Humanistic Leadership and Science

 At a recent presentation on humanistic leadership, I was asked about why I connect humanistic leadership and science so strongly.  Why is science central to the practice of humanistic leadership.

The answer is that in order to do good things, we can't just want to do good. We have to know how to effectively solve our problems. And to do that, we have to a) know what really causes our problem - instead of assuming what the cause is and b) we have to know what really works to solve the real causes of our problem instead of assuming we know.

To know what is real, we need science. 

Without that, we are adrift, or worse, dead.  

We are currently dealing with a labor shortage. What is causing that labor shortage? I honestly don't know. What I do know is that most people's assumptions are driven by their political biases and not by the science, and this goes for people across the spectrum. 

I also know that unless we deal with the real root cause of our problems, and there appear to be many, we not only won't fix the problem, we will probably make the problem worse. If I was tasked with fixing this problem, I would first, look at the research that has been done on what is causing our current problem. #science.

We are also dealing with a pandemic. How does this disease spread, how can we prevent it's spread. There is a tremendous amount of disinformation and misinformation being spread and again, a lot of that is based on political biases. None of us are immune to making assumptions about root causes. A scientific mindset helps us all, override our biases and look for reality that might contradict our beliefs.

The reason science is necessary is because, if you want to run a business and keep your employees safe and productive and not have them die on you or hospitalized - which does cause labor shortages, you need science.  And yes, this is a real problem. My county has told us our trash pickups will be delayed because employees are sick. My county government, literally, no longer has a functioning IT department because of the six staff members, 2 died, and 3 were hospitalized. Only 1 person is in our IT department is able to work. COVID literally wiped out our entire IT department in one week. 

Science is critical to operating a functioning business because functioning businesses require staff to be able to work. And for that - they need to be alive and NOT in the hospital.  We all need to understand the science and not just make assumptions about what is real or not. This doesn't just apply to the topic of covid, but - everything. 

One of the big problems I see locally is that leaders are unhappy with reality so they have declared that they are going to act as IF their preferred reality was true in the hopes that pretending it's true will make it true.  They are acting as IF the pandemic wasn't a reality. This will not work. You can't just wish away an unpleasant reality like a pandemic. You either deal with it constructively using science, or ... we all end up with more dead people, more hospitalized people and more disruption to - everything. 

I understand optimism. I'm a huge fan of optimism. You have to believe you can make things better to even try.  And a big part of that - is having a vision of what you want to see happen. My local government leaders don't lack for vision. They have a great vision. They want the pandemic to be over. So do I. But pretending it's over when it isn't - isn't going to magically make it go away. Pretending it's over when we are currently experiencing exponential growth of a deadly disease and disruptions to our work force as people end up in the hospital and some die, isn't effective leadership. It's insane leadership. It's deadly leadership. True, it's optimistic leadership, but it's not reality based leadership.  To fix our problems with a minimal amount of death and destruction, we need both optimism and SCIENCE! 

We simply can't fix our problems, whatever they are, without science.  We need to accept reality instead of wishing it away.

Good leaders do more than have vision. They plan for reality and science based plans to fix reality so that the outcome they want - actually happens. We ignore reality at our own peril. #Science is central.

Problems with Change Management

There are reasons why people resist change and techniques to help them adjust. Science really can help us be more successful.

I have helped organizations – both non-profit and for profit – through change processes. I’ve helped nonprofit with toxic volunteer employee relations build a thriving volunteer program spanning several departments. I’ve helped redesign business processes for a 1/2 billion dollar company so that our acquisition team could close 8 deals a week instead of the 2 per month we had been doing. And, I’ve got a background in behavioral psychology to understand why people resist change and how to help them overcome it.

Here are 3 reasons why change processes fail and how to fix them.

1. Not understanding that change requires unlearning and unlearning follows a very predictable process.  If we are going to change something, it means that we are doing something now and we want to do it differently. That means giving up the old way and adopting the new way. For a behaviorist – this means – unlearning. All unlearning follows a pattern. Understand what that pattern is and how to trigger it  - and you can more easily control the process.

2. Not understanding that resistance to change doesn’t mean rejection of change.  Resistance to change is instinctual. We are asking people to unlearn habits and habits are hard to change, even for people who want to change. The resistance that occurs isn’t necessarily a rejection of the new processes. It’s really just an instinctual inability to let go of old habits. This manifests as all sorts of cranky behavior by the team, but it’s predicted to occur so there is no reason to get worked up about it.

3. Taking the resistance to change personally. The number of managers I’ve heard blame the employees for not understanding the brilliant ideas behind the change request  is stunning. People insert a LOT of ego into their efforts and take it personally when they experience resistance. Good managers understand how to help employees through that and the ones that succeed – get their egos out of the way and focus on helping their staff cope with the stress that is – change.

Hope this helps. I teach an online course on this. Why is Change so Hard https://humanistlearning.com/change1/ – which discusses the behavioral dynamic playing out and how behaviorists trigger and control the process.

Bias, Stereotypes and Trust

How biases and stereotypes impact trust and how we can help make our workplaces more respectful and diverse.

I am going to share with you an article about some research that was done on middle school kids regarding stereotypes and trust. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-02/sfri-fyo020117.php
 Kids, and people, notice when they aren’t being treated fairly and if happens repeatedly they lose trust in authority – for good reason.

"Youth of color enter middle school aware that majority groups could view them stereotypically," notes Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, associate professor of psychology at Columbia University, who coauthored the study. "But when teachers surprise them with an early experience that conveys that they are not being seen in terms of stereotypes, but rather respected, it creates trust and may set in motion a positive cycle of expectations."

The actionable intelligence for teachers is that going out of your way to express trust and that you don’t see them as a stereotype goes a LONG way towards establishing trust and that kids who experience social trust, have fewer problems.

The reason this is important to managers in the workplace is because, at some point, these kids grow up and enter the workforce. The same dynamics at play in the classroom exist in the workplace.

The big difference is that the biases are more ingrained at this point. Both on the part of the majority group seeing people stereotypically and on the part of minority groups who have spent their lives dealing with people who don’t respect them as fully human individuals.

It isn’t enough to talk a good talk about diversity.  If it were, we wouldn’t continue to have diversity problems.

In order to overcome these built in biases, we have to be proactive.  We have to go out of our way to recruit a diverse workforce. We have to go out of our way to express trust and respect. We have to go out of our way to build the relationships on which trust is built.

It isn’t enough to recruit in a diverse set of people. If they are not welcomed and respected and trusted, you will have problems in the workplace.

Fortunately, you can take proactive steps. Among those is learning about how implicit bias effects your decision making so that just maybe we can start hiring more truly diverse work forces. And we can also get training in how behaviors and corporate cultures are changed so that all of your staff can do a better job of making people feel like respected members of the team. And finally, training on how to stop harassment and bullying in the workplace, because seriously, there is nothing that screams disrespect more than being targeted by a bully and having your employer not do anything about it.

To learn more about how to help check out these courses:

• Unconvering & Controlling Your Hidden Biases - Free
• Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace - $35
• Bridging the Generation Divide - $35

Problems Managing Change Management

We all resist change, and for good reason. We are habit based animals. Anytime you want to change a process, you have to eliminate the old habit and create a new one. And that’s REALLY hard to do because eliminating old habits, even habits you want to stop, causes an extinction burst.

We do this as individuals – for instance, anyone trying to quit smoking or stop eating ice cream while watching TV has withdrawals and fights it even if they want to change.  Magnify that resistance by however many people you have in a group and you can see what change managers are up against.

The key to being successful is to understand how changes in behaviors occur.

What you need to know is how the old behaviors are unlearned so that new behaviors can take their place. To cause unlearning the old behavior has to no longer work or be rewarded. After this happens people will resist and try to get the old way back. This is called an extinction burst. If they continue to not get the old way to work, they will eventually give up and start learning the new process.

Most organizations attempt change but fail to spend any time or energy on the unlearning of old behaviors and then are surprised when they meet resistance. The resistance is predicted to happen. It’s instinctual. It’s not people being difficult. It’s people being normal humans.

A good change process will take into account the need to cycle through an extinction burst as the old behavior is unlearned. Both the learning of the new behavior and the unlearning of the old behavior have to have equal attention.

One way that organizations can manage change is to understand that the level of resistance is a function of time and of frequency of reinforcement.  Some people will resist less and others more. It is possible to take advantage of these variable levels of resistance to roll out changes to groups least likely to resist. For instance the newer employees are less likely to resist as the habits are less ingrained. By taking a staggered approach with a group most likely to change we can prove the concept as working before rolling it out to other departments.

Another way for organizations to manage change is to understand that habit formation takes repetition over about 45 days. This means that employees need to be reminded daily and encouraged daily and checked up on daily for about 45 days before the new process becomes a habit. This is especially important IF the old way of doing things still works, because if it does, employees will train on the new way and quickly revert to the old way if they aren’t watched and monitored.

Again, this resistance is normal. There is nothing wrong with the staff. Habits are really hard to break. It’s like telling an elephant who is used to going on a certain path to take a different path and then being surprised when it goes the way it has always gone. You have to retrain elephants and staff and that requires patience and consistency over time until the new behavior pattern is established and habitualized.

To learn more about how to manage the behavioral extinction process consider taking Why is Change so Hard at Humanist Learning Systems: https://humanistlearning.com/change1/ 

What does it mean to be a manager?

A humanistic perspective on the business of management.

For me, management is a support function. It’s about helping ensure that a team of workers is able to work together to get their job done and to solve whatever problem they have been hired to solve.

Because let’s face it, if you didn’t have a problem that needed to be fixed and if that problem didn’t require a human’s intelligence to be applied to fixing it, you wouldn’t need to hire someone to do that job. It all comes down to problem solving. Even if you have hired someone to sweep the floor, there is a reason you need the floor swept and that reason is that if it isn’t swept, you will have a problem.

The people we hire are there to fix problems. The job of the manager is to make sure the people who are fixing the problems have the tools, training and support they need so that they can fix the problems they have been hired to fix.  This is a very humanistic conception of management.

The manager in this framework isn’t bossy. They aren’t telling people what to do. They are a support person who helps them team do their job.  Kind of like an engineer who keeps a train running. A manager is important, but not more important that those that are doing the actual work.  Sure, sometimes that means the manager has to tell the employees what problems to fix and to help them prioritize which problems get fixed first, but prioritizing tasks is a strategic coordinating function rather than a bossy boss function. 

Ideally, a humanistic manager works with their team collaboratively. It’s not a top down or bottom up role. It’s more of a coordinators role. It’s about communication. What needs to get done, how are we going to do it, what does staff need to do the job and so forth. The best managers are the best communicators.

The problem is that most people who become managers never receive training on what exactly it is they are supposed to be doing. So they wing it. They do what they think a manager should do based on what they have experienced in the past. They may even try to emulate a manger they saw in a movie once.  Who knows what they think a manager does. It may surprise you.

It is no longer acceptable to manage people as if they were expendable cogs in a machine that can be replaced. A dictatorial style of management is abusive and will expose your company to an amazing amount of potential litigation and high turnover. Humanistic management is becoming the norm for a reason. It’s a more effective and humane way of organizing people towards a common cause or whatever it is your staff are supposed to be doing.

Learn the Principles of Humanistic Management - https://humanistlearning.com/principles-of-humanistic-management/

Humanistic Tendencies in Business

Your business is not a computer program and your employees aren’t robots

For a while, business management was seen as a technical job. In some cases it still is. This is the type of management where the task to be done is broken down into component parts so that a human or robot can do one little job and then it moves on to the next person/robot for the next little thing and this keeps happening until finally, all the little jobs are completed and the task is done.

This is a mechanical view of management and it has its uses.  The problem is that humans aren’t robots and the mechanical model can only improve productivity to a point.

Humanistic tendencies in business aren’t just a reaction to mechanical managing. It’s also about recognizing that humans matter. That the business is run by and for humans and that humans matter.

Humanistic tendencies in business help us to recognize that even as we automate our businesses, our companies are still essentially collections of people working together for a common cause. Your workers aren’t slaves. You don’t own them. They aren’t “resources” or robots. They are human just like you.

Managers who try to exercise power over workers as if they are slaves aren’t good managers. They have no idea how to lead and share power WITH their employees. The humanistic tendency is about respecting the autonomy of your workers and the creativity that comes with that autonomy. It’s a much more democratic and respectful approach.

Finally, the humanistic tendency in business is that our businesses aren’t just about generating money or capital. They are about using capital to help solve the real problems we face as a society. It is the rejection of greed as a governing value in business.

Humanistic tendencies in business value the business in terms of how well it helps humans thrive. All humans and not just those who own the company. This means that a humanistic business gives employees with meaningful work that provides a living wage. And no you can’t separate out the living wage issue from a humanistic approach to business because any wage that isn’t enough to live on creates societal problems and doesn’t fix them. If a business can’t afford to pay a living wage, from a humanistic perspective, it’s a failure because it’s is creating a net drain on society.

Is your company part of the solution? Or part of the problem? And if it’s part of the problem, what do you plan to do about it?

Bullying isn’t leadership

Why bullying managers are crappy managers.

Most of us have worked for a bullying manager at some point.  And it’s unfortunate because it’s really counterproductive.  Management by bullying isn’t management at all.

A manager is supposed to organize and coordinate the activities that must be done to run a business. That puts them “in control.”  But the term “control: is a very poor word choice. When it comes to “controlling” other humans, it can’t be done.

We humans are autonomous individuals.  You can ask us to do things. You can beg us to do things. You can threaten us if we don’t do things. But at the end of the day, you can’t force us to do anything. You simply cannot control another human being. Heck, most people can’t even control themselves all that well.

The challenge of a manager is not only how to best coordinate the things that need to be done, but also how to get the people who are supposed to get things done to do their jobs.

Some managers, who have no idea how to get people to do their jobs, resort to bullying. They threaten their staff and demean them as a way to exercise some amount of social control. They do this because that’s what has always worked for them. And while they may gain compliance, they cause all sorts of other problems, including diminished problem solving ability and initiative as very few of their employees are going to risk sticking their neck out to solve a problem.

Other managers may bully accidentally because they aren’t good at handling anxiety. When they get stressed, they express their stress through abusive behavior towards their staff.  And again, while they may gain some compliance as a result of these “outbursts” the quality of the problem solving their team does is diminished because most people don’t do good problem solving when they are being yelled at.

If you want an effective team that is good at solving problems, you can’t afford to let a bully manage them. Because what a bully boss is doing isn’t management: its harassment.

In order to manage people well, you have to understand and recognize the inherent autonomy of the individuals on your staff. You have to consider yourself part of the team and not the controller of the team. Your job is to coordinate the work and to motivate the staff to work. A good manager helps their staff want to do the work that is required of them.  When things go wrong, they work collaborative with their staff to solve the problem. No bullying required.

If you currently work for a bullying boss – consider taking “Ending Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace” https://humanistlearning.com/retaliation1/  

If you are an HR Professional or are in a position of executive leadership and want to learn how to eliminate bullying in your workplace – take: Workplace Bullying for HR professionals: https://humanistlearning.com/workplacebullying1/

Stop Blessing Me!!!

I’m not a scrooge, but ... please don’t bless me through your voice mail message.  Why religious expression in the workplace does more harm than good.

I’m a Humanist and I’m all for freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion. But that freedom has limits when it imposes itself on others. This is especially true when you are in the workplace. Unless you work for an explicitly religious organization – don’t tell people to have a blessed day.  Here’s why.

Contrary to popular belief, we non-believers aren't offended by religious speech.  I certainly am not. But I do get annoyed by it when it is forced on me in a business setting. Generating intentional and avoidable annoyance is not polite. And is that really the impression you want to have on your customers?  Unless of course, you  don’t care about keeping your customers – in which case, you have other problems.

For the record, I am not offended by someone telling me to have a blessed day in their voice mail message. What I am worried about is how this employee will treat me if they found out I'm not religious like they are. This worry is especially acute if the employee is a public employee working for the government who has the power to deny me services based on my non-adherence to said public employee’s personal religious beliefs.  And yes, that would be illegal and yes, it happens anyway. I doubt that people who leave these sorts of voice mail messages mean any harm, but lots of religious people are scared of people who don’t believe as they do, so while they wouldn't intentionally discriminate, their fear might cause them to. It’s a real concern. And keep in mind. This isn't me inflicting my non-belief on them. It’s them forcing me to either go along with their religious belief or be exposed as a non-believer. It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in – especially when the stakes may be high.

Aside from the fear that I will be actively and openly discriminated against by the employee who “harmlessly” wishes me a blessed day, I also have to actively translate this peculiar bit of religious speak into secular speak so that I can understand what they are saying.  Do they mean for me to have a good day? Or are they making some sort of political statement under the guise of telling me to have a good day?  I have no idea.  But the attempt to figure that out is exhausting. And it’s pointless because I can’t really know for sure.  So, while I would like to think - this person means well, I can't always be sure.

“Have a blessed day” is an obviously overt religious expression and the secular expression to "have a nice day" is so ubiquitous that to choose the blessed option is rather obnoxious and that makes me wonder why this particular person felt it was important to use that particular phrase in such an overt and inescapable way. And all this is way too much thinking to think for a simple phone call message and so I become super annoyed that the person who just attempted to bless me put me through all that extra annoying unnecessary thinking and I no longer really want to do business with them at all – unless I absolutely have to.

If you want me to have a nice day - say so. Don't annoy me by making me do extra unnecessary thinking and worrying. It isn't very nice, it isn't very Christian, it isn't very professional and it certainly isn't very humanistic. Religion is your personal business. Don’t make it mine.

Visonitiative

Turning your visions into reality through personal initiative

My niece Kari coined this term as a new business buzz word with the goal of making a ton of money in the self help/business/leadership market.  I loved it and immediately told her I was stealing it.  And, if you ever hear this in the coaching marketplace or as a meaningless business buzzword, you will know where it originated (credit: Visionitative - Feb 2014 coined by Kari Hancock).

So – here goes.  What is Visionitiative?  It is the act of taking the initiative to make your vision a reality.  As a Humanist, I love this term.  Why?  Because I hate the positive thinking movement.

It’s not that I don’t like positive thinking. I do. I think positively all the time.  It’s just that I also think realistically. I have a grand and glorious vision of the future that involves running centers for Humanist learning all over the world and my family being fabulously wealthy real estate moguls and more.  But this is actually a realistic vision that I can and should be able to achieve through hard work and persistence.

To get there – I need ... visionitiative!  I need a vision and initiative. Both. Otherwise all I have is a really cool dream. And this is where Humanism differs from positive thinking. We don’t just think great thoughts and assume that the universe will magically provide for us.  We do something to make it happen.  Crazy, I know, but it does seem to work better than the just think good thoughts and hope for the best approach, otherwise known as magical thinking.

In the meantime, look for a visionitiative training from Humanist Learning Systems coming soon.

Business Management as Child Management

What can business managers learn from the positive parenting movement?

At first glance it might seem strange that I teach bullying elimination for kids and adults, humanistic parenting, humanistic business management and humanist life skills.  It might seem like my work lacks focus.

But actually, I’m only really teaching one thing: Humanist life skills, just applied to different situations.

When I teach how to eliminate bullies in the workplace, I am also teaching parents how to help their kids eliminate bullying as well.  When I teach managers that abusive management tactics are so incredibly counterproductive to the point that the euphemism for workplace bullying is “counterproductive workplace behavior,” it’s incumbent upon me to teach them better ways to manage, and those better ways are Humanistic business management.

To me, there is no difference between how we should parent and how we should manage the workplace. The skills we need are the same regardless because in both cases we are dealing with a real live human being. Just because the situation has changed doesn’t mean the human at the center of the interaction has.

The reason why positive parenting techniques works is because it’s based on operant conditioning and behavioral psychology coupled with compassion based respect for the child as autonomous. Now, just imagine if a manager used these same principles to encourage voluntary compliance from workers by approaching them with compassion based respect for their autonomy instead of cogs in a machine they have to whip into shape?

What I am after is a cultural shift towards more Humanist based social interactions at all levels. How we treat people in the workplace impacts how they treat their children at home. Social skills kids learn at home and at school, eventually carry over into the workplace.  These are not isolated venues with isolated needs. They are interrelated and the skills to be taught are actually the same.

The same skills a Humanist parent brings to parenting, to encourage voluntary compliance, encourage critical thinking and respectful autonomy, are the same skills Humanistic business managers need to use in the workplace.

The next question is – will you help me with this transformation by encouraging people to learn these important skills? (http://humanistls.myomnistar.com/)

Learn more at Humanist Learning Systems. (https://humanistlearning.com)