Via the American Management Association I joined the webcast Leadership with a twist. It was a presentation by Kenny Moore.

Now I found this webcast to be worthwhile not only because of the enlightening content, but also for the dynamic way in which Kenny Moore tells his story. It is very interactive and he has a marvelous gentle and refined sense of humor.

Some excerpts that I really liked:

Answering the question: How do you deal with employees who are negative no matter what the company does or what message they deliver?

Kenny first tells us that he loves those people, as they represent a part of him. Next he says, let’s take a look at a way of looking at this. He puts on a model, based on the work of Claes Janssen, the 4-room apartment.

This model says that everyone is always in one of the four rooms of the apartment: contentment, denial, confusion, renewal. How do people behave when they are in one of these four rooms? People in ‘contentment’ are happy, life’s good. People in ‘denial’ are angry, sarcastic. In ‘confusion’ people are frustrated, anxious. In ‘renewal’ people are engaged, entrepreneurial, energetic.

In this four-room apartment, there are doors, but the doors only go one way.

The door from contentment only goes into denial. Denial only goes into confusion. Confusion only goes into renewal. And renewal only goes into contentment.

Now, in Western thought we believe that only people in renewal and in contentment are good and that people in denial or in confusion are bad.

This model, which is based on how living systems thrive and prosper, says: no, actually, all four rooms are good. We need to increase our tolerance for these people. That’s the future of the organization! People who see things, they experience the shadow side of corporate life, and they don’t like it, and they want it changed.

Or, maybe the question is a larger one: ‘What might be an appropriate response to help people when there in one of these four rooms?’

People in contentment, what do you do for these people? Leave them alone, unless the buildings on fire, then you tell them to get out. But it’s just a matter of time before these people go into denial.

Angry. Sarcastic. Passive aggressive. What do you do for these people? There are three things you do, there is one thing you never do.

The three things you do: First, listen. Sometimes just by listening people feel affirmed. The other thing you can do that helps, is raise awareness. The third thing you do, is ask questions. My two favorite questions to ask people in denial: Obviously you’re not happy. What do you need to do to take better care of yourself? The other question that I like to ask people in denial is: What can I do to help you?

The one thing you never do for people in denial, is give them advice. For two reasons. They don’t want it. Secondly, if you give it to them, they will take it, they will go of and try it, of course it will not work, and then they’ll come back and they’ll want more advice. These people will suck onto you like a leach and suck you dry and spit you out.

People in denial will eventually move into confusion. There are two things we do for confusion. By the way, denial and confusion in some regards have some of the same emotional texture. The big difference is, people in denial don’t want to do anything, they just want to sit and moan. People in confusion want it fixed.

For the people in confusion you do two things. You bring them together. So, when they complain and they say ‘nobody’s thinking about the costumer’ and ‘this whole system is going to fail’, I’ll say ‘well, you sound very much like Mary. Go contact Mary, share your concerns with her, she’s on the team. She’ll take that information and move forward with it. If she doesn’t, get back to me, and I’ll help you.’

The other thing you do is focus people on the future.

These people will eventually move into renewal. What we do for them is: we try to limit the amount of good things they want to get involved in.

So, to the question: What do we do for these negative people?

You know, they’re in denial, you support them. You let go of the need to fix or judge them. And that will help.

Further on in this webcast he also sheds some light on the interesting matter of what do you do when you manage? What is the transition you go through when you shift focus from work to possibilities.

There are things we meet in the business world that are called problems. Problems have their natural resolution in solutions. We like solving problems. When we do that we go home at night and we feel that we have made a contribution. We have had our expertise used, we sleep well.

If you’re good at solving problems in corporate America, we promote you. And when you are promoted you no longer deal with problems, you deal with, what I call it, predicaments. Predicaments are the imponderables. The dilemmas of corporate life. There are no answers. Regardless of what the consultants say. And it’s terrible dealing with predicaments, because we feel anxious, we feel ambiguous, we feel uncertain. When we go home, we don’t rest well. We feel vulnerable. We know that, when we wake up the following morning, we do not look forward to going back to work, because we have not been able to fix anything and the whole thing could fall apart. However, this is the domain of executives. They hate it also, because that is not what they are good at. What they are good at, is solving problems, which is why we promoted them. So we are asking them to deal in a realm that they are not competent in. Which is why they micromanage. They want to do your job. They want to do my job. Because that’s what they were good at.

What helps in dealing with predicaments, when there are no answers, is when you can get the questions right. That proves to be sufficient enough to make a movement. So that’s what you want to do with predicaments, is get some movement. And understanding that’s a flawed movement, that is almost two steps forward, one step back. That in remedying one problem, you create another. You can’t get it all.

The theological term for predicament is mystery. Which is why I know something about it. The natural resolution of problems is solutions. The natural resolution of predicamnets is movement. What is the natural resolution of mystery? Awe. Like Mozes standing before the burning bush. Actually, the word mystery comes from the Greek, meaning ‘keep you mouth shut’. And that’s what you do. I remember a woman to stop by my office last year to share with me that her daughter is dying of leukemia. You understand that’s not ‘a problem’. I don’t open my file cabinet, look under ‘L’ for leukemia. There’s no answer. There’s nothing we can do for that person. We are in the realm of mystery. I’m told that when doctors complete their medical school, they’re informed that 50 % of what they learned, is wrong. But we just don’t know which 50 % that is. Because when you’re dealing with people, it’s not mechanical, it is not mathematical. It has elements of the sacred, it has elements of mystery. Because someone said ‘computers are useless, all they can do is solve problems’. Which I kind of like, because you understand that that’s the realm of problems and solutions. I think that there’s also some other correlations here. I think that the more junior you are in the organization, the more you deal with problems. The more senior you are, the more you deal with predicaments and mystery. I think chronologically, the younger you are, you deal with problems. The older you get, life confronts you with predicaments and mystery.