A Behavioral Approach to Humanistic Management

How to improve productivity while reducing negativity through the strategic application of science and compassion.

 

Management training that ALSO teaches how to stop bullying

For me - the how do you get the behavior you want out of your team skill set - is the same skill set as knowing how to get unwanted behavior from your team to stop. This just happens to be the same skill set you use to stop unwanted behavior or obnoxious behavior like bullying/harassment.

Knowing how to shut down bad behavior quickly and compassionately is an essential management skill just as much as how you reinforce and encourage the good behavior you want. 

Learning how to motivate and reinforce people by creating compassionate but compelling conditions to reinforce the behaviors you want is a powerful skill set to have. I consider this a basic life skill. Well - not basic - definitely advanced - but certainly people who know how to do this ethically and compassionately are way more effective managers than people who do it through abuse.

Management training that focuses on how to reinforce and reward the behaviors you want while eliminating the behaviors you don't - for effective management - is a step in the right direction. 

A "how to improve productivity while reducing negativity" management course would include the following information: 

1. The ideal
2. The reality
3. How behaviors are reinforced
4. How behaviors are eliminated
5. Being strategic about your interpersonal interactions (the role of compassion)
6. How to encourage positive interpersonal dynamics in the workplace
7. What to do when someone isn’t playing fair or being nice
8. Respectful Problem Solving
9. Resolving Conflicts – is it a conflict? Or something else?
10. Putting it all together

And that's exactly what you will find in my Applied Humanistic Leadership Certificate Program: https://humanistlearning.com/certificate-in-applied-humanistic-leadership/ 

And my Certified Humanistic Leadership Professional Program: https://humanistlearning.com/certified-humanistic-leadership-professional/

Can Bankers Change?

What does the continued problem with how our biggest banks are run teach us about change management?

The Atlantic published an excellent article about the banking industry – see: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/can-bankers-behave/389558/

The question asked is – can bankers behave?  The answer is obviously yes, but the structure of certain banks makes that change very very hard.

The article is ultimately a story about ethical habit formation and how change occurs. What I want to discuss here is the part of the article that focuses on the CEO of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman.

While we can debate the merits of the changes made at Morgan Stanley, what isn’t debatable is that Gorman was successful at making the changes he wanted to make.

Why was he successful when so many people struggle to create change within their organizations?  His attitude was if you don’t like the changes – leave. If you want to work at a hedge fund – do it – our core business is that we are a bank. And people did leave. And that was ok.

The mistake that managers wanting to create change make is in thinking – they have to make people change. The reality is that not everyone will change. Not everyone wants to. It’s ok if they don’t; they just need to find employment elsewhere if the fit is no longer good for them.

Change is hard. People resist it. That is normal. It’s a process that takes place over time and you will have early adopters and once the change is proven to work, mass adoption. And, there will be some holdouts that refuse to change. Sometimes you can drag them along kicking and screaming and they will become your biggest advocates. And sometimes, you just need to let them find employment that is better suited to them.

Accepting that you can’t be everything to everyone takes courage.  It takes courage to stand by your core mission as an organization. This is especially important if your corporate culture has allowed unethical behavior to propagate. Changing the culture to promote ethical behavior means, some people will have to go. Never allow people who want to be unethical to steer you off course and keep you from creating the positive social change you know is right.

FYI -  discuss the change management process in detail and how to use behavioral psychology to help this process along, paying specific attention to resistance to change, which in the behavioral model is considered an extinction burst and it’s predicted. Understand why and how that resistance will help you manage it when it occurs. (See:  https://humanistlearning.com/change1/)

Values as a Valid Management Technique

Why appealing to our higher selves is so appealing.

The NY Times had a great article about how to raise a moral child. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html?_r=0 

In a nutshell, the research shows that when you ask a kid to help, they mostly will. But, they will be more excited about helping and do a better job, when you encourage them to be a helper.   And, you can apparently cut cheating in half if you say, “don’t be a cheater” instead of “don’t cheat.”

What’s the difference?  Well, in the first case, you are giving a direction for a specific action at a specific time. In the 2nd, you are encouraging moral behavior for the sake of moral behavior.

Don’t be a cheater is a reflection on someone’s character. Don’t cheat is direction that only applies to this specific instance. If you want to raise a moral child, you have to praise and value moral character, not moral behavior.  Seems counter intuitive, but there you go.

The converse is true of getting rid of bad behavior. You want to encourage guilt about the specific situation, but encourage doing better in the future - via praise of good character.   It’s the difference between guilt and shame.

The question is - DO these tactics work with adults?  And can they translate into management techniques?  And the answer is yes.

You can’t just focus on good behavior – you have to instill a sense of character excellence in your employees, not just by word, by through action.  The places that are judged the best places to work are routinely those where the employee feels respected and valued.  How does a company manifest that – by actually respecting the autonomy of the worker!

They focus on ideals of excellence and they don’t worry too much about how something gets done. They trust their employees to get their work done without having a task master at a drum telling them when and how to row that boat.  I’m talking to you Amazon and your incessant data tracking so that your employees don’t steal minutes from you while they take a bathroom break!

Anyway – Focusing on the values and ideals you want your employees to manifest as opposed to specific behaviors and you should end up with really wonderful employees for the most part.

What are your thoughts?  Are values a valid management technique?