Tearing out your managerial hair over employees who just wonât changeâespecially the ones who are clearly smart, skilled, and deeply committed to your company and your plans for improvement?
Before you throw up your hands in frustration, listen to recent psychological research: These otherwise valued employees arenât purposefully subversive or resistant. Instead, they may be unwittingly caught in a competing commitment âa subconscious, hidden goal that conïŹicts with their stated commitments. For example: A project leader dragging his feet has an unrecognized competing commitment to avoid tougher assignments that may come his way if he delivers too successfully on the current project.
Competing commitments make people personally immune to change. Worse, they can undermine your best employeesââand your companyâsâsuccess.
If the thought of tackling these hidden commitments strikes you as a psychological quagmire, youâre not alone. However, you can help employees uncover and move beyond their competing commitmentsâwithout having to âput them on the couch.â But take care: Youâll be challenging employeesâ deepest psychological foundations and questioning their longest-held beliefs. Tread delicately and sympathetically through this potentially painful process.
Why bother, you ask? Consider the rewards: You help talented employees become much more effective and make far more signiïŹcant contributions to your company. And, you discover whatâs really going on when people who seem genuinely committed to change dig in their heels.
Still think that grappling with employeesâ psychology shouldnât be part of your job? The truth is, all managers are psychologistsâwhether they want to be or not. Helping people overcome their limitationsâincluding the messy, human contradictions that trouble us allâlies at the very heart of effective leadership.
THE IDEA AT WORK
Use these steps to break through an employeeâs immunity to change:
DIAGNOSE the COMPETING COMMITMENT
Take two to three hours to explore these questions with the employee:
âWhat would you like to see changed at work, so you could be more effective, or so work would be more satisfying?â Responses are usually complaintsâe.g., Tom, a manager, grumbled, âMy subordinates keep me out of the loop.â
âWhat commitment does your complaint imply?â Complaints indicate what people care about mostâe.g., Tom revealed, âI believe in open, candid communication.â
âWhat are you doing, or not doing, to keep your commitment from being more fully realized?â Tom admitted, âWhen people bring bad news, I tend to shoot the messenger.â
âImagine doing the opposite of the undermining behaviour. Do you feel any discomfort, worry, or vague fear?â Tom imagined listening calmly and openly to bad news and concluded, âIâm afraid Iâll hear about a problem I canât ïŹx.â
âBy engaging in this undermining behaviour, what worrisome outcome are you committed to preventing?â The answer is the competing commitmentâwhat causes them to dig in their heels against change. Tom conceded, âIâm committed to not learning about problems I canât ïŹx.â
IDENTIFY the BIG ASSUMPTION
This is the worldview that colours everything we see and that generates our competing commitment.
People often form big assumptions early in life and then seldom, if ever, examine them. Theyâre woven into the very fabric of our lives. But only by bringing them into the light can people ïŹnally challenge their deepest beliefs and recognize why theyâre engaging in seemingly contradictory behaviour.
To identify the big assumption, guide an employee through this exercise:
Create a sentence stem that inverts the competing commitment, then âïŹll in the blank.â Tom turned his competing commitment to not hearing about problems he couldnât ïŹx into this big assumption: âI assume that if I did hear about problems I canât ïŹx, people would discover Iâm not qualiïŹed to do the job.â
QUESTION the BIG ASSUMPTION
Then help your employee simply observe or analyze himself in the context of his big assumptionâbut without yet changing his thinking or behavior. For example, ask:
âą âWhat does and doesnât happen because you believe the big assumption is true?â
âą âWhat would cause you to question the validity of the big assumption?â
âą âHow and when did the big assumption develop?â
TESTâand CONSIDER REPLACINGâthe BIG ASSUMPTION
By analyzing the circumstances leading up to and reinforcing their big assumptions, employees empower themselves to test those assumptions. They can now carefully and safely experiment with behaving differently than they usually do.
After running several such tests, employees may feel ready to reevaluate the big assumption itselfâand possibly even replace it with a new worldview that more accurately reïŹects their abilities.
At the very least, theyâll eventually ïŹnd more effective ways to support their competing commitment without sabotaging other commitments. They achieve ever-greater accomplishmentsâand your organization beneïŹts by ïŹnally gaining greater access to their talents.