A coachee recently told me: “I think I should leave my job. My boss doesn’t motivate me.”
I got curious and asked a few questions.
Was the manager unfair? No.
Was he biased against the coachee? No.
Was he toxic or making it difficult for the person to do the job? Not really.
In fact, the coachee was doing reasonably well. Something else was bothering him.
As we went deeper, something interesting came up.
He had a very clear picture in his head of what a “good manager” should look like.
His previous managers used to openly praise his work. They checked in often. They made him feel that they cared about him.
But this manager was different. He was more output-oriented. He gave freedom when required, and expected the person to take ownership. He was slightly at fault in giving guidance though.
Nothing was necessarily wrong with the manager.
He just didn’t match the image in the coachee’s head.
That was the real source of frustration.
So I left him with two enquiry questions:
1. Are you getting the learning, growth and compensation you want from this job? And,
2. What makes you uncomfortable when your manager doesn’t behave exactly the way you expect?
A week later, he came back with a different perspective.
He realized that his manager didn’t need to become the manager he had imagined. His manager could simply be himself.
And in fact the relationship could still work out.
This made me think about how often we do this in our lives.
We create an image of how another person should behave. And when they don’t match that image, we conclude that something is wrong.
“My manager should get excited when I present a good idea.”
“My friend should always be available for me. Otherwise, are we really friends?”
“My spouse should behave like this. A good marriage should look like this.”
Yes, some of these expectations are reasonable. But many times, they come from somewhere else – previous experiences, things that we saw growing up, movies or even social media.
Stories about what a “great manager”, “good friend” or “happy marriage” is supposed to look like.
The problem is that the other person never agreed to play that role 🙂
Things get worse when the natural response is often to change the other person, avoid them, or eventually walk away.
I will share another option here. Let us ask ourselves –
“Is this person actually doing something wrong, or are they simply different from the picture I had in my head?” [Notice that “wrong” is also subjective]
We cannot control how other people are. We can, however, scan for the expectations we carry about them.
How often do you think we are fighting the person in front of us, when actually we are fighting the image of them in our head? Please share them in the comments.
