The Hands-Off Manager (11 page)

It’s no wonder companies descend into this paranoid, self-protecting culture. Our whole society feels absolutely trapped in this syndrome. Try to sell a newspaper about good news! Try to start a television news station based on the positive things happening in the world. As the old saying in the newspaper business goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” People have conditioned themselves not to look for what’s possible, but for what’s dangerous. When we vote for our presidents, one of the biggest selling points seems to be which one is going to protect us the most; not who can lead us into the kind of future we want to have, but who can protect us from evil?

To have happiness and success on our work team we must reverse this process ourselves. We can’t wait for society and the rest of the world to wake up. And we start by looking at our people as great people. And then looking for what’s possible instead of what’s wrong.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

—Tom Peters

Begin to watch every thought—it might be an opportunity for a turnaround in your belief system. Get good at that kind of reversal. Is that thought life-enhancing? Is it a thought that communicates to you and your team an example of who you are and who you wish to become? Or is it this thought:
I wonder if that person wants to hurt
me? Or,
I wonder if this
person just wants my job, or if they’re just telling me that to get on my good side?

Our biggest opportunity as managers is to reverse all we’ve been taught and start to think in terms of what could be, instead of what should be but isn’t.

It’s not natural to want to hide and live in fear and desperation. It’s normal and common, but it’s not natural. And the reason we know it’s not natural is that we’ve never met anyone who felt a sense of peace who lived in that way.

Physically we’re more advanced in this awareness than we are mentally or spiritually. Physically, when we experience pain, we immediately realize that something is out of alignment. So we work to bring it back into alignment through whatever means we can: nutrition, physical therapy, even surgery. We want to get ourselves back into the flow of things. Spiritually and mentally, though, when there’s pain, we blame others! We think, superstitiously, there’s something outside of us that needs fixing. So try to fix the world outside.

But the world outside is only a reflection of the pain inside. So we’re chasing ourselves. Want to be miserable? Try chasing yourself.

The hands-off manager calls off the chase.

Steps to hands-off success in your life

Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:

1. Write down three things you wish hadn’t happened at work last week.

2. Under each incident put the words, “Course Correction,” and list the ways you can make things better because of this so-called negative event. What can you use the event for? How can it be a parable or teaching tool in the future? What was it sent here to show you?

3. Before you announce a change to your team or to an individual, do a little brainstorming with yourself. All change is growth toward the better. The universe is kind. What is stopping you from seeing and communicating this? What homework can you do on this change so you can sell it enthusiastically to your team instead of sharing in their grief about it?

CHAPTER NINE
TUNING YOUR INSTRUMENT

Harmony is not just a feeling. It’s a physical process.

—Dr. Rollin McCraty

There is help for us in discovering what we align with.

There are books written about muscle testing and how you actually have a physical response to thoughts. Your body gets weaker or stronger based on how a certain thought is affecting you. (We recommend
Power Versus Force
by David Hawkins.)

Duane uses a breathing process in which he tries to figure out whether something is constraining his ability to breathe freely and easily, or whether he feels open around it. Some people call it gut instinct, but whatever process you use, you want to become aware of yourself physically.

As I’ve said, we understand alignment when it comes to physical pain. We understand indigestion. We understand fatigue. We know how to read those signals. But it is less natural for us to stop to read the more subtle implications of misalignment, especially misalignment in our lives and our minds. We get so busy that we don’t take a moment to feel how things are affecting us. Do I feel disappointed or sad by this circumstance? Do I feel a sense of well-being and peace? Do I feel joy around this person, or do I feel discomfort and anxiety around him?

Almost everyone knows when they’re in the presence of someone with whom they feel comfortable. There’s a feeling. It’s not even rational—it’s not because that person uses big words or dresses a certain way. That may have attracted you to (or repelled you from) him initially, but as you get to know him, your comfort level comes from an inner connection you feel. An emotional connection.

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

—Arnold Bennett

If you’re going to allow success in your life, if you’re going to create a life of peace and joy and satisfaction, you’ve got to become aware of and sensitive to what you align with. And you’ve got to discipline yourself to go there, to know what fits you best, to eat the kind of foods that contribute to your health, to engage in exercise that contributes to your physical well-being, to breathe air that is beneficial. It’s how alignment breeds success and well-being.

What we’re most ignorant of is how this alignment originates in our thinking. What thoughts bring us a sense of well-being? What thoughts bring us a sense of comfort, joy, and peace? If you are willing to notice it you can begin by deliberately nurturing those aligned thoughts.

You can also dismantle and dissolve thoughts that lead you away from success. Those are the thoughts that make you angry, sad, afraid, and disappointed; any thoughts that incite the fear-based emotions. Shine your light on them. Look at how they are positive course-corrections in disguise. Do not be afraid of them. Do not take them literally or seriously. If they are negative, they are not in alignment with the universe.

You may need to consider choosing a different position in the company if you find that as hard as you’re trying, the work you’re doing just isn’t fulfilling. But if you’re
afraid of change
, what can you do? Stay paralyzed and miserable? When you believe your negative thoughts, any possibility for bold change looks too difficult. That’s where the previous chapter on reversal becomes vital and useful. Because once you’ve altered your approach to life so that you can reverse whatever thoughts you wish, you will actually look forward to change. You will look forward to many of the very things you used to fear.

Once you have reversed your feelings about change, you can change anything, including your job. You can use the feedback mechanism inherent in this altered process to look from the inside out instead of the outside in and discover where you belong. You’ll feel what works best for you.

When we practice this we are focused on where we want to go, not what we want to get away from. So we can focus our whole lives on alignment. And when something doesn’t fit, it’s not bad or wrong—it’s a form of beneficial communication! Misalignment is a teacher who tells you, “This
doesn’t fit with you. This isn’t an alignment with who you naturally are. You won’t find success here. With this line of thinking, you’ll only find obstacles.”

We’ve heard so much, and so many books have been written about your life’s purpose. Some people say their life’s purpose is to be a teacher, or an artist, or a CEO, or a spiritual leader. And yes, those purposes can apply, but what we are talking about is
bigger than that
.

Your purpose is to become who you are

All those professions and callings may be eventual aspects of your purpose. Wonderful manifestations of it. But your highest purpose is to become the fulfillment of your potential. Right now, in this eternal moment. Not in some distant, hard-won future.

Your purpose is to learn to manifest and bring into the world the gifts that are contained within you. Now. It is simply the most fundamental, the most profound, and the most important reason for living. It’s to become who you already are. That’s your purpose. That’s everyone’s purpose.

What if—just for a moment—you could live without any thoughts of money? What if you could live beyond all thoughts of need? What if you only showed up at work today to do what you most love to do? How would that be? Who would you be? That’s a good exercise to begin with.

And then we might go even further than that. Discovering our purpose is about
gaining an understanding of it
. It happens in silence and solitude. It’s not uncovered by reading 35 books on how to discover your life’s purpose.

Purpose is simple. Purpose is letting the best of what’s in you come through and then giving it to the world. That’s your life’s purpose. And everyone has the same purpose! No exceptions. And within that purpose, they have their
individual outer manifestation of it: their gift to entertain, their gift to organize, their gift to teach, their gift to create.

The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.

—Byron Katie

When Robert DeNiro acted in
Raging Bull
he channeled the boxer Jake LaMotta. He “became” that person. He studied him, he gained weight to look like him, and he so became him that it was as though he were LaMotta. If DeNiro can do it with a dead boxer, you can do it with yourself.

I remember being at a standstill in the mid 1980s. I was at a crossroads in my life and I had no idea what to do next in my career. And I just thought,
When was I happiest?
I thought back to a 12-step meeting I was in when I was talking to a large room full of people. And I thought,
I’ve never been happier, less aware of time passing, more connected to the human race than at that moment.
And that’s when I made my decision:
Okay, I’m going to be a speaker. I’m doing seminars and giving talks. That’s it
.

When I told Duane about this he said to me, “The reason your seminars have been so successful is you are yourself! Not who you think you ought to be. You don’t have to create some story about having been a war hero. The audience connects to you because you’ve had problems and you’ve figured out a way to let them go and you have no shame in telling about them. And that’s where a lot of your audience is. They connect to you and they align with that life of problems. If you told them you were a war hero and never made a mistake in your life, they would not align with you.”

Alignment is the key to channeling your higher self. Being yourself, you come into alignment. You understand what that means. Now you’re doing it. Now you’re listening to your emotions, listening to your feelings, listening to your body, listening to your breath, and listening to your fatigue.

When you do something you absolutely love, you can do it for hours without even getting tired. When you do something you can hardly stand, in a matter of minutes you’re exhausted, so you can see why aligning with what you love brings the energy and focus that spells success. Once you see this in yourself, you’ll see it in your people; once this principle kicks in for you, it will be your biggest gift to them.

You might be thinking,
How do I know what I’m good at?
All you have to do is listen and learn. Listen to the environment and other people. Pay attention, because they’re trying to tell you what you’re good at all the time! It’s in you, but there’s also feedback—the world is trying to tell you who you are. There are signals. It’s all a big mirror of your own soul. If you feel wonderful when you read a sentence in a book and somehow you get goose bumps, that’s the world trying to say, “That’s you!”

Steps to hands-off success in your life

Three action steps to take after reading this chapter:

1. Take a few breaks today to just be with yourself and listen to your inner voice. It can be for 30 seconds with your eyes closed and your breathing deep. Watch what happens when you do this.

2. Start thinking in terms of alignment and misalignment rather than right and wrong. Notice that “right” and “wrong” are violent judgments compared to the gentle nature of alignment and misalignment.

3. Use your negative feelings as a welcome alarm clock. Let them lead you back to the stressful thought in question. Use that thought to make the workplace better.

CHAPTER TEN
BECOMING AVAILABLE

Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.

—Johann Kaspar Lavater

If we are the old-school micromanagers, we’ve been in hiding. We’ve been unavailable. We have disguised who we are.

We’ve been hiding behind a disguise made up of our problems and the excuses for having those problems. We’ve been cloaked in a robe of alibis, hiding behind a disguise that says we consist of our unsolved problems, that who we are is a composition of our unsolved problems in life!

We’ve taken on this identity instead of our true potential, and because we’ve done that, we’ve made ourselves unavailable to the very freedom for which we yearn.

So it’s time to turn and go another way, to calmly choose another path to take. This path will make you available to yourself. It will make you available to the inherent wisdom contained in who you already are.

Old-school micromanagers try hard to learn how to succeed. They seek out teachers and success gurus. They want to think and grow rich. But it’s that very thinking that’s in the way.