PSYCHOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF LEADING!

PSYCHOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF LEADING!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 29, 2008

“Emotion which does not lead to and flow out in right action is not only useless, but it weakens character, and becomes an excuse for neglect of effort.”

Tryon Edwards (1809 – 1891), American theologian

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In my long career, I have seldom seen leaders take into account the impact of the psychology of the situation on their decision making either individually or collectively.

Leaders, I have noted, base most of their decisions, on the short-term impact, or how it might play in the business or the market or the industry in which they compete. This psychology of neglect is as common in the family as it is with leaders in multi-national corporations. Leaders forget they are dealing with persons.

Alexander II, the last great tsar of Russia, was cut down while in his carriage by bomb throwers in front of a beautiful Russian Orthodox Church in St. Petersburg, which we visited when we were in Russia in 2007. In many ways, he was a kind emperor, but in many other ways he was not. He refused to allow Russia and its large peasant class to enter the Industrial Revolution other than subserviently, failing to understand the psychology of the times.

So often in my career, I have seen leaders take their workers for granted, not recognizing the changing nature of the psychology of work, and the changing nature of life itself. It is almost as if leaders are strangers to themselves, buying their own inflated regard, failing to see or understand their vulnerability, in fact, powerless beyond measure to recognize they are equally fragile and insubstantial as everyone else.

With such self-forgetting, leaders make decisions that impact the psychology of others in terms of dignity and self-respect, decisions that ultimately predict the collapse of their leadership.

No decision either small or large should be made without considering the psychological impact on the people it effects. People have their self-interest at heart. Through all the rhetoric, all the machinations of how tough times are, how we have to tighten our belts, how we have to work as a team, as a family, and all the other rot of such discourse, it always comes back to dignity and self-respect, fairness and consistency, and how I am, personally, being treated as an individual.

A company I was consulting was in deep trouble. It launched a vigorous campaign to improve quality and the delivery of its products. Forty managers and their direct supports worked seven days a week for the better part of two months to come up with a plan that turned the corner, while one-hundred and sixty workers were treated as no accounts. They weren’t interviewed, except by me, weren’t asked for their input, and treated as if they had no stake in the operation’s survival.

When the dust cleared, the product assurance manager was given a $10,000 bonus, and the other managers a letter of appreciation from the CEO, while the workers were provided with an announcement over the public address system that their jobs were secure.

The psychology of this abysmal situation could not have been worse on all levels. The company eventually failed. The workers, who were never included, never owned the problem or its correction. And although they saw their jobs disappear, it was an apparent price they were willing to pay for their bitterness of exclusion. As for the managers, many went forward like proper puppets too programmed to do otherwise, but a few left soon after the $10,000 bonus was awarded.

SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998) was written after seeing repeated evidence that a subconscious poison invades the spirit of workers when they are not treated fairly, consistently, and with dignity and respect. The moment an exception is made to protect a friend at the expense of someone else who is doing all the work is the moment this ugliness invades the human heart.

Every worker everywhere knows who is doing the work and who isn’t. Why don’t leaders know this, too?

My answer is that they are too busy covering their ass doing what they perceive as the least direct fall out. It is not a coincidence that the complainer, the operator, the devious one is more likely to keep his job than the worker when push comes to shove. The schemer as worker hides in seniority, others hide in having something on the boss, and still others play the flattering game for all it is worth. I have participated in redundancy exercises and have never seen departure from this formula.

The psychological fall out is manifested directly in the “six silent killers,” which are passive behaviors that are invisible but palpable in their impact causing more than $1 trillion in lost work every year while these same workers are on the job every day. No field of endeavor escapes this syndrome.

For the past four months, I have watched the collapse of the Tampa Bay Bucs, the National Football League team. Jeff Garcia is the quarterback who has been treated with less than dignity and respect, while showing real grit on the playing field. Imagine what he might have done if he had been treated more fairly and appreciated more thoroughly by his management.

Then there is the defensive genius of Monte Kiffin, who has chosen to leave the team in support of his son who is the new head coach for the University of Tennessee. His son has already been fired from one head-coaching university job, and now Monte is attempting to save him from another. Blood wins out as Monte has constantly turned down NFL jobs to be a head coach.

The psychological problem with the Buc’s collapse tracks precisely with Monte’s announcement of leaving the team. The incredulous would say, “No way! These are professionals!”

True, they are professionals, but a battered, beaten up team of mounting injuries to many veterans, players at an age when they should have retired by now. Along with all their physical pain, they didn’t need a psychological shock to their system much as it might be anticipated, leastwise at this time.

Defense in football is warfare. I know I played the sport. The relationship between a defensive coach and players is a close one, a very close one. Professional or not, they are having difficulty dealing with psychological abandonment, although not articulated or admitted, which this could clearly be felt to be.

You say these are men. Yes, they are, but they are also fragile, vulnerable, and frail men when it comes to the psychology that holds them intact, the same psychology with which we are all familiar.

For three months, the Monte Kiffin’s defense allowed one rushing touchdown with most games won on defense for a 9 – 3 record. In December 2008, the defense collapsed and the team lost the last four games of the season, all because the defense did not show up. In fact, the defense allowed 7 rushing touchdowns, 30 or more points and nearly 200 yards rushing per game during the month, when the first three months of the season they had held most teams to under 100 yards rushing per game.

Everyone says Monte’s announcement was a non-factor. The psychology suggests otherwise. You can build muscle on muscle and yet the human heart grows not at all. It is an emotional vessel of a finite capacity, and needs attention, needs respect, and needs understanding, something that I have not often seen in the human arena of work by its leadership.