The Hands-Off Manager (6 page)

You can see how old-school managers such as Kyle are so painfully attached to all these things they
have
to do all day (which are, in reality, nothing but thoughts).

Managers similar to Kyle would look at the list of 100 and be repelled by very the sight of it! They’d shrink away in fear. So they would do something else. Something not even on their list! Out of fear of not being busy.

What could these struggling managers be focused on instead of that grim list? They could be focused on their intention to make progress in the present moment. The present moment is the only place where one’s life can be moved forward.
That’s where all creativity occurs, when it occurs.

True power—the real measure of actual power—is your capacity to create results in this moment, right now.

Effective managers do first things first and they do one thing at a time.

—Peter Drucker

Hands-off management means hands off the past and hands off the future. Your focus is the present moment, because you understand that productivity always happens now.

Then, as your people also learn to create freely in the present moment, success, rather amazingly (and simply), comes to them. When we are in that creating mode, we are advancing upward, evolving and expanding toward higher levels of success.

Creating always occurs in the moment. Never in the future.

When our minds are in the future we experience thoughts of worry and fear. When we drift back to the past, thoughts of regret or resentment arise.

Are any of those thoughts worthy of clinging to?

Allowing success requires nonattachment to such thoughts.

Attaching to your thoughts like Velcro

Professional writers get something they call “writer’s block” when they start believing their thoughts about the future.

Attachment to those thoughts allows no room for freedom and creativity.

This habit of attaching, like Velcro, to every passing worried thought and every little judgment leads us into a life
of emotional teeter-tottering all day long. A life of fearful distractions.

Sit down with an unsuccessful (unhappy, struggling) manager and you will hear him describe where his focus goes: “I get too many phone calls. I have too many personal problems to deal with. My health is not ideal right now. The person down the hall has their internet gaming site on. I have too many visitors. I’ll never be able to answer all my e-mails. My reports are overdue. I have too many meetings to attend this week. I have to give a talk.”

Notice all those stressful thoughts crowding in on him. The hands-off manager learns to take just one of those thoughts (“I get too many phone calls”) and work with it (“I’m putting my calls direct to message. I look forward to hearing them later when I’m ready and focused on them”).

Hands-off managers are creators. They take one stressful situation at a time and create something good from it. Hands-on managers, on the other hand, are reactors. They react to all thoughts, all day, full alarm. For them, life itself is just a series of emergencies.

We lift ourselves up from that when we become creators. When we speak of God in religious terms, we often call Him (or that force), “the creator.” Which is why Deepak Chopra humorously says, “God is my role model.” He wants to live in the image of his creator by creating. Whether we know it or not, as we go through life, we all ultimately seek and desire an increased capacity to create. To create fulfillment, happiness, and the ultimate in professional satisfaction. What we all want, what’s a part of our very core, is that capacity to create. And we lose that capacity whenever we lose focus.

As the great teacher of human consciousness Byron Katie says, “If you want to be unhappy, get yourself a future.”

If we wish to move toward a particular outcome, we have to do something right now to create that movement. We can’t move something in the future. And we certainly can’t undo
anything in the past. We only advance when we are in the present moment. Only that sacred place will give us room in which to work.

Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold, and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.

—Brenda Ueland

Don’t focus on what you fear

In business you begin to realize you can never solve a problem by thinking about it in the same negative mood that created the problem in the first place. You can only solve a problem by focusing on it with a higher state of consciousness. Or to put it more simply: You get yourself into a better mood.

When you become a hands-off manager you are always aware that resisting the things you don’t want contributes to their power. Therefore, if you tell an employee he is doing a bad job, you are sowing the seeds of future bad work. For example, if you tell an employee with a drug addiction problem that they’re a terrible person, they will feel bad and want to go get another fix. But if you tell them they have potential, that they can learn from what they’ve gone through, if they can find a way to recognize it as something that was positive, you’re able to invite them to a new place of pure recovery.

Old-school managers worry a lot

Old-school managers manage by worrying. They believe that if they don’t get worried enough about something, they won’t solve the problem. So their internal motivation system is fear. They think they have to scare themselves into doing the right thing.

If you tell them they would be more effective as relaxed, happy, hands-off managers, they tell you they’re afraid that if they try that approach, everything will fall apart. They think that without fear as the ultimate motivator, no one would work—including themselves. So they use fear to motivate themselves and intimidation to motivate their employees. They continue to fasten their minds onto the very things that block them from making progress. They’re never focused on what they can do right now to move things forward.

If they are in sales, for example, they’re not thinking about who is on their referral list or what kind of follow-up calls they might want to make, even though those presentmoment activities would move success forward. Instead, they’re obsessed with whatever frustrates them the most. If you ask them how it’s going, they’ll spew out a list of their most current frustrations, which are always at the top of their mind.

A compassionate hands-off sales manager will rectify that situation. He will teach his people to use their “now” moments creatively. They’ll familiarize themselves with the products they’re selling. They will spend time studying to develop their skills. If they’re selling homes to people in their community, they will learn about local community events and activities.

All of these things are ways of focusing attention on what you can do now.

Some surveys show the average salesperson spends only 1.5 hours a day selling. That’s because of his focus on distractions and things he considers to be threatening. But salespeople
who transform from failure to success have simply realized that walking forward (by living in the now) is much more advantageous than walking backward (by living in the past) or spending their time worrying about what might happen (by living in the future).

Salespeople who struggle are taking one good step forward (identifying an intention) and then two nightmarish steps back (trying to make all the “bad” things in life go away). They wonder why they daily have that uneasy feeling of always losing ground. (They are.)

When you are a manager focused in the moment, you are moving your team forward again. You are paying attention to what’s being communicated to you. You are honoring every experience. You are finding value in everything that has ever happened to you. You have respect and caring for others. And it’s a different kind of caring. It’s not, “I care what you think about me,” but rather, “I care enough for you to want you to just be who you are. I accept you, I don’t want to fix you, I just want to understand you as you are and partner with you, moving forward in agreement.”

Many people think being focused in this neutral, accepting way would make them passive and directionless managers. Quite the opposite! Pure action emerges from an undistracted mind. It’s a clear mind that gives birth to the most beautiful quantum leaps of inspired action and bold, creative communications. Because that is where intention enters the picture, rises up, and takes over. It’s important to have intention. But intention is different from an outcome goal, and knowing the difference is vital to your success.

The goals of companies and individuals striving for success are often expressed this way: “This goal represents where I want to go, and I’m going to be really unhappy and disappointed if I don’t arrive there. This is what I expect of myself, and if I don’t get there I will be a failure.”

Obviously this kind of thinking only introduces stress into the human system. It builds discomfort and unwanted pressure. Stress is not optimal for performance. This has been proven over and over in everything from free-throw shooting to spelling bees: Stress and anxiety have a profoundly negative impact on performance.

That’s why it’s more effective to use peaceful inner intention. One can more easily think,
Well, that’s where I intended to go, but, oh well, I didn’t get there
. It may sound weak, but it’s actually stronger, because from that relaxed place you are more likely to keep trying. You are able to say to yourself,
Gee, it was just an intention, it’s okay that I didn’t get there. I’m going to keep working on it. I’ve got great new ideas
. Instead of:
I’m disappointed and angry with myself; I’m a loser, I can’t progress, and I can’t make it
.

With intention you can be like the water Bruce Lee spoke about. Being like water, you allow your nature and your energy to flow along with your intention. With a stressful goal you’re always trying to push yourself uphill to finally “get to” the goal. But with an intention, there’s no place to get to. No hill to climb. The intention is in you already. You already have it. You just flow with it and use it as a directional monitor.

At its core, intention is a powerful place to come from inside you, and a goal is a hoped-for place outside of you to get to. The truly successful person has learned to get his or her hands off of future outcomes and just flow like a river.

Steps to hands-off success in your life

Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:

1. Rather than focusing on large, external goals that stress you out, keep your task list simple. List three action items you think are the most important to do today and then pick just one to do right now.

2. Once your first three priority items are finished (one at a time), you’ll feel a real glow inside, and you can turn to page two where you have other action items listed. Circle one more and do that immediately.

3. The next time you talk to someone, take time to really be there. Don’t multitask, check your smart phone, or think of other things. Just be in that conversation and create the relationship you are in. Slow down to the speed of life. Who you are right now is more important than some future visionary quest you’re obsessing about.

CHAPTER FIVE
QUESTIONS LEADING TO SUCCESS

Judge others by their questions rather than by their answers.

—Voltaire

The hands-off manager doesn’t spend a lot of time giving advice.

Instead, he perfects his ability to ask questions. Questions that allow success and fulfillment to happen. Questions such as, “What things come naturally to you? How comfortable are you doing this work? How easy is the workflow for you right now?”

We have been trained by the media, by our families, by our traditions, and by our culture to focus on the negative and try to fix it. We obsess over sins and shortcomings, trials and tribulations. We try to go outside ourselves to change the negative things. Then we try in vain to create an external situation that’s positive.

But none of that works, because the positive solution is on the inside. What we were seeking was already in us. No wonder we couldn’t find it out there.

And just how do you find these solutions inside you? Questions! Just start asking questions. And then listen. Take just a moment after you do something and question how it feels to you. You just sent an e-mail to a team member whose actions upset you. Do you feel a sense of satisfaction? Do you feel a sense of fulfillment? Could you say to someone, “I loved doing that. That was fun for me.” Or do you feel a sense of guilt and dissatisfaction?

Just listen to that feeling, whatever it is. With a little practice and discipline, it’s not hard to find a way to test all your actions against this inner knowing. To tune your instrument for excellence and efficiency. Soon your e-mails and other communications will be both compassionate and powerful. You will tune in to ways of communicating that are clear and satisfying.

I was talking to a manager named George about slowing down and listening to his inner, higher wisdom, when he finally said, “You mean I should love everything I do?”

“That would be ideal.”

“If I wanted to do that, all I would do is play golf!”

Very funny, George. But golf is your entertainment, not your work. And entertainment has its place in our world. But unless you’re a pro sports figure or an actor (and even those people work very hard at accomplishing what they do), entertainment will not bring you true joy and fulfillment. It will not give you a sense of satisfaction and well-being. Those kinds of feelings only come from what you accomplish, what you contribute, or what you do to make a difference.

Your work will provide you these feelings. Your true feeling of success will only come from what you give to the world through your work and love, while entertainment is based on what you can get from the world.