Episode 63: Reprimands that Actually Work

In the prior episode we identified the elements and delivery of a standard reprimand; why it undermines culture, creates an environment of low safety and doesn't stimulate growth. Now, we meet again to deliver the framework to reverse all of those outcomes. 

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to The Sovereign Guide. I'm your host, Alistair MacDonald. Let's get started.

Speaker 0:08

Is it possible that we can reprimand people in a way that actually catalyzes growth, that deepens connection, that makes people grateful for who you are? It's out there, and it's about to be yours. Let's jump in. In the last episode, I explained the history of the edification sandwich that since became the shite sandwich, and I, I just wanna go back to that for a moment because it's nobody's fault here. We use the term edify all the time. People say, "Well, edify this person, edify that," and of course, I shared with you what it actually means. But so this is one of those things that I talked about in the last episode about being right versus being effective. Uh, this is a classic case. I am right in terms of how I use edify. Others that are using edify thinking that it builds somebody up or kind of pedestalizes them are wrong. But guess what? I am not effective, which means I'm right, but it doesn't actually matter. This is why I wanted to go through this. I am right about what edify means and how I use it. Everybody else is wrong, at least everybody else using it the way that Mary Kay, uh, you know, the, the kind of... the leftover aspects of Mary Kay's edification sandwich. She was right because she was actually trying to instruct people in the middle. We've turned edify into pedestalize, when in fact it means, again, to morally ethically, and intellectually try to improve somebody and improve, quote, "their character." Those are heavy lifts. You've gotta really feel like you've got your stuff together to do that. But this is a- an example in real time, which is why I wanted to do this. I am right, but I am ineffective. What do I mean? There is no version of that podcast episode fundamentally changing the use and deployment and application of the word edify in the American business world. It's just not gonna happen. But this speaks to another critical piece. We know of memes, mimetic desire. We know of these things, so the mimesis, the original Latin term meaning to copy or replicate. Mimesis, M-I-M-E-S, changed by Richard Dawkins for the publication of his book, "The Selfish Gene," I think in 1976, where he turned it into meme, M-E-M-E, trying to hybridize it and make it sound like gene, which of course was the premise of "The Selfish Gene," the book that, uh- Uh, really cut a very deep groove in our understanding of biology all those years ago, and which is beautifully being revisited and maybe overturned as we speak. But that's got nothing to do with reprimands and what we're talking about. I mention this because the word edify has itself become a meme, meaning it has been memetically turned into something else. Here's the trippy thing about memes. for a meme to be successful, it does not need to be useful, it does not need to be accurate, it doesn't even need to be true. It just needs to propagate. That's all. That's what makes a meme successful is how much and how quickly it propagates. So the edify term used in business has propagated so widely that the meaning of the word itself will change before the world will change back to it. It's just a fascinating thing about linguistics. This shows up all the time. Many, many words no longer mean what they used to, and words we use today will be changed in the future. So I have no judgment about this. I carried a bit on the front end, pretty sure that I needed to tell the world what edify actually means, but it's pointless. I'm yelling into a cave. Nobody cares, and we've moved on, and we edify our associates and our doctors and our regional managers and stuff all the time. I'm right, but I'm not effective. I need to let it go, and I'm happy to do so. In deconstructing the standard versions of a reprimand in our last episode, you'll notice that we did some critical things. We talked to Jane about what she is, what she was doing, who she was. We talked about the mistakes that she was making. We talked about how long this has gone on for. All the while, I've been nice to you, you've been nice to me. You foolishly trusted that when I said it's good to see you, I meant it, only to discover that I've been carrying this resentment for months. And then finally, the absolute blow of all blows at the end is to let you know that the team members are struggling with this as well, that others have come to me. So, uh, you, the person, or the issue, I have tolerated this. You can no longer trust me, and of course, now you're looking at being excluded, which is, as we alluded to, there's a part of the brain that fires... There's exactly the same part of the brain that fires as if you're being shocked with a, with a weapon Nothing about this is of any value. If the core essence of a reprimand is to effect change and growth, this is not how we're gonna do it. And if we are, it's not gonna come from me because my dignity has been impaired and I am feeling shame, and shamed people will not contribute. Shamed individuals will not put their hand up and suggest ideas. The creativity you're looking for is not gonna come from Jane, and it's also not going to cause a system-wide, uh, or a, a process-oriented change because you focused on me, and I have focused on me in my self-defense in that reprimand. Let's think about the actual objective. We want change, we want growth. Not only do we want growth in our processes and our systems, but we must have growth in our people. It is the people in your business that built it. It is not the systems. I can't stress this enough. This is why I focus on complex problems with my docs and clients and so forth, because co-- solve complex problems and everything else is easy. Be brave enough to go straight to the wellspring of the tough stuff. Start there. You wanna be a better player, play better opponents, any game. You wanna get good at something, take on the best. You wanna get smarter, go to the hardest problems. You wanna become more intellectually robust, read the hard books until they finally make sense, and keep reading them until they do. That's a plus one for diving into the world of complex problems. This is a complex problem because Jane is going to respond to how I interact with her more than she is going to start thinking about what aspect of her job she could do better or differently. I mean, you can see this right away. The issue with complex problems, such as anything in the HR world, anything with employees, incentive systems, reprimands, et cetera, is that best we can hope for is a range of possible outcomes. But by shaming, impairing the dignity of, coming down on, and threatening to exclude them from the group, we are not going to get any of this. We've just only narrowed down that range to less and less attractive versions. I think by now the point is made. So if change is what we're looking for, why are we talking about the past? If improvement is what we seek, why are we so focused on Jane? If we actually believe that the employees on our team are there because they can produce results at a certain standard and are getting paid in exchange to do so, then why did I take the results back from her? Let's speak about that one for a moment. Let's start there. Instead of it being about this-- We're just gonna reverse everything. Here's the solution. Here's the magic core of what I teach, a concept called the clairvoyant reprimand. There's more nuance to it and application, but these are the core elements. Clairvoyant because I can see the future. I'm from the future, and I know how this goes. If I keep treating Jane this way, it's not gonna work out. She's not gonna work out. She's not gonna work harder for me, et cetera, et cetera. Jane has been empowered, hired, compensated for producing these results. Whose results are those? They have to be hers. You have to, not just for your own wellbeing, not just for your own wellbeing, but for increased efficacy, you have to give those standards back to her. Instead of, "These results are not good enough," it's, "Jane, I know these results aren't good enough for you." Give them back to her. This is her area. She's been doing this job for ten years. You've taken away her results. By taking away her results, you've told her that she's incapable, yet she's been getting paid all this time. Give them back their results. "Jane, I know how dedicated you are. I know the history you have of producing these results. This can't feel good for you. What do you think needs to happen for us to help you avoid this for the future?" Give her a path forward by starting with giving her results back. Give her results back to her. That's what she needs. Give them back. "Jane, I know this is not the standard that you typically hold yourself to, yourself to. That's why you're here. You're awesome. You have high agency in this domain. That's why I hired you." You hire somebody expecting them to take complete responsibility for things and then take it away when moment it falls apart, you are actively disabling them. You are undermining their skill set and their confidence and creativity. Give them back their results. That's the very first thing. "Jane, I'm just here to help you. I know that thing fell apart last week. That's the last thing you want, I'm sure. What do we need to do? What can I do to support you?" Support you with your problems, achieving your results Respect her and respect, the potential that you've talked about. Give her a chance. We're talking about going forward. Why do we talk about going forward? Because up until now, the whole reprimand has been focused in the past. Can you change anything in the past? Is there anything back there other than your-- their shame and reminders of their dignity being impaired, the stupid choice they made, the thing they overlooked, the issue they forgot? You go to the past to punish them in the present, but it creates no change because there is only one place that change can happen. It's in the future. There's one thing that change needs: hope. Hope lives in the future. There is no hope for the past. It is pointless, and it is there simply to punish. You do it to punish them. You do it to build a case. Look at all this, all of this just to justify your righteousness. Friends, the results are hers. You've observed it. You know that they're not good enough, and they're not good enough for her. You feel bad for her. Kicking a dog when is it-- when she's down. She's got agency. This is why you hired her. She's great at her stuff. What do you need from me? How can I help you? Now, there are steps to this. I'm not gonna go all the way through the three complete full cycle steps of the reprimand. I'm just gonna lay down the concepts here for you 'cause it's a, it's a specific tool that, uh, that only works all the time, but I'm sharing the concepts with you. You can build your own scaffolding if you don't want to use mine. First thing, the results are hers. The second is it's about the future. Why? 'Cause that's where hope lives, and hope has to be there in order for change to occur. You are there to collaborate on solutions, not punish for a past that has already run by. There is no mention of anybody else suffering. There is no need to suffocate someone's well-being by talking about how everyone is talking about them. Finally, we put a plan together What do you think we need? The first question is, what's missing here? What do we need? Do we need tools, time, resources, mentorship, support, personnel, understanding, more ideas? What do we need? What's missing? What's missing here? Once that's established, we can ask ourselves, "Okay, what do we need to choose differently?" If nothing was missing, what choices should we make to change the outcome? And then finally, a plan with a specific what I call a time harness. I think we've actually done a whole episode on time harnesses, which are applicable everywhere and useful all the time. "Jane, let's do this. We've talked about what's missing. I realized that you weren't aware of this change in the software. I understand what else was missing is Jack wasn't in the day before, so therefore you didn't get that report." Spot what's missing, then move to what was chosen. "Okay, we did that. What can we do to make different choices? How can you? What can I do?" Et cetera. It's all collaboration. If you are not collaborating to solve these things or your leads are not, you do not want progress. You want righteousness. You want somebody to feel bad in the hopes that that's gonna catalyze change. Ask yourself this. There's somebody in your life that just makes you feel bad all the time. I mean, hopefully you have or have had someone in your life that tries to manage you with guilt. Think about that person for a moment. Just get them in your mind, and my question for you is simple: How much time do you want to spend around that person? How often do you want to make an effort to be with them? Guilt is a poison. It is a repellent, and people that use guilt to keep us in relationships are simply ending that relationship earlier than necessary. And people that use guilt to keep us in a relationship are doing nothing but assuring that this relationship will decay, atrophy, or end much sooner than it needs to. Use guilt at your own peril. Don't allow it in your life, and more than anything, don't allow yourself to use it in the lives of others, especially individuals over whom you have a say of their wellbeing, especially over people that you manage, you're in charge of, you feed, you give, you pay. You have an authority there, and you're an authority figure that can very easily be abused, and it's cruel, and it's unnecessary. You don't need to do it. Time harness, collaboration. This is what we're gonna do Let's do this. We'll check in next week and we'll see how this version of it's going. Or two weeks from now, we'll know that this is working if we have, of course, negative KPIs, less of this happening, or positive KPIs, more of that happening, and see how it goes. This is the language and approach of a person that is oriented toward growth. This is the leader that is legitimately invested in change and progress. Or you can keep doing what you're doing. Looking at the results that it gives you, you can do that. I've actually had individuals say to me, well, I don't want to come across as weak. What a strange, strange thing to bring into this interaction. I don't want to do that because I don't want them to think they're getting away with any Getting away? Talk about not assuming the best. Why do you have people on your team that you assume the worst of? You've got a hiring problem or a personal philosophy problem. But I don't want them to think that, you know, that I'm weak. Weak? This has nothing to do with weakness. This is effectiveness. I don't know about you, but the most effective people in my life are the strongest I know. The people that don't get pulled into the ditch of acrimony and he said, she said, and can you believe? No, they just get stuff done. That's power. That's not weakness.

Speaker 2 17:16

So what I've covered here is really step one. This is a conceptual philosophical overhaul and overview of reprimands done effectively. As you can probably tell, there's typically more to a reprimand than just the actual initial meeting. It is common that individuals will need us to sit down with them again, uh, that it'll take a few meetings. It's also common that there are individuals that do not improve and ultimately work their way out the door. They have to move on. They're just not a good fit for us. Those are additional steps. All in, this is essentially part one of a three-part series in my clairvoyant reprimand. I call it, as I say, the clairvoyant reprimand because my cautions, my concern, my efforts are all oriented toward the place where hope lives in the future. The clairvoyant can see the future, and I can see this for them, and I don't want that. And that's where part one and part two of this three-part process actually go. For now, I'll leave you with this. There's more than enough here for you to think about how you might wanna overhaul your reprimands, and I certainly don't wanna take you halfway across a busy highway and leave you there. But there are other far more nuanced aspects that we have to hold the line on this particular philosophical thread all the way through, such that when we do finally let them go, should we have to, it will be completely aligned with the effectiveness, the kindness, the benevolence, and the specificity and high standards that this whole process is oriented toward creating as an outcome. But that's for another time. For now, I leave you here.

Speaker 3 19:07

That's it for this episode. Thanks for being here. Hey, there's only two things that you have in your life, your time and your attention, that you've given both to me for these few minutes of today means everything. Cheers.