Look For Reality

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Business Management Tips #254
Look For Reality

Perceptions become reality in the minds of people.

What are the prevailing or dominant perceptions that exist in your organization? Are you aware of the behavioral, environment, cultural or organization contributors to those perceptions? Are you in touch with the organizational realities that cause the majority of your employees to behave the way they do? A key concept to consider is: you can tell what a person’s unconscious intentions are by paying attention to what they pay attention to. So through simple consistent observation it is generally possible to know what people are feeling or thinking that is contributing to their behaviors. It’s called the power of intention.

To make effective plans, correct decisions and take appropriate actions that will achieve the results you desire it is essential to know the predominant intentions of employees. To be out of touch with these realities is to guarantee that your decisions and actions will achieve less than their desired results or even fail.

All of life is a perceptual issue. No one interprets the same email, meeting comments, casual remarks, event, decision or memo exactly the same. It is these differing individual interpretations that often lead to a great deal of mis-understanding, a lack of communication clarity and mistakes.

The following contribute to an individual’s unique perceptions or interpretations: his/her - age, education, sex, cultural background, philosophies, values, expectations, beliefs, goals, life outlooks, attitudes, habit patterns, upbringing, religion, and experience.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to know which one/ones of these creates a person’s perception or interpretation of a situation, circumstance, person or event. To run a business, department, branch, division or an entire organization requires a manager to have a clear understanding of how his or her messages, policies, communication or expectations are being interpreted or filtered.

Seeing reality in your organization requires that you:

1. Create open lines of communication both top-down and bottom-up.
2. Foster a safe environment where people can be honest with the information they share without fear of criticism.
3. Encourage the upward flow of information from the lowest levels in your organization.
4. Reward honest behavior, feedback, feelings and information.
5. Get out from behind your desk. Circulate, wander, investigate, observe.
6. Inspect what you expect.
7. Do not reward employees who tell you what you want to hear or the truth.
8. Keep your ego out of the way when it comes to gathering and/or sharing information.
9. Frequently ask for people’s opinions.
10. Hire an outside consultant to help you discover real issues.
11. Conduct an attitude or perception audit.
12. Talk with the people who will be affected by your decisions or who must implement them before you make them.
13. Assume nothing.
14. If it can fall between the cracks, it already has.
15. Bypass your direct reports when looking for reality.