What are you enabling?

Sometimes I find it incredibly hard to see what is right before my eyes.  Do you ever experience that?

You’re looking at something but you can’t see what you’ve got…until you reach out and ask for help.  

So that’s what I did this morning and it’s why I believe all of us in leadership roles need to be comfortable with asking for help.  You know, from someone we can bounce ideas around with, be challenged by and be held accountable by.  

In my case, I knew exactly what I wanted to say.  I had the letters of the acronym I wanted to form, but I couldn’t see a “word”.  A quick call to my sounding board and with a bit of insightful coaching, I had it:  EMIT!

So let’s talk about EMIT and what it’s got to do with poor employee behaviour.

The thing is, if you’ve got behaviour in your workplace that you don’t like, it’ll be because of YOU …AND one of these four things. Today, let’s look at the first of those things – it starts with the letter ‘E.’ 

E is for ENABLE: 

As leaders, we often enable poor behaviour by our very own behaviour.  Let me say that again in a different way, so that there’s no doubt about the meaning: One of the ways we get poor behaviour is because we ENABLE it.

Take for example the boss who gives his or her staff everything they ask for.  Time off when numbers are already tight, cash bonuses that aren’t linked to performance, expensive end-of-month social events for no reason other than bonding, extra leave because of “personal” circumstances.  

Those same leaders then wonder why their employees bring an attitude of entitlement to the workplace and won’t volunteer for anything over and above normal, without some kind of reward or exchange.  

The staff, in these situations, know that they’ll get whatever they ask for, so they keep demanding more, waiting to see where the boundaries are.  In effect, the leader has trained them to be demanding.  The leader has taught them that they get rewarded if they take advantage.  And the leader has demonstrated by their actions that they would rather acquiesce than say, “no.”

For some of us, saying “no” is really difficult. If we have a high need for social acceptance, we don’t want to risk people not liking us.  If we have a high need for long-term affiliation, we won’t want to rock the boat. If we have a strong need for harmony, we’ll avoid situations that may result in conflict.  In short, we give in, and by our silence, enable poor behaviour.   

Time for a bit of self-reflection then, before the next instalment – letter ‘M’:  look around you – are there some poor behaviours that you could be enabling?  If there are, I encourage you to share your reflections – we can all learn from better awareness – it’s the foundation of engaged leadership.

And if you’d like some data-driven insight into what your workplace needs around social interaction, affiliation, and harmony look like, try the Predictive Index assessment for free right now  – it only takes 5 minutes.