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Want to, How to, Opportunity to....
Can’t and Won’t
Dealing with Won't's Learned Strategies
Matchers and Mismatchers -- Sameness
and Difference
The Three Boxes
Employee Joe -- The Difference Guy
Two Kinds of Difference
Matching and Mismatching: The Climb
up the Corporate Ladder
Differences in Training
Talking to Mismatchers
A Final Word About Mismatchers
Taking Your Best Shot
The Final Solution to Won't
Using the right tool for
the right job:
the difference between “want to”, “how to”, and “opportunity to.”
According to psychologist and motivation expert David McClelland, there are three ingredients necessary for implementing any change, whether it is a new skill, tool, or pattern of behavior. They are
1. Want to,
2. How to, and
3. Chance to.
If any of these is missing, it won’t happen. Whatever it is – self directed work teams, TQM, a successful marriage, or a new start-up business – if any one of the three is missing or even weak, failure is imminent.
Lucky for us, this kind of failure isn’t permanent. Want to is always in flux. Any time we make a major change in our lives – like going from smoking two packs of cigarettes a day to being a non-smoker – want to is where the biggest shift occurs. Where there was little or no want to one day, the next day it’s there in a form so powerful it can break a chemical addiction, a twenty year pattern of behavior, and a personal demon. That powerful want to combined with sufficient how to and chance to produces a new pattern of behavior.
If the how to is missing or incomplete, you keep learning until you get enough. In our smoking example, all the want to in the world may not be sufficient if the how to is deficient. There are things a smoker needs to know how to do before they attempt to change their behavior. How do you resist the physical need? What can you do instead? How do you maintain relationships with friends who still smoke? They meet for coffee and cigarettes – where do you fit? They meet for the Friday night poker game – how do you sit in that smoke filled room? How do you handle withdrawal symptoms? What about patches and gum and pills? How to stop smoking is a complex learning. You have to know where to go for help.
You have to know your own limitations. You have to know your priorities. You have to know what you want.
Chance to or opportunity to requires something of the outside world. It depends on the pattern of behavior you’re trying to put in place exactly what the outside world must contribute. In our smoking example, chance to may amount to no more than a few consecutive days without a family emergency or a financial crisis. Or maybe the chance to comes in the form of a vacation – a change of place and events that encourages a change in behavior. Chance to (or lack thereof) in the working world is often much easier to spot.
Let’s look at how the responsibility for new patterns breaks down in the workplace:
Want to is the responsibility of the employee
Chance to is the responsibility of the employer
How to is the shared responsibility of both
The worst case scenario is the company which sponsors a global initiative to implement a new tool – like self directed work teams – they bring in highly qualified trainers to teach the how to; they bring in professional motivators to generate a groundswell of want to; but then fail to dispense responsibility and accountability throughout to adequately provide chance to. A TEAM, by definition must be able to make decisions which fall within their area of responsibility without fear of being over-ruled or overturned by the next supervisor up the ladder. Or the supervisor above that. Because the TEAM initiative was decided and dictated from the top, where power (responsibility and accountability) resides, the odds are not good that those decision makers will happily give up any of their power. Unless those at the top of the organization have already made the shift to L6, it is unlikely that L6 work teams will be a reality. They may look good on paper, or be a tempting “flavor of the month” management style, but TEAMS only work when L6 is the pervasive system at work. L5 may talk a good TEAM game, but when push comes to shove, they will take charge and make any and all decisions from the top without regard to TEAM recommendations. In that situation, all the want to and how to in the world won’t produce a new pattern or management structure.
The opportunity to has to be a part of the package at all the relevant levels of the organization, and in the make up of all the people who could or would contribute or interfere with the success of the change.
Want to is the responsibility of the employee a question of motivation
Chance to is the responsibility of the employer a question of executive level intervention
How to is the shared responsibility of both a question of training
The difference between an employee who “can’t”
and one who “won’t.”
What we generally think of when we talk about “difficult
employees” are those people who for whatever reason are not in step with their co-workers
or the company culture. There are two categories of these people:
Those who can’t
Those who won’t
In want to, how to, and chance to terms, can’ts are missing some how to, while won’ts are missing some want to.
When seen from this perspective, can’t is simple problem to fix. Even though a can’t may hide their inadequacies behind defensiveness or a failure to follow directives; a little coaching, a little training, a little hands-on experience under the watchful eye of a skilled partner – and can’t becomes can.
A true won’t, on the other hand, needs motivation. If attempts to motivate fail, a won’t may ultimately need to be somewhere else. To allow continued unacceptable behavior implies permission and permission to be unmotivated is exactly what business doesn’t need to be competitive and successful.
Most people are making the best choices they know how to make.
So what do we make of someone who won’t? If we take it as a basic truth about humans that people are usually making the best choices they know how to make, how do we treat those difficult employees and co-workers who consistently make bad choices about how to function in the workforce?
When choices are inappropriate, it means the employee may have insufficient resources to choose better. If you give them more resources, they’ll often make different choices.
Think about the American diet in the 1950’s. Fried foods on every table. Steak as the ultimate reward. Bacon fried up for breakfast and served with biscuits slathered in butter, and scrambled eggs every day. Gravy on everything. Cheese on everything. Butter on everything. Whole milk as the only choice – unless you wanted to upgrade to half and half or cream. The four basic food groups were meat, dairy, bread, and fruits and veggies – and any diet that had all four every day was considered balanced. If anyone had suggested the Mediterranean Pyramid in 1955, the unanimous cry of won’t would have been deafening.
But give us resources like the basic nutrition education we all get from school, from afternoon talk shows, and weekly news magazines; give us alternative food choices like low-fat yogurt, skim milk, boneless-skinless chicken, soy products, fresh vegetables and fruit – in and out of season, flown in from growers all over the world – lean cows, lemon in place of salad dressing and au juis instead of gravy; and voila! We start making better choices. Our won’t becomes will. And for no more reason than an increase in choice. More resources.
In the working world, an employee who won’t show respect
for fellow workers may not have the people skills necessary. Or maybe there’s an
illness that the company doesn’t know about. Or problems at home spilling into the
workplace. Or maybe nobody made it clear that a respectful attitude toward co-workers
is part of the job and failure to fulfill this expectation is grounds for dismissal.
Or maybe the employee has always chosen to be disrespectful of others in order to
create distance – a buffer of privacy that avoids criticism, feedback, interference,
and closeness of any kind. Or maybe they’re just reacting – playing out a pattern
that is so ingrained that it would take a conscious act of will to do anything else.
Not a very pretty picture, now matter how you dissect it.
Each of the “what if’s” described actually fits into one of two categories: either the employee who won’t is using a learned strategy that simply isn’t working, or they are exhibiting a meta program at work.
Dealing with Won't's Learned Strategies
Most “won’t” behaviors can be understood as some learned strategy for dealing with new or fearful situations. What is most interesting about learned strategies is that often, we use strategies deep into adulthood which we developed as children. A child might react to teasing and cruel jokes by throwing verbal barbs and insults. If this strategy worked, then the next time someone teased or made a cruel joke, the child would react in the same way because it had worked before. If throwing verbal barbs and insults continued to work up through middle grades and into high school, the pattern became so ingrained that they continued that behavior without ever reevaluating its appropriateness or usefulness. And as they grew into adults, the behavior probably kept others at a sufficient distance and self-protection that it still appeared to be a working, successful strategy. In the workplace, however, insults and barbs may get distance, but they probably won’t get success.
Similarly, we often develop strategies for dealing with illness and family stress.
Some people learn as children and young adults that talking about their problems
leaves them exposed and vulnerable, so they become withdrawn and/or resentful of
even the friendliest conversation. While some of us learned from loving and generous
family members that illness and stress are more easily survived together (a
critical L2 lesson),
not everyone has that advantage. Learning these L2 interpersonal strategies is much more difficult for many if they have to
learn it as adults.
There are also learned strategies for dealing with our own ingnorance. Again, in
childhood, many were confronted with the daily demands of education and were not
always prepared for or aware of what was asked of them. They may have learned to
run a good bluff. They may have learned that a quick stomach ache would get them
out of class. Maybe they learned to create a sufficient distraction to avoid being
exposed as ignorant, unprepared, or unaware. Whatever strategy or strategies they
adopted, if they continue that pattern of behavior into the workplace, it probably
doesn’t serve them as well as learning to be prepared. As an employee being paid
for skills and time, an avoidance illness, a string of BS, or a creative distraction
to avoid expectations is often interpreted as won’t behavior.
How do supervisors and employers deal with these learned strategies? There are several
choices.
The first and most obvious is to simply point out to the employee that their behavior
is not acceptable and not productive. Taken by itself, this sort of wake-up call
can sometimes jolt an employee into coming up with a new and more successful strategy
for fitting into the work environment.
Just pointing out that a behavior is undesirable may work for some, but it is always
more useful if a supervisor, co-worker or employer can first point out the behavior
that needs to be discontinued, and then offer some new choices of behavior to replace
it. Once we see the less than successful consequences of what we’re doing and what
the other options are, we will often attempt to choose better.
Beyond these simple and obvious ways of dealing with won’t learned strategy
behavior, there are other, more complex thought processes that may be useful. There
are covered in Chapter 5, “Deconstructing actions and choices so that motivation
rather than behavior can be discussed.” in detail.
In some cases, won’t behaviors are not learned strategies, but meta program responses. The meta program in question is called Sameness/Difference, and can be recognized by asking the following question:
What’s the relationship between these three boxes?
For the purpose of following this explanation, go ahead and answer
before you read on, using the lines below, or using a separate piece of paper. Be
sure to list at least six or eight items which describe the relationship.
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
For those who found themselves noticing mostly how much alike these three boxes are, congratulations. You seem to be looking for sameness between related objects and ideas.
For those who saw just how different the boxes really are, you should be congratulated as well for having noticed the differences between such loosely related drawings. You seem to be looking for the difference between ideas and objects.
In fact, unless you took your cues from the “Matcher and Mis-Matchers” heading, you probably weren't looking, because the sameness/difference meta program predetermines what you are seeing-hearing-feeling-smelling-tasting. You can override that meta program response with conscious intention (there’s intentionality again), but whether you match or mis-match, your meta program has been running since you first began sorting information.
Sameness/difference is a process for sorting information. We’re all familiar with the information storage and retrieval metaphor which compares our brains to a filing system. We take in a new piece of data, or some new experience, and we file it away in a place where we know we can come back and get it later.
The Sameness/difference meta program can be seen as the part of this metaphor that determines the filing system. If you happened to be predominantly a matcher, you would file information with other pieces of information like it. If you were predominantly a mis-matcher, you’d file it based on how it is different from one data chunk or another.
Very few people are either completely “matchers” (those who look
only for sameness) or “mismatchers” (those who look only for difference). Most of
us are a mixture of both at some percentage or balance.
If you think of it as a continuum, only 1-2% of us fall at the far extremes so that
we only match or mis-match. The rest of us fall in a basic bell curve distribution,
with the majority able to both match and mis-match, with some slight preference for
one over the other. The closer you get to the ends of the bell curve, or the continuum,
the more pronounced the preference will be. Likewise, the closer you are to the center
of the bell curve, the more flexibility you probably exhibit. Someone who looks at
the three boxes and notices and equal or nearly equal number of similarities and
differences is probably able to choose more fluidly between matching and mis-matching.
This idea of matching or mismatching applies to managing difficult employees in a very important way because of expectations and requirements; requirements being those things required by the employer to get the job done, and expectations being those things the employer feels should be done to do the job right. Requirements are objective, where expectations are more subjective. It is critical that employers and employees alike are clear about this difference, because without it, Outcome Oriented Thinking will collapse in the face of an absolute, 100% mis-matcher.
You are a supervisor and you say to Employee Joe, “It takes three steps to get from here to the door safely.”
If Employee Joe is a matcher, he will probably look at the floor and say, “Yep. That looks like about three steps to me, too. Here, I’ll try it.” (takes three steps) “Yep. Three steps will do it.”
If Employee Joe is a mismatcher, he will probably look at the floor and say, “you know, I don’t think your legs are as long as mine. If I take three of my steps, I’m liable to fall right off into the street. Here, let me show you. I think 2 steps is just about right for me.” (Takes 2 long strides) “See there. What did I tell you. Three would’ve sent me flying. And I think your feet are a lot smaller, too.”
If you tell Employee Joe to do this list of things in this amount of time and Joe is a matcher, you will probably see it happen. If Joe is a mismatcher, you may very well get it a day early, a day late, or with seven extra tasks that Joe noticed needed doing along the way.
Similarly, if you tell Employee Joe that “blah blah blah” is the mission of the company and “blah blah blah blah” is Joe’s responsibility in that mission – the possibilities start to get interesting. With only that small amount of instruction, Joe can either match the mission and manage the day so that only efforts important to that mission and that singular responsibility are done – or Joe could actually mismatch the mission of the company by mismatching your expectations and requirements.
Why is this so? Because this sorting meta program not only determines how we sort and catalogue information, it also determines how we react to communication and events around us. Of all the possible reactions to any given situation, our sameness/difference meta program is part of what determines which of the options we will select.
It’s important to remember that all but those very few 100% matchers will mis-match occasionally. Even if you are far to the right on the continuum, showing dramatic preference for sameness, every now and then you’ll be mis-matching. How you mis-match is something important to know, because there are two distinct groups.
The first group we call Options Mis-Matchers because they #1, won’t do it the same as anybody else; and #2, they won’t do it the same as they did it last time. For example, if you say to an options mis-matcher, “this is black,” they could say, “it looks like very dark brown to me. Or maybe charcoal. Could be indigo or that really deep wine color that looks like black if you’re not in a good light....”
The second group, the Polarity Mis-Matchers, not only don’t do it the same as anybody else, they actually swing to the opposite pole. For example, if you say, “This is black,” to a Polarity Mis-Matcher, they will say either, “This is white,” or they might just say, “No it’s not.” If you say, “Day,” they say “Night.” If you say “‘Tis the sun,” they say, “Tis the blessed moon.”
More important, if you say, “We need this by 3:00 this afternoon,” the Polarity Mis-Matcher may say, “Can’t be done,” or “I won’t do it.” The Options Mis-Matcher, on the other hand, will start offering options. “I can do it,” he may say, “but probably not by 3:00. How about 3:30?” Or, he might say, “I really get busy around here between 2:30 and 3:00 every afternoon. Can I bring it to you at 2:00? Or if you’re willing to wait, I can make your copies and have it all to you by 4:00.” Or maybe, “I can do that, but I was really wanting to try it this other way first... how about if I do that and if it works, I’ll have it there on time. If it doesn’t, I’ll just be a couple of minutes late, but we’ll have learned something.”
Mis-matchers are the archetype of difficult employees and co-workers. Not because they’re stubborn or slow or malevolent – but because they think so completely against expectation and requirement. They think against everything. That doesn’t mean they are negative thinkers – that their thoughts contain negative content – only that their thought process works off of difference, opposition, and counter point or “counter thought.”
You offer them steamed carrots, the Polarity Mis-Matcher doesn’t want any part of it, and the Options Mis-Matcher wants his carrots with peas, or wants them caramelized, or thinks that carrot sticks is really what sounds good. – Maybe carrot sticks with a little blue cheese dressing on the side.
A man takes his mis-matching wife a dozen red roses, and the Polarity Mis-Matcher doesn’t want them because they’re too expensive; the Options Mis-Matcher wishes they were pink – or white – or yellow. Or a nice mixed bouquet. Or maybe carnations would have been nice. Or how about roses and that baby’s breath mixed together? In fact, for a married couple where one of the two is an Options Mis-Matcher, the flowers may have to be different every time to meet the options requirement.
Otherwise, the Options Mis-Matcher may think they are unloved, simply because the spouse didn’t take the time to come up with a new option. In the worst case scenario, where a 100% Options Mis-Matcher is married to a 100% Matcher, the Matcher believes that as long as he/she is doing exactly the same as they have always done, that the marriage will be exactly the same as it has always been. The Options Mis-Matcher partner believes that without constant change and growth – constant new and different – the marriage will stagnate and die.
Matching and Mis-Matching: The Climb Up the L5 Corporate Ladder
What if you are a supervisor and you’re a matcher? You’ll not only be matching those above you – you’ll tend to expect matching from those you supervise. We all think everybody ought to be the same as us – at least, that’s what matchers think. (Mismatchers think everybody is different and that’s really for the best. Diversity should be cultivated, you know....)
The higher up the corporate ladder you go, the more matchers you find. If this is true, this means the shift supervisor – and their supervisor – and their supervisor – have a greater and greater chance of being matchers. And guess what? If you don’t match them, their expectations, and their requirements – they’ll notice. In a climbing environment, what this means is that in order to advance from the lowest rung to the next rung up, we must match our job description, match the corporate policies and procedures, match dress codes and schedules – in other words, we need to match in order to climb. The better we match, the higher and faster we climb.
In most corporate L5 environments, the lowest positions will have a much higher proportion of mis-matchers than the higher executive positions. One exception to this is in companies started by free-thinking (mis-matching) entrepreneurs who looked at what already existed in a particular field and mis-matched it. They may want their company run by matchers who can match laws and regulations, but the entrepreneur at the top is probably an Options Mis-Matcher. Another exception is in assembly line operations. Because of the constant and unwavering sameness of assembly line work, everyone but devoted matchers gets thinned out and goes off to find work elsewhere.
In the L5 workplace, however, the way up is paved with matching.
Matching and Mis-Matching in Education and Training
In public education, Options Mis-Matchers are often singled out as being creative, while Polarity Mis-Matchers are singled out as trouble makers. Because Polarity Mis-Matcher children don’t match school policy or classroom rules, they get labeled as troubled children. Because they don’t match the teacher’s expectations about how homework should look, and when it’s turned in, they are labeled poor students – or worse – they are called stupid or unteachable.
The process of teaching the same material, year after year to students tends to make the field of teaching top heavy with matchers. Mis-matching teachers often go into counseling, higher education, or go off into experimental or alternative classrooms. This means that the average public school – which has a full distribution of students along the continuum – will be taught in the majority by matchers. At present, that means they are taught by matchers who believe everyone is a matcher – but that some of them are just doing it very badly.
The result is “gifted and talented” classrooms which have a disproportionately high number of Options Mis-Matchers, and remedial and low-level classes with a disproportionately high number of Polarity Mis-Matchers. These Polarity Mis-Matchers, who start out their lives called difficult students, end up in low paying, often dead end jobs, and are called difficult employees.
This idea of matching or mismatching applies to managing difficult employees in a very important way because of expectations and requirements; requirements being those things required by the employer to get the job done, and expectations being those things the employer feels should be done to do the job right. Requirements are objective, where expectations are more subjective. It is critical that employers and employees alike are clear about this difference, because without it, Outcome Oriented Thinking will collapse in the face of an absolute, 100% mis-matcher.
Why? Because as long as the Options Mis-Matcher is allowed to form the options, and as long as the Polarity Mis-Matcher is allowed to swing to the opposite pole, future thought is impotent against them.
A few decades ago, someone in the blossoming field of psychotherapy found themselves face to face with a Polarity Mis-Matcher and discovered that if you said “Day,” the Polarity Mis-Matcher would say “Night.”
– And they would do it every time. This resulted in the widely popularized idea of Reverse Psychology – that is, if what you want is for someone to say “white,” the best way to get what you’re after is to say “black.” While this made for some clever plot lines in early situation comedy television, it didn’t hold up well to the test of time because it was so over-generalized.
What those early popular psychology mavens didn’t realize (or at least didn’t make sufficiently obvious to the public) was that Reverse Psychology would only work for a very small percentage of the population – the Polarity Mis-Matchers. As long as you used your Reverse Psychology on a Polarity Mis-Matcher, you’d get what you were after; but use it on anybody else, and you just land flat.
The best tool to use against a Polarity Mis-Matcher is to short-circuit the polarity shift. Think of it as an electrical circuit.
As long as the swing from (+) to (—) occurs, the circuit is complete. To prevent the circuit from being completed you have to interrupt it before it happens. You can’t undo it. You can’t take it back. You have to interrupt it.
How? By removing the opposite pole from play.
It goes like this:
“I really need this cost analysis. Whether you get it to me by
2:00 this afternoon ...
[there’s the (+) pole]
... or not ...
[there’s the (—) pole]
... what’s really important ...
[here comes the outcome we’re after]
... is that we get it before the last postal run of the afternoon.”
What happens inside the head of the Polarity Mis-Matcher during this process is interesting because you can see the short circuit if you watch the Polarity Mis-Matcher’s face and body carefully as it’s happening. Their natural tendency to swing to the opposite pole is already underway when the cancellation occurs and it will give them a physical jolt to have that swing interrupted. Suddenly, there’s nowhere to go. They may freeze. They may rattle a bit. But the opportunity to feed them the “what really matters” piece only lasts a moment, because the void is temporary. Given a few seconds, the Polarity Mis-Matcher will find some way to mis-match something – even if it’s just their willingness to listen.
The important piece of this little delivery is the Outcome Oriented
Thinking that occurred before we ever started talking. While it’s very useful to
know how to blow out the circuit by removing the (—) pole in the .5 second gap it
take to complete the circuit, the first requirement is that you always know what’s
really important. This requires intentionality and forethought. It means you
have to think through how you’re going to talk to a Polarity Mis-Matcher before
the conversation ever begins. You have to know what’s really important, so that when
you cancel out the + and the — poles, you’ve got what you’re really after right there
where you can drop it into the void created by the short circuit.
You have to approach a Polarity Mis-Matcher employee or co-worker with full intent
and with your outcome in your sweaty little hand if you’re going to make any exchange
productive.
The short and dirty version of the Polarity Blow Out can be used any time you find yourself face to face with a Polarity Mis-Matcher who is about to complete a circuit. To remove the (—) pole from play, just throw in a short “...or not” before the circuit completes. For example, you say, “I need that report by 3:00 today.” Suddenly you realize you’re about to be smacked with an “impossible” swing, so you casually, nonchalantly toss in “...or not.” It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t logical. It doesn’t have anything to do with Outcome Oriented Thinking – but it will blow the circuit because it fries the (—) pole. And it will buy you the moment you need to construct some kind of a follow through.
Remember, the purpose here is to turn a won’t into a will. Whatever it takes – no more and no less – is all that’s required.
A Final Word About Mis-Matchers
Dealing with mis-matchers doesn’t mean you have to show all your employees the three little boxes, or three paper cups, or three chairs or three books. All you have to do is pay attention. People who match most of the time are fairly easy to spot because they tend to wear the same socks with the same shirt every time. They wear their hair the same every day. They drive the same route to work, to church, to the grocery, or to the gas station. They order the same meal off the menu every day, or the same entree every Monday.
Likewise, Options Mis-Matchers are easy to spot if you’re paying
attention because they will always be trying something new. New foods, new paths
to walk, new roads to drive. New clothing combinations. New hair cuts. New night
spots and new cafés. Difference will show up in their lives at every turn.
Polarity Mis-Matchers are easy to recognize because their polarity swings so often
appear as argumentative and disagreeable. They are what my Grandmother would have
called “contrary.” Who every you’re dealing with, the important thing to remember
is intentionality. Do it on purpose.
One of the most gratifying side effects of knowing about the sameness/difference meta program is the effect the knowledge has on Mis-matchers. As a general rule, the 100% folks never realize that the other extreme exists. That is, the 100% matchers have no idea that there are people out there in the world who don’t match. Why would they do things different if what they’re doing is working? The 100% mis-matchers feel exactly the same way. They can’t imagine people doing the same boring thing, day in and day out. How dull would the world be without new and different choices?
Something interesting happens when people hear about sameness/difference for the first time. To begin with, when you show them the three boxes, and ask them to tell you about the relationship – a heavy matcher will actually translate your instructions into their own meta program. Even though you say “relationship”, what they hear is, “Tell me how they are the same.” The heavy mis-matcher will do the same translation, and hear, “Tell me how they are different.” And both will be willing to fight you – or at least put up some resistance – swearing that what they heard is what you said.
In the end, just knowing that the other end of the continuum exists is often enough to cause even the 100% folks to reconsider their reaction, and rethink how they are sorting the world. It doesn’t mean they will abandon their natural tendency, but often it will add a resource to their toolkit. Being able to recognize an unproductive mis-match in someone else, means you are more likely to recognize it in yourself. You become conscious of your pattern. You catch yourself – sometimes as you mis-match, sometimes after – and sometimes before.
Once a mis-matcher gets accustomed to being short-circuited, it is often enough for a friend, co-worker, or spouse to simply wink and say, “or not....” and the Polarity Mis-Matcher will pull back and revert to logic and reason over their own natural tendency.
Imagine those children who have been told they are trouble makers – or that they’re just stupid – suddenly learning that it is a choice whether they mis-match or not. How many of those destined for the dead end would choose to bite their tongue and refrain from their polarity swing, if they knew it would be the difference between minimum wage and the middle class? How many parents would change the way they talk to their children? How many husbands and wives would change the way they talk to their spouse?
While knowing how to talk to mis-matchers will get you a long way
in dealing with difficult employees, it won’t solve everything. Because you can get
a different response by choosing your words carefully, it is clear that the responsibility
for turning a difficult employee into a real asset rests with supervisors and peers
as much as with the identified employee. A Polarity Mis-Matcher who doesn’t know
he/she is a Polarity Mis-Matcher and who doesn’t get any help from the outside will
continue to mis-match. To give these people the best possible entrance into the working
world, it is to their advantage and to their employer’s advantage that they learn
about this meta program, and they are dealt with skillfully by their co-workers.
To be able to use their intelligence, skills, experience, and creativity pays of
for everyone.
It may also be that supplying co-workers with the skills to deal with unusual personalities
makes the difficult employee easier to manage, and gives others a new set of life
skills they can carry out into the world.
Everybody wins when you take your best shot.
In the end, there are some people who choose won’t behaviors and will continue to make those choices regardless of how good the supervisor is, and how much good information they are exposed to.
Some people have such deep breaks in their ability to function in a social situation that they must seek professional assistance with those personality breaks, or dissociation from a particular company environment. While dissociation is a drastic step, if the won’t behavior is disruptive or is costing money, time, and emotional wear and tear on others, then there really is no other choice. As long as every attempt has been made to bring this person into the fold, and those attempts are documented, the break should be a welcomed relief for all parties.
The idea of quick and painful relief has been made into a horror story by legislation in the past decades, but as long as the job description is clear and complete, and as long as feedback, coaching and accountability measures are documented clearly and completely, ridding any company of a serious liability is possible.
Copyright (C) 1998, Lynn Maupin Webb
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ducksoup/555
Reproduction or distribution in any form of material contained in this site without credit to Lynn Maupin Webb and reference to this email address is strictly prohibited.
L.M. Webb can be emailed at purciful@yahoo.com
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