Are you including mindfulness in your own personal management development program?

Just the other day, an employee shared with me a story about something her manager did that reminded me of the importance of cultivating mindfulness if you’re a manager. I’ll tell you about it shortly, but first, let’s look at what mindfulness is, and why it’s so important.

Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, Employee Motivation, Engagement, and Morale

Mindfulness is simply being tuned into the moment, paying attention to what you’re doing, thinking, and saying, and paying attention to the other person or people you’re interacting with. When we do that, we’re much more interpersonally savvy. Our Emotional Intelligence quotient (EQ) goes up exponentially. Mindfulness increases our ability to pick up subtle cues and messages, recognize unspoken concerns, and select the most effective response.

If you want to enjoy the benefits of having motivated employees, if you want maximum employee engagement, or if you’re interested in improving employee morale, practicing greater mindfulness will help you achieve these goals.

Why?

Because when you’re in a position of power, and especially when you have a powerful personality, you unwittingly stomp on people without realizing it.

"I Didn’t Realize I Crushed Him. I Didn’t Notice a Thing!”

Did you ever see the Far Side cartoon where one Mastodon says to the other, something like “I thought I felt something” as he looks at the squashed caveman embedded in the underside of his hoof. Just as we might squash a bug, without realizing it, the caveman’s presence barely registered on the Mastodon’s radar screen until it was too late (for the caveman).

Unless you’re perfect, it’s likely that you occasionally do things or say things that “squash” your employees without even realizing it, because they’re unwilling to confront you. Multiply this by 10 if you have a forceful personality.

I was reminded of how even really smart, really good managers can inadvertently “shoot themselves in the foot” by not paying attention to how their personality and their power affects others.

The “Employee Motivation Reduction Technique”

Here’s the situation...(I’ve changed some of the details to protect anonymity, but the essential ingredients of the incident are captured below):

An employee (we’ll call him Brent) came to me asking for advice about how to deal with a situation he had with his manager regarding a decision he felt was unfair.

Brent had approached his manager about getting his job title and pay upgraded to the next level, since he was already doing the job. His boss agreed that he was already doing the job, but said he needed to do four special projects before she would give him the official title (and commensurate salary).

He was puzzled because:

1) She acknowledged that he was already unofficially doing the job.
2) His colleagues from other divisions who had this title had gotten their promotions in the past without having to do the extra projects she was requiring of him.

Brent’s boss acknowledged the validity of his points, but said that his colleagues were going to have to do those projects in the future, and he would need to do them to get the “promotion”.

Now Brent felt angry and frustrated as it didn’t make sense to him, but he didn’t want to come across as combative or push the issue.

But for months, he stewed.

Dissed and Dismissed

To make it worse, Brent’s boss said he would think some more about it, and get back to him in June. When June turned into July, Brent asked his boss about the issue.

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do,” said Brent’s boss. “Don’t worry, when I do, you’ll be the first to know.

Brent obviously felt dismissed. He also felt frustrated and insulted.

According to Brent, his boss’s reaction communicated “Your future with the company is a low priority item to me. I’ll deal with it when I get around to it.”

Stop for a moment and think of when you’ve felt dismissed by a boss and its effect on your engagement level and desire to go the extra mile.

Add to this the extra dose of injustice of believing you are being treated unfairly, and being told discussing it is off limits.

A Quick Aside About The Price of Injustice

A quick aside if you’re concerned about improving employee morale and engagement...

According to a leading anthropologist, Donald Brown, the desire for justice and revenge are two of the universal human traits he identified when studying cultures. In other words, he could not find a single culture where people valued justice and also practiced revenge when they were treated unjustly.

While not every employee who feels they were treated unjustly exacts a price overtly or dramatically, injustice has an effect. Think of when you’ve been treated unfairly and how it affects how “gung ho” you are about helping your boss or your employer. While you didn’t input a virus to the computer network, you probably were a bit less interested in putting all your energy into making a contribution. Or you left.

OK, Back to The Story

Now, he wants to revisit the issue, but doesn’t want to seem like he’s badgering his boss. He’s also aware of how angry and frustrated he feels, and he doesn’t like feeling that way.

He and his boss also have a really good relationship—other than this situation—and he doesn’t want to jeopardize it.

So, he came to me wanting to explore his options.

We can talk about how he might approach the situation in a later post, but for this post, I want to explore his manager’s side, because my hope is that you will use this all-too-common-slice-of-work-life example to examine your interactions and to stimulate greater mindfulness.

Here are a few thoughts to ponder and points to consider:

1. Whenever you have more position power than someone else and you have a disagreement, if you want the conversation to lead to a productive outcome, you need to make it safe for the other person to speak their mind. If they don’t feel safe, they might not fully express their opinion or reaction to what you’re saying. While this might, at first blush, seem like a good thing—i.e. less for you to deal with—you end up inadvertently paying a huge price in terms of reduced engagement and morale.

2. If you have a strong personality, like Brent’s boss, it’s even easier for you to shut someone down without even trying. If you tend to be forceful, you’ll need to pay even closer attention to how you handle disagreements and conflict, if you don’t want to create problems for yourself.

3. Notice that Brent’s boss did not honor her commitment to report back to Brent in June, and when he brought it up, instead of her acknowledging that she broke her commitment, she simply “blew him off.” Notice the “double whammy” in terms of damaging trust and communicating disrespect. First, she didn’t honor her commitment. Then, when confronted, rather than acknowledge her mistake, she used her power to dismiss his legitimate concern. Brent’s boss is a really good manager, according to Brent. But, she’s imperfect—like the rest of us—and, when caught off guard, she slipped into a defensive mode. Just like the rest of us. Because these sorts of things happen, it’s important to apply Principle #4.

4. You can always do a “take back.” Because we’re all busy and imperfect, we all do things and say things that hurt other’s feelings or create disharmony in our relationships without even realizing it. Therefore, the goal of mindfulness isn’t to achieve perfection in the moment. That’s not possible (at least as far as I know).

While the goal of mindfulness is paying attention to how we’re interacting in the moment, it also includes reflecting on our interactions and returning to repair possible damage or clarify misunderstandings. In this case, if Brent’s manager was more mindful, she could have returned later to Brent and said “Hey, I was thinking about our conversation and I wanted to apologize for my flip response. I was kind of caught off guard, so I reacted defensively rather than really think about the validity of your question. I DID say I would get back to you by June and I forgot to, which I apologize for. I’m glad you were willing to bring it up—even if I wasn’t so glad at the moment. I say that because if there’s something going on that you’re wondering about or not happy about, I want us to be able to talk about it.”

Your Own Personal Management Development and Emotional Intelligence Development Program

So if you’re serious about improving your ability to motivate and engage your employees, if you’re interested in making it safe for people to speak honestly and openly, practice cultivating mindfulness. By doing that, you also increase your ability to learn from each manager/employee moment of truth, thereby turning everyday life into an ongoing management development seminar.

Also if you have a story to tell, either of a great manager moment of truth where your boss handled the situation really well, or a bad example, I’d love to hear from you. I want to collect stories that I can share with the managers I work with, to help them develop greater mindfulness.