Bring out the best in people by spotting the best in them
Q: You wrote to Ordinary last week about how “nothing compares to you.” How she need not be special to be amazing. And I wondered something. What could I do as a Director who leads a team of 11 people? It could be that I’m doing stuff that creates or reinforces comparison-itis and therefore keeps people from spotting their own brilliance. So many things are outside my control (I work at a Fortune 500 company), but tell me, what can I do?
Dear Spotter,
What a generous and generative question. Thank you for that.
And, before I answer the specific question, I want to talk again to this particular persona in the Onlyness framework. The one who has a low voice, who doesn’t believe they have anything particular of value to add. Who doesn’t feel connected to anything beyond their nuclear unit (their house & husband). They are weak in Voice and have low Belonging.
This quadrant is labeled “small”.
When I first started studying all this stuff I write about with regards to the power of agency, I never thought anyone would willingly choose to be “small.” I thought if they were small, it was because someone else was keeping them down, like a hand pressing someone under the water.
But this is not the case, as Ordinary has shown us.
After “years of following the construct of Onlyness,” she writes how incredibly committed she is to not seeing herself and her own distinct light. I wish she was an anomaly but, based on the volume of emails I get on this topic, she’s not. It reminds me of when you open the door of a caged animal, yet the animal stays right where it is.
WHY EVERYBODY KEEPS RETREATING
Long before people show up @work, they are taught who to be, how to be.
Early in life, it sounds like “why don’t you get straight A’s, you’re so capable.” So, as test-taking is prized, the full range of creativity is discounted. Later in life, it might be, “isn’t it about time you got married,” or, “when are you going to have children?” As if some one is no one without those. Maybe even it’s an internalized voice of late-stage capitalism that says, “you should have been a founder/done an exit/become rich by now.”
Instead of asking what any particular person actually values, we ask how they fit convention.
Some research done by Kyung Hee Kim suggests that the American educational system’s focus on testing as well as frequent group activities has brought a steady decline in creativity over the last 25 years. I’d argue that it goes deeper than that. Testing has brought about a steady decline in understanding who we are. After all, if we’re being taught that the goal is to pass a test, we’re conditioned to believe there is a single answer, the right answer.
It’s as if the many paths up a mountain get narrowed down to one, so we start to go single file on this one path. Hence, small.
Again, it’s not that any of us want this, but it’s how we become this. How we understand our own power, our own capacity is not something we individually develop on our own; It’s not simply personal, it’s profoundly social. So as children or as adults, we can be shown and told how to be in the world, what rules to accept, and what path (often, a singular way) is acceptable.
After a while, we act like the helpless rats in the cage, not even trying to escape the situation anymore. Just as once-trapped animals stay inside, even as doors are opened, we stay small.
As both my therapist and spiritual director would say, this is what trauma response looks like. And, why Ordinary shrinks.
ASTONISHING LIGHT OF ONE’S OWN BEING
No one can convince shrinkers like Ordinary to come out of their small spaces. Nor should we. The life we live and the meaning we have in our lives are made from our own choices.
So that’s not your work to do.
That said, you can provide some “scaffolding” for them to see, as Hafiz said, the astonishing light of their own being.
And you used a perfect word for your role, Spotter. One thing I’ve been working on during pandemic time is being able to do an actual pull up. When I do something that’s a stretch weight or new technique, my amazing trainer, Nick, spots me. Spotting in weight training is the act of supporting another, which allows a person to do a lift or push, because they can take the risk, safely.
If you do your spotting well, your team members will reveal more and more of themselves because it’s safe to do so. It can look like this…
- “When you’re on a project, everyone gets more enthusiastic about brainstorming.”
- “I feel like you’re a good teacher because you’re patient as I ask you questions to deconstruct a problem.”
- “Your sense of humor is appreciated during these tense times.”
- “I notice how much more relaxed the team is when you’re in the discussion.”
- “Synthesizing a lot of different ideas seems to come naturally to you,” and so “you make research look easy.”
- “You’re the soul of the team, for me,” might give someone a clue they’re good at shaping a culture of innovation.
And so on and so on. (The more specific to the situation, the better.)
NAMING IT IS NOT OWNING IT
You might notice I’m guiding you to use words like, “I feel” or “it seems.” The goal is not to say “this is true for you” as if there are such known “facts.” This is you naming what you see.
Because of course, we each add light in our own distinct way, but none of us can spot that all by ourselves.
You might remember how I wrote about this in Onlyness. It’s as if we have a lightbulb over our head, but whenever we walk into any room, the room is that exact color. Say, of mandarin orange or peach sherbet. That’s how it feels to name our specific and distinct Onlyness. Whatever skills or attitudes, whatever energy or capacity we bring to a situation, we can’t see how the room is different by our presence. We might think, “that’s just how the room is,” and not realize that we are the one adding that particular and specific type of light.
Your leadership goal is to notice and name what you spot about their light; these insights can act as footholds and stairsteps. So they can see themselves, and be seen. Onlyness.
NOT LOOKING FOR A PERFECT SELF BUT MANIFESTING ONE’S TRUE SELF
This spotting is not the same as a formal feedback cycle, the type organizations typically do annually. The organization’s goal is to get documentation, to evaluate you vis-a-vis other folks for the purpose of raises, using a distribution curve, maybe to cull some percentage.
While annual reviews aren’t positioned as competitive or comparative, they almost always are. (For example, stacked ranking, which was the default system for nearly all of the last 40 years of management, and whose ideology lives on even if the naming convention is gone.)
Formal feedback is why so many people shrink rather than reveal themselves at work. Its methodology assumes that someone doesn’t already want/need meaning and autonomy. Because the process is both standardized and comparative, an employee’s goal often becomes to manage other’s favorable impressions, hiding or downplaying mistakes, and being someone others like to work with.
I’m convinced there is no greater waste of resources in organizations than the energy spent in a formal assessment creating a false self, a perfect self, a likable self.
The act of spotting says just the opposite: I want to bring out the best of you because I already believe in you. It’s coaching vs. evaluating. It’s the power of agency, not power-over another.
And of course, one way we help others to live a life of aliveness is to live it ourselves.
Just as none of us were born knowing how to walk, none of us were born knowing how to be oneself. You might do it effortlessly today, but at some point, you didn’t. It was once new, and even hard.
Think of how you learned to be yourself. To know what you cared about and why. To claim what you cared about. How you found your people, where it was safe enough to become more of who you are. How you learned to use your quirkiness to excel at certain things. Or how you learned to listen to that voice that said x or y or z is important (even when no one else did).
Maybe it’s how you craft teams where each person feels chosen and seen. How you stopped saying “if I can do it, anyone can,” and instead celebrated what comes naturally to you.
When you are able to see and be seen, it will light a way for others to do the same. ⠀
