What They Need, Not Just What We Want…

Earlier, as I emphasized that even the most powerful organizational or individual purpose won’t completely replace the need for equitable compensation, I shared that we can’t communicate with all of our team members the same way and expect the same results, suggesting the idea of applying The Platinum Rule… Even when we’re extremely competent in the tasks our team members are responsible for daily, helping each connect those directly to the organization’s purpose will require us to do more than share a message like we’d want to receive (as most of us have be told to do in following The Golden Rule); we’ll need to provide the message in the way THEY want (and need) to hear it if we really hope to help them tie the two together.

I recently watched an early episode of Leave It To Beaver where Eddie Haskell put Beaver up to saying something to his friend in Spanish that offended the friend. Beaver and Chuey had been getting along great prior to this, even though they didn’t necessarily understand one another’s words. Beaver didn’t know what Eddie was telling him to say, but wanted to speak his friend’s language so he trusted Eddie (and it was always a mistake to trust that twerp). If you’re not familiar with how that all unfolded, you owe it to yourself to be more familiar with that show - especially the first few seasons - so check it out. Once you have, you’ll see how similar it can be when we share a message with one of our team members the way we’d want to receive it rather than how they’ll best understand it. They may not run home crying, but they’re very unlikely to get everything they need from it to buy-in at the level we need them to or draw the level of fulfillment they could if we had delivered it in a way they could best comprehend it, even if we are both speaking English.

Not only can adapting our message to meet their needs help them connect their work with the organization’s overall purpose, it will be huge in giving them a way to tie their individual purpose back to both the tasks they perform and what the company is working to achieve. Understanding our own behavioral style, and the emotions driving that, gives us a higher level of self awareness, allowing us to become better at that thing called self management. Recognizing how our team members are wired provides a foundation for social awareness and adapting our communication to meet their needs is key in relationship management.

With regards to your organizational purpose, my challenge for you is to become very intentional about helping each team member who counts on you for leadership to connect their daily routine directly with the impact your organization is striving to have on the clients you serve as well as the community you’re a part of - and do it in the way that they’ll have the best shot of digesting it. As a quick side note, I’ve referenced the DISC Model of Human Behavior, communication/behavioral styles, and emotional intelligence heavily here. If you’ve completed a DISC assessment and aren’t completely tracking with how all this fits together, or even if you’ve never heard of any of it, reach out to me directly. I’ve talked with far too many folks who have been sold an assessment but haven’t understood what their results meant or how they can use the science behind it to get immediate results in everything they do. That pisses me off! If that’s you, I believe you’ve been cheated and I’d like to help make things right.

When we have the correct tools, we’ve been trained to use them properly, and we invest the effort into using them consistently, I believe we can make tremendous strides toward reaching our organizational purpose. But, as leaders, we’re still responsible for helping our team members move toward the purpose that fuels them as individuals so that’s how we’ll wrap this all up.