You Taste What I’m Spittin?!

The animal inside is still very much alive and angry.

I feel that I have done a really impressive job of taming it.  Especially over the last few years.  The animal is a direct result of my father (typical Italian temper) and the behaviors I was exposed to as a child.  Because I hated the way he flew off the handle and its results for the family, I worked on controlling my animal.  And it really hasn’t come out in a long time.  The one thing that ALWAYS makes it rear its ugly head is when I am illogically disrespected.

The animal came out on our office “HR” chick.  Everybody despises her.  She is possibly the least qualified person for any job involving interaction with other human beings.  She yells, screams, demands and bullies.  I’ve always had a good relationship with her and always took her with a grain of salt.  But, she disrespected me and her answers to me questioning her behavior involved disrespecting me even more in an extremely unprofessional manner.  Although I controlled the animal a bit, it still came out and I am ashamed at that. 

Well, not necessarily learned today, but reinforced today… What people say does not matter at all, only what they do.

A lot of us think we truly understand this principle, but we never really act on it.  A girl I work with and am somewhat friends with came in yesterday after being on vaca for a week at a wedding with friends….with a rock on her finger.  Apparently she got engaged the night before.  Now, I won’t get into how she got engaged to a kid she dated a long time ago and then cheated on with (what we thought was) her current man for the last 6 months or longer, a kid we both work with. 

What I want to point out here is that she was INSANELY vocal about how dumb all her friends were for getting married so young (she is maybe 25 or 26).  To the point where she talked about it constantly and swore up and down that she is waiting a “really long” time to get married.

Then, BOOM!  She goes to a wedding (which we all know makes every single girl in the room want to jump into marriage) and gets engaged to a kid she hasn’t dated in almost  a year.

Don’t listen to what people say, only what they do.  This is why arguing is completely useless.

I’m reading a book called “Change or Die”.  Good read, not your typical OB book, which gets boring real quick.  Basic message - you, your business, even your industry can proactively reach a behavioral change, you just need to take the right path.

Anyway, I was reading the section about the substantial cultural change IBM went through in the 90’s and later and one thing REALLY struck me that I could put into action immediately in my every day work life (and personal life for that matter).  You can’t just tell people to do something (Theory X management style) and expect that to sustain a productive and innovative work environment for too long.  Eventually you need to inspire hope, self fulfillment, and “buy-in” if you want your team to really function well and reach the next level.  I consider myself a pretty damn good manager, definitely more Theory Y than Theory X, but I realized I could do much better.  For example:

I am working on a staffing plan right now for a huge event I manage, the US Open.  My direct report (whom I trust and work hard to enhance her career) is going to be second in command this year, with a new member of the team as the third member of the team.  My biggest goal is to get her to move to a leadership role, so my staffing plan reflected that.  But what I realized today is while she would certainly appreciate the trust and faith I have in her, if SHE had input into the staffing plan, I could get her buy-in.  This will no doubt have positive effects on her work on this event.  So, I sent her an email posed as a “challenge” to her and asked her to write a staffing plan for herself, a wish list, if you will.

Now I’ll get to see exactly what she envisions for herself (which should be on par with my initial staffing thoughts) and when I put the staffing plan into action, she’ll be much more likely to really invest herself into the work since she essentially asked for it. 

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