GOOD MANNERS, NOT ETIQUETTE

I have never been big fan of etiquette—it smacks of authority and conformity. But I do believe in good manners, and I know they have a powerful effect on the fabric of society.  Too often these days, the “prevalent custom” of treating each other with courtesy and respect is rapidly devolving, especially in public life.

Merriam-Webster defines etiquette as “the conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be observed in social or official life.” I don’t really know what “good breeding” means, and “prescribed by authority,” sounds a little too hierarchical for my liking. Manners, “the social conduct as shown in prevalent custom,” feels more comfortable, especially when it is modified by the adjective “good.” Without the modifier, our conversations are at risk for creating frictions, strife and divisiveness, which is fraying our civil society. Witness almost any popular talk show, many blogs (especially in the comments), or conversations among politicians and other leaders. We are seeing a slow unraveling of the goodwill and mutual respect that Peter Drucker referred to as “the lubricating oil of modern organizations.”

We got a powerful reminder of this last week as participants at an event called It’s Up to Me AZ. The keynote address was delivered by Frances Hesselbein, president and CEO of the Leader to Leader Institute and editor-in-chief of Leader to Leader Journal.* She a 95-year-old leadership icon who continues to work hard, travels extensively and is consistently gracious. She spoke about the need to return to good manners, as a way of creating a climate of trust and respect.

We consider good manners a form of extending goodwill to others, even when — especially when — it is a difficult conversation.

People often see goodwill as a feeling or emotion, believing it requires that you like the person you’re talking to. Goodwill is not a feeling — it is a choice about how we bring ourselves present in any given moment. And it is a skill that can be developed. We can choose to approach a conversation with goodwill, no matter what. Even with a stranger. Even if we disagree. Even if we don’t like the other person.

As Hesselbein says, good manners are not about mindless or old-fashioned rules but rather are about “the quality and character of who we are.” Good manners are about who we choose to be in the world.

It takes manners and civility to build the “healthy, inclusive, and embracing relationships that unleash the human spirit” she said.  Goodwill is foundational — it breeds a culture of accountability, commitment and collaboration. And if you’re trying to succeed in the marketplace, that kind of “good breeding” makes business sense.

*(If you’d like a free copy of the article on Authentic Conversations we published in Leader to Leader Journal, please send us an email at info@henning-showkeir.com.)

UNPLUG THE LABELS

Ground Zero Mosque or Islamic Community Center?

Undocumented immigrant or illegal alien?

Tax cuts or tax relief?

Civilian deaths or collateral damage?

We are reminded of labels’ potency every time we listen to the news. The louder the rhetoric becomes, the more labels get charged with power.

By naming things, we create a reality, and that reality colors the worlds we have created by the labels we use. People and things become what we name them. Complex issues get reduced to a catchy, easy-to-remember phrases and sound bites.

Labels can be useful — try to have a conversation with out them. And they can be dangerous, because we quickly forget that by creating a label, we have breathed into it independent life.  We project power on our creations and allow ourselves to be defined and ruled by them. And too often, we sail along oblivious to the danger that comes with exercising our genius for using words to create truth.

Labels also are a tempting way to distort reality and deceive ourselves. We saw a powerful and unsettling example of this in a documentary about the war in Afghanistan we recently viewed. The camera cut between scenes of dead civilians and their mourning families and a emotionally distraught Army sergeant. He lamented that the Army’s mission of winning was over the hearts of the people was derailed when “locals” were accidentally killed and injured.

How do you rob labels of their power? By looking behind them. By deconstructing the assumptions upon which they are founded. By wading past the sound bites and getting neck-deep in the complexities. By remembering that labels can create illusions and delusions, and are not reality.

IT IS ALL ABOUT INTENTION

People often approach us with worried looks and furtive questions after we speak about manipulation and how it derails Authentic Conversations and relationships.

“I sometimes stay silent in meetings because I need time to think, not because I’m afraid to speak up. Is that manipulation?”

“Is it manipulation if I give people a compliment before I ask them to do something that needs to get done right away?”

Our answer is almost always the same: Only you know if you are using language for manipulation.

We define manipulation as an attempt to make someone to do something or feel something without revealing my true intentions. If I am doing or saying one thing while appearing to do another, that creates fiction — and it’s manipulative. Although we all have been on the receiving end of acts or words that felt manipulative, in truth, intentions are intensely personal. If we don’t want people to misread our intentions, the best way to do that is to make them transparent.

It is intention that drives our technique. If we intend to be manipulative — even for what we think of as a good cause — we might drop a powerful name, describe a circumstance in rosier tones than it warrants, or pretend to be interested in you when in reality, my true aim is to get you to like me so you’ll do what I want. When we engage in these sorts of techniques, we are creating something no one can believe in.

We start learning these techniques early on, and by the time we’re adults, have honed a fine, sharp set of manipulative tools for supporting our intentions. We use them with impunity, justified by the notion that it is necessary for our survival or getting our own way

Most people we talk with readily see this phenomenon in the behavior of others, but sometimes are reluctant to admit doing it. Others admit it, and justify their actions by claiming to know what’s good for others, having their best interest at heart or deciding it is the best way to produce a desired outcome. In the workplace, these techniques have been codified into leadership and management development programs. Managers are trained in the art of crafting of conversations designed to motivate others, get predetermined results, or hold others accountable, but that’s just manipulation in action that’s been blessed by someone.

If you want to stop manipulating others and create authentic relationships and cultures, we advise you to stop focusing on the techniques (what you say) and begin focusing on your intention. It means choosing for hope and optimism in the goodness and intelligence of people, and focusing on disclosure and transparency.

Create a transformative intention, “I will stop manipulating others and use language for disclosure, rather than manipulation and effect.” Consciously making this commitment reflects the belief that relationships are richer and more meaningful when they’re authentic. That belief gets tested in situations where it is difficult to disclose.

We find it is helpful to deal with 5 areas :

1. Stop blaming others. No one can make me do anything — I always have a choice.


2. Realize it isn’t possible to know what is best for others. Only they can determine that for themselves.


3. Live with my own vulnerability. Disclosure and vulnerability go hand in hand.


4. Learn to forgive myself and recommit frequently. I am not perfect.


5. Let go of my attachment to certain and specific outcomes. Give up the illusion that my outcomes are the only or best ones for this situation.

Conversations and language can be used as powerful tools to manipulate others or for inviting partnership, collaboration and engagement. But it all begins with intention.

WHAT WAS MY CONTRIBUTION?

One of the conversation skills we teach and emphasize in our work with individuals and organizations is also one that people find really difficult: Owning your contribution to the problem.

It creates a very different conversation than one where I describe a difficult issue and then begin reciting all the ways YOU have made it difficult.  Stating out loud, right away, “Here are the ways I have messed up” becomes a powerful, daring act of personal accountability. In addition, it makes clear the things that are completely within my control to change — I don’t have to wait for anyone else to “go first.”

This conversational skill is the antidote to blame and its destructive forces, and a step toward taking full accountability for the success of outcomes and relationships.

One of the trickiest parts of owning your contribution to a problem is doing it without the expectation that it will unleash in another a list of the contributions they made as well. We often get asked, “What happens when I own my contribution and the other person just agrees and doesn’t own theirs?” While it’s unsatisfying advice, we usually recommend resisting the temptation of naming someone else’s contribution if resolving the problem is really your intention.

In a New York Times article published Aug. 13, we were delighted to see this skill being taught to young people. Rachel Simmons, author of The Curse of the Good Girl, runs a summer camp for adolescent girls, which aims to help them develop and maintain confidence as they navigate the rocky shoreline of the teen years. Conversation skills are among the things taught, including helping them own their parts when relationships go awry, and to ask directly for the things they want and need.

The article said Simmons hopes that by helping girls resolve tensions with their friends, they will also be developing the skills to confidently ask for the respect they deserve in the future — including promotions and raises — and become the “leaders of their own lives.”

One example the article uses is a conversation between a girl named Taryn and her roommates, who she feels have been excluding her. Her contribution? “Mine was not bringing it up sooner and hoping it would get better.”

Sounds like the kind of situation that happens in the workplace every day.

OF OXEN AND INNOVATION

The principals of scientific management are aimed at efficiency and finding one best way to do something. By its nature this means reductionist thinking, breaking things down, streamlining, making things lean. Efficiency is king.

In his book, The One Best Way, Robert Kanigel writes that Frederick Taylor could be the most influential philosopher of the 20^th century — scientific management has become the water and we are the fish. We have applied these philosophies in education, healthcare, social service systems and our own personal lives. Do you drive to work or the store the same way all the time? Of course! You go the one best way.

The purpose here is not to bash Taylor or efficiency. Both have made significant contributions to our world of work, society and “economies of scale”. The problem is that scientific management was conceived to quash innovation and experimentation – find one best way and repeat it over and over.

In a marketplace owned by the customer, innovation is both longed for and necessary. Innovation by its nature requires expansive acts. It demands experimentation and creative thinking, which means risks will be taken and mistakes will be made. Innovation and creativity demand open access to information, interaction and feedback, the antithesis of what Taylor demanded when he wrote The Principles of Scientific Management: “Under our system, the workman is told just what he is to do and how he is to do it.  Any improvement which he makes upon orders given him is futile to success.”

Even today, that is the message disseminated in many workplaces: Managers figure things out, core workers do as they are told. Managers watch to “make sure” and core workers avoid scrutiny and getting caught in a ‘mistake.’

What gets lost in that dynamic is the benefit of collective thinking. At about the same time Taylor was developing and defending his principles, a man named Francis Galton was conducting research on the other side of the world that supports the power of many minds. In weight-judging competition at the annual show of the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition in Plymouth, people were given the chance to guess the weight of an ox after slaughter and dressing. Those who guessed most successfully received prizes.While no one correctly guessed its exact weight — 1197 pounds — the average of the 800 attempts was only one pound off: 1198 pounds.

Ever so slowly organizations are beginning to wake up to the simple truth illustrated in this study and many since — the collective possesses far greater wisdom than any individual. James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, says three things are necessary to harvest collective wisdom.

1. Organizations need a way to aggregate many individual judgments to produce collective wisdom. One example of is using whole system, large group engagement for deliberating and resolving difficult issues.


2. The group benefits from diversity, which allows people to look at a problem with multiple perspectives. Bringing customers, suppliers, interested third parties and radical thinkers into deliberation processes is a way to achieve maximum diversity


3. People should be encouraged to think for themselves rather than constantly taking cues from each other. Authentic conversations help create a culture of informed collaboration where mistakes are seen as learning experiences and differences are valued.

When many perspectives are valued over the one, rather than imposing one perspective on the many, the organization will begin seeing the fruits of collective wisdom.