“We are all adults here.”
This is the phrase my neighbor – a software engineer – repeated over and over again a few years ago as he worked to navigate the decisions passed down to him and the teams he managed.
He’s not the only one. It’s a phrase I’ve heard from so many employees in passing, at personal gatherings, and in more “official” contexts when I’m interviewing teams as part of my work.
I hear the opposite from leaders who can’t understand why people aren’t showing up to a standard they expect. In their most exasperated moments, they will say things like:
“Children. I work with children.” Or, “I’m meeting with a bunch of three-year-olds with crayons.”
They aren’t the only ones. These phrases are those I’ve heard for many years, in organizations from 10 to 10,000, across industries from the most expert or automated to the most manual or blue-collar. And it begs the question:
If employees think they are being treated like children, and leaders believe they work with children, how do we have more adult relationships?
Most leaders I know have no interest in constantly checking in on every little detail. Yet when something is off, the instinct is often to dig into more of the details or to create rules and policies.
For many employees, this comes across like micromanaging or like spending too much time following rules that don’t make sense – to them – rather than tend to the work at hand. The result can be a sort of push-pull dynamic that breeds more of the behaviors both are trying to avoid… behaviors you might find in a parent-child or parent-teen dynamic.
Unlike children, adults have typically learned more sophisticated ways of covering up their resistance. Children melt down, run away, hit, or become stiff as a log on the floor. Teens may scream in your face or push boundaries with friends in ways that often get them in trouble.
Adults, on the other hand, are usually more adept at displaying behaviors that fit into acceptable social or hierarchical norms. Conversations may seem cordial and agreeable, especially when they are talking to “the boss.” But in the day-to-day, they may become passive, stop paying attention to details, only do the bare minimum, complain or create excuses, or undermine others when the boss isn’t around.
Often, these counterproductive behaviors brew under the surface long before it becomes apparent to those at the helm of the business.
Of course, by that time, results are starting to suffer. Targets are being missed entirely, or work just isn’t moving forward at the speed you had hoped. Sometimes, people who once took serious initiative or interest in progressing stop raising their hand as much as they used to. You sense the distance, mismatch, or even resentment – but can’t put your finger on it.
All kinds of strategic, operational, organizational, financial, structural, political, and cultural factors may contribute to this and need to be addressed – but often the most foundational factor is relational.
Like it or not, being in a position of power and authority can blind us to some of those invisible relational dynamics, unless we work really hard to make them visible.
(Jim Detert and Megan Reitz have done some excellent work on power, hierarchy, speaking up, and unspoken rules, if you’re interested in going deeper on these topics.)
While I have devoured many tens of thousands of pages on organizational and leadership development, some of the best insight I’ve gleaned on this topic is from what we know about child and youth development.
I have read a ton of books and articles on child and youth development – and have for a long time. Chalk it up to trying to make sense of my own troubled teenage years where I went from being on track for valedictorian in a large high school to doing whatever it took to get out of high school as quickly as possible. That meant going to an alternative school for troubled teens.
Most people were forced there as a last resort, whereas I chose it as the fastest path to a diploma. The experience was eye-opening in terms of seeing what people need to show up at their best and contribute – or not.
One of my latest reads on this topic was Untethered: Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise a Resilient Generation, written by clinical psychologist and educator Doug Bolton.
Towards the end, Doug introduces an old model called The Circle of Courage – a combination of four critical elements that encourage children (and adults alike) to show up as a fully contributing and enthusiastic member of a group, team, or community.
In simple terms, the four elements are:
- Belonging: Do the people in charge want me here? Are they happy to see me?
- Mastery: Am I progressing? Can I see measurable improvement in something I care about?
- Independence: Can I take action on my own? Do I feel like I have to check in before my every move, or that each move will be corrected?
- Generosity: Am I contributing? Do I believe I have something of value to share with the world?
This model originated decades ago when child development researchers drew on indigenous practices for development and well-being (specifically from the Lakota and other plains tribes). They found that these practices foster courage, resilience, and an overall greater sense of contribution – which in turn causes people to be more generous in their contributions.
These elements aren’t just for children – they have a strong relationship to the core components of key research on motivation (the research foundational to Dan Pink’s book Drive).
I like these four a little better, though, because what Dan Pink (and original organizational psychology researchers) did was group belonging and generosity into one concept. Pink calls it purpose. Researchers call it relatedness. I find the Circle of Courage’s split it into two distinct concepts (belonging and generosity) works better in practice, even with adults. Here’s why:
Too often, the first thing to go when we are upset with someone’s performance is that sense of belonging. We hold back letting someone know we are happy to see them – sometimes because we aren’t, and haven’t taken the time to get ourselves in the right space – and then we counterintuitively expect generosity.
We take away a fundamental sense of connection and security, and then expect someone to show up over and above what they may have been doing before. It’s a backwards idea, but it’s something most of us have learned by being raised in a punishment – reward system.
We take away belonging, and they can’t fully show up. They lose that sense of relatedness or purpose – those things that contribute so much to our overall happiness and well-being.
They might be able to perform to some degree in the short-term – but they typically do so while experiencing greater degrees of stress (which may not always be visible). They also tend to need greater amounts of external incentives as time goes on – for the same amount of performance. This is costly for both the employee and the company in the long run.
What the Circle of Courage suggests, and what I’ve seen time and time again, is that when counterproductive behaviors arise, it’s often because employees do not feel positively about the answers they are receiving (explicitly or implied) to their unvoiced questions:
- Do you see me? Do you see what I can actually contribute, beyond what you “don’t have time” to do?
- Do you hear me? Do you actually understand what I’m saying?
- Do you care about me at all? Beyond this set of tasks you need me to do for the business?
- Does what I’m doing matter? To you? To anyone?
Employees (or those on your leadership team for that matter) may not have the skills and tools to address these questions overtly.
Even when they do, structural, hierarchical, and overall power dynamics may inadvertently close the doors to an “adult” conversation that would address getting their needs met in a way that allows them to show up at their best.
You can make sure you’re doing your part to open the door and lay the groundwork by:
- Sharing that you are happy to see people – instead of skipping straight to business every time
- Greeting someone and showing an interest in the relationship or connection before immediately moving to issues or correction
- Acknowledging the concerns they are sharing – even if you need to reinforce the business decision, reflect that you hear and understand the interests and concerns brought up
- Sharing why the work matters to you personally
- Connecting the team with why the work matters to others
- Looking beyond what you need people to do for a particular job or task, and reflect back their greatest contributions and potential
- Expressing confidence in their ability to find solutions – connecting them to resources, rather than providing advice
- Articulating your expectations in the form of outcomes rather than tasks, ideas, or detailed instructions – so that you can actually let them own the work
- Structuring the work in a way that matches the skills and interests of people (in alignment with what you actually need for the business, of course)
- Creating more relevant, tangible, micro, and leading measures (beyond top-line and bottom-line results… those matter, but are often lagging and large measures that people can’t see themselves in)
If you believe you’ve got the relational or belonging piece down, these last three more structural or operational components may be what’s getting in the way of building a sense of mastery and independence. Belonging, mastery, and independence are all needed for employees to sustain a sense of generosity.
And if you’ve tried all of these, it’s possible your efforts are falling on deaf ears. This can happen when there’s something that needs repair.
(Dr. Becky Kennedy has an excellent TED talk on that subject, through the lens of the parent-child relationship, if you’re interested.)
With practice and a bit of groundwork, you can show up in a way that allows others to make the connections most important to their work, and share their greatest contributions.
And with a certain level of consistency in the relationship, you can create an environment where you don’t feel like you have to watch over children – one where employees don’t feel like they need to escape from your control or go elsewhere for their growth.
To your growth (and theirs),
Amanda