#4-09/21/06: Can People Change?
Can People Really Change? (Part 2)
The Answer To The Million Dollar Question.
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, September 21, 2006
Good morning!
I’m now going to answer the question I posed in the previous blog---“Can People Really Change?” In the previous blog I pondered exactly what that question meant. And I’ll now answer it in two ways. First I’m going to say that if the question is really asking if people can change their personalities, if they can change “who” they are, then my answer is “I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter”.
A manager’s job is not to “change” someone. If that’s the manager’s life mission they should have been a therapist.
Second, a better question to ask is, “Do People Change Their Behavior?” And the answer is absolutely “YES”.
As a manager, your job is to get a specific behavior from people, behaviors that support the goals of the organization, not to change their personality.
People are constantly changing their behaviors to get what they want and a manager’s job is to find a way to get people to behave in such a way that is productive for the team, the company, the project, and the individual.
In fact, that’s exactly why I got the reputation of being a manager who could build high performance teams with people no other managers wanted to work with. I was able to focus on getting the behavior that I wanted. And it’s why my coaching programs produce such powerful results (I know that’s blatant self-promotion, but it’s a fact.)
The best way to think of it is this way. Imagine that each human being is an iceberg floating in the sea of life. (Sounds poetic doesn’t it?) From our birth through our early years our iceberg has the potential to float pretty high in the water. A good deal of our potential way of being, our potential personality and the behaviors produced are visible for all the world to see. We play, we express ourselves, we laugh, we cry according to some internal and innate sense of who we are and who we can be and who we are becoming! Our behavior is flexible and varied.
Then life occurs and “stuff” gets added on top of our iceberg and more and more of our iceberg gets pushed under the surface of life, invisible to most people. We “grow up”, we go to college, we become technical professionals and our iceberg gets well defined as a “technical professional’s” iceberg. Now life just keeps happening and maybe all of a sudden the waters change. Maybe they get warmer; maybe they get colder; maybe they get rougher; maybe they get calmer. Whatever new situation arises, it’s a new situation and the question becomes, “What happens to our iceberg?”
Well, we generally attempt to ride in the “new” waters the same way we rode in our “old” waters. And often that doesn’t work. So a manager, coach, mentor comes along and starts to interact with us. All of a sudden things are different. The person (in this case, the “we”) begins to behave differently. As I said, in my career, my experience is that I can take people who have not been willing to change their behavior and when they find themselves traveling in the waters I manage, they’re different. What’s unique? Is it me, is it the other person, or have both of us led to this difference?
I’ve now come to understand what happens not so much as a change process at the core of an individual but as a “potential” for changed behavior and the appearance of that changed behavior in the world. You see, many people are hiding most of their potential under the waters’ surface, out of view of the world. If you know how to change the surface “weight” on their iceberg, (i.e., the environment, the communication, their relationship to their world) you can actually get people to “expose” a capability they have always had but that hasn’t been visible, yet. The capability has always been there and because of fear, or lack of need, or lack of knowledge, it stayed hidden. The really exquisite manager, or mentor, or coach, can bring this capability to the surface and help the person expose it and all of a sudden it looks like the person has changed when in reality they’ve had the capability all along and all that is different is that the person is behaving differently. Have they “changed” at the core? Maybe; maybe not.
But as a manager, I’m not interested if they’ve changed at their core, I’m most interested in their ability to change their behavior.
Now some people don’t have certain capabilities. No amount of coaching, managing, or mentoring will bring a behavior to the surface if it’s not under the surface to begin with. For those people, training and desire are then necessary. For example, let’s say my manager decided that the company needed a brain surgeon and I should be it. I’m not a brain surgeon and I haven’t been trained as a brain surgeon. It’s not a reasonable potential for me, yet. No amount of coaching, mentoring, or managing is going to make me a brain surgeon by uncovering that hidden capability. In order for me to be a brain surgeon I have to want it, badly, and I have to be trained in it. Once trained, I can have that behavior as a potential.
Likewise, if a manager wants an employee to behave differently and the necessary capabilities are not there, such as communication skills, or management skills, or and interpersonal skills, no amount of prodding is going to make it happen. The direct report will have to want to make those changes and will have to acquire the knowledge and training necessary to have those capabilities.
On the other hand, if your manager wants you to make a presentation to a thousand people, and you already have comfort speaking in front of a few people, but you just haven’t spoken to a thousand people before, then getting you to step up on stage to speak to a thousand people is merely a capability that has been hidden from view. And in the right circumstances, that behavior will show up.
So I’ve come to believe that I don’t know the answer to the question “Do people change?” What I have concluded is that people have a vast potential that is unexplored, unexposed, and not used in the way they can behave. A vast potential of how they can become given the opportunity. And there are two requirements for a behavior to show up. Number one they have to want it. A desire to have the new capability and the new behaviors is a necessary but not sufficient requirement. The second required component is the exquisite mentor, coach, or manager who can create an environment where some of that vast potential of the person can indeed be exposed. It’s what Peter Drucker meant when he said a manager’s job is to emphasize people’s strengths and make their weaknesses irrelevant.
There you have it. Like the iceberg, there is much more under these words that goes into their application. This is the process that I use in my coaching program. At some point in your career, as a technical professional you’ll be asked to behave not so much as an engineer, scientist, or technologist, but as team leader, a manager, a facilitator, or marketing communicator (or maybe you’ve already been asked). All or some of these requested behaviors might be potential behaviors that have been hidden but have not yet become available to you. How do you make the shift? How do you behave differently and keep yourself intact. This is where coaching, and judgment come into play.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 09/21 at 09:22 AM Engineer to Technical Manager • Becoming a manager • Technical Manager • Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • (0) Comments • Permalink
#3-09/18/06: Can People Change?
Can People Really Change?
The Million Dollar Question.
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, September 18, 2006
Good morning!
Recently I was in a coaching session with a high level technical manager at a high-technology company. This manager has been struggling with a difficult direct report. In the course of our session the manager asked me point blank: “Can people really change. I’m beginning to get to the point where I think we really can’t change people.”
Now that’s the $1 million question, isn’t it? As managers, can we change people? Should we change people? Do we have the ability or even the right to contemplate the phrase; “Can I change this person?
Have you changed? Have people close to you changed? When you think about whether you have changed are you looking at a time frame of months, or years, or decades? When you ask the question: “Have I changed?” what’s your answer? Do you respond, “Well I’m the same person but I’m different too.” “Different in what ways?” “The same in what ways?” If you focus on what’s the same, does it mean you haven’t changed? If you focus on what’s different, does it mean you have changed?
Can we change people only if they want to change? Do we change at the “surface” but not at our “core”? What is the core anyway? If I’m a technical person am I a “technical person” for the rest of my life? Do people need a life-altering situation in order to change?
Frankly I don’t know the answers to these questions. These are age-old questions, aren’t they? I like to think that people change and yet for every example I can give you of how someone has made a miraculous change I can give you another example of someone who has resisted change. Is there a “truth” in there somewhere or is it just my perspective? I believe that anyone who tells you they know the answers to these questions is full of hot air.
Having said all that you might ask, “Well, as a technical manager, what’s the use of trying to help people to be successful? People come to work as who they are and that’s that. They either do their job or they don’t. It’s not my job as their manager to change them.”
Now that last paragraph is one I really don’t agree with. I do think there are certain boundaries and generalities that we can make about the possibility of human change. I’ve seen people make radical shifts or changes in behavior in my years as a manager. Is a shift in behavior a change in them or just a change in behavior? Remember, as a manager, you ultimately manage a person’s behavior; you don’t manage changes in a person’s personality. What you want as a manager is a specific behavior from an individual, not their soul. Let me explain; let’s take this a step at a time:
First, we probably all know people who fall into the category in which they are not going to change, no matter what. They are set in their ways and they’ll gladly say so to anyone who will listen. They like themselves just the way they are, and it’s clear, just in conversation that they are not interested in changing one bit. These are not the people I’m talking about here. We can exclude them from this conversation.
Second, we also probably know people who don’t seem to have a sense of themselves. They adopt whatever demeanor, behavior, and personality are best suited to the situation. They are also not the people I am talking about here. We can exclude them from this conversation as well.
The third group comprises the people I am talking about and they are those people who have some sense of themselves in a way that is stable and identifiable to the outside world. Their way of moving through the world, their way of being, for them, has worked well enough in life. Perhaps things have moving along just fine and now they are coming up against some “personal life force or situation” that requires them to change in order to deal with it. They can either change and deal with the situation successfully or they can revert to old behaviors and get hammered by the situation. The bottom line is that we probably have enough experience in our own life and in our observations of others to know that about 50% of the time people change and 50% of the time they get hammered.
From this third situation what are we to conclude? Are we to conclude that people don’t change, that people do change, or that some people can change and some don’t? As I said earlier in this blog, to this question I must say that I don’t really know the answer. But I do have a different way to think about this that makes a great deal of sense to me and explains the observable facts better than the black and white answers, “yes” or “no”.
I’ll elaborate in Thursday’s blog. See you then.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 09/18 at 08:41 AM Engineer to Technical Manager • Becoming a manager • Management • Technical Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Communication for engineers • Soft Skills for engineers • (0) Comments • Permalink
#2-09/14/06: Using Your Skills?
Are you using all your skills at work?
Most technical professionals aren’t.
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, September 14, 2006
Hello,
I want to introduce you to what is probably a new concept for you. The name of the concept is, “The Fully Integrated Technical Professional©”. I’ll explain what that means in this blog.
You go to college to learn your trade. You learn how to be an “individual contributor”, a technical professional who can solve specific technical problems. That’s all well and good.
Then you work at a company for a number of years and slowly or perhaps not so slowly you are given greater responsibility, especially responsibility for the management of projects and the management of a small team. You are expected to contribute positively to the team and maybe even display a little leadership in meetings. You are expected to be able to compromise and find the most effective solution in collaboration with your colleagues, those down the hall and those halfway around the world. You are expected to communicate and communicate well with a wide variety of people.
And from this situation there are two possible paths your career can take. You either do all this well and you succeed and therefore move along a path to management, or you don’t succeed, you crash, and you get relegated to doing “technical work” only. Now don’t get me wrong, you may choose to be the manager or you may choose to remain completely focused on the technical work.
The operative word here is “choose”. If you choose the path you want, fine. But many technical professionals, who get relegated to the technical world after attempting the management path, don’t get to choose. They find they haven’t measured up and they are disappointed, frustrated, and bitter. In fact, it’s mostly for this reason that many companies have developed the “dual-track” for those technical professionals who want to stay technical and those who want to become managers. The dual track allows technical people to “stay technical” throughout their careers, and while some choose this path, some end up there because they didn’t know how to make the successful transition to management.
Here is my position; let’s throw this whole concept of two paths and failing on any one of them out the window. Let’s make what we do with our careers a choice… a conscious choice, made because we understand what we want to do and what we are best suited to do.
That means that when you graduate from college and enter the work force as a technical professional you have one of two major paths to take; either you remain primarily technical or you move into technical management. However, whatever path you take you will contribute ALL of your capabilities. Regardless of whether you stay technical or you become a manager you will develop your skills at communicating with anyone in any situation. You will develop your ability to manage and lead be it in a meeting or with a company wide project. You will learn how to think systemically. You will learn how to vary your communication style so that you can motivate people whether in a small meeting down the hall or when talking to an auditorium full of your employees.
This then is what it is to be a Fully Integrated Technical Professional. It is to be a fully developed contributor to your organization either as a technologist or as a technical manager. It’s to continue your personal development process after college. It’s to be able to live your professional career from a position of choice not from of position of limitation. The Fully Integrated Technical Professional is a technical professional first. It’s someone who understands to varying degrees technology, its implications, and its capabilities. And it is someone who can also communicate and interact with, understand, and motivate people and situations so that things can get done, not just by one person, but also by many people. Remember, the days of living in the corner lab and working alone to accomplish what needs to be done are mostly gone. Look around. Nothing of significance gets done anymore without the contributions of many people. To me, the Fully Integrated Technical Professional is the only way to be a technical person in the 21st century. Like I often say, the Fully Integrated Technical Professional is a technical professional who is more than technical.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 09/15 at 10:25 AM Inter-Personal People Skills • Fully Integrated Tech Professional • (0) Comments • Permalink