[MUSIC]
Now that you're aware of how powerful values are, and hopefully you are more
aware of your own values, it's time to see how that applies to you as a manager.
In this lesson I describe how point of view is used and
give examples of how it affects the workplace.
We discussed the importance of identifying your values and
understanding your point of view and assumptions.
Finally, we discuss why it's important to investigate
facts when managing and coaching.
And we believe that our point of view is the truth about the world.
But what we soon start to realize when we start working with other people is that
other people think different things about the world.
And think different things about how people should be in the world.
And because we believe that what we believe is true,
then we think other people should think the same way as we do.
[LAUGH] That's not the case, right?
And so then we put ourselves into this right and wrong judgement position and
we use our point of view to judge others and
make assessments about their intention or their behaviors.
So, as a manager, your point of view is not really what's relevent.
What's relevant is the goals, the accountability, the outcomes, and
how do we help people get there?
Your assumptions get in the way.
So point of view can influence how managers perform.
It can influence your decision-making,
it can influence your beliefs about why people do and don't perform,
it can influence your perception of what you think is hard work, it can influence
the assessments that you make about why people are working or not working.
It greatly influences who you think is easy or difficult to work with.
I do a lot of work around coaching managers to coach difficult people,
and I also coach people on how to work with difficult people.
At the cornerstone of calling someone difficult
is a difference of perspective of how we communicate and connect with each other.
Point of view also influences what we believe is acceptable in
the workplace, right?
Some places, you can do pretty much anything at work.
Other places, it's much more rigid.
That's a point of view, influence, decision.
So, some examples of how point of view, influences managing.
As I mentioned in the previous lesson, tardiness and absenteeism.
We make assumptions about why people don't come to work on time or
why they miss work, and when we coach from our assumption, we miss.
We need to coach from their perspective, not ours.
All we have to do is hold the expectation of being to work on time.
When people don't perform.
When they don't meet their goals, we have a point of view, right?
So many people who are managers are exceptional performers.
That's why they became the manager.
Because they're really, really good.
And because of that, when you are dealing with somebody who is not performing,
a lot of managers don't even know what to do.
To deal with that because they can't understand why somebody
wouldn't be working hard to do well.
But their reasons for
not doing well are very different than what your reasons would be.
And that's where that coach role is so
important because we have to investigate, we have to understand,
we have to diagnose which we're going to talk about in the future course here.
But if you're stuck in your assumption about why someone is not performing,
you can't help them.
We make assumptions about people's level of effort.
We make assumptions about people's level of urgency.
We make assumptions about how people should or shouldn't communicate.
Eye contact, tone of voice, speed of voice, frequency of communication.
We have all sorts of perspectives on how communication should look.
And just keeping in mind that everybody else has a different and
unique perspective, but when we hold ours as the right way,
we miss the opportunity to understand their perspective.
And the last place that a lot of us get stuck as managers, in terms of our point
of view, is when we believe that someone should have known something already.
I know that's a English term, should.
You should know and so for those of you who are listening to this,
I know there's a lot of you who speak different languages.
When we say that someone should know something,
we're assuming that it's already in place.
And then when it's not in place, so let's say I assume that anybody who works for
me should be able to organize themselves.
So I assume that that skill is already in place.
But a lot of times it isn't.
But if I believe that they should have already known how to do it,
then I get frustrated that they don't.
Right, so my point of view that tells me that something should be done and
it isn't is actually negatively impacting how well I can coach them.
Because what I really have to address is that they don't have the skill.
I don't have to address that they should have already known it,
that's not relevant, they don't know it.
So, now I just have to coach them from where they are.
So, our point of view is going on all the time,
our job as managers is to recognize how it's influencing us.
Right? And because so many of us don't know what
our point of view is, it's very hard to even communicate it.
And what we want to recognize is that oftentimes, because we don't know what our
point of view is, we don't share it and we don't communicate it.
Oftentimes even once we know what our point of view is, we don't share it,
we don't communicate it.
Then what happens is,
we hold people accountable to uncommunicated expectations.
I have all these thoughts about how people should be in my office but
I don't tell them.
As a result I make assumptions about behaviors that I observe in people without
discussing anything with them I just go with my assumption and
ultimately it causes significant breakdowns and communication and
in performance and engagements.
So keeping in mind that a point of view is reasonable, we all have one.
The goal is that you have to recognize yours first and
not be coaching and managing from perspective, from your point of view.
Once we can recognize that we have a point of view, then we can move forward and
really help the employee.
So in summary, most of us don't know our perspective, our point of view and
what we value because we've never really been thoughtful about it.
We just know when things are compromised, when our values are compromised,
when our belief systems are compromised.
But because so many of us are taught, and learn from such a young age, that what we
believe to be true about the world is what everybody else should think, can cause
a lot of discomfort for us, especially once we get into a management role.
Part of supervising our own point of view is to clearly understand what our values
are and how they are influencing us in our management role.
So our values are playing out everyday.
Sometimes the values that we have are really effective outside of work and
maybe not as effective inside work.
So that's something to think about and we all have a point of view.
We can learn to understand it, we can learn to modify it,
we can learn to employ it properly.
