Success Secrets and Stories
To share management leadership concepts that actually work.
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Success Secrets and Stories
Transforming Workplaces: Seven Caring Habits in Practice
Ready to break free from the chains of the seven deadly habits? Join us as we navigate the uncharted territories of Dr Glasser's seven caring habits, which can profoundly enrich your managerial experience. We'll be plunging headfirst into the heart of these habits, examining their real-world applications and their transformative impact on communication. Listen in as we dissect the importance of language and approach when influencing others, and the power of active listening and thoughtful response.
Moving on from self-transformation, we'll shine the spotlight on creating a harmonious workplace. Here's where the challenge gets real - balancing the needs of your team with the pressing demands of business. Join us as we discover how flexibility and respect for boundaries can coexist within the same space. Tune in, and let's embark on this enriching journey together!
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello and welcome to the podcast Success Secrets and Stories. My name's John Wunalski and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody, hey, and we're here and we're going to be talking about a part two, a two-parter, for our podcast this time. During our previous podcast we talked about a gentleman by the name of Dr William Glazer in the choice theory and Dr Durst talked about this from the MBR side of the story. And also I actually was in class when I was taking my few classes in psychology and talked about Dr Glazer.
Speaker 1:I remember the five keys survival, power, belonging, fun and freedom and how important they talked about survival, that security and safety and whether you have food.
Speaker 1:Those are the first things that you're looking for the belonging and the power. But a little bit about what they're talking about and Dr Glazer's talking about was setting up to talk about the seven deadly habits or the seven caring habits, which is another way of describing how it is applied, and I found his description of the deadly habits well. We've all run into them and I find them counterproductive. That's why I'm not really excited about going over the deadly habits without having some kind of balance, but criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing and the one that I find true entertainment bribing are all those things that are dealing with management teams that if they're using these kind of approaches, that is nothing more but the verbs and that they're choosing are basically how you do you control another person. These are the kind of things that you see in a dictator kind of environment, a telling environment. It isn't an exchange of ideas kind of environment. So, in the effort of giving a little bit more of a tilt to the positive, greg, why don't we talk about the caring habits?
Speaker 2:All right, Thanks, John. We actually have seven caring habits and read them to you supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, trusting, respecting and negotiating differences. And you can do a self-examination with these habits. If I do or say this, will it bring us closer together or will it push us further apart, whether it's your partner at home or your business partner? So let's start off with supporting. Do I support people for who they are they're true, authentic selves, and John had a great example at a previous podcast about an employee that was doing painting, had a painting job but really, really wanted to farm and wanted to do that as his primary role, and John supported this employee in his effort to reinvent himself professionally and he did indeed make that transition from painter to farmer.
Speaker 1:And I was originally bringing him in to put him on a performance or criticizing his performance and reviewing it. In terms of a pip, it's a negative. We were able to turn it, but yeah, the ying and the yang of the concept, dr Glazer's exact point.
Speaker 2:That's good. That's good. So let's move to encouraging, and that could be something as simple as being a cheerleader when others start to doubt themselves or they start to get discouraged. And one thing that you can do as a manager is actually and I've seen this say the words you know what. You've got some talents in your background and experience that should make you very successful with this project coming up. I'm very, very certain, in fact, I know you can do this.
Speaker 1:That kind of tone, those, kind of words are encouraging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the encouraging, and only more that bothers me is the cheerler side, because it's the blaming and the encouraging. It should be more than positive adjectives and adverbs. They can tell the difference when it has meaning and it has some depth to it. So you want to try to encourage, you want to give them the impression that they're doing it the right way. But one of the lines that I think I've heard that was interesting is that you're showing them from the one-minute manager that you're meeting the requirements and you're congratulating them, encouraging them. So there's a little bit more meat on the bone to what that means. It's not just a pom-pom moment where the cheerleaders are happy. I think you're going to talk about number three. That's the one I think is the key.
Speaker 2:I think it is John listening. The greatest gift one can and receive is to know that here she has been heard, understood and taken seriously.
Speaker 1:And this is a tough one. Isn't it the key of the 360 evaluations?
Speaker 2:too. Yes, indeed, you get that feedback and be able to not rationalize it and say, well, those people don't like me or hey, those people really love me, but to really listen to the feedback and do something with it. So one of the challenges people have in the work world and outside is being an active listener. Their mind is racing. The governor in their little head is on overdrive. They can't wait to respond. They know you're saying words, but they already want to pop back with a very quick, hopefully important response, but they're really not listening. They stop listening. So the first thing you need to do is listen. And the other thing is sometimes we hear something and we get a negative reaction to it and to an idea, a concept, whatever, and a trick I'd heard some years ago when I've seen people put into places if you hear an idea you don't really like, you listen to it. Say three good things about the idea before you say something bad about it, because what you do in that situation is demonstrate that you listen to the idea.
Speaker 1:And Dr Durst talked about listening and how. Sometimes, naturally, you're thinking about a response while the person is still talking and your brain's on hold. Your brain's already moved on. You're thinking about it, what you're going to say, rather than listening to the entire concept. I always find it interesting when somebody speaks and I'll stop and I won't answer immediately. They want to fill in that space, that ever famous pregnant pause of no, I'm actually waiting for your whole concept to process before I give you an answer. I'm trying to do the best job of listening to everything you said and then being ready to fill in that gap and having a response instantly. I'm going to give a little bit of a time to gather it Now. Some people are sharp and can keep that conversation moving really quick, but there's nothing wrong with being purposeful in terms of your response. If you're listening, they'll understand that you're doing that.
Speaker 2:So let's move to number four, which is accepting. That's a concept. The idea of feeling completely accepted works it all by another person and it leads to a personal sense of validation, and one of the things that you have to do as a manager. What you need to do as a manager is create that sense of belonging, because employees want it, and that's nothing you can do. You can do that in quite a few ways. How you engage with employees shows how you're accepting of them. Sometimes people manage by wandering around and wander around to all of the workstations of all their employees and maybe just say good morning, but they say it to everyone so that everyone feels like they're part of the team. Maybe they bring in donuts and hey, come over here, I got donuts. You tell everybody that what you're doing is treating them like humans and they know that they're part of the team.
Speaker 1:And then I think the next two, the trusting and respecting, have the foundation of where they talk about caring habits when we talk about the other two.
Speaker 2:They do indeed, john. There's a gentleman by the name of Patrick Lincione who talks a lot about management behavior and practices and he will tell you trust is the base of his model for cohesive teams and business. Team members are genuinely transparent and honest with one another. They even become vulnerable. That's how you build trust and trust goes both ways. You got to open yourself up and you got to choose to be worthy of somebody's trust and respect. As John said, kind of hand in hand, kind of that. Healthy and really close relationships are built on a foundation of mutual respect. You treat your staff members with dignity and respect, but you don't expect poor behavior. You only accept appropriate behavior and high quality behavior. So you're not lowering the standards, but you are accepting them as human beings and members of your team.
Speaker 1:And I think Dr Durst's concept in terms of how he kept on going with the word responsible, and these words the trust and respect and responsible are, in my mind, almost the same thing. On how they're being applied. The component in terms of trusting and using MBR I always thought it was interesting when I took a test in terms of when I was changing jobs and you were talking about how my orientation towards management and I trust people too much. Well, if MBR works, you're trusting the people that you have in their assignments. Now, if they can't do the job, then you're responsible for either training them up or showing them the door. But trust is the thing that you empower from giving them your trust. If they're in a position of leadership, they're taking that element of you and they're applying it for you so that the organization works.
Speaker 1:That's the trust, the respect. Those are the keys, I think, to both concepts For choice and for Dr Durst's concept of management or responsibility. It's trust and respect. The last one's the interesting one because deadly habits and negotiation is, I think, a key. Let's go with number seven, Greg.
Speaker 2:Yep, negotiating differences. Compromise and balance are vital elements of all relationships, and mature relationships recognize that both partners can't have all their needs met at the same time. From a business standpoint, this may include setting and honoring boundaries and engagement with your staff. I use the example. Sometimes you have employees that you know are really good morning folks. They wake up to get the office early. If you're going to give them a project, something real important, give it to them in the morning, because in the afternoon they may be at a lunch coma and not quite ready to give you 110% if you needed that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and being flexible in terms of their starting time. If you have the ability to do that, there's nothing wrong with somebody starting that are geared more at nine o'clock than they are at seven.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. We're talking about managing employees' capabilities and preferences in a way to meet or exceed your business needs, while creating balance Right. One of the things that I like about these seven caring habits is the last word habit. These are things that don't happen once a week, every other month, but they become part of your normal routine on leading and managing people.
Speaker 1:In some of the axioms of the choice theory that Dr Glazer talks about, is the only person whose behavior we can control is your own. That's, at the end of the day, that's your involvement. What happens in the past, whether it is painful or whether it is happening today, to revisit that pain of the past, is not going to be any kind of advantage. You have to be in a now, and that is so much of what Dr Durst talks about. The five generic components of survival, love, belonging power, freedom, fun kind of links to Mavlov's theory about the hierarchy. And, holy cow, how many more psychologists can we talk about in one episode? Right? Have I ever worked in the environment where it's gone sunny, gone upside down? Oh, heck yeah. I went out and one organization that I took the job, I did the ever famous approach in terms of interviewing your boss and interviewing his boss and understanding the hierarchy of the organization and their culture and their approach, and I was so excited I hit a home run. I remember I jinxed it probably at that point, suggesting to my wife that we should open up a bottle of champagne that's been sitting in the back of the refrigerator for forever, and I finally did all the pieces right. It wasn't more than about six months later that, between retirements and people taking different advancements and, unfortunately, some dismissals, that entire executive team the CFO, the human resource vice president, the operations vice president and even the president of the organization changed, and not for the better. Now the rest of the organization that was there were really good people and I made the decision to manage up and that's not an easy decision. It was where it was transparent. People understood that we were doing better than a lot of others that were dealing in the same environment, because I wouldn't succumb to it as a leader. I was creating at buffer between my management team and some of the silliness that we had to deal with. But that's part of the job. When you accept the position as a leader, sometimes you're going to have to create that environment that is better for them and you can't be dragged down by somebody else. You have to look for your happiness, you have to look for your satisfaction and you're helping those people who are working for you.
Speaker 1:I really shouldn't say that. Always consider it teammates. There wasn't them working for me or me working for them. We were a team, we were together. Yeah, I mean we collectively approached the works and the good works that we did. It wasn't my insights that made the biggest difference, it was my cooperation, my ability to build a team. That was the part that other people tried to emulate and support your team. Yeah, and if you hear about the caring approach, those are the kind of things that you walk in the door and you're applying all the time. And it is so sad when you talk about people who are so appreciative that they hear something that's positive and they haven't heard it in your 15-year career and really it was like a toss-in that you were doing because you do it, that's your nature, that's how you communicate, and they're overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:The line that I've always found that is the most entertaining is no one ever asked me how I should do it. It's such an easy, low-hanging fruit of engaging the people that you're working with. What's your approach? Tell me how you would do it. This is what I'm trying to get done as a goal. I don't have to go down the path that I've just described. Give me your path and putting them in. Yeah, and then listen, which I always found we're both on the same page of if you're doing that piece, if you're not talking and you're listening, you're probably a better leader, yes, so what are we going to be?
Speaker 2:talking about next week, Greg. So, John, our next podcast episode covers keeping agreements.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we kind of tipped on that already, didn't we? But it gets better. You have to listen to the next podcast and if you like what you heard, you might want to look at my book Building your Leadership Toolbox on Amazoncom and Lulurcom. My e-books available on Burns and Noble. You are listening to my podcast. I appreciate it. There are other podcast formats but I'm glad you found the one you're listening. And Dr Derson's material his books and his MBR program is available at successgrowthacademycom. The music is brought to you by my grandson. Well, thanks Greg, thanks John.
Speaker 2:As always.
Speaker 1:next time All right, man.