Beware Your Pride

Happy Fall, Y’All! 

Ah, pride… not the kind where you fly flags, but the kind you live to regret. I think it’s probably taken all of us down at one point another. And that’s okay. The trick is to be willing to recognize when it happens and course correct.

This week’s article is about that topic as it relates to work. But I gotta say, I’ve been noticing it at play in other parts of my life lately, too. If this resonates with you, just know that we’re all a work in progress. The only failure is to stop trying. You can take a break if you need to—rest, reflect, maybe go for a walk—but don’t stop trying. We need you out there.

I was speaking with a new client recently. He was sharing that he’d received a lot of feedback about his communication style in recent months. He was trying to correct the problem, but didn’t really understand what the problem actually was. As he described the interactions, he seemed truly baffled by how he could have been “misunderstood” by so many other people. It was clear that it was impacting his confidence.

Before I could ask more questions to try and probe deeper to help him get to the bottom of it, he kept going. He announced, somewhat smugly, “So, the next meeting I attended, I just sat quietly and didn’t say a word.” He sat back with a defiant look on his face, clearly pleased with his decision. I asked how that strategy had worked out. He admitted that it hadn’t really helped because several people in the meeting had texted him asking what was wrong. He then threw his arms in the air and was clearly exasperated as he declared to me, “I just can’t win!”

Weeeeellllllll….

Let’s take this down to the facts. 

• Feedback is given about a leader’s communication style.
• The leader claims to not understand the feedback, nor how to act on it, but asks no questions.
• The leader chooses to sit back, without giving any context to the team, and simply not engage.
• The leader feels justified in his exasperation that this opposite extreme was no more effective than how he began.

I would be lying if I said I’ve never done pretty much this exact thing. I’m not proud of it, but it has happened. More than once. So I’ll turn the lens on myself and examine what I did and how I got past it. Just in case you can recognize yourself or a colleague in this description, and it proves helpful.

Feedback can hurt.

I’ve received feedback from people over the years that felt very much like humiliation. There was criticism of my behavior, response, tone, lack of diplomacy, lack of sensitivity, or all of the above. The vague “instructions” were to “do better” or “not be so aggressive.” There was no support for figuring out how to do it differently. So, I’d go into the next interaction with the person or group I’d offended and just sit silent, stewing in my humiliation, anger, and pride.

When my eldest child was in preschool, he ran everywhere. One day at pickup, his teacher overheard me yell at him to “stop running!” He didn’t even break his stride. His teacher, watching the interaction, called out to him, “Sam, please use your walking feet!” He smiled back at us and slowed down to a walk. Then she turned to me and said, very kindly, “Try telling him to use his walking feet. That way, you’re telling him what you want him to do, rather than just calling out what you don’t want him to do.” I looked back at Sam who was still walking. Briskly, but walking, not running. I was impressed.

In both cases, calling out the undesirable behavior alone was ineffective. Even offering vague ‘direction’ on what to do instead proved unhelpful. What worked with my then-three-year-old (now-22-year-old) was simple, clear direction of what the desired behavior was. Adults aren’t much different, even if we are more complicated.

What has helped me accept feedback about problematic behavior was a conversation.

Here are the steps you are welcome to try out that have worked for me and for my clients: 

1. The person giving me feedback framed it from the perspective of how the behavior had affected other people, and then asked if I was aware that I’d impacted someone else that way. 
2. They helped me examine why I had chosen the approach I had in that moment.
3. There were plenty of opportunities for me to ask questions. 
4. The other person made their investment in my success clear. 
5. They helped me think through how I could approach the next interaction differently, and how it might give me a different result. 
6. And then they encouraged me.

There is no universe in which I’d try that approach with a three-year-old, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t effective with adults. Back to my client…

I asked a lot of questions to help him examine more thoroughly what had caused a problem in the first place. Without judgment, I tried to make it safe for him to admit where he might have gone wrong. Then we figured out why he had chosen that path in the first place. Once he recognized that, it was much easier for him to figure out how he could engage the same group of people differently in an upcoming meeting. We crafted a strategy together for how he could approach the conversation, suggest outcomes, get agreement, and move through the interaction in a much more consensual way. 

He’s had some initial success in trying out this new approach. It’s not perfect, but then again, none of us gets it right 100% of the time. The idea is to use that compass (not the roadmap) to keep you moving in the right direction. 

Oh, and try not to let your pride dictate your reaction. That never seems to end well. For any of us.

Want to talk? Let’s connect. I believe in you.