It’s widely held that the English, when some hapless foreigner doesn’t understand them, speak louder.  This is the cause of merriment because, quite clearly, it’s a strategy that doesn’t work.  The person who doesn’t understand English is unlikely to understand it any better for being shouted at.

Apparently, this strategy is not the sole preserve of the English.  I was recently talking to someone who, in China, had experienced something very similar as she travelled through more remote areas of the country.

Of course, it’s easy to laugh when someone else is doggedly pursuing  a strategy that doesn’t work.  It’s even easy to see when someone else is pursuing a strategy that doesn’t work.

It’s not so easy to notice our own worst endeavours.

The clue is in the struggle

Is there something you’re struggling with right now?  Something you’ve been struggling with for a while?  If there is, you’ll know how hard it can be.

Maybe you’ve taken action to address a situation that isn’t working for you.  You feel confident that the action you’ve taken is constructive, purposeful action and yet you feel no further forward.  You couldn’t believe the response you got, for example, and you don’t quite know where to go from here.

What sort of situations are we talking about here?

Perhaps you’re managing a member of staff who isn’t responding to your clear guidance about what’s expected, to your attempts to coach, even to the formal process you have recently put in place.

Perhaps you’ve made what you see as a compelling business case to the Board for a new venture, IT programme, HR initiative… whatever.  But you’ve come away without the approval you wanted and you don’t begin to know what to do next.  How could they turn down such a clear case and with such clear benefits for the business?

Perhaps your struggle is with yourself.  You know that your sedentary work lifestyle is not working for you.  You can see how you’re piling on the pounds.  You meant to go to the gym, to walk to work, to go running.  Maybe you even set yourself some clear ‘SMART’ targets… and still, you’re snacking on burgers or chocolate, drinking too much alcohol, and failing to do what you planned.

Whatever the area of struggle, you keep trying to move it forward… without success.  In whatever way you “shout at the foreigner”, you keep shouting louder.  You’re struggling and the struggle is not moving you forward.

Groundhog Day… and why we continue to do the things that don’t work

If ever you’ve watched the film Groundhog Day, you know what it is to struggle.  In this comedy, weatherman Phil Connors is assigned to cover a small-town assignment which he positively detests… Groundhog Day.  Trapped in a blizzard he has to stay in the very place he detests so much and wakes up the next morning to discover that it’s Groundhog Day all over again… and again… and again…

Groundhog Day is a comedy with a message – if you keep doing the same thing, you’ll keep getting the same results.  But there are reasons why we continue to do the thing that’s not working.  In my work with clients, three things seem to be most common:

…We think it ought to work.  John thought the figures in his business proposal were persuasive so, when his proposal was not met with approval by the board, he gave them more figures.  What John didn’t understand was that other people don’t all think the way he does – he failed to adjust his approach to meet the needs of his audience.

…We think it’s who we are.  This is one of the most common reasons why we continue to do what doesn’t work rather than to adjust our approach in order to do what works.  Frances, for example, was renowned in her workplace for her spiky manner.  She frequently met feedback by giving feedback of her own or by making a comment that seemed irrelevant to her colleagues.  “You’re not my slave?  No.  I know that.  I never said you were!”  Whenever her colleagues requested a change in her approach, Francis was quick to say, “Why should I change?  It’s just who I am.”

(I want to add that yes, sometimes it really isn’t who we are and yet… we are all subject to programming in childhood by our parents, teachers and other figures of authority.  Examining who we really are opens up opportunities to let go of redundant ideas and to find new and more effective ways of getting things done).

…We worry about how people might respond.  Ahmed had worked for ten years for the same boss when, quite suddenly, his boss’s behaviour towards him started to change.  His boss was losing his temper unexpectedly and with little or no explanation.  Ahmed felt uneasy about this dramatic shift in their relationship.  What he didn’t know was that his boss, for the first time in their history, was unhappy with Ahmed’s work.  At the same time, he was struggling to give Ahmed feedback for fear of offending him.

Doing what works

There’s a debate that comes up again and again and which, I confess, irritates me just a little – it’s the “are leaders born or made?” debate.  Who would ask of a world class violin player “is a virtuoso violinist born or made?”  Few people, if any, achieve excellence in their field without some combination of natural talent, learning and practice.

Leaders are no different.

Smart leaders constantly ask themselves what’s working and what’s not.  They beg, borrow and steal ideas – most tell stories of people they have learnt from.  Over time they come to understand the need to choose an approach that works in a given situation.  They get smart about what works – how to influence the board, how to engage staff, how to nurture potential in their highest performers… and their lowest.  The list goes on.

And you?  I invite you to check in with yourself – to what extent are you making choices based on your understanding of what actually works?  You can do this, for example, by giving yourself a mark out of ten against the following:

O equals “I don’t think at all about how well my approach is actually working and when I don’t get the response I want I get frustrated with people and wish they would change.”

5 equals “Sometimes I think about how best to approach a situation and sometimes I forget and just do what I’ve always done.”

10 equals “I make a habit of thinking about what works and what doesn’t.  When I don’t get the response I want I get excited – I like to think about what I can do differently based on the response I get from others.”

From the school of doing what works

In case you’re wondering what this looks like in practice, two stories have fallen into my lap recently from the school of doing what works.

One friend, frustrated by her teenage son’s refusal to put his socks into the wash, stopped picking them up.  He was quick to admonish her – “It takes no time at all to pick them up.”  She let the message sink in… if you want clean socks, you put them in the laundry basket.

Another friend became aware that a member of his team thought him lazy, because he always left promptly at the end of the day.  The same staff member was completely unaware that, most days, he arrived in the office at least an hour before any of  his colleagues.  Rather than face the issue head on, he started to make a habit of assigning her work as soon as he arrived in the morning.  He would drop an e-mail to her at 6.30 am saying “I’ll catch you when you reach the office but first, I want to give you the heads up…”  He would ask her to get things done by midday.  He asked one of his peers to keep her ears open – quite quickly, this particular team member stopped complaining about how lazy her manager was.

These friends both let go of what ought to be true and asked themselves what might just work in practice.

What strategies have you found that work?  I’d love to hear your stories.