The Hands-Off Manager (5 page)

But neutral means neutral. You just don’t care if no deal is made. You’re not striving for one of those frantic, win-lose deals in which you give away the farm in your desperation for success.

People who do that don’t realize that attaching to a certain outcome pushes that outcome away.

Remember, neutral is the attractive force. (They called it “playing hard to get” in high school.) The neutral position is always the most effective.

Once you become neutral, positive and negative then become the balancing forces. When you are neutral, you’re automatically attached to the positive, if you look at it from a nuclear physics perspective. The negative is brought in to create the balance, but the link between the neutral and the positive is where the power lies.

The problem is that we don’t accept that. We keep trying to make the negative go away.

But that’s akin to trying to iron the waves in the ocean to make the ocean smooth. Or cutting the positive pole off a bar magnet so that you just have the negative.

Futile.

The balance of all three forces reflects the nature of life. But in order to get the positive, most managers go out and fight against the negative, and wonder why more negative keeps coming in.

We do this trying to manage our society, too. We hire more police to oppose gangs, and wonder why we have even more gangs. We create more government programs to fight poverty, and wonder why poverty continues to grow. The very things we fight against become the things our attention goes into and empowers. What we resist persists. What we oppose grows stronger. Consider that your attention is the fuel of change. What you pay attention to is the fire that you are adding fuel too. If you truly want a positive outcome, focus on the solution and not the problem.

There are other ways to deal with gangs and poverty that address the whole, balanced system instead of just addressing what’s “wrong”; with the current system.

New solutions show up as whole systems.

What you resist will always persist

A gifted chiropractor we know (we’ll call her Judy Smith) became a corporate business consultant, and she was terrified that she would have no credibility with clients because of her limited background in business. She feared being perceived as a “mere” chiropractor. Because she was so focused on getting rid of the negative (her perceived lack of credibility), she took the technical doctorate she had earned as a chiropractor and put it on her business cards and Website. She was now “Dr. Judy Smith.” Clients just assumed she must be a PhD in organizational development, which was what she hoped would happen.

But it didn’t take long for the word to get out that the “Dr.” Judy was using was for being a chiropractor, and she
was made fun of. The very negative she was trying to avoid came back at her in a bigger, more vicious form. What she opposed grew stronger, and what she resisted persisted.

Later she stopped resisting, and told clients up front about her successful chiropractic practice. She dropped the “Dr.” from her name. She told wonderful stories about her work as a chiropractor and the lessons she learned that she could apply in creative ways to business. People loved it. So by not resisting reality, reality became her ally. By no longer feeling negative about her former profession, she could return to a powerful neutral position.

In the workplace, the old-school micromanager is obsessed with eliminating the negative. And by doing so, he himself becomes negative, judgmental, and non-trusting, focusing only on problems (thereby making them bigger than they are). Ignorance of neutrality leads managers into a world of deception, dispute, and control. None of those attitudes is an aspect of neutrality.

This is why managers who are controlling and micro-managerial get so much push-back from their people. Their people feel paranoid and judged.

But when they give up dragon-slaying the negative, managers become hands-off managers. And from that place without judgment, they can focus their attention on that which they wish to create. What a relief to everyone.

In every person, even in such as appear most reckless, there is an inherent desire to attain balance.

—Jakob Wassermann

Alan Watts used to say that his definition of the human ego was “defense of a position.” That is exactly what the workplace ego is: defending your isolated position in the organization. But when you fight for a position instead of embracing the entire system, you contract your being into something small and weak.

The bigger part of you is the part of you that is unconditional, accepting, and without judgment. Many just don’t grasp that that’s the really powerful part of you.

The power aspect of neutrality is that it allows you to be an observer who is open to all possibilities. When you meet with team members from another department you can hear their side of the story and see whole-system solutions. You are not overly defensive of your position in the universe.

In negotiations, neutrality is a mutually inclusive concept that most businesses now acknowledge is the only real way to do business if you want longevity and a lasting network of relationships with the people with whom you negotiate. The old macho idea of besting your “opponent” in a negotiation gives people a short-term thrill and a long-term headache. Professional athletes whose agents best the team to get multimillion-dollar contracts often earn the scorn of fans when they have a bad year and leave the sport in shame and disgrace.

Neutrality brings you to honest solutions, and, most of all, it lets you allow—not force—the results to move toward a fruitful outcome.

Author and social scientist David Hawkins talks about surrender being the most powerful path to enlightenment. And in today’s world of the macho, Rambo-like computer-game character, people almost cannot conceive of such a thing being the path to power.

But ironically it is what martial-arts hero Bruce Lee taught. At only 135 pounds, Bruce Lee was, pound for pound, the strongest fighter on the planet. No one could defeat
him—not even the biggest American boxers, with whom he did exhibitions. He once said, “To be a great martial artist, you become water. Water is totally accepting of whatever gets thrown into it.” And the big American boxers would lose because they would punch outward and try to defeat who was in front of them. Bruce Lee said, “I’m like water and you are jumping into my ocean when you fight me. And to be like water is the most powerful way you can be, both as a martial artist and as a human being.”

Water is soft and accepting, yet it has the power to level a city.

Bruce Lee said the only American boxer who came close to that principle was Mohammed Ali, because Mohammed Ali would dance and “float like a butterfly.” And with his amazingly flexible body, he would invite his opponents’ punches throughout the fight in such a way that they would punch themselves out, being drawn like moths into the neutral fire Ali was embodying. And by the time an opponent was so weary he couldn’t hold his arms up anymore, Mohammed Ali would jump in and finish his fight. He would “sting like a bee.” But he never actively resisted his opponent early in a fight. Nonresistance was his neutral, successful position.

Former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger was one of the greatest negotiators of all time because no one could come up with a position that would offend him. No one could upset him. No one could put him on the defensive. He was always willing to understand the other side’s position, so they could almost always find a whole-system solution that would in some way work for both of them.

Duane Black has been a master negotiator for land acquisitions for many years. He says, “When you’re negotiating with someone and you find things that they have to have, that they just can’t live without, you can get so much in return on your side of the equation by giving them those things, it’s
amazing. And that happens a lot. Sometimes people will have a particular hot button, and if they can get that, they’ll give you everything else.”

A skilled hands-off negotiator never has to make a deal happen. He never gets so attached to a particular outcome that he can’t move to the idea of higher opportunity. He can always push back from the table and say, “Gee, I would have loved for this to work but I can see it’s probably not going to work in a way that will serve both of us, so I’m happy to just take a step back.”

Back to neutral, the position with all power. Back to where it doesn’t matter if it “works out.”

“And it will amaze you how people will respond to that power,” says Duane. “How people are drawn to the fact that you might want them but you don’t need them.”

Remember high school? The most interesting young women seemed to prefer the guys who could take them or leave them. And the needy guys who were desperate to have them, who couldn’t live without them? The young women didn’t want anything to do with them.

As human beings, we’re not attracted to needy relationships. We don’t want to be involved with someone who needs us desperately. Needy feels creepy, which is why stalking is a crime.

The other person’s neediness takes a part of us away. It becomes a mechanism of control, and we don’t want to be controlled. We want to be free. That’s our very nature.

The neutral perspective allows the best possible outcome for both parties to emerge. There’s no forcing. And even though you’re always drawing attention back to the benefits of the direction you would prefer to see things go, you’re also open-minded. If the other side has a new idea about a different direction that you hadn’t thought of, you can shift right along with it. Smoothly, without resistance. Because you have no position to defend. You’re not attached to any particular outcome, except for the higher good.

That’s the power of hands-off neutrality.

Steps to hands-off success in your life

Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:

1. The next time you are negotiating with someone in the workplace, give yourself time in advance to enter the world of “neutral.”

2. Actually write down all the good things that might come from this negotiation not resulting in a “win” for you. Get comfortable with the “worst thing that can happen” so that you lose all sense of needing this to go a certain way.

3. Schedule three meetings with people in your organization with whom you have not had the easiest time talking (people you don’t like). Then have a no-agenda meeting with each of them in which your position on everything will be neutral. No position. You will be there to listen and learn and be taught by the greatest teachers you will ever have. The people you like are not your best teachers, and by valuing neutrality, you’ll learn this.

CHAPTER FOUR
USING FOCUS AND INTENTION

The universe always gives you more of what you are focusing on.

—Alan Cohen

I met with Kyle in his penthouse office overlooking Atlanta and encountered his litany of stressful thoughts about the future. Kyle thought they were legitimate concerns about the present.

“The list is endless,” he said. “I’ve got so much to do today that I sometimes feel like jumping out of this window.”

“That’s one option,” I said. “As long as you don’t do it while I’m sitting here. That would be my request of you. As your coach.”

“Well, what would you do?”

“I’d go on vacation.”

Kyle laughed bitterly. That was the last thing he could possibly do with all these crises coming up.

I said, “Kyle, will you do an exercise with me right now? I think it might help us sort this out.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“Close your eyes and let your mind travel back in time to the last time you felt happy when you got out of bed. When was the last time you felt total peace inside, and started your day in a fully relaxed and happy way?”

Kyle took a while. Finally he said, with his eyes still closed, “My trip to Mazatlan. I remember waking up each morning with nothing to do. We didn’t plan much on that trip. We just woke up whenever we wanted and walked to the patio and looked out over the water. It was like being in heaven.”

“And so you did nothing?”

“Oh no! We did a lot of fun things. Our days were full. But it was funny that there was no stress. No real need to be anywhere. We just did whatever came to us.”

“So you did a lot.”

“Quite a lot and it was all fun.”

“Did you have lists of what to do?”

“No. We had ideas, even before we went there. But we just did things as they occurred to us. One thing at a time.”

“And so I think you’ve hit on it, Kyle.”

“What? Move to Mazatlan?”

“In a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said it. You gave yourself the answer.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you did one thing at a time.”

Using Focus and Intention

Kyle thought for a moment. Then he said, “Well that’s not possible around here.”

“Really? What were you doing before I came in?”

“I was finishing up the Bertoia Report. In fact, I sent it off as an attachment as you were walking in.”

“So that was the one thing you were doing?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Try to see that all your life you have only done one thing at a time. It’s all you ever have to do. It’s all you’ve ever done. It’s always worked for you. It always will. You just don’t trust it, so your mind races into the future and you try to do 100 things—in your mind—all at once, and that’s what causes you stress.”

Kyle and I talked for a long time about the impossibility of doing more than you can handle. That coaching session was the first in a series that moved Kyle away from his worried to-do list of 100 action items he was staring at all day. He soon learned to take his hands off that massive to-do list completely and keep it in a drawer. Kyle soon adopted his Mazatlan lifestyle of “one thing at a time.” That’s all he would ever do, and all he would ever have to do. He learned to live at work just as he did in Mazatlan, doing one happy, relaxed thing at a time, and learning, to his surprise, that it would always be more than enough to bring him success. Kyle learned to live in the present moment.