PRAGMATIC @ WORK – CONTROL IN THE WORKPLACE
I’ve been thinking about control a lot lately – how people react to it, what happens when we don’t have it and how we try to get it back.
Over the last 18 months we have seen the control we have over our lives shift dramatically. Freedoms we took for granted have been stripped away for the benefit of society. Victorians and those in NSW know this all too clearly.
When we don’t have control we often try to get it back. Anti-lockdown protests are an example of this. Protesters are trying to regain control by defying the current health orders. They are told to stay home, but they decide to go out. No one really knows if they think they will make a difference, but in the moment they feel in control.
Panic buying of toilet paper is another example. Being locked down for an unknown period of time is pretty confronting. We loose our freedoms (control of destiny) and this is a new feeling for many of us. To counter this, people spend money on things they think they need in order to regain control, albeit for a short period of time.
In extreme cases being without control leads to learned helplessness. Many studies show that when people and animals are deprived of control of daily activities they become helpless. If the situation continues, learned hopelessness sets in.
We humans have a funny relationship with control. We take credit for results that we don’t control. If you’ve ever said ‘I caught a fish’ it’s probably not true. While you may have put the bait on the hook and put the hook in the water, it was the fish that bit the hook and got caught. Without the fish doing what it did you wouldn’t be able to say you caught the fish. It was the fish that took the defining action here not you.
This leads to the second problem we have – we try and control things we have no right to. When we ask, “How can I get that customer to buy more from me?’ we are trying to control another person. The customer will choose to buy from whomever she feels like! This can be confronting for many sales people and managers to realise
Finally, we outsource what we should control. We outsource our feelings, attention and actions all the time. When someone says ‘I’m offended by that’, they have outsourced the way they feel to be dependant on someone else’s actions. To get around this, they then expect others to change their behaviour to match what they want so they are not offended. This is a bad place to be. At best it is playing the victim; at worst it is trying to control others.
We outsource our attention too. If you look at your phone every time it beeps you are handing over the control of your attention to every app with an algorithm in it.
We can have a better relationship with control by understanding our relationship with it. It enables us to ask a better question to get a better outcome. When we say, ‘I made a sale’ we’re trying to take credit of the actions the customer took. We might have presented an offer, but it was the customer who bought. When we ask, “How can I get the customer to buy more?” we’re trying to control someone else. We know we can’t do that, but we still keep trying too. It’s better to ask, “How can I be worth buying more from?”
And when we get angry/frustrated at the actions of others we can gain more control here too. Instead of trying to work out how to stop them doing what annoys you, simply change your reaction to their behaviour and stop getting annoyed. This is a lot easier than you think.
As always, I’d love your thoughts here.
