If you’re constantly let down and irritated by people, maybe the problem is you. Well, your relationship skills, anyway. Read on to pinpoint two small changes that will make a big, big difference in your life.
Sometimes life feels like one struggle after another. Not only are your kids disrespectful, they have become master manipulators in their quest to get what they want. You’re constantly at odds with your spouse. Heck, you can’t even get the plumber to show up when he’s supposed to! Is the rest of the world just incompetent? Or are your expectations just too high? Neither. The bad news is you haven’t developed effective relationship skills—and the good news is it’s not too late. Good relationship skills are worth their weight in gold. In fact, they’re more valuable. When you can motivate others to do what you want and need them to do—and to do so willingly and cheerfully—you have a skill that no amount of money can buy. Your life just plain works better. I spend most of my time using evidence-based leadership to help companies “hardwire” leader behaviors that effect culture change and create lasting business results. But the same skills that make companies more prosperous also make families, marriages, friendships, and even service-based relationships—with, say, your hairdresser, your auto mechanic, and your child’s teacher—operate more smoothly. A relationship is a relationship, whether it happens in a business office, a home, a garage, or a classroom. There are two big leadership skills, in particular, that we should all practice. One is eliminating the we/they phenomenon, especially inside families. The other is learning how to manage up. Simply by making these two changes, you can change your entire life for the better. Real-Life Remedy #1: Squelch we/theyism in your family. One of the biggest problems I help my clients deal with is the we/they phenomenon. In the workplace, we/theyism happens when one leader subtly (or not so subtly) pins the blame on another leader or department to deflect employee ire. A typical we/they statement might be: “Well, Rick, I fought for your pay raise but you know Human Resources makes those decisions.” If you’re the boss, Rick may not be mad at you anymore, but you’ve just sabotaged your own culture. We/theyism is just as common in families as it is in companies—and just as divisive. You may know this phenomenon as “Go ask Dad,” or “Sorry, Mom says you can’t have the cookie until after dinner.” If you’re a parent, you know how easy it is to casually toss out such (seemingly innocent) statements. (I have even heard of one parent “firing” another: “Your father cannot tell you yes! Only I can tell you yes!”) But failing to present a united front at all times can set kids’ manipulative tendencies in motion and leads to untold amounts of whining, begging, and other unpleasant behaviors. We/they tactics are attractive because they briefly take the pressure off. We all want to be liked, even by our kids—especially by our kids. But children have finely tuned weakness detectors, and they will seek to turn that weakness to their advantage. Never, never, never let we/theyism get a foothold. Stand firm and stand together and soon you’ll be thinking someone replaced your kids with amazingly well-behaved look-alikes. Real-Life Remedy #2: Manage up others every chance you get. What is managing up? For starters, it’s the remedy for we/theyism. To revisit the “pay raise” example, instead of pinning the blame on HR, the boss should say something like: “When I talked to Denise over in HR, she pointed out that health insurance premiums have risen 23 percent over the past year, so pay increases must be postponed. The company is working really hard to maintain the best possible coverage for all of us.” In the business world, managing up is basically positioning other people (or departments, products, or employees) in a positive light. But far more than being “just” a leadership tool, managing up is a valuable life skill. It’s the polar opposite of chronic negativity, which far too many of us accept as the norm. Look for opportunities to say positive things about people in your life. You might manage up your child’s teacher by saying to another parent (and/or to the principal): “Mrs. Truman does an amazing job with those kids! Philip was having trouble with his reading until he moved up to her class. Now you can’t tear him away from his books!” Do this often enough and word will surely get back to Mrs. Truman—and you can be sure she’ll show her appreciation by redoubling her efforts. (Don’t forget the “flip side” of managing up either: When you hear something nice about another person, pass it on. You’ll make him or her happy and some of that goodwill is sure to spill over onto you, the messenger.) Managing up encourages people to be on their best behavior, to be the best teacher or spouse or waitress or whatever that they can possibly be. We love praise. We all do. It’s human nature. So it just makes sense to say nice things about the people we want results from, instead of constantly complaining and nitpicking their bad behavior. It starts a chain reaction of positivity that will end up coming back to benefit you. If all this sounds too simple to be true, don’t worry. I have turned around many floundering multi-million-dollar organizations by teaching these and other (equally commonsense) remedies to leaders. And I am convinced that if something works at the office, it’ll work after 5 p.m. as well. People aren’t that complicated. We just aren’t. We all have the same bad habits, and those bad habits come home with us in the evening. And the good news is that if we can fix our problems at work, we can fix them inside a family or a friendship or, I don’t know, a relationship with our hairdresser. I always say leadership isn’t an art. It isn’t some ability you’re born with or not born with. It’s a set of learned behaviors. All you have to do is decide, “You know what, I’m through doing the same old destructive things and getting the same old results. I’m going to make a change.” Make a couple of adjustments and all your relationships will change for the better—and happy relationships add up to a happy life. About the Author:
Quint Studer not only teaches it, he has done it. After leading organizations to breakthrough results, Quint formed Studer Group®, an outcomes firm that implements evidence-based leadership systems that help clients attain and sustain outstanding results. He was named one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare” by Modern Healthcare magazine for his work on institutional healthcare improvement. Studer was named “Master of Business” by Inc. magazine. He is the author of Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference; 101 Answers to Questions Leaders Ask; and Wall Street Journal bestseller Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top. For more information, visit www.studergroup.com .
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