If you’ve been in my orbit for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about H.U.M.A.N. Strategies™, my dynamic approach to personal and professional leadership, communication, and effective decision-making skills. It’s foundational to the work I do, helping to bring humanity back into organizations.
To date, I’ve walked you through four of the five principles:
Now, it’s time to explore the final principle: Negotiate Solutions.
Negotiate Solutions
So far, you’ve learned that we can only truly honor the person when we understand their perspectives. And that by honoring and understanding, we’re better able to manage our reactions. Doing all this opens the door to attracting desired results, whereby the needs and objectives of an organization are met by people who feel seen, valued, and eager to participate because they feel honored, and they know their perspectives are valued — and because their work fulfills part of their purpose in life.
The final element of H.U.M.A.N. Strategies is Negotiating Solutions.
You might have heard this joke:
“Stress is the confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it.”
That’s a fairly true and valid definition of stress. Because we do get a lot of our stress from other people.
And while I love the humor in that joke, I’ve reimagined it to speak to a more serious sentiment every one of us can understand and has experienced firsthand:
Stress is that condition created when a person is being asked to behave or perform in a manner incongruent with their personal values and/or integrity.
If I have a certain ethical standard and a business wants me to set that aside and behave in a way that’s incongruent with my ethics, I’m going to be under stress. There is no way that I can perform at my best.
If I value something like human connection and bringing joy to people’s lives, and you put me in a job where I never see the light of day or another human being from morning ‘til night, I’m not going to be in alignment with my job.
We negotiate who we are, what we do, how we do it, and what we want from things from these places of integrity and values. That’s why I use the Core Values Index™ (CVI™). It gives us tremendous insight into what people value and how they want to show up.
If we negotiate with people from that place, if we find those things that are valuable to them, we can find the mutually desired outcomes that we’re both focused on and committed to. Then, there’s hardly a need to manage reactions because we’re much more aligned and symbiotic. We’re going in the same direction.
How could you not have an environment where people feel honored if all that occurred?
If you’re one of the lucky ones, your organization already fosters that sort of environment. If not, that’s where H.U.M.A.N. Strategies really can make all the difference.
Why Your Organization Needs H.U.M.A.N. Strategies
We have strategies for everything in our life except people. The single most expensive resource in an organization is its people, and yet most of the time, we fail to have a strategy that truly engages and honors them.
I’ve been doing this work for 18 years. Again and again, the need for this work shows up when organizations have poor trust, poor communication, and poor accountability.
It all starts with poor communication. It looks like giving orders and expecting results without telling people the “why” behind their work. It looks like saying things and not following through on what you say. It looks like saying something is temporary when “temporary” never actually ends. That’s poor communication.
These moments of poor communication undermine trust. Eventually, when you say something is temporary, people won’t believe you, not because they think you’re a liar but because the circumstances have proven that you’re not communicating fairly, honestly, or accurately.
How can you build a solid, functional team without trust? The idea of accountability goes out the window because accountability is not being distributed evenly or consistently (some people are getting away with murder while others are being punished for stealing a stick of gum).
Is your organization struggling with an absence of powerful, effective communication? Does it have issues with trust? Is there ineffective accountability? Then you need a human strategy.
If this is an experience you’re having, this is the work we need to engage in. As a concept, H.U.M.A.N. Strategies may resonate with you and get you thinking. But the real work is repetitive. Change doesn’t happen overnight.
I can help identify where and how the root problems manifest themselves in your organization, and I can walk you through the hard work that needs to be done.
The people you lead deserve better, and so does your organization. I want to help you; I can help you. To get started, contact me today.
Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash
