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Control, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Paul.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: How you doing?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm good.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: How are you doing, Matt?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm alright.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm alright.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Today's quick fix is control.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: What do you mean by control?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Aha.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Control.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh ooh, this one might be the most complicated in many ways of the um of the core skills that we work on uh people with.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But we define it as the ability to have command of the world around you, including understanding when to take command and when to relinquish command.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this is like this is deeply, deeply complicated.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you really, really want people really want to get into it, they can go back and they can read some of the work of like early German philosophers about this stuff.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: There is tons of of uh um tons of really, really interesting stuff about this because it kind of like influences and is affected by how you view the world.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it is related to everything from you know the role of self versus the role of collective good and all kinds of different things.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So fixing it in uh in 10 to 15 minutes is gonna be a bit of a challenge, Matt.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you said something there.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: You said part of it is when to relinquish it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: So why would you relinquish control if you work so hard to get it?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, funnily enough, that that that's where that's that's where it starts to get complicated already.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I can give you probably a uh a real world life example, right?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So um a lot of us do a lot of work um solo these days.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the the we haven't got great measures of this yet.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there will be more coming in some of the research over the course of the next uh one to two years.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, when we moved to out of the office, many of us moved out of the office and went to remote organizations or started working from home more and around the COVID time and then exacerbated by when we started using generative AI to help us accomplish our work, there was a big shift that had already started before, but a big acceleration of people doing less work in real time with other people, so real-time collaboration, more collaboration happening uh asynchronously, but critically more work happening entirely solo, where your only your only partner in your work is the tools that you're using to accomplish it, and including your your AI counterpart.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so people are spending a lot less time, um, a lot less time than they were uh working in real time with other people.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And as they do that, they are losing kind of like the get the the natural ability to give and give and take work um effectively.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of like the long version of it.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: The shorter, summarized version of it is that you want to relinquish command so that the people you work with can take command.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in many cases, that is in your strong interest.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because what are you doing if you're taking command of every situation?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is you're number one, most likely micromanaging and creating negative uh results.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be micromanaging a lot of people think of micromanaging as the specific role of a manager and somebody underneath it, but people can micromanage as peers.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can man you can micromanage the work that a peer is doing along uh alongside you.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're constantly trying to take command and you're determining how things are getting done, there are there are people the other side that you're pushing down.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so are those other people going to step up when they need to step up?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not if you're having anything to do with it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so as your activities of constantly trying to take command of the situation, they seem like practical in the moment, but the medium-term result of that can be that you are diminishing the capabilities of the people around you.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess people must have have a baseline, you know.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the one of the things that I that I was that I was struck with, just kind of an old adage around leadership, is kind of make yourself obsolete, which is kind of the same point here, which is you got to get people to understand your vision and let them do it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and but people do, yeah.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you um there's several books been written about this over uh over a time, and a few of which I've probably got uh probably got behind me here right now.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But several of them talk about the idea of there are leadership, um, there are leadership archetypes.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are people that like like really want to get their hands dirty and get involved in the in the how of work more often.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are people who like to who generally take a step back and have a more of a hands-up, more of a hands-off approach.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: The point here is that if you really master the skill of control, you're getting situational about that, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're figuring out when to when to do that and when to and when to not do that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: There are gonna be times when your skills are the are the skills that are the most appropriate for the uh for the situation at hand, and you want to be able to be the person who does like step in and take command.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then there are gonna be other situations where you want to and need to consciously step back in order to allow others to thrive.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so people get this wrong because they think of it as a weak, as weakness, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of uh the idea of of stepping back.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they also uh col connect it with the idea of like, I've lost control of the situation, and so I feel uh I feel anxious.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The whole all of these activities, a lot of them are centered around like underlying pieces of anxiety.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there is kind of a baseline that people have.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're often centered around upbringing, they're centered around biological differences uh as well.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but once you know that baseline and you understand yourself well enough, you can figure out where to where and how to flex from that baseline.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's fascinating that it's that it's situational.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's situational both in terms of like uh of you and situational in terms of of of the environ the situation we're you're in, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the and the most intriguing thing is that most people are not aware of this.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: They sort of like bring the they they bring the them to the situation, and it works over here.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they take that exact same approach and uh and apply it over there, and then they get confused as to why, well, hang on, normally this works.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a whole ecosystem of their environment, almost like, you know, uh yeah.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is my style.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now I will say that if you were to take a hundred people and you were to on average in the round and you were to look at a hundred people um as to what their level of capability is in this area, it's typically very low.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the when we do our durable skills assessments, it's one of the lowest scoring uh areas that that that uh the people struggle with.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it is because they're not able to flex from uh from where they start, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's that um there's that line in the movie Idiocracy, you need to lead, follow, or get out of the way.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um the the challenge is that people don't understand that those are three those are three options, they're not the only options, but those are three options in every situation.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so knowing when to do which is something that people just uh they're they're not even even aware that they're consciously making that decision, they're just applying the them to this situation.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting that most people, yeah, that makes sense.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't be aware of that at all.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then would they are they then trying to kind of control the controllable or or things that are like they're not even factoring, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they're not even thinking about it like that.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: That that term that term control the controllable is used a lot by um uh in sports science and sports psychology a lot as well.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just to for the people that are not familiar with it briefly, it's the uh the concept is that at any point in your life, at any situation that you're looking at, there are things that are within your control and there are things that are outside of your control.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: So as it comes from as it's heavily used in sports, I should say, let's uh consider a situation like uh golf, for example.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm playing golf on the on the uh final day of the masters, right, there is literally nothing I can do to stop somebody else in the field shooting a 62 on the final day.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I can I that is completely out of my control.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can't think about it, and so even thinking about it is wasted energy.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: What I can do is I can bring myself the best myself to every shot.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even control what the weather, if the wind blows a puff of wind when I hit that shot.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what I can do is I can focus in on that shot and I can uh and I can work on that.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so what sports psychologists do when they work with the with people is they they work aggressively with them to to push out all of those things that are beyond their control so that they can focus exclusively on the things that are and that they'll get uh significantly better results.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um and also they'll be able to deal better emotionally when other things do, when bad things do happen.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, they play their best round of golf and somebody does shoot a 62 and they lose.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay because it by definition was uh was out of their control.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's really um uh that that's sort of an important aspect of what you do, but it is sep, it's connected to but separate from the idea of determining ahead of time how much control you're gonna take versus how much control you're gonna relinquish.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've determined how much control you're gonna take, then that determines the boundaries through which what is in can you what is in your control or what is without uh outside of your control.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a real challenge too.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because if, for example, you say, I okay, I'm taking a step back on this, are you really taking a step back?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or the moment that anybody flounders, are you jumping in again and taking and taking control again?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Those are some of the things that you have to be able to figure out how to do well.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: So uh what's the best first step here for folks?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so last week we talked uh, I think about an audit, and I think it's actually a similar approach here as well.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um there is a lot, a lot of lack of a awareness that people have around this field.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So start with that, right?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Matt, I'll ask you, if you were to think about your, you know, you manage people, you're uh you're in um situation different situations whereby work has to get done in those different situations.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are you adjusting and adapting the level of control that you're using as you approach these these different situations?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you consciously, even when it feels uncomfortable for you sometimes, determining taking a decision to step back more than you than you naturally would?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know think about those those things and get a pen and paper out and write it down.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like look at look at get specific, look at three, four situations currently in your life and ask yourself, am I using exactly the same approach across each of those different situations?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you are, you're not being thoughtful enough about it.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's a real joy in um giving up some of those things and watching them take shape, either in a way you didn't anticipate or in the way you would have done it, either way.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Seeding that control and watching what happens is interesting too.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and and a learning experience, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, huh, I wouldn't have gone that way, but cool, look what happened, right?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, precisely.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't know, like, like three days.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we're all too short-termish about it as well.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like somebody will will will seed control, something will happen that wasn't wasn't in our plan.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: We jump straight back in again to try to take control again versus just seeing how it plays out.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Three months later, it might be completely different, and there might have been a whole bunch of pain in between now and three months, but the three-month version might be better than you anticipated.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, often happens.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Paul.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, control fixed.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you see you on the next episode next week.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all right, see you then until next Tuesday.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: See ya.
• 14:07
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• 14:10
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• 14:15
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• 14:17
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