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CHAPTER 1

TAKING YOUR POWER BACK

In everyone's life at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the human spirit.

— Albert Schweitzer

Most management activity today is what was alluded to by the Peter Drucker quote at the beginning of this book. Managers make it difficult for their people. They unknowingly kill, or at least diminish, the human spirit by their old-school micromanaging and critical judgments.

But there is a new kind of manager emerging in companies today, a manager devoted to rekindling the human spirit by keeping their hands off their employees and allowing success to happen. We'll just call these enlightened people "hands-off managers." Managers have these two primary communication styles from which to choose:

1. Hands-on: They can criticize, control, threaten, and judge their people.

2. Hands-off: They can mentor, encourage, coach, and genuinely care about their people.

This choice presents itself many times throughout every day. Every interaction with one of your people is going to be a version of this choice.

If you choose judgment (and criticism, implied or otherwise), you will provoke defensiveness and withdrawal — not creativity and productivity.

When we judge our people and find them coming up short, we then start to criticize and micromanage them. In this age of the sensitive, knowledge-based worker, that's a self-destructive cycle. It engenders nothing but resentment and push-back.

Also, when we judge and then hold a grudge, we are giving our power away. When we resent a team member, we are giving our power to that team member. We are giving that power to the very person we are angry with by allowing him or her to occupy and dominate our thinking. We are focused on the problem and not the solution.

Real power in leadership comes from partnering, not criticizing.

The hands-off manager sets himself apart by retaining all his power. His practice is to understand everyone he meets, to see more in his people than they are seeing and to invite them to that vision.

By doing this, he is reducing his own stress level at work. He is completely aware that every time he judges someone he alters his own well-being.

So he refuses to assign the responsibility for negative feelings to the person he is tempted to judge. He assigns the responsibility for these feelings to his beliefs regarding that person.

Only thoughts cause stress; people do not. People cannot.

But for the old-school micromanager the stress never quits, and the harmony in the organization never holds.

If you are micromanaging in the old style of shame and blame, you will recognize this example: You're pulling into the company parking garage and suddenly have to slow down because there's an old person in front of you going slower than molasses. If you then decide you don't like older people who drive slowly, you start to suffer. And you will suffer every time this "happens" to you. Even though it's not really happening to you, it is being caused by you — the stress comes directly from your thought. The older person has no power to stress you out. You think you are suffering because this oldster is driving poorly, but the truth is you are only suffering because of your judgmental thought about him or her.

We all want to be powerful and in control of our own well-being, but we continually give away the very power we seek by our inability to forgive and let go. The only way out of this trap of constant suffering is to cultivate the open-minded, hands-off skills of letting the actions of others roll off our backs and letting other people's negativity go in one ear and out the other.

Anything we cannot let go of has control over us. But once we can let go, we're in control. We can laugh and enjoy how we are unaffected by what other people might be doing.

That's when you change as a manager.

That's when people see you as an island in the storm. A person to go to for peaceful resolutions of crises. In other words, a true hands-off manager who gets results from a relaxed, enthused, and highly productive team.

How to open your energy field

The hands-off approach allows you to learn to take your power back and live in a world of quiet action and non-judgment. If you do this, you'll soon be living with an open mind, forgiving effortlessly and taking back control of your energy and enthusiasm for doing great work.

Discovering your natural gifts and learning your true nature is not about learning how to force yourself upon your team. It's about allowing success to emerge from within you, and then from inside others. It's an inside job. And once you see that all real power comes from the inside, you can start to become powerful.

There is a story about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that illustrates what we mean. A young would-be composer wrote to Mozart, asking advice about how to compose a symphony. Mozart responded that a symphony was a complex and demanding musical form, and that it would be better to start with something simpler. The young man protested: "But Herr Mozart, you wrote symphonies when you were younger than I am now!"

Mozart replied, "Yes, but I never asked how."

Mozart's point was that he simply let the symphonies emerge from within him. He didn't have to figure out how to force something outside him to work.

Duane has a saying he uses at work, although it doesn't apply only to work; it applies to life in general. His saying is, "Find them, don't fix them." It's a policy that encourages finding strengths in your employees that already exist, and allowing those strengths to come forward. It also applies to finding the right people for the job, people whose natural skills and interests align with the work you are asking them to do.

When they do what they love the success will follow. Once you know what they love to do and help them do it, they'll do it for you all day long. Keep finding ways to match their talents with the tasks ahead. Find them, don't fix them.

And there will always be employees for whom you don't find a good job match. Nothing seems to make them happy. Soon, you know in your heart they aren't a fit for the team you have.

Old-school managers have a hard time dealing with this realization. They keep trying to fix things. They keep trying to fix people. They go through endless inept exercises to try to find ways to motivate mismatched employees to get them to do what they really don't want to, and are not interested in or excited about doing. They try to find ways to make them change themselves into someone they are not. This is a waste of everyone's energy!

Our hands-off manager's commitment to finding how our people can fit rather than fixing people who don't fit has been the central factor in the success of teams. Take the case of Barry.

Barry was so stressed by his financial debts at home that he pushed hard for a sales management position early in his employment, and got it. (Barry was very persuasive and a crafty communicator.) However, Barry simply did not enjoy the responsibilities of leadership. He was easily frustrated with salespeople who didn't have his natural love of cold-calling and meeting new people. Even though he tried to learn our principles of coaching success instead of forcing it on people, he was still unhappy, and the results showed it.

We finally identified the mismatch and convinced the CEO, Glenda, not to keep trying to "fix" Barry with leadership training and negative performance reports. We asked that Glenda "find" Barry — the real Barry, the true, natural salesperson wanting (but not being allowed) to emerge.

Finally Glenda saw the light and repositioned Barry as a senior major account salesperson and turned him loose in the field where Barry loved to be. After four months, Barry's commissions were enormous, and he was able to settle all his financial crises at home while loving the job he was doing.

Glenda had just taken her hands off Barry's natural inclination to succeed. And this powerfully effective "find them, don't fix them" approach also applies to us as individuals. We benefit when we continue finding out who we are and letting that discovery manifest in the outside world, rather than trying to fix ourselves.

Learning to turn in a new direction

1. We often enjoy going in person to hear the teachings of a dear friend, a philosopher/guru named George Addair who holds wonderful workshops on personal evolution. (This book is dedicated to him.) One of his sayings is "You never overcome anything." In this Addair means that anything that has been a part of your history will always be a part of your history. You can't make it go away. However, over time, if you choose to, you can simply defuse and dismiss it and go another way. You can follow another path so that the memory loses all its power over you.

2. When leaders are bold and decisive throughout the day, they often make mistakes and bad calls. It's part of being in action. It's a big part of courage. George Patton used to say that an average plan executed right now is far more effective than a great plan that takes a long time to decide to put into action.

3. A hands-off leader can just release a mistake and let go of it. And while it doesn't disappear, it simply becomes old news. It's this letting go of the need to "overcome" things that happened in the past that leads to becoming truly powerful.

4. The Greek word metanoeo is translated as "repent' in the English New Testaments, and W.E. Vine's Dictionary states that it means "to perceive afterwards." Therefore, it means to take another look and to change one's mind or purpose, and it always involves a change for the better. So repentthen means nothing more than "turn and go another way." Some traditions have been trying to teach us that if you've done something wrong, you should punish yourself, feel remorse, and burden yourself with your shameful behavior. What the literal translation really wants you to do is just turn away from it and take a newer, better direction in your thinking.

5. When I reflect on my recovery from addiction years ago I realize I didn't really "overcome" my addiction. I simply took another path. I repented, in the truer, deeper meaning of the word. I realize, too, that if I were to get back on the path of alcohol and drugs I'd have the same problems all over again. The code is there in my brain for addictive drinking. So if I started drinking again, it would be addictive. And it doesn't matter whether the code came from repetitive use or genetics; it's there, so I just don't go there. The process is to not go there. To replace the false spirit of drugs with true spirit.

6. I know from my personal experience that "overcoming" truly doesn't work. It doesn't have any track record of working in the workplace, either. And when you hear people who are newly happy with their jobs now, they say, "I've moved on. I've just moved on." They don't say, "Well, I was able to come to grips with it, wrestle with it, overcome it, conquer it, defeat it." No one who is truly free of a problem such as addiction says, "I was able to overcome, defeat my alcoholism, and it lies in a heap and I am victorious over it." They just say, "I've moved on. I've accepted my powerlessness and taken another path. It's not a part of my life. I've chosen a different way, a different form of spirit than alcohol."

7. Carl Jung said, "People do not solve their psychological problems, in my experience. They outgrow them. They grow in a different direction and just leave them in their history." This is what the process of allowing success is all about. It's the heart and soul of hands-off management. It's considered a revolutionary form of management because it breaks the old codes of manipulation and mistrust.

8. Some therapists say that in order to move on, you must reenact a conversation you had with your antagonist all over again and resolve that memory that's inside you. But that's just giving more strength to the story. And we are looking to free you from your stories. Micromanagers in the workplace do the same dysfunctional thing those therapists do. They relive breakdowns and mistakes and go over and over them, making people wrong all day long.

Why not just leave it there and move on? Release its power over you. See it in a different light so that you can focus on your natural talents, your God-given gifts, and bring the best of who you are to the surface.

The hands-off manager uses this principle to not carry grudges; he meets every person in the workplace with equal trust and understanding. The past is merely something you have learned from. The mistakes were a blessing, because you now know how to do it better going forward.

Most micromanagers in old-school organizations today immediately think that when things go awry, they have to overcome them. They imagine a Rambo figure who can overcome any odds and can fight off 50 or 100 people at a time if he has to, because he is so strong in his ability to overcome. Our national macho mythology nurtures an image of a guy who is really muscular and adept at fighting. So we build into our culture and collective psyches the idea that "If I only became stronger, if I only worked out harder, if I only ran more miles, or went to more seminars, or pushed myself harder, then I'd finally become strong enough to deal with the issues my team is facing."

But the opposite is true. If you want a strong mind, you must learn to quiet your mind. If you want real power, you must learn to let go. Greatness exists within everyone, and your biggest job is to get out of its way and let it come through.

Doing this will eventually make you incredibly powerful. Not so strong that you can lift hundreds of pounds at one time, but strong in a different, deeper way. So strong that you can discipline your mind and discipline your thoughts to let go of anything that isn't serving you. So strong that your people draw their strength and calm from you — just from being with you! You don't have to say anything for them to feel how peacefully powerful you are. They warm up to your vision, and teamwork begins to emerge of its own accord. It's being inspired to happen instead of forced to happen.

No more team-building seminars

Companies often ask me for a seminar in team-building. I don't give them anymore. I know that if people are not performing and communicating with team spirit, it's not a team-building issue, it's a leadership issue.

I am very direct with the manager asking for the training. I want her to see that great leadership will create a culture in which teamwork will simply grow. They don't need team-work training. The manager herself needs hands-off leadership training so she can learn to mentor success instead of trying to impose productivity.

If you are a newly enlightened manager you have begun with a shift in awareness. You've pulled your power back from the external world of form to the internal world of energy. You now know how to shift your awareness up and over the bothersome event so that you can see another more productive path to take.

You cannot be attacked from this lofty position. Even if people say negative things about you, you don't end up giving your power to them. You keep it in yourself. "Negative" occurrences don't bother you so much anymore because you simply use them for practice. You actually gain strength from them.

Is it a tough discipline? Yes! It may be even harder than working out with weights. Because it's so counterintuitive at first. It goes against our whole upbringing and training.

Learning the inner game

When you study people in history who knew the secret of inner allowing versus outer overcoming, you find that they usually had long, happy lives. Bernard Baruch, who died in 1965 at the age of 95, was an American financier, stock market and commodities speculator, statesman, and presidential adviser.

After his success in business, he devoted his time to advising a range of American presidents, including Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy, on economic matters for more than 40 years. Baruch was highly regarded as an elder statesman. He was a man of immense charm who enjoyed a larger-than-life reputation that matched his considerable fortune. Baruch is remembered as one of the most powerful men of the early 20th century.

When asked about his long life and success, Bernard Baruch said he discovered the key when he was younger. He said, "In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves."

What? Ourselves? Not overcoming outside obstacles?

Here is another way to look at the hands-off manager's shift in inner awareness. Imagine going to the airport with a huge suitcase. You don't even consider trying to take it onto the plane with you because you know it won't fit or be allowed. So you check your bag and let the airline take care of it.

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Excerpted from "The Hands - Off Manager"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Steve Chandler and Duane Black.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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