As I was pondering the problem of leaders who overlook negative symptoms in their organizations, I received food for thought from my naturopath at Nature Cures Clinic. In a newsletter article, Nutrition Mission: Improve your Health through Food, nutritionist Maria Zilke made a fascinating point:
“We are very adept in this country at shutting up our symptoms – if we have a headache we take a couple of aspirin, a body ache has us reaching for a bottle of ibuprofen. Acid reflux or GERD is soothed with antacids – and even our red, itchy dry eyes are treated with fake tears! Symptoms are no longer considered to be the body’s way of communicating – they’re conditions that must be relieved so that we can ignore them a while longer.”
As leaders we often do the same thing with our business. We view symptoms as annoyances to be relieved rather than seeing them as the insights into exactly what is out of alignment in our organization. Far too often and to our detriment, we view common issues-complaining employees, incomplete paperwork, errors in programming, reduced morale, employees showing up late for work-as irritations that simply must be relieved. However, more often than not these common business ailments actually indicate a larger workplace condition needing attention.
As Maria points out in her article, the problem with ignoring a symptom is that it doesn’t really go away; it just gets louder and more demanding if we fail to address the real cause.
Might the symptoms in your organization be warning you of a potential hazard? Perhaps the real issue behind program errors is a communication gap that everyone is too afraid to name, one that leaves people unclear about their objectives and responsibilities.
Could low morale at work be a function of fear that you, as the leader, have the ability to alleviate if only you become conscious the fear exists?
Incomplete paperwork might be less a function of lazy employees and more a function of forms that fail to effectively meet either the needs of the organization or the workflow of the team.
As human beings we are quick to judge, quick to blame, quick to deflect and way too quick to swallow a pill. We go for the quick fix rather than taking the time to address the underlying conditions that give rise to the visible symptoms. As a leader of self or others, take a moment to reconsider these symptoms, or annoyances, that plague you or your organization. Consider the root causes. You may rediscover that your people are awesome, and that just a few simple circumstances or conditions are standing in the way of their greatness.
