Every human resources manager worth his or her hay completely understands what a communications “zoo” today’s workplace can be. Quote in point: “Nobody’s speaking about the elephant in the room!” It’s a euphemism that highlights how sometimes the most important, pressing important topics for business discussion are all but glossed over, denied or outright ignored. Smart leaders and managers can smell and tell when there’s a dusty, big, fat, hairy, smelly, messin’-n-stinkin’ pachyderm in the workplace or house.
ZOO CREW: WHAT ELEPHANT? I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT!
Denial is not a wonderful thing, because if your team or “zoo crew” can’t talk openly and honestly, chances are problems won’t get solved and crises will build until they bust out of the zoo. Denial may not be a very big a problem when profits soar, but when profits shrink these “perception impressions” cause big costly errors. You and your “esteem team” just can’t throw a blanket over a big elephant and pretend it isn’t around, can you?
TUSK…TUSK…TUSK
So how do you know when an elephant is occupying the room…and that the big beast stinks…real bad? Here’s how to raise your E.Q. (or Elephant Quotient) by 10 points, easy:
1. SPLITTING HAIRS. Holding meetings and weighing and measuring and discussing and splitting hairs about what really IS an elephant or what makes an elephant tick. Who doesn’t know what an elephant looks and smells like?
2. NOT FEELING LIKE TALKING. It doesn’t matter if you want to talk about the drudgery and droll of elephant droppings, because elephants are going to drop their droppings in our living room or board room, regardless.
3. DRESS IT UP. Putting a dress or tuxedo on the elephant or dousing it with expensive perfume or cologne doesn’t make it stink or poop any less.
4. IT’S NOT THAT BAD? I don’t know about you, but the reality of my experience suggests that elephant crap IS that bad, whether shallow or deep, and you should be mad. No amount of positive attitude adjustment is going to make the room stink less.
5. DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Not talking about the elephant poop and goop means you and your team will have to spend an enormous amount of wasteful time and energy walking around “poo-piles” and using clothes pins to pinch your nostrils shut.
6. EMOTIONAL BRIBERY. Emotional bribery is telling a leader or manager what they want to hear when it’s bad for the company and future profits. An example: “Well, yes…there might be an elephant in the room if that’s what you think but it’s not always in the room and besides it’s on a diet and is almost no trouble at all. Now about this other project we’ve got to discuss…”
7. SWEET RAGING RAMPAGING. Some talk sweetly when miffed, implying in tones that suggest that you are out of your skull if you think talking about elephants…or elephant excrement…or rampaging elephants makes any sense, whatsoever. “Psycho-critiquing” shuts down and shuts up healthy criticisms about: “It’s not working around here and we all know it!”
8. CRAZY AS A TARZAN OR JANE? Managers who live in denial aren’t “stupid but ignorant” because they don’t get it…or know what they’re talking about. Why do we listen in rapture to power-driven managers who make big mistakes by ignoring and refusing to deal with reality?
9. THROWN UNDER THE BUS. The ultimate fear of “anger in the workplace” is your being “accidentally” “thrown under the bus” because you don’t tell upper management what they want to hear—and no witnesses will come forward.
10. KISS THE ELEPHANT’S RUMP. Many of us react on the “work team” as we learned to survive in the “family team.” For example, kissing the rump of the stinking elephant to obtain favors…even telling a “white lie” for job security.
ZOO SURVIVAL: KISS THE ELEPHANT’S RUMP?
If you try to talk about the elephant to the zookeeper and you are ignored, patted on the head, brusquely scolded, talked over, told a bunch of head-spinning slick rationalizations or excuses, sweetly chastised or ridiculed and threatened with “you’re off the island to survive on your own”…then your managers will simply “shut up and go along to get along,” which is a cryin’ shame.
If there’s an elephant (rhinoceros, hippopotamus) in the room…be a real mouse to scare the elephant out of the house…instead of acting like an imperfect human being who pours expensive perfume all over the pachyderm and dresses it up in a fancy business suit to salute. There’s simply no more time to lose.
ABOUT DR. DENNIS O’GRADY
ABOUT “TALK TO ME” BY DR. DENNIS O’GRADY
Dr. Dennis O’Grady’s third and latest book is called, “Talk to Me: Communication Moves to Get Along with Anyone.” TALK TO ME is a self-help and personal growth psychology book about communication, and it specifically lays out O’Grady’s newest theories about two types of communicators: Empathizers and Instigators. With great success, Dr. O’Grady who is a Clinical Professor at the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology, has been using this new approach to effective communication in his private executive coaching and professional relationship counseling practice and with corporate management teams, sales teams, community groups and professional associations. As such, he’s helping them integrate these new communication tools into their companies, personal relationships, family dynamics and business/work-related communication exchanges.
In fact, the Empathizer-Instigator thinking and approaches can be applied to everyday life, and his goal is to give people a new understanding as they drive down the two-way communicator highway. For a synopsis of Dr. O’Grady’s personal growth book, please visit http://www.drogrady.com/web_Mailer.html.
In addition, Dr. O’Grady’s training programs, background and resources are featured at his website: www.drogrady.com (including a blog that provides daily, useful information, tips and advice). He hopes that visitors to his Web site will find helpful information, feel comfortable working with new ideas and be willing to share their insight into topics of importance. Please order the book, so it should arrive soon. After you’ve had a chance to look it over, please feel free to send any feedback to him – by letter, by phone call, by e-mail or by posting a comment on Dr. O’Grady’s blog!