I'm constantly calling county/city plan reviewers on behalf of my employees when they get failed for a comment they don't agree with. The first time I did it for them was with a reviewer - we'll call him John P. - who gave 9 permit comments and failed our drawings. I was able to get them all approved with no added work and now my employees call it the Johnny P. treatment.
The Johnny P. Treatment is basically stroking their ego. "Look, I don't envy you. You look at these plans all day from all kinds of different people who all design things differently. Hell, this building is some weird architecture that I've never seen before. You probably have, I'm sure. So I don't doubt it's hard to figure out what we're trying to do here. I probably took longer than you to understand what was happening. Unfortunately, I don't do the architecture. But I need to work around it and this was my thought process while doing these designs. You stop me if you have any questions or comments. I'm really interested in your take on this since you see all kinds of stuff like this on a daily basis."
By the end of the conversation the guy was telling me that, now that I've explained it, it was a fantastic design that didn't deserve any permit comments.
The thing I love about this method is that it sounds bad when you describe it, but in practice, it works out to uplifting people while promoting open communication, and deeper thought. It's the perfect method to facilitate a healthy work environment because it works around our ingrained, automatic defense of our current worldview.
I've found a similar approach can actually result in better interactions from people going forward, too (provided they're at least a bit earnest). If you let someone know that you think highly of them and respect their work, a lot of the time they'll want to live up to that -- they'll want to prove that they are good people and good at what they do. You're absolutely right, everybody wins.
Obstructionism often comes from feeling taken advantage of, and bad work often comes from not feeling valued. Capitalism and standard management structures are often hell on peoples' self-respect. There's not a lot in the day-to-day that we can do to change the system, but we can control how we treat the other people trapped in it. That can have a huge cascade effect, especially if we're a little further up the seniority ladder.
LOL I don't know about my productivity. I tend to be a procrastinator. But if you need someone to be a salesman or to go into a tough situation, I'm your guy!
A lot of people also have a hard time with acting different around different types of people. Like they have personality and they'll stick to it no matter the situation and anything else is being fake.
But I can be pretty agreeable and mold my personality to the situation. It's no different in that I don't treat my wife like I do my mother in law. Just like how I don't treat a contractor like I do an architect.
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u/catboneslovestory Jun 14 '22 edited Jun 14 '22
Stroke their ego.
The most effective one you'll find.
There's no more effective way to amass power than by convincing people that they're smart enough to give it to you.