A Square Peg In A Round Hole

Putting A Square Peg In A Round Hole Does Not Work

As a Leader, we need to be able to read the room and understand the most effective ways to interact with both members on our team as well as others. Too often Leaders attempt to put a square peg in a round hole in terms of how they interact with others --- both on their teams and people outside their teams.

Effective leadership is highly dependent on effective communication. Frequently we attempt to interact utilizing the styles we prefer. Fortunately, not everyone is like us. We all have distinctive styles, personalities, and ways by which we respond to stimuli and the people around us.

I attended a church service over the weekend where the pastor spoke about being an encourager. If you are familiar with the New Testament of the Bible, Barnabus, an early church leader whose name translates into “Son of Encouragement”, was a mentor to a young man, John Mark. As a result of his mentorship / discipleship John Mark also became an early church leader.

The encouragement sermon topic caused me to consider how I give encouragement to others. As leaders our responsibility includes encouraging our teams and grooming them to become successful in their current job assignments and grooming them to be future leaders. This grooming involves individualized encouragement and mentorship that must recognize that people are wired differently. Each person’s wiring results from things such as genetic factors, environment, socioeconomic backgrounds, personality, and psychological makeup. Encouragement must be considered and applied uniquely based on how the recipient will receive the encouragement for it to be most effective.

I believe as an encourager in dealing with individuals, I need to factor in three components each of which has sub-components. I will allude to an unusual one first. The pastor over the weekend referred to a book by Gary Chapman entitled The Five Love Languages. While the author was primarily focused on understanding / applying interaction techniques between people in romantic relationships, the same interaction techniques apply to how we interact with people outside of romantic relationships too ---- especially including how we encourage others.

Per my previous point, I believe the three components needing to be considered in how we encourage others are 1) Love (encouragement) language, 2) motivational factors, and 3) communication preferences.

For today’s blog, I will refer to the love languages as encouragement languages. The encouragement languages are 1) words of affirmation, 2) quality time, 3) receiving gifts, 4) acts of service, and 5) physical touch. I am not suggesting anything inappropriate in how to employ these as encouragement tools, but let’s consider each of them. Understanding that each of us responds differently to different stimuli is key. Recognizing that an employee, mentoree, or someone else needing encouragement responds differently to diverse types of stimuli will allow you to choose the best tool as you try to encourage them.

-          Words of Affirmation: Sometimes someone just needs a compliment or a kind word or an assurance that things will get better. Those and many other verbal communications are types of words of affirmation. “You got this!!” works miracles.

-          Spending Quality Time: Others may just need a friend / mentor to listen to them and spend time helping them work through a problem. Remember though that spending quality time with someone does not constitute attempting to “fix” the problem. You are there to be a good listener and offer support and guidance in helping them to work through a problem or reach a crucial decision.

-          Receiving Gifts: Other people may just need to receive a gift to be encouraged. Things like a thoughtful card, or a note of appreciation, or a reminder of a past success can be the best form of encouragement to other people.

-          Acts of Service: Acts of service may take various forms such as assisting on a project, taking the person out for coffee or lunch, introducing them to a resource they may need or are requesting, or providing a recommendation. There are innumerable ways to perform an act of service for another person to encourage them.

-          Physical Touch: Appropriate physical touch is another important way to encourage someone. A pat on the back can do wonders. Depending on the situation and its appropriateness, a hug may be what works best.

Bottom line, people crave connectedness with others. Encouraging someone can take many forms, but needs to be given from the perspective of the intended recipient of the encouragement to be most effective.

The second component is similar to the encouragement language component. This component involves recognizing that people have different motivational factors. I often had this discussion with members of my team as we conducted performance reviews and salary treatment recommendations. When you consider motivational factors, I believe that there are four main types. There may be others, but these are the ones I saw most often with my teams. Motivational factors include 1) money, 2) title, 3) responsibility, and 4) peer recognition.

-          Money: I had a boss one time who assessed his value to the corporation based on whether his W-2 wage summary form for this year was larger than the W-2 wage summary from the prior year. I had employees who assessed their value to the team based on the size of their salary increase or bonus.

-          Title: Some people are driven by the title they hold or a title they desire. I have seen employees thrilled by receiving a new title that had little monetary benefit. My former employer performed an initiative to standardize titles across the various entities that had been assembled by mergers and acquisitions. The climate changed dramatically when the Executive Directors became Associate Vice Presidents. It was only a database update but returned a huge motivational uplift.

-          Responsibility: Giving a person a special assignment or additional responsibility can encourage others. Has your boss ever asked you to do something special and you were exhilarated and excited about the opportunity?

-          Peer Recognition: Peer recognition is a tremendous motivator and encourager. At my quarterly town meetings, we used part of the time to do special recognition of individuals and small teams. These were peer nominations. People were thrilled to receive special recognition from their peers.

The point is that we all have motivational stimuli. We respond to those stimuli differently based on the intrinsic factors mentioned earlier. Encouraging someone means understanding the motivational stimuli that will be most effective for that person.

The third component is the preferred method of communication. People have preferences for phone calls, text messages, chats, written communication, etc. We cannot be available for all communication channels simultaneously. I used to ask each of my team members what their preference was in communication methods. I attempted to reach out to them primarily via their preferred channel. Sometimes it was a text message telling them to check out an email or voice mail I had left for them. The key point is that we are all overwhelmed with all the channels of communication now and become unfocused if we attempt to cover them all. Understanding how someone wants to be communicated assists with providing encouragement to someone.

Encouragement is something we all crave and need. It improves our perception of ourselves and overall self-esteem. To effectively encourage someone, you need to think about how to effectively reach out to and communicate with the intended recipient. Effective encouragement is dependent on seeing the encouragement from the recipient’s perspective. Otherwise, the encouragement you provide may be ineffective or be ignored.

Consider an employee that you want to encourage. This employee craves words of affirmation (encouragement language), is financially motivated (motivational factors), and prefers personal interaction (communication preference). Conducting a one-on-one session telling them that they are a highly valued member of the team with a reminder that they are highly compensated too can work wonders.

There are innumerable examples of how these three factors work together.

Do you provide encouragement from the recipient’s perspective? How would you change the types or channels of encouragement you provide to your daily interactions across team members, co-workers, friends, significant people in your life, family.

Like the Love Language that Gary Chapman mentioned in his book, it might change the nature of your interactions with others.