Manuals assist us in understanding processes, practices, and putting together furniture.  They help us in knowing what to do and in what order.  They ensure quality results.  They give us knowledge, understanding and a sense of order.

Until they don’t.  And that is when we’re talking about human behavior. Then, they can really suck.  Because human beings do what they want and don’t do what they don’t want. And that is okay.  Except when it isn’t. To us.

This is the complexity of relationships & leadership.

I’ve studied human behavior for nearly 40 years, and know this to be true.  People do what they are motivated to do, not what we want them to do. Our job as leaders is to create a motivating environment in which expectations are understood, aligned and achieved.  But here is where manuals cause us angst.  When they don't work.

There is a difference between your goals and expectations, what you need people to do to perform at work, and the general manual we each have for how humans beings should behave.

Examples:

• A peer leading ineffective meetings
• My boss not delegating uniformly
• My team is not cohesive

Themes:

• My peer should run meetings effectively
• My boss should be developing the whole team/deal with non-performance
• My employees should be operating as a team

The commonality?  Should.  

Shoulds are judgments.  A belief that others should be acting a certain way, doing things a particular manner.  Operating the way we would.  Our “shoulds.”

The manual.  Anais Nin:  “We don’t see things as they are.  We see them as we are.”  And we expect them to behave like we do. 

Which causes us stress, annoyance and frustration.  Because people can do what they want, how they want with careless disregard to our manuals.  

We can provide our own point of view.  We can give the peer feedback on running meetings more effectively, or opt out of the meeting.  We can have a difficult, honest conversation with our boss--share our perspectives.  Or we can find another job.  We can set new expectations for our team to interact more cohesively, to encourage a foundation of respect.

But in each of these cases, we cannot change the individuals’ behavior.  It is their choice to make.  Just as we have our own choices to make when things don’t change, or people don’t change their behaviors.

Which is much clearer when it comes to employees.  Because in that case, we can certainly identify expectations which need to be met.  We have the right and responsibility to ask others for what we need to achieve goals and results.  And if they don’t achieve them, of course, there are consequences and ramifications.  It is still their choice.  It’s their decision.  

What causes us pain is when we think that they should choose the “right” answer, which is our answer.  Rather than their answer.  Which may have an unpleasant consequence to them.  And to us.  Because we want them to simply follow The Manual.  The ones written for Good Employees.

But our peers?  Boss?  Families? Friends?  Not so much.  They get to choose.  And we can choose to remain chronically irritated and annoyed by those choices, or we can accept them.  This means accepting others for who they are.  Not who we want them to be.

That is the final chapter:  How to live with others by accepting that they control their choices, their behaviors, their decisions, their lives.  They have a manual w

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