The ‘whole’ person paradigm
When you see people only as fulfilling a function, you’re treating them like a thing, like the chair you’re sitting on. I don’t think we as humans can assume the right to do that. None of us want to be just something standing in a corner. We found the greatest satisfaction for an employee is to feel part of something and to feel trusted to make decisions and contribute. ~ Horst Schulze
Consider your employees as things which started in the “Industrial Age” when all what we needed from an individual was the body without caring about the mind, heart and spirit; and they will treat your customers the same way they are treated. That would be legitimate to be very frank!
What do we mean then by the ‘whole’ person paradigm?
Use me creatively (mind), pay me fairly (body), treat me kindly (heart), in serving human needs in principled ways (spirit)
~ Stephen Covey
The last element being the most important of all, and what would give birth to an organizational mission statement. This would make everybody learn to focus on what it important, but not urgent. We need to understand that what is making people answer others’ emergencies – sometimes not even important — is the lack of direction. No clear shared vision. No clear shared mission. We are only doing what we are doing to be popular; to be accepted. I will probably go through how to build this mission statement, how to use the 4th generation planner in which we plan all our life’s priorities another time. For now, I will only tell you it has the power – among other factors — of transforming us from productive anxious individuals into effective ones.
While productivity is doing what we are asked to do the right way, effectiveness is doing the RIGHT thing the right way.
Is having formulated the organizational mission statement enough to take both people and the organization to the next level? I wish it could be that easy… It is only one of the crucial elements. Even when people do the self-awareness exercise — guiding them to dig deeply and discover what they stand for – very seriously and with a heart open to embrace the change and unleash who they truly are, it is really easy to get trapped in their auto-pilot mode and subconscious program patterns. A real transformation takes time.
What will we need then?
The promotion of a Win-Win paradigm; which is implicitly empowering every single individual, making them able of tapping into their internal resources and gifted talents.
The Win-Win Paradigm
In order for the Win-Win paradigm to become the way to go, there are some requirements the C-levels need to take into consideration. Why the C-levels? Because they are the ones setting the tone.
The center, the different interactions types and moving from reactivity to productivity (sub-title)
We need to start working on discovering the biased centers. This can be done using the 4th generation planner. Those distorted centers are defining our interactions. There will basically be two resulting kinds (there are other types, but those are the main ones):
- Win-Lose: people using power, possessions, or manipulation to get their way. Their success means others’ loss. In management style, the Win-Lose is the authoritarian approach.
- Lose-Win: people who are always giving their power and accepting loss for the sake of popularity or acceptance. They don’t have any standards.
Then, we progressively move to the universal correct principles center through a daily self-awareness exercise to re-write the program in alignment with the principles; which leads to the first part of our transformation: from reactivity to a proactivity. We are mainly moving from the personality traits (unhealthy ego sphere) to the character traits (self-love arena) among which the most vital ones are: 1. Integrity, 2. Maturity, and 3. Abundance mentality.
Building relationships
From the character foundation, we start building Win-Win relationships and begin the second part of the transformation: from proactivity to interdependency!
When I am physically interdependent, I know that I can do any physical task alone, but I also recognize that, you and I working together, could do much better than, even at my best, I can accomplish alone. If I am emotionally interdependent, I am self-resilient and whole, but I also admit my need for sharing love. If I am intellectually interdependent, I can easily admit that our analytical skills put together could take us to the farthest places I would have never been able to reach alone!
Business is not about reporting, following on some goals, giving some dehumanized feedback, finding a guilty person for some crisis. Business is sharing core values (already summarized in the organizational mission statement), and building healthy relationships first; which starts by building trust!
This is requiring a number of deposits I will not go through in this essay. What we need to remember is those building relationships is part of effective people priorities. Those principle-centered people find the idea of «investing their time & effort in what’s important» exciting, and will always have sufficient, independent will power to say “no” – pleasantly, smiling, unapologetically – to other only seemingly urgent but unimportant activities.
The reward system (sub-title)
And last but not least, an important area to work on, so that to maintain a Win-Win paradigm within the organization is a system aligned with it. This is linked to the second part of the ‘whole’ person paradigm.
If you talk « Win-Win » but reward « Win-Lose », you’ve got a losing program on your hands. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals & values. The spirit of Win-Win cannot survive in an environment of contests.
~ Stephen Covey
What is that meaning practically speaking? Let’s suppose there is a critical project requiring the cooperation of twenty people. The size of the compensation pie should be based on cooperation, but a particular individual’s piece of the pie would be based upon individual efforts; thus, nurturing both interdependence (cooperation) and independence (personal plus-value).
A simple example could be: the cooperation compensation is 80% of the pie. It is granted to every person of the twenty in the form of “Gifts tickets”. The 20% remaining are distributed as a bonus depending on the individual contribution. If it is a sales department for instance, how many contracts each one singed.
The idea here is that, without cooperation, NOBODY would get anything!
Conclusion:
What could we do to make businesses effective during and after this COVID-19 crisis? Two options:
- Coaching the C-levels to become servant leaders — which is anything but a quick fix – so that they could lead the transformational change within the organization as a second step.
- Promoting servant leaders to C-levels; worst-case scenario to some positions with a formal authority and a certain flexibility in taking initiatives. Those servant leaders will not have to master any technical skills. This is for management who would need them for the sake of helping their teams enhance their knowledgeability, and getting their hands dirty whenever required.
The latter seems to me way more efficient!
P.S. Please be aware there is another important axe to work on we call the ‘Performance agreements and the delegation’. This will probably be introduced another time.
As I have already written in this group, I think that the leader of the time of the coronavirus is, first of all, a resilient leader, who takes care of his collaborators, also involved in their personal and family matters. Provides exhaustive and transparent communications, which authentically manifest gratitude towards every action, every idea, every feedback, even if negative. That creates a climate in which one trusts each other, recognizing the specialist skills of each one, welcoming feedback as an opportunity for improvement, measures what happens, in a meticulous way and redirects sharing decisions based on facts.
But he is also a leader who maintains a high sense of humor: making fun of himself, accepting mistakes, joking about pressure, exorcising the fear of contagion, means creating teams in which people, although physically tired and in some cases seriously worried, they manage to give their best with a great sense of responsibility.
This is what needs to be done due to the need for reaction, speed, sense of urgency and responsibility.
I believe that this could apply to any leader, entrepreneur or politician.
Yaaaaaay love this valuable input dear friend! 👏👏👏 Thank you for stopping by and for sharing some of your wisdom! 🙏🌞🙏
Myriam — Your advice is sound whether we we’re in a pandemic or not. I respectfully disagree with one of my colleagues here that “businesses exist to make money.” Businesses exist to provide value – products and services – to prospective customers. If that value is of a sufficient nature, they will exchange money to get it. If not, they won’t.
There is overwhelming research to support the idea that employees will feel more engaged and thus be more productive if they operate alongside an emotionally intelligent servant leader. Engaged employees are more apt to stay with a company, thus saving the company the expense of rehiring and retraining a new employee. If those employees are more productive, they will save the company operating expenses, which can be used to reward shareholders or be reinvested to provide new products and services.
Operating as a servant leader doesn’t mean turning a company into a social service agency either. It means valuing the contributions – the labor, voice and thinking – of each employee. It means building an organization that thrives on collaboration and team work versus internal competition.
I was fortunate to work for an inspiring servant leader whose mantra was “Profits sustain us, but they don’t define us.” What sustained us was her attitude and behavior that we mattered. That translated into us developing superior products and services on behalf of the customers we served, and that translated into exceeding financial goals.
Running a business this way isn’t rocket science. It’s a recognition that people matter; they’re not just parts that can be used, used up, and thrown away.
Thank you!
No thank you Jeff my friend for having restored my faith and realizing I’m not an alien! I value this adding so much; really means the world ! Thank you again 🤩
Very interesting views Myriam, thank you so much…still thinking here🙏
I’m glad it was thought-provoking my friend! 🤩
Myriam, I will respectfully disagree with the entire content of your article! Promoting a “servant leader to a C-level position which they are in all likelihood unqualified for is a recipe for disaster. The same holds true for coaching C-levels to become “servant leaders’ is equally irresponsible. Most businesses exist to make money. They should be responsive to their employees in times of n emergency or crises. As an employee, you were hired to a position that had various tasks assigned to it. In exchange, you agreed to work for X amount of dollars. You cannot turn a business into a social service agency. Right now some many businesses are struggling just to stay in business. There is no time nor will there likely be any time in the near future to try to change one person into this person. In general, business is not meant to operate in this manner.
I can only respect your opinion even though this is the main reason making businesses struggling in the first place ☺️
As usual, my prolific Middle Eastern soul sister, you provide a munificence of wisdom always woven with a parable. What a fabulous article! Thank you for this!💖
I’m so glad you finished this long article my beautiful Darlene! It means a lot 🤩