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Consider Them First!
“When a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t” – Louis CK.
I received a call from a concerned boss a short while ago. He was concerned that his people seemed to be behaving despondent toward him. At his most recent staff meeting he was shocked to find that there was very little support for his newly initiated employee recognition program. He was further disappointed because in another staff meeting he received resistance from an employee from which he expected full support. He thought of this employee as a friend so he felt free to seek this employee out and ask why he didn’t share his actual feelings prior to the meeting. This bothered the leader because it revealed that this relationship was not where he thought it was. His friend told him that the people in his department did not feel valued or respected by him and as a result, were not motivated by him. His friend also reported that his overall impact on the team was negative and made worse by the fact that he didn’t seem to notice or care. His jaw hit the floor.
After our conversation a couple of thoughts occurred to me, the ability for leaders to behave in ways that demean or belittle others and the potential inability to realize or respond when it is happening. There are more than a few psychological explanations for what impairs a leaders’ view of their own behavior. The self-preservation instinct, normal in most people, can grow into an all-consuming monster when one has accepted a position of power. Psychologists refer to the motivation to think of yourself as better than you actually are as ‘self enhancement’. This motivates people to look at themselves, their words and their actions in the most positive way possible regardless of their own reality. This tendency lives in all of us, some of us are able to keep it under control for the most part. How powerful is this self enhancement? How distorted can one’s reality get? Let me tell you about Cornbread Turner and Duke.
On March 7, 1993 the sketch comedy show ‘In Living Color’ introduced the world to Cornbread Turner and his dog Duke. Cornbread Turner played by Jamie Foxx enters the scene with what seems to be a dead dog on a leash. Cornbread spends most of his camera time trying to convince the other characters that the dog was not only alive but could perform heroic acts. In one scene he pulled Duke over the gym bag of a police officer and, to the hysterical delight of millions of viewers, a bag of marijuana was found inside. However instead of bringing people to his line of thinking, that Duke was an exceptional canine, Cornbread usually offended people by his yanking of the dog in public.
One could argue that this was just a comedy show played for laughs but the second story I submit to you is that of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck. Also known as the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’, Fernandez and Beck were convicted of three murders although up to twenty murders are attributed to this deadly duo. Their modus operandi was to place Lonely Hearts ads by Fernandez which rich, older women would answer hopeful that they would find love. In 1949, sixty six year old Janet Fay and Raymond Fernandez became engaged and moved into his Long Island apartment to live with him and his “sister” Martha Beck. Beck caught them in bed together and flew into a murderous rage. She hit Fay in the head with a hammer and Fernandez finished the deed by strangling her to death. When Fay’s family got suspicious and started asking questions, the Lonely Hearts Killers fled to a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan where they met and moved in with Delphine Downing and her two year old daughter. On February 28, 1949 Downing became agitated by her housemate’s behavior, Fernandez gave her sleeping pills to calm her down. While Downing was in her sleeping pill induced stupor, Beck choked but didn’t kill the two year old daughter and then Fernandez killed Downing. A few days later Beck, exasperated by the constant crying, drowned the two year old in a basin of water. At their executions, Beck and Fernandez, claimed that their lives were a testament of love that the world would emulate. Beck, just before mounting the electric chair, said “My story is a love story… I am a woman who had great love”.
Whether you are trying to convince people that your dead dog is alive and healthy, or that your behavior of killing people is a testament of love, the truth is that your impact is gaged by the receiver not by the doer. Essentially the key is your ability or your willingness to see things from the other person’s perspective. If the Lonely Hearts Killers could see their actions in the same way that Janet Fay or Delphine Downing did, and consider how those ladies and that young child would feel about a violent dying a violent death they would be more likely to behave differently. The problem in professional workplaces is that people don’t spend nearly enough time seriously considering the people impacted by their behavior and they have no empathy.
If you are this type of leader, people will submit but will give the bare minimum and will not invest in you or be concerned with your mission. An additional consequence of this belief in your own perception is that you stop caring about what others think resulting in you blindly walking into a minefield that can ravage your ability to get things done, and, ultimately hurt your career. When people feel unheard and trampled on they await your downfall. Your concern for others is the key to your success. If you want to inspire them to do more, to invest more and to demonstrate concern for your success then they need to be the focus of your attention and energy.
You will never drag people to your destination like Cornbread Turner dragged Duke because they will not go. You will never be able to shoot, strangle, or be able to force people to do your bidding. You have to inspire people to get them to follow you. If you want people to be inspired, it is on you. You have to demonstrate a concern for your people and they will show concern for the people they come in contact with, and, they will also show a deep interest in you. Be more generous with your time and expertise. Be an example for people. Speak kindly and uplift your team with your words. Make that commitment to be an example to yourself and others and you will SOAR!
William A. Brown
December 23, 2018
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Fernandez_and_Martha_Beck
