|
 So much of management training today could be called "light learning."
Like light beers and fast food, light learning has its place. But quickie solutions for most every management challenge are something else. We must not get too enamored of incremental gains in knowledge when something deeper is needed.
For instance, in spite of all the seminars and books to the
contrary, the phrase "managing people" is itself all
wrong. You don't manage people, you work with them. And you
help them manage themselves.
Real leaders know that they have less of some kinds of power the higher up they go in an organization. They may have authority - the ability to set policy and direction. But the power to execute is in the hands of the doers, the front-line performers. So, as your authority increases, your power diminishes. The lasting power of working with people is just that, empowering them to do their best.
In this way, a manager's chief job is to learn how to become an "evocateur". An evocateur is someone who evokes in the people around him or her skills and potentials they did not know they had. You've probably seen evocateurs in action: a coach, a teacher, an uncle, a parent, or a manager who knows that his or her real job is to help you dream a larger dream about what you are capable of.
One of the great evocateurs from the world of literature
is Don Quixote, as he wanders his landscape looking for adventure.
As he rides into the village he meets Aldonza, who, you'll
remember, is the town prostitute. Aldonza feels trapped, loathing
her lot in life, and everyone around her. When our man from
La Mancha meets her, however, he does not call her by her
given name. He christens her Dulcinea and he looks past all
of her bad history and unpleasant and even disgusting behavior.
He sees in her a delicate woman who is fully human and dignified.
As the old man sings his name to her, Aldonza is at first
attracted to the idea, but all too true to human fashion,
she then rejects Don Quixote's belief that she is more than
she appears and calls the old man a fool. What does he know
that the others don't?
By the end, however, due to his persistence, she realized that Don Quixote is right. He never approached her for what she was but for what she might be. Under his dream for her, she knows has the potential to be much more than she was. Dulcinea is as much a part of her nature as Aldonza.
Effective managers are Don Quixotes, of sorts. They are evocateurs
of the soul and the mind and the heart of those who work with
them. Often they meet with disbelieving Aldonzas, however:
their own employees who are used to the old patterns and limited
beliefs about themselves.
But managers of La Mancha do not accept the limiting beliefs
of others. They see those latencies within people and situations
and then respond creatively. A manager's job is to take all
the inconsistent and unpredictable human behavior that arises
and to help their co-workers mold it in a consistently creative
fashion in order to produce constant gain. Gain means profitability
but also customer satisfaction, a more skilled employee base,
and perhaps most of all, an Aldonza workforce that begins
to believe it has Dulcinea capacity.
Much of what is happening in the workforce today is truly exciting. In many places I look and consult, the old machine theory of management - which boxed employees into routine, over-specialized jobs and made them non-thinking, replaceable parts - is being challenged. The idea whose time has come is the team-based workplace, where the work is designed for maximum productivity and maximum people involvement. From financial-service companies to hospitals to job shops, the revolution is here. What is needed is a new generation of managers with true vision and a belief in people that expands the pace and scope of this change.
These evocateur/managers go past shallow lessons being passed off as learning in our training and education programs, and go deeper to probe the core issues of the human imagination as it applies to work. As a society, we must make available to them the kind of leadership training, models, and tools they can put to good use as they transform the old models into the new realities.
Perhaps above all, we must encourage within ourselves our Don Quixote nature. It is undernourished in a world that refuses to look below the surface.
Things are never what they seem. Managers as evocateurs know
that. They see Dulcineas everywhere. They recognize the wisdom
in the words of pop cartoon character Ziggy: "In this world
of ordinary people, you gotta' love ordinary people."
By applying their wisdom about ordinary people with real vision and with the right tools to humanize the workplace, the new evocoteur/managers may just bring some of those unreachable stars within our reach. |
