Walking ‘the line’ initially takes courage, then it gets easy.
Mark is a manager. Visit his department and it feels depressing.Several low performers drag everyone else down.Mark is not even close to walking ‘the line;’ he is conflict avoidant, neglecting to hold people accountable.
The price: lack of engagement and innovation; errors; loss of good people.
Don is another manager.Visit his department and it feels tense.Don is a high performer and has very high expectations.If his people don’t do exactly what he wants, he blows up. Don is constantly crossing over ‘the line.’ Frequently, he ends up working a lot of extra hours redoing his peoples’ work.
The price: lack of engagement and innovation; errors; high turnover.
Jack is a third manager. Visit his department and it feels energized, you can feel people actually like and help each other. Jack knows how to walk ‘the line.’ He engages everyone, sets expectations, and speaks up immediately if something or someone is off target.
The benefit: innovation, engagement, quality and the pick of high performing individuals who want to be part of his organization.
What is this ‘line?’
‘The line’ is between creative and destructive conflict where innovation and peak performance lives.
Six weeks was all it took to transform my daughter from a critic of Boston drivers to being one. She had to adapt to survive.
Environment, good or bad, is a powerful transformer.
If you are in a ‘bad’ environment, can you change it?
There is wonderful audio program on WNYU Radio Lab where I learned about a troop of baboons who transformed their culture of aggression into one of peace and cooperation. Baboons are very aggressive by nature, yet this group transformed; they’ve sustained the peace for 20 years.
What did it take? I encourage you to download and listen to the radio program (it is very well done) for the specific details, but here is the basic outline:
A catastrophic event altered their aggressive behavior to one of nurturing.
The dominate members (alpha males) continued their peaceful behavior past the event.
All new alpha males introduced to the environment adapted to the peaceful behavior rather than fighting to establish dominance.
Back to my question: Can you change a ‘bad’ environment?The answer is yes.But, it requires a significant sustained change in leadership.
If you are in an environment where you don’t share the values of the group, you will find yourself adapting to the cultural behavior little by little, unless you are the dominant person or leader.
Important questions to ask yourself: Do I want to become one of them? Can I embrace these values?
BTW, my daughter loves Boston; she consciously decided to become one of those crazy drivers.Watch out Indy when she returns!
