A Coaching Power Tool By Sing Lee Lim, Career Coach, Performance Coach, Transition Coach, SINGAPORE
Control vs. Influence: Andy’s Story
At the end of the day, you can’t control the results; you can only control your effort level and your focus. Ben Zobrist(American Athlete)
Andy worked as a travel consultant at a travel management company for 5 years. He had been proud of himself for being able to deliver outstanding results that constantly exceeded his manager’s expectations, among his teammates. Entering Q1, the management team announced that the new performance goals set for the year would be evaluated on a team basis.
Andy was unhappy with this change. He believed the new evaluation method was unfair to him. As an outstanding performer, he was fully aware of the performance level of his teammates. He was doubtful that he would be able to sustain the same level of achievement under the new evaluation method. He proactively reached out to his manager to explain that this new method would not work. His manager told him to look from a larger picture that this new method would enhance the collaboration within the team so everyone would work closely as one team to achieve the same goals. Andy, on the other hand, believed this change was to allow his teammates to take a free ride on his achievement that would eventually contribute to team results.
Ending Q1, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of Andy’s team were concluded as barely meeting expectations. Andy was deeply disappointed. He went to justify with his manager with his personally tracked KPIs to prove that his individual result was impacted by team results. This action of his had hurt the feeling and morale of his teammates.
The situation went worse in Q2. Andy felt that he was circling nowhere since his manager would not listen to his appeal and recognize his achievement. Andy’s teammates continued on no dialog with him because Andy always put the blame on other teammates during a team meeting.
What Is the Difference Between Control vs. Influence?
What is Control?
According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, control essentially means 1) to direct the behavior of (a person or animal); 2) to cause (a person or animal) to do what you want.
In the scenario mentioned above, Andy was trying to get his manager to concur with his view so as to revert the new evaluation method back to the old one. It was because, with the old method, he had control over his own KPIs. As such, he didn’t have to, nor did he has the interest to deal with the KPIs of his teammates. He felt that he had lost control over his own KPIs. Therefore, he was trying to prove himself right to regain control.
According to Stephen R. Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, the first habit is to Be Proactive. He explained that “Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things that they can do something about.”
Andy’s focus had been on a new evaluation method that would impact his KPIs delivery. He didn’t realize that he had been reacting to the management decision on the new evaluation method deployment, which fell within the Circle of Concern instead of the Circle of Influence, over which he had no real control about it. This reactive focus resulted in negative energy within the team, impacting his working relationships with his manager and peers.
What is Influence?
According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, influence essentially means 1) the power to change or affect someone or something: and 2) the power to cause changes without directly forcing them to happen.
Imagine this: had Andy been aware of the new evaluation method deployment was something that he had no real control about it, he proactively reached out to his teammates to discuss the implication of the new evaluation method. Fully aware of the performance level of his teammates, he first highlighted the new team goals, and then called out the potential gaps to achieve the team goals. By thinking win-win (habit #4), he could try to understand the challenges facing the team to achieve the team goals. After that, he iterated his aim to not only achieve but exceed the team goals. He then offered his help and support to teammates who needed guidance to achieve the team goals. Together, the synergy of the team spirit was high, and everyone was so motivated to achieve the team goals.
According to Stephen R. Covey, habit #1 Be Proactive, habit #2 Begins with The End in Mind, and habit #3 Put First Things First focuses on private victory, which is solely dependent on an individual’s control. Habit #4 Think Win-Win, habit #5 Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood and habit #6 Synergize focus on public victory, which is interdependence on many individuals to make it happen. In Andy’s situation, should he take his teammates into account, instead of making this his solo war to fight on, he might get a different outcome.
Let’s take a look at Andy again: circling nowhere, Andy was in despair. He had thought about resigning from the position and looking for a new job elsewhere. Andy’s manager sensed that Andy was disengaged. Not wanting to lose Andy to a competitor, he had asked the site HR Business Partner to approach Andy. Andy met up with the HR Business Partner and he shared his pain points and the hopeless war that he was fighting on his own. The HR Business Partner invited him to reframe his perspective to think about what if he didn’t need to win this war but to think win-win. During the explorative conversation, Andy realized that the change in the new evaluation method was outside of his control. Nevertheless, he could embrace the change by influencing his teammates to put in the effort together to achieve the goals. In the event that the goals were not achieved after a few attempts, they would have more data to justify to the management team that the new change might not work.
On the next day, Andy shared his new learning with his managers and teammates. They welcomed his behavioral shift and started to discuss action plans. Ending Q3, Andy’s team result was meeting all expectations with some exceeding expectations.
The Art of Coaching in Control vs. Influence
We feel comfortable when we are in control. When things go sideways, we tend to be uneasy or anxious because it has gone out of our control. We often say that someone has been in his/her comfort zone too long, therefore he/she is resistant to change. It is because change is unplanned and may result in unexpected outcomes that normally are beyond one’s control.
Coaching is most powerful when a coach helps his/her client to recognize what he/she really wants, i.e., creating self-awareness. Self-awareness is an inward focus that focuses on one’s inner self. This is a very powerful process to help one to learn and grow. Often, we wonder why we have already tried so hard, yet we never succeeded. The reason could be as simple as we didn’t realize what we truly desire hence we didn’t work in the right direction. After learning of his true desire, Andy learned that deep inside he wanted to pursue personal wins which he had most control. The new evaluation method took such control away from him. Hence, he resisted the change and got stuck.
In Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he mentioned the power of paradigm shift. When one is stuck in a situation, shifting the paradigm to see things from a different perspective may open a whole new world to the person. This is a powerful tool in coaching, which we called reframing perspective. In Andy’s case, the HR Business Partnerhadhelped Andy to shift his paradigm: from trying to keep everything under his control to trying to influence his teammates to cooperate with him so they could achieve what he aimed for. By doing so, Andy managed to keep some levels of control as to how could he influence his teammates to work towards the same goals.
Control vs. Influence in Career Coaching
However, in today’s business world facing a company, change is the only constant. Many of us have come across a change process at work in many ways. For example, system migration, process improvement, business transformation, or organizational restructuring. For some, they resist the change because they don’t like to get out of their comfort zone. For some, they are just tiresome of endless changes. All of these added up to the stress level one could handle, some might end up quitting their job.
Consider this: In the following year, Andy’s manager would like to promote one of the team members to be the team lead. Andy was keen on the role. The whole promotion process was of course not within Andy’s control. He was concerned that his previous behavior against the deployment of a new evaluation method would impede his candidacy for the role. He went to the HR Business Partner to seek her advice. The HR Business Partner asked him about his goal of pursuing this career opportunity. Andy gave deep thought to this question. Then, he answered that it would be great to know if he has the capability to become a people leader. Being selected for the role would be the best outcome, however, learning more about his capability and his readiness to be a people leader, would help in his career growth.
Having that in mind, Andy became relaxed and no longer nervous. Without prior people management experience, he had nothing to prove as a track record. He had an open and candid dialog with his manager about his interest in the role and what would he bring to the table for the team. He acknowledged that his past uncooperative behavior was inappropriate and shared what had he learned through the incident. His manager was pleased with Andy’s proactive manner and how he successfully influenced and supported the whole team to achieve the team goals together. He told Andy that his application to the role would be carefully considered and, that Andy would be informed of the outcome in due course.
Andy was very happy with the coaching received from the HR Business Partner, which not only helped him in self-awareness and saw things from a different perspective but most importantly, he had grown through this series of events. He had come closer to his career aspiration. He believed he would have finally gotten a chance to become a people leader one day.
Control vs. Influence on Client’s Growth
There are some questions a coach could ask to dig deeper to create awareness and facilitate the client’s growth when navigating through a change process.
- What really bothers you with this change?
- What would be the ideal outcome of this change?
- If this is not within your control, in what way you could do to influence to achieve what you’ve wanted?
- How can you look at this change in a different way, which gives you a positive feeling?
- Assuming that you are unable to change others, what could you do to make the situation better?
References
Stephen R. Covey (2013). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (25th Anniversary ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
In an interview with “Andy”