All companies have metrics of success. Companies with a lot of physical inventory measure inventory turns. Restaurants monitor food costs. Consulting firms assess utilization.
As a business owner and leader, have you started tracking leadership tantrums? If not, I recommend that you start. Just as metrics such as inventory turns, food costs, and utilization can represent warning signs for a company’s financial health, tantrum tracking can signal the cultural health of a company.
The dictionary defines a tantrum as, “an uncontrolled outburst of anger and frustration, typically in a young child.” Why are tantrums definitionally associated with young children? Because young children have not yet learned the strategies required to reset themselves after an emotional torrent. Most adults have not learned this either. Perhaps they don’t want to.
But at least the dictionary is honest: tantrums belong in the domain of childhood, not only because they are childish, by which I mean not age-appropriate when committed by an adult, but also because they represent the result of a lack of a particular skill. Let’s call that skill self-regulation.
If you’re an engineer, you know what a regulator is. It’s a valve for controlling the pressure in a system. All kinds of industrial processes require regulators. Without regulators, industrial machines with an excess of pressure explode. And everybody gets killed. That’s bad.
This reminds me of Egon Spengler, one of the supporting characters in the classic 1980s movie, Ghostbusters. In this film, ghosts from another dimension attack New York City. Three Columbia University scientists in the field of parapsychology, “respond by establishing ‘Ghostbusters’, a paranormal investigation and elimination service operating out of a disused firehouse. They develop high-tech nuclear-powered equipment to capture and contain ghosts…” (thank you, Wikipedia). Hilarity ensues.
In case you missed it, the above description does indeed describe “nuclear-powered equipment to capture and contain ghosts.” These “proton packs” release a “charged particle beam” which, when it comes in contact with a ghost, immobilizes it, allowing the Ghostbusters to trap it.
But what if that charged particle beam comes into contact with literally anything else? It blows it to smithereens. Doesn’t that sound dangerous?
Of course it does! But not as dangerous as what happens if you, all together now, cross the streams. What are the consequences of crossing the charged particle beam streams from multiple proton packs? Let’s let Egon Spengler explain it:
“Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.”
Ok are we all together here? One charged particle beam either captures a ghost or blows stuff up. Multiple intertwined charged particle beams cause every molecule in your body to explode. So…DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS.
And to wit, this plot inspired me to devise The Egon Principle: There is one very dumb thing that, if you do it, it tears apart the very fabric of reality.
Corollary to The Egon Principle: DON’T DO THAT THING.
In our case, I cannot recommend strongly enough: DON’T LET EMOTIONAL PRESSURE BUILD UP FOR TOO LONG. Why? Because it would be bad. Like tearing apart the fabric of your company’s culture bad.
A human being is a system. Our emotional responses trigger physiological responses. And while that is not really our topic here, it is worth noting that the more effective we are at regulating our emotions, the more robust our physiological systems. Like fewer heart attacks robust. That is why people who meditate generally speaking have fewer heart attacks. Letting off steam can save lives. Opening the pressure valve prevents death. Egon agrees.
Back to leadership. When you have a senior leader who throws tantrums it is destructive of your culture. Culture is the unseen source of energy that subconsciously tells people how they are expected to communicate, collaborate, and treat one another.
When you have a senior leader who throws tantrums, the message to the organization is that tantrums are the culture. People subconsciously understand that when they want to get a message across, they can yell and scream, gesticulate wildly, foam at the mouth, use foul language, and attack people. The more important or difficult the message, the more emphatic the permission to emotionally expectorate.
This is certainly true when it is a junior member of your staff throwing tantrums, but it is far more powerful a force for ill when it is a senior leader. It is leadership that defines culture in an organization. Or fails to do so. And then culture gets defined by the default worst behavior. If you let that happen in your organization, it would be bad.
How do you deal with a thrower of tantrums in your company? You must coach him or her out of the behavior–or out of your company.
Here’s our simple approach to coaching people to a new set of behaviors. We call it The Three P’s: Paradigm Shift, Process Change, and Practice
Paradigm Shift
The tantrum thrower must get real with the gap between their mindset, which gives them permission to throw tantrums, and your culture, which does not. That is a paradigm shift that you as the leader must coach him or her through. This might be a tough conversation. You’ll define the culture at your company and contrast that with specific behaviors the employee is demonstrating. The Culture Equation can help you encapsulate your cultural expectations in the right language. Focus on the Declaration variable, i.e., encapsulating in as few words as possible (but not too few) what your company stands for in terms of communication, collaboration, and how people are expected to treat one another
Process Change
Once the tantrum thrower understands the cultural model you expect at your company, and understands that your cultural expectations are a line in the sand, with cultural fit is on one side of the line and his or her next great opportunity outside of your organization on the other, then your role as the leader/coach is to help them distinguish between the process that got them to the tantrum and a better process that is culturally consistent. This means that your responsibility as a leader is to have that process mapped out in advance.
Practice
The final step in coaching people to a new set of behaviors is to provide opportunities for practice and improvement. Role play is a great tool for rehearsing the process you taught the employee in your potentially-tough conversation, mentioned above. But you also then must provide them with a specified length of runway (think one month, two months, three months – again, the right length, not too long, not too short) to demonstrate either understanding and integration of new behaviors or failure to do so.
This process is not going to be easy for the employee. They will need support from you. That is part of leadership. Sometimes your employees will need to borrow your confidence in them until they achieve the goal and develop a reservoir of their own.
How do you know when the employee’s professional development is worth your investment in terms of time and energy to steward them through The Three P’s? It’s 100% dependent upon their commitment.
In other words, your emotions are not part of the calculation. As you begin to discuss culture, you’ll know relatively quickly whether the employee is on board or not. Their commitment is the signal whether it is worth the investment. Once they commit, you must be all in for that defined amount of runway you provided for them to practice the new process and demonstrate improvement.
Ok so that’s one way to handle a tantrum thrower in your organization. But what if the tantrum-thrower is YOU???
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