortable with it.

We spoke about how managers get uncomfortable with difficult conversations. Well so do employees. Neither party has quite enough experience with those situations to ever get comfortable. So the more of these conversations we have, the more comfortable everybody gets with them. they start to become commonplace and even expected, rather than something that comes every once in a while (and usually only when something bad happens).

Finishing Up

So remember, if you’re not changing it, you’re choosing it.

Choose change, choose the difficulty, choose action. Either that, or don’t complain!

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

Check out our Feedback Factor Program for Managers

→ If you’re struggling with getting the best out of your people. We help teach your managers a simple and easy to execute system for using feedback to effortlessly change behaviours, improve teamwork and drive performance. To find out more click here

Or reach out to me at [email protected]