Is It Time To Fire Your Inner ‘Fixer’?
When your fixing keeps others incompetent.
Many leaders avoid feedback out of not wanting to hurt the relationship.
For example, 44% of leaders say they find feedback stressful and 21% avoid feedback entirely.
But the irony is that an absence of feedback makes a relationship unsafe. It becomes conditional on only good things happening. By definition, it’s fragile, unable to weather any off script moments.
If a relationship is conditional, it’s not safe.
It’s reliant on all things going well, rather than having the buffer and muscle memory for things to go wrong.
Solid relationships can handle it when things go bad. Weak relationships fall over when things don’t go to plan.
A safe relationship has the absence of interpersonal fear. That means you trust the other person will react in a reasonable way, even to tricky news. You can handle seeing someone disappointed; they can handle being disappointed in front of you.
The ability to bear and witness discomfort is the skill that links this all together.
A psychologically safe relationship is one that can handle feedback.
Yet telling someone that something they’ve done hasn’t hit the mark can be terrifying for some leaders, because they don’t like to hurt other people's feelings. This keeps the other person in the dark about their performance.
Consider this example… you’re in your performance review.
For the last six months you’ve been asking for feedback and been told it’s all good. Even the CEO said so. Then in this performance review, you’ve been told you’ve not met expectations.
Do you trust what your leader has to say?
The ‘sin’ isn’t the under performance, it happens, it’s fixable.
It’s the trust that’s broken when the team member figures they can’t rely on their leader to tell them what’s real. That puts the other person on edge, not trusting their leader is giving them the real deal.
Avoiding the ‘ick’ of watching someone else squirm.
It’s not really the feedback that’s the ‘ick’. It’s having to witness someone else be uncomfortable and not being allowed to save the day.
Watching someone else struggle is counter intuitive for folks who like to make people's lives easier. Yet it’s impossible to grow without learning. Learning is inherently awkward.
If you lead someone, you will facilitate their growth. You will have to watch them feel uncomfortable. That’s your burden to take on as a leader, not theirs.
Building the muscle of not fixing.
Tell someone who’s used to running things not to fix a problem and watch them squirm (are you squirming reading this?). It doesn’t feel very comfortable. Yet, allowing others to be temporarily uncomfortable is part of facilitating growth.
Discomfort or lack of safety?
There’s a difference between being uncomfortable short term and unsafe long term.
Uncomfortable at work looks like:
Getting feedback that’s surprising.
Processing feelings about feedback, feeling defensive.
Having a big week of heavy deadlines needing to get it done.
Dropping the ball in front of a client or Big Boss.
Giving a presentation that’s important to you.
Being uncomfortable is a normal part of growing, and learning in your role. Being exposed to stress, temporarily, is also part of it.
Being unsafe at work looks like:
Being exposed to high stress situations over a long period of time in a relationship.
Examples:
A mercurial boss: you never know how they’re going to react.
A colleague who gets defensive every time you approach a problem.
Witnessing a client act aggressively and get their way and watch your higher ups do things you know aren’t ethical.
A colleague continually drops the ball requiring you to get involved and ‘save the day’, leading you to over-access your reserves you need for recouping at the end of the week.
Hopefully you can see, by giving someone feedback and watching them feel uncomfortable, is in the ‘this is a normal part of work’ category.
Not being able to handle receiving feedback…
It’s not a sin. Defensiveness is a biological response to stress. But, it impacts both your reputation and the safety of the relationship you’re in.
That doesn't mean putting up with aggressive or hostile comments. It means when defensiveness turns up, you have a plan to manage it.
Tiny things create resentment over time.
Meaning the feedback you eventually give can feel emotionally charged.
An alternative is to give smaller bits of feedback as you go. To get okay with that, it’s useful to practice tiny bits of feedback where you don’t own someone else's discomfort as a first step.
By doing so, you slowly get people used to you giving feedback, and you get used to witnessing small discomforts, giving you muscle memory for bigger ones over time.
Fixers, what’s it like watching someone incompetent?
It is painful watching someone else not succeed. But consider what work could be like if you no longer took on the burden of someone else's (in)competence.
When you go into ‘fix it’ mode, the other person stays incompetent and disempowered. When you allow mistakes to happen, within reason, they feel the panic of it stuffing up, try to fix it themselves, hopefully learn new skills and lessen the burden to you long term. You keep your accountability (team performance). But you remove yourself from the burden of having to control someone’s output.
It’s their career, they can technically choose what they like to do with their reputation.
But they can only do that if they have the intel or experiences to become better.
Becoming an ‘anti fixer’ leader.
Sometimes, you need to create space for someone else to grow. But to do that, you need to be okay with someone else not doing it well, for a bit.
Putting yourself in lower stakes scenarios, where you’re forced to witness someone else's discomfort without fixing or saving the day, can help develop the muscle of allowing people to grow.
A few examples of low stakes scenarios.
Sending back an incorrect order at a cafe, asking for a refund when you get overcharged, or correcting someone who just waffled on about nonsense. All examples of not ‘fixing’, and practicing witnessing someone else's incompetence, and allowing them to problem solve.
Try it out on a stranger sometime … how might it feel to not own someone else's underperformance and witness it, instead?
Do your leaders need these skills NOW?
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