Get Off Your Dignity
by Miki Saxon
Tuesday we talked about how to make levity a part of your MAP, but left the final one, how easily do you laugh at yourself for today.
Many people have trouble laughing at themselves and some who do so easily in one arena, are up tight in another—especially if it’s business related.
If you want to implement your own version of The Levity Effect you need to recognize that it’s almost impossible if you can’t lighten up yourself.
We’re not talking about telling jokes, but about accepting your own humanity.
When you stand on your dignity or take yourself too seriously you become unapproachable; your team and colleagues can’t be sure where the lines are or what might offend you, so they shut down.
The first thing you need to do is identify why you feel that way; once you do you can either change it or just learn to work around it; it doesn’t matter which as long as you get results.
I have a client who, when something happened that was embarrassing or didn’t match his self-image, had a tendency to tense up or even take offense and strike out, instead of laughing or shrugging it off.
I had him spend some quiet time one evening replaying many of the incidents and letting them play out using worst case analysis. It turned out that in his mind the worst thing that could happen was being laughed at, which would cause his people would lose respect for him. (I’ve found ‘losing respect’ to be on of the most common reasons for maintaining dignity in people at all levels, but often worse the more senior they are.)
When I suggested he try laughing first, he said I was nuts (I hear that a lot) and dismissed the idea. I said that he should do it just to prove me wrong and also that if it didn’t work I would refund a portion of what he had paid for coaching.
Money always gets people’s attention as does the chance to say ‘I told you so…’, so he took me up on it.
We agreed he would do it consistently for a month, record the results and then discuss them.
30 days later he was a different guy. He said that work had never been so much fun, not a word he had previously used; his team had been cautious when he started responding differently, but after a couple of weeks they seemed to be accepting the change. The office atmosphere was considerably better, attitudes had improved as had productivity and one candidate had accepted the offer in part because “everyone in the group was smiling and it seemed like a fun place to work.”
It may sound simplistic, but often solutions to these types of problems are simple, although they take great strength of character to implement.
Image credit: Jim Gordon on Mapping Company Success
August 21st, 2012 at 1:17 am
[…] A few years ago I share how a manager turned his organization around by learning to laugh at himself. […]
May 23rd, 2013 at 1:15 am
[…] used to be called “standing on your dignity;” I wrote about getting off it several years ago, but these days it seems there are more people standing on […]