The Deep Choice That Determines Influence

Minnesota’s 2024 legislative session started last week. Bill introductions are moving fast again this year. I hope you’ll follow our Advocacy News to keep abreast of the issues your Chamber is tracking. You can subscribe HERE. Also last week, we participated in the 2nd annual Black Entrepreneurs Day at the Capitol. The rotunda was full of more than 200 people, who rallied together and then prepared to speak directly with legislators. Organizer Sheletta Brundidge also invited other speakers to lend their voice. I was impressed by the potency in the room, both in terms of the number of people and the energy they brought to the moment. A takeaway for me came from one of the speakers: “people show up participate, make demands of their legislators. On Black Entrepreneurs Day, we want to amplify that ‘we the people’ means everyone.”
 
Week 3 of Leadership and Self-Deception:  “The Deep Choice That Determines Influence.” More on this idea of operating “outside the box,” seeing our colleagues and team members as individuals, not just objects or numbers. One of Tom's team members had done something wrong, and he’d corrected her. But he’d done so with arrogance and dismissiveness. The right thing in the wrong way. “People primarily respond not to what we do but to how we’re being – whether we’re in or out of the box toward them.” Tom asks a questions I’ve wondered too: “how can you conduct a business seeing others as people all the time? Won’t you get run over doing that?... Isn’t it a bit unrealistic to think that you have to be that way at work, when you’ve got to be fast and decisive?”
 
The key: if we are dealing with a team member on a hard issue, how we handle the situation and the person matters. If I’m “in the box,” seeing her as an object or as less important than I am, the real question is: after the correction, have I invited her to be more enthusiastic and creative about her work or less? Tom needs to figure out how to uphold standards and expectations while also being “out of the box,” seeing others as humans, and addressing them as equally valuable. Absent that, he may solve the immediate problem but create others in its wake.
 
Being “out of the box” doesn’t make me soft . Being “in the box” doesn’t make me decisive or tough. It goes beyond behavior, to the being of a person. The approach. The mindset. “Ultimately, we can be tough and invite productivity and commitment, or we can be tough and invite resistance and ill will. The choice isn’t to be tough or not, it’s to be in the box or not.”
 
There’s something deeper than behavior that determines our influence on others – it’s whether we’re in or out of the box. When I’m in the box my view of reality is distorted – I see neither myself nor others clearly. I am self-deceived. And that creates all kinds of trouble for the people around me.
 
Bud then gave Tom a challenge that I’m taking on as well: “think about the people you work with and ask yourself whether you’re in or out of the box toward them. And don’t lump the people into an impersonal mass. Think of the individuals. You may be in the box toward one person and out of the box toward another at the same time.”
 
What we do with that exercise I’ll share next time!
 
 
See you in the trenches,

​B