Meet Mr Careful Converser
Meet Mr Careful Converser
What talent management and leadership should know about that employee who never says what he means
Corporate America offers some fascinating wildlife that you seldom see in the world of entrepreneurship and results-oriented work. In the Meet Mr Series, we meet some of these corporate creatures and their challenges for talent management. One frustrating creature in corporate America is Mr Careful Converser. Mr Careful Converser avoids communicating clearly and always protects his words by using protective language. His passive aggressive nature wants to avoid conflict while stirring it up at the same time. He prefers subtle manipulation if he can get away with it over direct communication and transparency. As we'll see, he's not the costliest of corporate creatures, but he can create confusion in your company.
But first, a fictional story. Because I'm creating a fictional stories as examples in this series, I'll call Mr Careful Converser in my story Cory. As a reminder, our fictional company is ABCZ Corporation.
Story
"David, I need you to come into my office," Cory said on the phone and quickly interrupted his pause, "It's not as bad as it sounds." Cory hung up the phone and adjusted his tie. He moved back and forth in his chair while crossing his legs. He felt odd, so he shifted his legs in a different way, but it still felt odd. A few seconds later, David walked into this office. David moved toward Cory at his desk to shake Cory's hand while Cory pointed to the chair in front of his desk and said, "Sit oh yeah," then shook David's hand.
"David, you have been a phenomenal member of our team," Cory began shifting back and forth in his chair. "Our company has faced challenges that we've never seen since we began a decade ago. To be honest with you, this is the most difficult year our company has ever faced - even more difficult than the first year we started. I'm just being extremely honest here. I could lie, but I don't see how that would benefit either of us." Cory started flapping his tie on his shirt as he continued, "I'm only saying all this because I understand how challenging everything has been here this past year."
"It has been a challenging year," David agreed. "I think the first year was more difficult for our company because we were understaffed and all of us were working eighty plus hours a week. Our team was living out of our small office at the time."
"Yes we worked a lot," Cory started, "But to be fair, we're all working eighty plus hour weeks in our head, even when we're not in the office this year." Cory paused while flipping his tie faster, "Maybe I shouldn't say this, but it feels like leadership wants us to breathe our jobs here. We all have other struggles we have to face and I think leadership overlooks this reality sometimes by expecting us to get results. Maybe that's a little out there, but I feel it's right if we look at the whole year."
"Companies succeed because of their results," David said.
"Oh for sure," Cory agreed. "But it's like, 'guys it's just money' you know. Maybe I shouldn't say this but when leadership gets so focused on making money, they forget the bigger picture."
"Which is?"
"I mean, it's kind of hard to explain but there's just so much to running a company, you know," Cory replied. "I don't know, you know I'm not really cut out for leadership in those ways so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems like the focus on money this year is out of place."
"I think that the rising borrowing costs and increase in inflation has made management re-think some financial decisions," David disagreed.
"Oh don't even get me started on inflation," Cory nodded while flipping his tie. "What a headache! But to be fair, they did give a lot of people money a few years ago, so maybe we should have expected that." Cory paused waiting for David to say something, but he said nothing. Cory flipped his tie faster then started, "So anyway, um, I brought you here because leadership reviewed our team's performance and they find it lacking, even if I disagreed with them. Maybe I shouldn't say this but I think their expectations from our team are unrealistic given the challenges we're all facing plus the fact that we're all working more hours than normal." Cory paused again looking at David for a response, but David said nothing. "They began a new initiative to track people here on the basis of their growth within this company on several levels, one of which is their skill contribution to the company. Provided that the graphs look pretty, I think it may be a way for every employee to get feedback on where they stand with the company and what they need to do. Look, I'm only saying this in front of you and no one else, but I feel like leadership wants us to engage in a bunch of busy-work about managing employees that make all our lives more complicated. To be fair to them, I get the overall situation though."
"Okay and this means?" David asked.
"So the thing is the leadership team will be reviewing the weekly reports on every team member's growth within the company," Cory replied while flipping his tie faster. "They also found ways to numerically measure an employee's work contribution and they have a baseline they expect for each employee. To be honest with you, I think the whole concept of a 'baseline' is absurd because each employee contributes to a company in different ways that can't be 'baselined' out. But leadership thinks that people need to know where they stand so that they can improve and so that they know what is expected of them. I get how confusing all this sounds, but am I making sense so far?"
"You're saying that leadership will measure us weekly on our work compared to what they expect from us," David confirmed to see if he had the right idea.
"Well, to be honest with you, well... yes," Cory replied. "You know, it's like a measurement that will involve a color value if you are at target, under target, or over target. Maybe I shouldn't say this, but I feel like this whole idea is a little elementary because they want the blue color to mean you're over target, green to mean you're at target, and red to mean you're under target." Cory paused and flipped his tie while moving back and forth in his chair. "I told them over and over that red feels a little harsh to see on a report. To be fair to leadership, they chose strong colors, as yellow and orange were too light." Cory looked at David waiting for him to respond but he didn't. "Anyway, this is just leadership's idea for now. I probably shouldn't say this, but I'll be they decide something different in a few months."
"So you brought me in here to tell me that there's a new report which will measure our performance against our expected performance?" David asked.
"Yes," Cory replied while dragging out the end, "well, um, mostly yeah. You have the right idea. Leadership has rolled out a new report that compares how well you're currently working to where they'd like you to be. You're are right on about that. Look, I doubt that this report will ever come up anyway. You know leadership - they have so many reports to look at, are they actually looking at these reports?" Cory laughed uncomfortably but David didn't mirror his laugh. Cory started flipping his tie faster, "To be honest with you, I don't expect this to be a big deal at all. I'm only just guessing here, obviously, but I think this will blow over as the situation improves."
"I understand, thanks," David said standing up.
"Well there's another thing," Cory said motioning David to sit down, then flipping his tie quickly. "They rolled out this report last week. I know I shouldn't say this, but I just hate it when leadership surprises people like this."
"And?"
"Well, the report shows that you're in the red," Cory replied, "not by much though. You're only ten percent below of where you need to be and that's really, really good! I mean, look, this whole report is going to blow over, so I know how it sounds to be ten percent below of where you need to be, but it's not that big of a deal. To be honest with you, it's not like everyone else on the team is a superstar." Cory paused for a bit hoping that David would say something, but he didn't. "I'm only just guessing here, but leadership would like everyone to be a green or higher so they're viewing your performance as below where it needs to be." Cory paused again hoping for a response, but nothing. "To be fair to you, this only just rolled out so it's not like you knew this ahead of time. I know I shouldn't say this, but this whole report idea just will demoralize some people. I just don't like it, but to fair to leadership, they think this is a way in which people can see where they stand."
"Okay," David finally said. "They want to see my performance improve."
"Yes, but I think you're doing great and I don't agree with the report at all," Cory said quickly.
"Excellent. Thanks for sharing this new report and how I'll be measured," David said and with that, he left Cory's office.
What the Research Shows
In his book, Surrounded By Idiots, Thomas Erikson highlights different personalities who we come across at work and he makes a strong point that none of these personalities are idiots. However, they all have strengths and weaknesses. What we read with Mr Careful Converser is a person who doesn't take a position and struggles with leadership - a "Green" if you're familiar with Erikson's book.
Where I differ from many personality books is that I've tested where transparency and measurement can alter behavior when someone wants to change. In other words, you may not be a born leader, but if you want to lead and you know how a good leader is measured, you can become one. Outside of the calling to be a leader (ie: the desire to change), I've seen companies improve their employees' leadership ability and there is a fundamental system that can be used to achieve this. One major misconception is that leadership happens in everything: this is not true. People can lead a team, an event, or even an entire organization, but this does not mean they lead in every area.
Costs
If you felt any confusion with what Mr Careful Converser was trying to say in the story, then you have good reading comprehension skills. This is precisely how it feels to communicate with Mr Careful Converser! "What are you actually trying to say?" We have vague ideas about what he's trying to communicate to David because he won't come out and say what he means - "leadership wants us to objectively measure employee's performance and we've found that your performance is 10% under the target." Imagine a conversation like that and the amount of time both would have saved.
We'll notice some of the language patterns of Mr Careful Converser:
"Maybe I shouldn't say this but../I probably shouldn't say this but.." If you shouldn't say something, don't.
"To be honest with you" If you're now being honest, you should learn to be honest as a practice so that you can drop the "to be honest" lead. As a quick note here, there’s a difference between “to be blunt” and “to be honest” in that the blunt statement is stating “I’m going to be direct.” You should avoid ever saying “to be honest” as it implies you were lying.
"I'm only just guessing" If you admit to guessing about a situation, you may consider not guessing as a better practice. It is perfectly acceptable to not know something and leave it at that.
The popular passive aggressive criticism sandwich or in this case, blowing out the praise while slightly offering criticism. The criticism sandwich only works with extremely immature people who can't handle mature feedback - you don't need to mix praise with criticism. Offering criticism alone can be extremely useful and is especially desired by top talented employees because it's clear and direct. Should you praise when someone is deserving? Of course! And you don't have to lead every criticism with a praise, just like you don't lead every praise with criticism.
While Mr Careful Converser isn't the most costly of corporate creatures, we see that he creates confusion and wastes company time because he lacks effective communication.
The Meet Mr Series
For more in the Meet Mr Series of posts, check out Executive Decisions’ regular Series page. Some highlighted posts from this series:
All images are sourced from Pixabay. The written content of this post is copyright Executive Decisions; all rights reserved. None of the written content in this post may be used in any artificial intelligence.