My New Book

Order your copy today!

David Maister - Professional Business, Professional Life
David’s ResourcesAbout David
NEW! Browse my materials by topic of interest:StrategyManagingClient RelationsCareersGeneral

Passion, People and Principles

| return to blog index |

Escalating Appeals

post # 20 — February 21, 2006 — a Managing post

What do you say to someone on your team who is not in compliance with your standards? (for example, he or she doesn’t get involved in marketing, doesn’t treat people with respect, doesn’t show up to meetings on time.) What appeals can you make to them that might tempt them into cooperating?

Here’s a list of possibilities.

  1. The Personal Request – Do it as a favor to me. I’ll owe you one.
  2. The Ego Protection Ploy – You’ll look bad in the eyes of others.
  3. The Team Play Appeal – It’s important to the team.
  4. The Fun Promise – You’ll enjoy it once you start doing it.
  5. The Isolation Gambit – You don’t want to be the odd person out.
  6. The Guilt Plea – You’re a better person than that.
  7. The Values Volley – It’s consistent with what you believe in.
  8. The Perspective Point – It will pay off for you in the long run.
  9. The Have Mercy Message – Other people will suffer if you don’t.
  10. The Contractual Comeback – You agreed to this when we discussed it.
  11. The Principle Principle – It’s the right thing to do.
  12. The Context Framer – When you do this, it has the following consequences for others.
  13. The Achievement Temptation – You could get good at this if you wanted to.
  14. The Recognition Response – People will really think highly of you if you do this.
  15. The Desperation Resort – Do It and We’ll Pay You (We promise.)

Anybody out there have an opinion on which of these work most often? Least often?

Which ones have I forgotten to list?

11 Comments

Bill Peper said:

The technique that has worked best for me is the straightforward question—“What can I do to help you make this expectation in the future?” By deviating from the contract/expectations in the discussion, it sends a mixed message.

posted on February 21, 2006

David (Maister) said:

Brilliant, Bill.

posted on February 21, 2006

Lars Plougmann said:

The question you pose “What do you say to someone on your team who is not in compliance with your standards?” is extremely relevant in a time where project teams consist of people from across the organisation, or spans organisational boundaries. Hence the project manager is often not the boss of anybody on the project team.

I remember on one project, we had some success with a variant of #2 – “If you don’t deliver on time, we will shame you in the next meeting…”

But care should be taken not to overstep the line, what is acceptable depends on the atmosphere within the project team.

posted on February 22, 2006

David (Maister) said:

Lars, I think you’re right that any one of these can be overused. I think relying on only one approach (even one as smart as the one Bill Peper proposed in the comment above) just proves that you are too limited as a manager. The essence of managing, in my view, is varying what you do depending upon your abiity to understand the specific human being in front of you. Generalizations like: people respond to X – these generaliaztuions are always dangerous, because people do vary.

It’s hard to figure out (and hard to figure out quickly) what each person will respond to, but that’s what makes good managers so special.

posted on February 22, 2006

Ed Mays said:

I’m not sure that the question of appeals to compliance is properly placed. I would think that, in a true firm context, the question is more properly directed to the firm. Namely, what conduct, or lack of conduct, is the firm willing to accept from its members. I doubt that any of the appeals will be successful in the long run if the firm member is not internally motivated to comply. If that is the case, then how should the firm respond? The motivation question is a one of professionalism, answerable only by the professional. The response of the firm is the real management issue.

posted on February 23, 2006

Bill Peper said:

I agree that no approach works in every situation, and that the best managers learn to “play all 88 keys” in whatever style necessary to inspire each direct report. However, it is important to distinguish between efforts to inspire employees and having a discussion about noncompliance with firm standards with an employee. Attempting to accomplish both objectives simultaneously is often counterproductive.

Creating workplace excellence through others is the lifeblood of management and an ongoing requirement. While opportunities to inspire occur throughout a “tough conversation”, the focus should be the unacceptable work performance.

If the goal is to develop a professional, productive relationship, I cannot imagine a situation where guilt, force, or a similar tactic is preferable to a manager’s commitment to help and a reaffirmation of the standard breached. Such tactics hinder the goal of conducting a “real” conversation on the issue, and they threaten to take the conversation on nonproductive tangents.

Rest assured that the employee will perceive and resent any explicit or implicit manipulation or threat. Even with no prior relationship, we instinctively know whether the waiter wants to be there after saying only, “Would you like something to drink?”

The real challenge of managing is summoning the courage to resolve unpleasant situations in the best — and not the easiest or most expedient — fashion. Managers show their greatest ingenuity in rationalizing why a particular situation represents an exception and justifies using one of tactics David described in the blog.

posted on February 23, 2006

Ed Mays said:

David,

I’m not sure that the question of appeals to compliance is properly placed. I would think that, in a true firm context, the question is more properly directed to the firm. Namely, what conduct, or lack of conduct, is the firm willing to accept from its members. I doubt that any of the appeals will be successful in the long run if the firm member is not internally motivated to comply. If that is the case, then how should the firm respond? The motivation question is a one of professionalism, answerable only by the professional. The response of the firm is the real management issue.

posted on February 23, 2006

John Koetsier said:

What? No “do it or we’ll fire your ass” option?

posted on February 24, 2006

Matt said:

As someone who works in a firm that recognizes a lot of your teachings, I found that my firm’s constant message is that the managers to help its workers achieve their goals, and that is a great motivator. Although I haven’t been in a situation where my managers needed to have the tough talks that the prior commentators and you have discussed, I can tell you that the underlying message would probably help me and others if we weren’t meeting expectations. My managers would most likely come back to the philosophy that, “We want to help you to be successful. Your (behavior, attitude, actions, etc.) are making it difficult for us to help you do that. You’re also making it difficult for us to help your colleagues to achieve their goals.”

I guess this approach is an appeal to personal work ethic, pride, the contract approach (that you mentioned), and the consequences approach (that you mentioned).

Of course, some workers won’t care about his or her manager’s view of their work ethic, but I have found in my experience that most do. Additionally, a firm or organization that has a certain set of standards would be able to weed those types of workers out in the interviewing process or at the early stages of the worker’s employement (one would hope).

posted on March 1, 2006

David (Maister) said:

Matt, you probably don’t know how useful your affirmation is that there are firms and people out there doing it right and trying to live up to their principles. Thanks for helping to fend off the skeptics.

posted on March 1, 2006

breakingranks said:

David, I hope it’s okay to remark on an old post. The popularity of verbal coercion is a scary thing for me. I hope your tongue-in-cheek approach will discourage people from this sort of approach, because there’s a very short leap from effective persuasion to mental abuse.

The particular instance I’m thinking about is when a person of great rank in a company, but no direct authority over you, uses these tactics to bring you into “compliance with their standards” at the expense of the people who are actually your managers.

I was caught in this situation when I was assigned to a project where I reported to a team leader who wasn’t my regular manager. She was offered my services under the explicit instructions that I would only work 12 hours for her a day. She ended up with me working for her full time by her repeated application of the coercive tactics you mentioned above. Whenever she saw me do someone else’s work, she would fly in and try all these manipulative tricks she had obviously learned from some book. I felt that the very fact she would try to manipulate me that way meant she had a very low regard for my intelligence.

I couldn’t say anything, though, because she was a powerful person in the department, and I couldn’t afford to have her speak badly of me (which she would do in a heartbeat if she got the remotest whiff of resistance). The managers who were her peers were terrified of her for the same reason. The irony is the reason my own manager didn’t protect me and stand up for the proper time allocation: she wanted me to be abused so she could complain (or rather have me complain) about the manipulative manager and have her fired.

I secretly worked overtime to try to get my work done for my manager, whose expectations I should have been meeting/exceeding first. However, that didn’t make up for the fact I had been verbally bullied into working the 9-5:30 hrs. for someone I didn’t actually report to. At the same time I tried to resist filing the formal complaint that my own manager was trying to maneuver me into. The result of this is that I was let go on the last day of my probationary period for the vague reason that I didn’t “show good judgment” – i.e., I didn’t help my manager get the manipulative manager fired.

My feelings about the whole thing? A pox on both their houses! It’s now incredibly hard for me to trust any manager, especially once they start using cheap verbal ploys. I will probably never be able to work in the corporate world again. I have the same hyper-vigilant reaction an abused person would. I feel like a casualty of psychological warfare.

In the corporate world, there are more differences in formal power than differences in fundamental intelligence. It’s very easy to put people of a lower rank through this sort of experience, and the scars may be permanent. Abusive managers not only ruin lower level employees for their own workplace, they ruin them for other companies they may work for in the future. Thus it’s in the interest of all employers to actively discourage forms of coercion based on verbal persuasiveness only. If you give the inmates of the asylum weapons, they will use them with ridiculous enthusiasm, and the entire organization will be debilitated for it.

posted on October 31, 2006