Getting Control of Control


Jims clinic at the hospital had arranged an off-site meeting where they would review their performance over the last year, address some administrative issues in the department, open up lines of communication, and develop their sense of team. Prior to the four-day meeting, the HR department of the hospital had initiated a ˜˜360-degree review process, in which people were given a chance to provide feedback on each of their coworkers. The idea was to collect all the feedback prior to the meeting and make it available during the meeting itself. At the meeting, people were given a chance to speak one-on-one with colleagues to get clarity on the comments about them.

This was a great first step in Jims evolution away from being a highly controlling person. Ive seen this work several times. By giving the people around the controller the chance to say what is on their minds, the controller becomes more aware of the consequences of his style. Jim learned that although his colleagues and some of his patients respected his technical skills, they found his bedside manner laughable. Further, he found out that nurses and technicians dreaded talking to him because they knew their opinion would never be welcome and Jim would talk down to them as though they were children and incompetent.

Jim was saddened by the feedback he received. He had always known he was dominating but was unaware of its impact. When he went home, he told his wife what he had learned about himself at the meeting. She supported him during his sadness but also filled in the picture from her angle. She lovingly communicated that even though she was accustomed to letting him be in charge, she sometimes resented it. At one point she told him that not only was he controlling, but he was compulsive about some things as well.

˜˜For heavens sake, Jim, she said, ˜˜were the only family I know that washes out plastic bags and turns them inside out to dry so that we can use them again! You need help, Jim!

Jim had all sorts of professional resources available to him. But he wanted to ˜˜manage the optics. He and I had met at school and stayed in touch over the years . He called me for help. Our work together focused on two distinct matters: his communication style and his controlling orientation. We dealt with communication matters first because regardless of why Jim controlled people, he could certainly start changing right away by interacting with them differently.

Controllers often are highly task-oriented people who lose sight of the humanity around them. By staying too focused on task, they miss the human needs. For controlling personalities to be less caustic in their relationships, they have to find ways to incorporate empathy into their communication.

Empathy means feeling what others feel. It is different from sympathy, the recognition of how others feel. For example, if I told you that Larry, my pet goldfish , passed away, quietly , in his bowl, you might look me in the eye, shake my hand, and say, ˜˜Sorry about the fish. Sympathy is like that. The sympathetic person gets to stay on the sidelines paying respect and feeling bad for the victim. Empathy, however, involves actually taking on the feelings of the other party. If I were lamenting the loss of my fish, and you were empathetic toward me, you would join me in my grief .

By incorporating genuine empathy into your stylenot sympathy, which allows you to stay on the sidelinesyou will undoubtedly project less of a controlling image. When people feel the connection created by the expression of empathy, they feel validated , the opposite of what they feel when they are being controlled. The challenge in using empathy is in accessing it.

I believe that most people are born with the capacity for empathy. It is hardwired right into the nervous system because it is a key part of species survival. Parents are better parents when they are compassionate, and societal bonding calls for some degree of interpersonal commonality at an emotional level.

The initial off-site meeting that Jim attended set the stage for his learning about empathy. He began at that meeting to understand how people felt about him. He realized that their observations of his style were not just intellectual; they were emotional. Jim felt bad about hurting peoples feelings, and he also began to feel empathy for the people he had hurt.

Next, Jim had to learn how to incorporate empathy into his day-today communication. He had to learn to take a few moments in most dialogues to ask himself how the other person was probably feeling about the dialogue, and he had to learn to address those likely feelings either directly or indirectly. For example, rather than saying to a patient who had been prescribed a complex regimen of pills, ˜˜Have you been staying on the meds like I said? Jim learned to say, ˜˜I know that was quite a complex bunch of instructions to follow; how has it been going?

Jim had no problem adopting this approach in much of his professional communication. He was a very motivated learner. He couldnt accept being a man in a healing profession who was doing psychological damage, even in some small way.

Jim told me his biggest challenge was speaking empathetically to people he didnt like. Some of the technicians and other doctors were not, in his eyes, worthy of much respect. As he put it, ˜˜I really dont care how those guys feel. Am I supposed to fake it with them or just stay on task? He did not want to fake it and he did not want to drop the ball in one area while making progress in other areas. He wanted to do this right. So we spent time locating authentic compassion for the people he didnt like. We did it by analyzing them together and discovering how even their provocative behavior, the things that Jim did not respect in them, came from an innocent array of private hurts. Jim learned, for example, that even though he didnt respect a doctor whom he considered to be motivated by greed more than by medicine, that doctor had his own set of fears that explained his behavior.

Over time, Jim developed the skill of infusing authentic empathy into his communication. His bedside manner improved and his coworkers began to see a change in his style on the job. One day, he came for his session, updated me on his progress, and then said, ˜˜But Im still washing out plastic bags. We laughed and got down to work on his controlling orientation.

The hardest part of Jims progress was the time we spent focusing on why he was so ˜˜tight. He liked that word because it had two connotations that he thought could be collapsed into one appropriate descriptor. His wife called Jim ˜˜tight, referring to his being miserly (e.g., washing disposable bags to save money). Jim called himself ˜˜tight because that was how he felt while he was at his most controlling. For him, both uses of the word meant the same thing. They referred to self-protection, an effort to keep things out.

I asked him, ˜˜What specifically are you so afraid of? ˜˜Well, he said, ˜˜surely its understandable that I would have some fear of what might go wrong. I mean, Im making hundreds of decisions a day that have a huge impact on peoples lives.

I told Jim I wanted to connect with his fear rather than hearing him describe how logical it was to have a fear response.

˜˜What do you mean? he asked. ˜˜Well, lets talk about the plastic bags again. Why do you wash them out?

˜˜Because throwing them away when they in fact could be used again is unnecessarily harmful to the environment.

˜˜But what feeling is behind it? ˜˜I dont know.

I asked him to close his eyes. I knew that he would connect with the feelings driving his tendency to control if he could visualize a provocative situation. ˜˜Picture yourself in the kitchen of your home. You are doing the dishes. A piece of chicken you had for lunch was taken out of its plastic bag and the plastic bag is just lying there. Can you picture that?

˜˜Sure, he said, ˜˜lets go with it. ˜˜Okay, you are walking over to it. Jim, I want you to throw out the bag. Pick it up and put it in the garbage.

˜˜No. Its bad for the environment. Itll sit in a dump. ˜˜Jim, on this special occasion, throw out the bag.

He chuckled and winced at the same time. ˜˜There it is, he said. ˜˜Simple as that. Theres the tightness. I asked him to focus on the tightness and tell me what it felt like. ˜˜Its tight in my chest. ˜˜Good, I said. ˜˜Now can you bring a picture to mind of where that tightness is coming from?

˜˜Its a small mass inside my chest, like a lump of coal. Its very tight.

˜˜If you could give it a voice, what would it say? ˜˜Well, first of all, this is the tightness that accompanies me on all my days. Its always there.

˜˜Good. Tell me more. ˜˜Its got to be like this. There cant be any other way. I have to keep them out. They just have to do what I say.

Following his lead but not knowing what he was talking about, I said, ˜˜Good, Jim. What happens if they get in, if they meddle?

˜˜It all comes apart. I had to ask, even though this was the difficult moment, ˜˜What happens then, Jim?

He paused . ˜˜Funny. A memory just popped into my head. I urged him to go with it. ˜˜Its a sandbox memory. I remember actually being in a sandbox in my backyard. I was fighting. I can picture myself saying, ˜Its mine! Its my sandbox!

˜˜What if they get in, Jim? ˜˜They will take it away! Jims eyes opened wide and there were a few seconds of silence while he processed the connections he had just made.

Since these things are all unique to the person experiencing them only the principle of fear being involved is universalI was curious to hear his explanation.

He said that he was the oldest of five kids in his family. He had spent years experiencing a phenomenon time and time again. When he was young, his favorite things were given to his siblings: his clothing, his toys, time with his parents. By his mid-teens he was sick of it. Out of anger, he adopted the position that he would take it no longer.

˜˜I became selfish with my time, my ideas, my principles. Nobody was going to get in.

All of Jims controlling behavior could be explained by this model of his. On the job, he blocked peoples questions because he was afraid that they would open up other possibilities and take away his ability to make things work his way. He managed family vacations because otherwise he wouldnt have a good time. He was controlling with the nurses and technicians around himif they did not do things to the letter of his law, he might not be loved for doing things so well.

Of course, the irony was that Jims strategy actually worked against him. After all, by including other peoples opinions , the controller is more likely to reach a better conclusion about matters. But being in the rut of being a controller works that way. Controllers may reap the benefits of control, but they miss the harvest of dialogue with others.

For a controller to understand why he controls does not itself remove his long- term , deeply ingrained habit of controlling. But it can set the stage for progress. When a controller knows why he does what he does, he can begin to make different choices throughout the moments of each day. Controllers must experiment with relinquishing control and experience the fact that not having control in those instances does not represent failure or harm.

Disposing of single-use plastic bags no doubt hurt the environment. But doing so did allow Jim to experiment with letting go of control. In fact, we talked about how his desire to hold onto plastic bags was the perfect metaphor for his problem. Clear plastic bags are enclosures. You can see in them, but they are sealed. Jim liked them not so much because

they didnt spoil other things in the refrigerator, but because they would protect what was in them from other things. For Jim, tightly sealed containers that kept things out were good things to retain. Our mission was to let them go. It wasnt easy for Jim, but he learned to do it, and survive.

Putting everything together, then, if you are a controller you can benefit from taking these four steps:

  1. Get feedback from the people being controlled concerning the impact you have on their feelings and their subsequent efforts. This feedback will help you to learn that you are not in a vacuum . From an empathetic place, you can learn that control not only shuts people down and denies access to the value they can add; it is also hurtful.

  2. Make an effort to change your basic behavior. This usually involves learning how to communicate more empathetically. A coach or mentor can give you specific instructions about how to delegate tasks and empower others.

  3. Learn to detect the role of emotions in your propensity to control. This is the critical step. This explains why it is happening. People like Rick or Suzanne control to move toward something (such as love or attention) and a fear of not getting it propels them. People like Jim control to move away from something that they are afraid of (such as pain). The pain or fear of loss that plays a role in all these cases must be owned, in the sense that you ultimately must say something like, ˜˜Yes, I have this fear driving me. I accept this fear as part of who I am.

  4. Recognize that along with control goes the illusion that it is necessary. When you control, you adopt a very narrow view that you happen to think is the best possible view. This is almost always an incorrect assessment. My experience is that there is always a bigger perspective that carries with it another dimension of considerations.

As a coach I sometimes touch base with the original complainants several months into a change effort to see whether change has occurred. When the controller knows that this will happen, a sense of accountability is instilled.

In following up with Rick, Suzanne, and Jim, I uncovered consistent results. All three continued to experience the impulse to control. And all three did indeed periodically fall into their old habits. But they all self- reported a reduction in their controlling tendencies. And all of them had received feedback from those around them that they were, as Jims wife said, ˜˜not as bad.

Another consistent report pertained to the most powerful aspect of any effective effort to become less controlling. ˜˜Owning the fear has a huge impact on success. It means the controller not only has to acknowledge that there is a fear behind keeping control, she also has to experiment with not taking control, feeling the anxiety it provokes and accepting that anxiety for what it is. One cannot hide from that anxiety in a way, hiding from it is the source of the problem. Instead, one must stay with it for a while. Hold onto it. Realize that it is a natural but usually unwarranted defense motivated by a sincere desire to avoid angst from the past. Resting in that fear can be both invigorating and freeing.




Face It. Recognizing and Conquering The Hidden Fear That Drives All Conflict At Work
Face It. Recognizing and Conquering The Hidden Fear That Drives All Conflict At Work
ISBN: 814408354
EAN: N/A
Year: 2002
Pages: 134

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