The Hands-Off Manager Read Online Free PDF Page A

very source of workplace fatigue and burnout.
    To try to get relief from all this anxiety, a micromanager will often dip back into the past. But that’s not much better, is it? When you’re in the past you are spending the majority of your time thinking about what you feel guilty about. Shift to the future and you’re back to what you’re afraid of. How can you mentor someone from that sort of “bipolar” mood swing? How can you be present to the task at hand and the person in front of you?
    To truly mentor someone you must be at peace. When you are not at peace the other person will be contaminated by your stress. So find the peaceful place inside you that tellsyou what success really is. Then go forth and model the same peaceful efficiency and creativity to others. That’s the beauty of hands-off management in a nutshell.
    True success is less about reaching the final goal and more about using each moment to make progress toward the goal. Focus more on how you can be constantly moving forward and what the next step is. It will make the ultimate goal that much easier to achieve.
    Steps to hands-off success in your life
    Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:
1. Make a list of all the external, material goals you have in your life. Then ask yourself about each object (a car, a boat, a vacation home): Why do you want it? How will it feel to have it? Write that feeling down as the true goal, with an openness to the possibility that the feeling can be achieved without (or prior to) achieving the material goal.
2. Write down your financial definition of success. Give it a number. What does success mean to you financially? Then ask yourself why you want the money. For what purpose? What feeling do you want that you don’t have now? A feeling of security? A feeling of power and freedom? When you’ve written it down, allow yourself to be open to the possibility that you can have that inner feeling without (or prior to) receiving the money in your life. Then open yourself to the possibility that wealth may even flow faster into your life when you are at peace and feeling secure, powerful, and free.
3. Write down your relationship and family goals. Why do you want these things? How much of what you have written down depends on other people acting in certain ways?Then rewrite them focused only on what you want to contribute to others regardless of how they behave, or their “loyalty” to or “appreciation” of you. Make these goals within your capacity to reach now, right now, and not at some future time when the world corrects itself.

CHAPTER THREE
USING THE POWER OF NEUTRAL
Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.
    —Confucius
    Kerry was a division leader obsessed with creating a new incentive plan for her major telemarketing teams. This obsession was causing her anxiety and stress.
    All her focus in the past had been on negatives. She wanted certain guarantees that her people would not betray her. She resented certain past behaviors that she was now trying to eliminate. The more she fretted, the more she micromanaged, and every time she tried to negotiate a new plan there was a war between the two sides. She couldn’t see that she was creating the war. She was creating havoc every time her irritated voice proposed a new plan.
    I met with Kerry for a coaching session prior to yet another meeting she was about to have with her top people.
    “I’m worried about this meeting,” Kerry said.
    “Why?”
    “I know they’ll argue against this plan and ask for more guaranteed salary, which I don’t want to give them because they will all get lazy on me if they don’t have to work for commissions.”
    “You don’t trust them.”
    “They haven’t earned it.”
    “People have to earn your trust?”
    “Of course. I’ve been burned too many times not to know that.”
    “I’m not surprised that you’ve been