For Your Money, NOT Any Whim

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Before me is Dmitry, the head of a successful enterprise. Interested in psychology. He often invites trainers and coaches to the organization who teach him various tricks of managing people.

He came to me to resolve the issue of changing the coach - he had already considered various candidates, and someone recommended me to him:

- In principle, I am very pleased with my coach. He's good, he's successful. But he has no psychological education, and it confuses me. And you have both technical and psychological.

What is coaching? A process aimed at achieving goals in various areas of life. A coach is not a classic business consultant at all. A consultant comes and clearly gives advice: do it this way, it is different, but in your company it is generally necessary to completely rebuild it. But the coach never gives hard recommendations. He is looking for a solution together with the client. That is, it does exactly what psychologists teach.

Dmitry is not a stupid person. And as soon as the recommendations of his coach began to resemble some incomprehensible "PR tricks", he became wary.

I asked him to tell what this coach taught him so interesting.

- He once told me a story about dolphins: “In the dolphinarium, the trainer gives each dolphin certain exercises. Moreover, for the same trick done correctly, one of the dolphins gets a fish, and the other does not. Then again, and again it is not clear who will be awarded. Once again. And further. What for? So that the trainer does not become predictable for dolphins. So that he controls the dolphins, and not they control them. " The coach advised me to use the "trainer trick": if you want to raise your salary, raise it with a scandal, stamping your feet, shouting and swearing. And another time the employee is mistaken - and you pat him on the head and went to expensive refresher courses. Or at least invite me to dinner.

- Do you use this technique?

- I use it regularly.

- What for?

- So the coach taught me how to hack people.

I asked him to explain how he relates to the word "hack", although I myself already understand everything. The essence of techniques of this kind: to bring people into the plane of emotional thinking, and therefore into an uncontrolled zone. In the literal sense, "piss off" the employee, after which all his actions and thoughts can be easily calculated.

- Well, the word "hack" is just a term, nothing special.

- Well, if we appeal to the term … Why is hacking carried out? To rob an apartment. No one will break open the door in order to wash the dishes and vacuum the carpets.

Dmitry looks at me in surprise.

- It's clear? Hacking is robbery. Let me explain everything to you in the language of dolphins. They ask you to tell your coach and the same trainer that both are assholes! Because of this attitude, the trainer has long lost respect for dolphins, because he plays dishonestly. At some stage, they will still carry out his tasks, hoping that the trainer will turn on the brains. And if not: they themselves will divide the fish among themselves and stop obeying him.

This is the so-called "return". Equilibrium laws operate in any system. Dishonest and inappropriate behavior violates the ecology of processes in the system. And here no "bribes" will help. The system will go into self-regulation mode - and the feedback law will work.

How does the "return" work in the organization? Employees are well aware that the boss will be emotionally vulnerable in some matters. This means that he, too, will one day enter the plane of emotional thinking - and lose control. Delays, sabotaging orders, disobedience, coalitions, distortion of information, banal monetary untidiness - this is not a complete list of the "return".

The fact is that in any organization there are three motivations

1) Motivation for communication;

2) Motivation of power;

3) Motivation for success.

Each person is dominated by one of these three types of motivation. Moreover, a professional psychologist, according to the prevailing motivation, one can understand in which zone of development of relations with the outside world a given person is:

1) Motivation to communicate with people = zone of interaction with the mother, acceptance and unconditional love. This is the area of communication, building relationships, building teams. In this area are pay and incentives. But it is also a zone of grievances and conflicts. They bring a lot here from their "family kitchen".

2) Motivation of power = an attempt to win the father's love, to prove to him through rivalry that you are also worth something (this zone is difficult for those who have any problems with their father). This is the area of career advancement. The zone of struggle, masks, rigidity, here "all means" are often used …

3) Motivation for success = freedom of action and responsibility. Here a person does not prove anything to anyone. He himself is his only competitor. But there are many pitfalls in his path when dealing with people with a different dominant motivation. There are only 5-10% of people with the motivation for success, but they are capable of changing the entire system. And it is better not to go beyond this figure, otherwise the system will either rot (if less) or destruction (if more). In times of danger, they try to get rid of them under any pretext, they say, "now is not time to show off."

You can ask any top manager (or anyone who has a goal of achieving success in life) what their dominant motivation is. On a conscious level, he will not hesitate to answer "success." But on the unconscious (this includes body language, behavior, and much more), quite a different motivation is often read.

This is why, in my personal opinion, the coach needs a basic knowledge of psychology. Yes, without knowing its deepest laws, he will cope with his task. But it is unrealistic for a coach to work well without understanding the psychological principles; otherwise he will not be able to observe the very “ecology of the process”.

At one of the certification trainings, we were offered an interesting classification of business consultants and coaches / trainers: pop singers, chansonniers and jazzmen.

Popsoviks - perform only their own, rehearsed and well-known for a long time. They will not tailor their training, ideas and recommendations to the interests of the organization. They will come, sing their hits and leave. And don't tell me this is bad! By the way, our whole country is dragged along by Stas Mikhailov and Elena Vaenga …

Chansonier - such trainers sing personally for a specific client. A conversation with such a coach is a conversation between two people who have decided to change. And they constantly ask each other the question: "Do you respect me?"

Jazzmen - the highest class, coaches who will be based on the music already sounding in the organization, and improvise on its basis. Their approach always looks beautiful - the main thing is that everyone has enough imagination. Jazz musicians have one problem: they need to keep track of their spatial and temporal perspectives. And do not get carried away with your party …

In any case, a coach or trainer is a person who is in the father's zone. He teaches to establish interaction with the world according to the type of conditional love, that is, "I love you for the fact that …" and "I respect you for the fact that …". After all, a person who invites a coach is on the road of change, getting ready to hit the road - and symbolically, the image of the road is invariably associated with his father.

We will come back to examples related to coaching more than once. For now, I just want to emphasize once again how important it is not to "get caught" with all sorts of tricks, like the "hacking" described above. Do not forget about observing the ecology of the process so as not to destroy the entire system. Carefully keep track of which category you are inviting a specialist from, carefully select the person with whom you have to deal with the intricate segments of your life path.