Better Think Tanking #12
How to Change Your Workplace
“Advocates seem to find it easier to be cold blooded and analytical when influencing others. But when it comes to their own institutions, they often leave all their toolkits at the door and shout/cry/rage against their machine. Sometimes the conversation resembles a particularly dysfunctional family Christmas.”
Duncan Green, strategic advisor to Oxfam GB shares thoughts and lessons learned from colleagues in the aid sector on the difficulty of changing one’s own workplace with regard to gender equality, anti-racism, and other relevant topics. Some takeaways:
Framing matters. For example, it can be more effective to advocate for gender equity on the basis of capitalist reasons, even though you’re motivated by social justice. Sometimes, outspoken activism should give way to subtle tactics.
If those with decision-making power only act on suggestions by people they fear or respect, make those people the messenger. Pro-tip: this tends to be most effective if the messenger is someone from outside your organization.
Make people in higher positions think your reform proposals are their idea.
As a reformer, you may be met with passive resistance from colleagues and bosses (e.g., ignoring or derailing initiatives). First, be aware of this subtle behavior. Second, keep your perseverance and stubbornness, but expect to lose some support along the way. Make sure you know your allies and stick to them. Don’t do this alone!
Stop People Pleasing
“The thing about people pleasing is that because we are basically misappropriating our good qualities, it is very easy to take on people pleasing as an identity.”
People pleasing is one of many habits that can stand in our way to success. We may find ourselves spending all our time with things we took on to please others instead of pursuing our own goals. But when you feel like you got all your “brownie points” and successes from pleasing others, it’s hard to start saying “No”.
Like many other behavioral patterns, people pleasing is not distributed randomly in society, explains Natalie Lue. People with marginalized identities use it to adapt to the dominant group, women try to conform to gendered expectations, and people who dealt with rejection or loss during childhood continue using it as adults even if it doesn’t benefit them anymore. We’d add: For people with a lower-class upbringing, rejecting an opportunity can feel like being ungrateful and ruining your chances.
People pleasers tell themselves they cannot help but please others. But they often feel trapped in commitments they made to others, which can trigger anger and resentment. Lue’s good news: You can be kind, generous, and giving, even with setting boundaries. (Not least because we tend to overestimate the power others have over us and underestimate the power we have over them.)
Start to notice how you feel when confronted with somebody else’s needs in the moment, versus how it makes you feel after having said yes to spending lots of your time on commitments to please others.
Learn to distinguish between desire and obligation. Respect your energy, bandwidth, and own goals. Review how much time you spend on “hell yes”, “maybe”, and “I wish I didn’t have to” tasks. Pause before you say yes. Jaime Masters says: only commit to things that feel like an “absolute yes”.
Learn the art of the “soft no”. If you feel uncomfortable with a straightforward no, don’t over-explain or get over-apologetic, don’t make a big deal out of a small request. Instead, be truthful and say something like: “It sounds exciting, but I don't have the bandwidth right now // that’s not my lane // it’s not for me”.
Encourage Vulnerablity
Brené Brown encourages us all to show our vulnerability. Being vulnerable means putting yourself, your feelings, and your ideas out there without knowing the outcome and reactions you’ll receive. You’ll risk making mistakes and failing with new proposals but you’ll also open the door for creativity, innovation, and change.
It should be in everybody’s interest to create workplaces in which failing and learning is welcomed, where we can overcome the feeling of anxiety or shame when voicing something unconventional. As an experienced colleague, talk about things gone wrong more often. Speaking from a position of power and success makes it so much easier. Big or small, share your struggles every now and then in a lunch break, team meeting, or kitchen talk and show that you’re as vulnerable and human as everyone else.
Consider Therapy. Seriously.
Self-awareness is the ability to identify own needs and personality traits and to understand how these affect and relate to others. Most of us overestimate our ability for self-awareness. Research estimates it to be at only 10-15 percent.
Hendrik Schriefer advocates for more self-awareness at work and in the way we compose our teams. He self-critically draws on his own lack of self-awareness in his previous job and admits that his high need for power led to conflicts. His suggestion: we should all go to therapy! Employers should send themselves and their staff to self-awareness therapy to help better understand oneself and one’s colleagues.
Therapists can create an environment in which we feel free to discuss our needs, find our strengths, and reflect on personal motivations. It allows identifying our weaknesses and (especially managerial!) blindspots and their impact on the team. Ultimately, it not only increases individual well-being but also productivity and reduces sick days. So, if you need the economic incentive, here you go.
Therapy is time- and cost-intensive and not every organization can afford it regularly. So, be creative and find ways that fit your institution: maybe offer every employee one session every half-year. This is a first step that may motivate employees to take it forward individually.
The Feedback Equation
Being able to give open and honest feedback at work is great. It can help people reflect on their own skills and grow. In team contexts, feedback is essential to understand the often unnoticed effects of one’s own behavior on others. But it can be hard to know when to stop, especially when work styles and personalities clash and there are unaddressed conflicts. In such situations, it is important to realize that different characters and work styles are a form of welcome diversity as long as they don’t negatively affect colleagues and results. Otherwise you risk pushing for conformity and keep your team from realizing its full potential.
For feedback conversations, a good guideline is only discussing traits and behaviors that have either positive or negative effects. Speak from your personal viewpoint and follow Lara Hogan’s feedback equation: Observation of a behavior + impact of the behavior on the work context + question to reflect or request to the person = actionable and specific feedback.
What We Are Thinking About
The duty to view perfectionism as a warning sign:
Like What You Read?
Tell us about it - even if you didn’t. Forward this newsletter to a friend, tweet it, and help us inspire more people.
Theresa & Sarah