By Dr. Evan Parks—There are situations that leaders find themselves in that fall outside their realm of experience and training to handle well. Many people have marriage problems, but what do you do when someone is being physically abused at home? How do marriages even get to this terrible point? All teens face challenges, but why do more and more teens resort to cutting themselves? If we do not understand how people operate and get stuck in life, then we are not going to know how to help. Leaders need to understand human behavior to effectively solve problems and bring about change in their organization. If we cannot explain why two people who love each other tear apart their marriage, we will not understand why two managers cannot cooperate on a vitally important project.
Test Your Knowledge
Imagine that you have a seven-year-old daughter and she is developing bald spots on her head. She has long, healthy hair and seems to be a happy child. Yet, there appears to be evidence she is pulling out her hair—a lot of it. If you are not sure why this happens, you are most likely going to talk to your daughter, asking her if she is doing this and why. She may say she does not know why, feels embarrassed you are asking her, and then promises to stop. The next thing you notice is even larger bald spots. What do you say now? How do you help?
You might be wondering how a child with hair-pulling problems relates to the conflict and dysfunction you see at work. Good question. When we have a handle on human behavior and why we do what we do, you will be able to recognize problems and know how to help regardless of what problem you are seeing. People are people regardless of age or life situation, and our problems all have some common elements.
Asking the Right Questions
It does not matter if you are talking with a child who is pulling out their hair or a manager who is locked in conflict with an employee who refused to engage. If you do not know why people (children or adults) do what they do, your questioning and advice are not likely to be helpful and may be harmful.
Here is a short list of real-life problems that leaders are going to face while helping people within their organization:
- A customer making threatening statements to the organization or its members.
- The unusual behavior of an employee, such as refusing to sleep for days at a time.
- An employee drinking alcohol or using drugs while at work.
- A manager takes on more projects than can be handled and creates an atmosphere of chaos.
- Team leaders who do not communicate, encourage others, reply to emails or follow up with team members.
- Disgruntled employees who obstruct the effective work of others.
- Employees who do minimal work and spend time talking negatively about others or watching videos on their phones.
The emails and phone calls I receive about these situations are a great opportunity to help leaders who feel overwhelmed. Help begins with understanding how problems develop and why people get stuck. We are psychological, ethical, and relational beings. We have a mind that malfunctions, character that becomes flawed, and needs that go unmet in our connection with others. Seeing how these three dimensions interact and support each other provides a foundation for recognizing what is healthy and unhealthy, adaptive and dysfunctional.
Signs We Need Help
When we need to intervene in a difficult problem, the key sign that we need help is our inability to explain to ourselves what is going on. We need a way to understand emotional problems, unusual behavior, responses to trauma, and why relationships fell apart. Without a model to explain problems, we have no way to predict why doing one thing and not another would be helpful to bring about change.
If you are facing situations that you have not faced before and are concerned about the impact of your actions and advice have on the lives of other people, contact me and ask about available times to talk and fees. I would be happy to help think through the human puzzle with you and apply principles that may help. I am looking forward to hearing from you!
