How do you act when the spotlight is on you?
You join a big team meeting. It’s meant to be an inclusive place for the entire team to shine and their accomplishments to be brought into the open.
And then someone starts cutting people off. You try to speak, and they take over, changing the narrative. What do you do?
It’s always interesting to me how people act when they know there’s a spotlight available. Do they try to put it on themselves? Take it away from others? Fill all of the air time in the room? Do they tell fiction or embellish in hopes of entertaining or garnering some kind of social influence? Or do they recite stories from experience, no matter what the outcome was? Do they pass the baton so others can speak?
I call people who try to stand out in this way bad actors, engaged in corporate-political theatre.
The best way to deal with folks like this, I have found, is to try and call out the behaviour and its impact as soon as you see it. However, many poor leaders actually respond pretty well to this political theatre, thinking these bad actors are their rising stars. Why not? They’re taking the time to speak up when no one else is, right? Surely no one else had anything of value to offer? And this is one of many ways that out-of-touch leaders enable toxic workplaces to form.
As leaders, we have to take the time to watch the subtleties of how our teams interact, or how they neglect to. We need to be quick to call out strange behaviour and the impact it has on others.
An HR person said something the other day that I quite agreed with:
(paraphrasing) “Canadians are too polite. Often, when you disagree with something you ask questions instead of just saying you disagree and why. This causes things to carry on way longer than they need to, and even seems like you are endorsing an idea or behaviour, just wanting to find out more about it.”
Since they said that, I haven’t been able to stop noticing it everywhere.
What behaviour are you going to call out?
How will you help people understand the impact they are having?
