Ed Batista

Defensiveness Is in the Eye of the Beholder

A theme in my practice is defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback. When it arises as a topic I'm usually working with a client who's figuring out how to deal with a defensive employee or colleague, but occasionally I have a client who's been accused of defensiveness and is wondering what to do in response.

The key word in the definition above is "disproportionate." When someone is slightly hostile, anxious or evasive in response to critical feedback, we don't think of them as "defensive." Critical feedback is stressful under the best of circumstances. [1] So when someone responds with curiosity and calm we view that as a sign of maturity and professionalism, but a moderately negative response is normal and expected.

And yet we also expect this negative response to be temperate and short-lived. It's only when the other person's hostility, anxiety or evasion seem excessively emotional or unduly persistent that we label them as "defensive." This is highly contextual, determined by the surrounding cultural norms, our relationship with the other person, and our individual standards. What qualifies as defensiveness is truly in the eye of the beholder. So what are the implications of all this, and what can we do about it?

When You're Dealing with a Defensive Person

Don't call them "defensive."

Don't even use the word, as it will only make the situation worse. Bear in mind that they don't think of themselves as "defensive"--no one ever does--so being labeled as such will feel to them like an unjustified accusation and amplify the negative emotions they're already having difficulty managing. You may be perfectly justified in thinking of them as defensive, but keep it to yourself, at least for the moment.

In the present moment, de-escalate.

Defensiveness emerges in response to unexpected bad news, and you and your counterpart may be facing an immediate crisis. In this moment your task is to help them de-escalate their threat response and regain the ability to regulate their emotions. [2] Slow down--choose your words thoughtfully, make decisions judiciously, be mindful of how you might be contributing to their sense of threat. [3] In some circumstances, encouraging the other person to discuss what they're feeling can help them down-regulate those feelings. [4]

As soon as possible, make it a learning opportunity.

When the sense of urgency has abated--but before so much time has passed that the details have grown hazy--make use of this situation as a learning opportunity for the other person. At this point it may be useful to acknowledge that you perceived their response as defensive, but don't stop there. Offer behaviorally-specific feedback that allows the other person to gain a new perspective on their response and understand why you experienced it as counter-productive. [5]

In the meantime, clarify your own lessons.

There's undoubtedly ample learning here for you as well. Why did this bad news come as such a surprise to the other person? How did you share it with them? If you hired them, why did you fail to identify their defensiveness in the process? [6] How successful were you at de-escalating their defensiveness? Did you inadvertently make it worse, and if so, how? And if you're repeatedly encountering defensiveness over time, that merits a look in the mirror. Just because defensiveness is in the eye of the beholder doesn't mean it's always a fair or reasonable perception.

When You've Been Accused of Defensiveness

Don't make it worse by rejecting the label.

You almost certainly don't feel defensive, nor is that how you would describe your behavior, and it's unfortunate that the other person has chosen to label you this way. But reflexively responding, "I'm NOT defensive!" will only be perceived as further evidence of your defensiveness. Remember that defensiveness is in the eye of the beholder, and the fact that you feel unfairly maligned has no bearing on the other person's belief in the validity of their perspective.

If you haven't heard this very often, it's a learning opportunity.

It's likely that the behaviors being perceived as "defensive" are the result of your surprise and disappointment at encountering an unexpected setback. If you've enjoyed sustained success in your career, this may be the first time that you've experienced a meaningful failure. And if you've rarely (or never) been called defensive before, you're learning that your responses to setbacks are perceived as problematic by this person at this moment. As challenging as it may seem, this presents you not only with an opportunity to transform setbacks into fruitful experiences [7], but also to accelerate your overall growth and development. [8]

If you've heard this repeatedly, take it very seriously.

Learning opportunities sometimes come at a cost, and being called defensive can be career-limiting if the label sticks. When I'm working with a client who's hiring to fill a role, I encourage them to test for defensiveness in the interview process because defensive people can have such a corrosive effect on company culture, and it's difficult if not impossible to get them to change. [9] If this person has perceived you as defensive multiple times, it's a signal to invest in your working relationship. [10] And if you've been called defensive at multiple points in your career, consider whether a failure to take responsibility is holding you back professionally. [11]

No matter what, it's feedback, and feedback is data.

Being called defensive is a form of feedback, and like much feedback, it can be stressful, confusing and unwelcome. As I've noted before, feedback isn't a "gift" that we should automatically express appreciation for, but it is potentially valuable data that merits investigation to assess its utility. [12] You're not obligated to agree with this feedback, nor are you required to take any particular action in response, but consider the extent to which you trust this person's judgment and value their opinion of you. Should you conclude that they're trustworthy and acting in good faith, thank them for taking the risk to speak up, and ask them to tell you more. [13]

 

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Footnotes

[1] For more on feedback and stress, see the following:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What to Do About It)

[2] The Tyranny of Feelings

[3] How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)

[4] Talking About Feelings

[5] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[6] Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates)

[7] The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)

[8] Learning How to Learn

[9] Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates)

[10] Better Working Relationships

[11] The Trium Group on Responsibility

[12] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[13] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

 

Photo by West Point.

We Don't Get What We Deserve...

We don't like to acknowledge this. It feels unfair, an injustice. I talk with clients every day about perceived injustices, some grievous, even outrageous. But in my capacity as coach I don't do my clients much good by merely validating their grievances or affirming their outrage.

Sometimes that's a starting point. Leaders need to vent like anyone else, and their colleagues may be unsympathetic (or implicated in the injustice), and their family and friends may not really understand the problem. But empathetic listening has its limitations, and when we reach those limits in a given conversation, I'll remind my client of this fundamental truth:

We don't get what we deserve. We get what we negotiate.

This isn't to deny the injustice, or to dismiss my client's feelings of grievance and outrage, or to excuse the actions of others that may have caused or contributed to the situation. Nor do I lack empathy--this isn't code for "Tough shit. Try harder."

To the contrary, empathy plays an essential role here. I must empathize with my clients' sense of injustice to be an effective coach to them. More importantly, my clients must empathize with their presumptive adversaries--but here's another fundamental truth: Empathy isn't agreement.

Empathizing with adversaries does not mean agreeing with them or abandoning our efforts to change the situation. It means getting out of our self-centered mindset and fully inhabiting an alternative view in order to be a more effective agent of change.

Because whenever we think, "I'm not getting what I want, but I deserve it," we diminish our agency and make it less likely that we'll achieve that desired outcome. We make ourselves victims of circumstance, and if the world has anything to teach us it is that victims may deserve justice, but that has very little bearing on whether justice will be done.

Empathizing with adversaries does mean seeing the world as they see it, understanding their emotions in response, and suspending our judgment about the accuracy of their view or the validity of their feelings. And the intent is to make use of this data in negotiating with them.

To be clear, we should think of "negotiations" more broadly than we usually do. Negotiations don't occur only in rare or special circumstances, such as compensation discussions or peace treaties. Life is an endless series of negotiations, particularly in our professional relationships.

Many people are uncomfortable with negotiating--they view it as unseemly or grasping--so they don't engage in deliberate practice, and they never improve their skills. And when they inevitably run into a savvy negotiator, they lose--which makes them feel uncomfortable, and the cycle continues.

But we need not assume that negotiations require a zero-sum, winner-take-all attitude, or that they're characterized by distrust or rancor. This is a caricature, one that enables people who are uncomfortable with negotiating to justify their discomfort. And yet in my experience very few negotiations benefit from this approach. (Some do, of course, but not many.)

So if you find yourself unhappy with a situation, feeling that an injustice has been done, and yet unclear on how to move forward, what can you do?

Consider your beliefs about yourself and how you respond to adversity.

• Learning How to Learn
• The Tyranny of Feelings
• The Value of a Good Fight

Consider your beliefs about power, influence and negotiation.

• Power Struggles Among Nice People
• Force Isn't Power
• Culture, Compensation and Negotiation

Engage in deliberate efforts to develop your skills and learn from experience.

• Conscious Competence in Practice
• Comfort with Discomfort

 

This piece is perhaps another way of saying Make It Better.

Photo by Jernej Furman.

Surfacing Defensiveness (Three Questions for Candidates)

One of the greatest barriers to learning, growth and improved performance is defensiveness, which I define as an unwillingness to accept responsibility for setbacks, characterized by a disproportionately hostile, anxious or evasive response to critical feedback.

Talented professionals typically experience an upward trajectory in their career, with past successes enabling them to take on bigger challenges in pursuit of greater rewards. Most people are interrupted on this journey, reaching a point where their capabilities are insufficient to meet the challenge at hand. Optimally they view this as a learning opportunity and adapt in response, enabling continued progress, albeit sometimes in new directions.

But some people feel threatened by the idea that a setback may be a consequence of their own limitations, and they search frantically for other explanations, other figures to blame. And some unlucky people don't experience a meaningful setback until relatively late in life--as the Rev. William Swing once noted, "Some people don't conspicuously fail until they are 45 years old, and it devastates them." [1]

Whatever the cause, it's not uncommon for previously successful professionals to experience difficulties and respond with defensiveness. A theme in my practice is the leader who's struggling to manage a senior employee who's under-performing and is unwilling to acknowledge and accept critical feedback, let alone learn from it. [2]

In some of these cases it's certainly possible for the leader to intervene and help the person make progress toward overcoming their defensiveness. But this requires a willingness to change [3], a degree of psychological safety in the environment [4], and sufficient time and resources to address the issue--and all of these factors are likely to be in short supply when performance is suffering.

So in many cases it's not possible for the leader to help a senior employee overcome defensiveness, and the all-too-typical result is a messy termination. The key to minimizing these situations is surfacing defensiveness in the hiring process, well before it becomes a problem. This enables the leader to assess the potential cost of dealing with the person's defensiveness and weigh it against their likely contributions.

I'm not suggesting that employers automatically rule out candidates who manifest any sign of defensiveness. As the great management thinker Peter Drucker once wrote, "The idea that there are 'well-rounded' people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses...is a prescription for mediocrity if not for incompetence. Strong people always have strong weaknesses, too. Where there are peaks, there are valleys." [5]

And it's a fact of life that we make exceptions for particularly talented people and tolerate their shortcomings, including defensiveness. That said, a defensive senior employee will impose a high cost on their leader, their colleagues and the organization as a whole. And on balance my clients who've had to deal with such people wish they hadn't made the hire in the first place or moved more quickly to terminate them. [6]

So what does this look like in practice? Here are three questions to ask candidates during the interview process, and in this order (although not all three may be necessary):

1. Tell me about a time when things went wrong.

If the candidate can't answer this question thoughtfully, that's an initial red flag, suggesting that they're unwilling to be forthright about their setbacks or unable to observe and interpret such situations without experiencing distress. But some candidates will provide an adequate answer while leaving themselves out of the story, blaming the setback on the failings of others or inescapable misfortune. In these cases, proceed to the next question:

2. Tell me about a time when you made a mistake.

The wording here is deliberate, providing the candidate with an opportunity to take responsibility for a setback without using unduly fraught language. We all "make mistakes," and only the most defensive among us will refuse to admit it. Still, some candidates will respond with an example in which the consequences of their mistake were relatively trivial, providing little data on their capacity to acknowledge and learn from serious missteps. In these cases, proceed to the final question:

3. Tell me about a time when you failed.

The wording here is also deliberate, inviting the candidate to identify a situation in which they bore personal responsibility for a meaningful setback. Some candidates who were less forthcoming in response to the first two questions will finally avail themselves of this opportunity--and others will not, providing examples of inconsequential "failures," or evading the idea that they failed, finding others to take the blame.

If a candidate's unable to provide a satisfactory response to any of these questions, consider that a likely sign of defensiveness, and assess your capacity to take on the additional burden of dealing with it in the event that they suffer a setback in the role. To be clear, we're all prone to defensiveness under certain circumstances, and you may well determine that the candidate's strengths outweigh this particular weakness. But don't be caught by surprise--should you hire them, be prepared to improve your ability to provide effective critical feedback. [7]

 

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Footnotes

[1] Rev. William Swing on Failures and Daydreams

[2] Why Executives Derail and What You Can Do About It

[3] Why Change Is Hard

[4] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

[5] The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, page 72 (Peter Drucker, 1966 / 2006)

[6] Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

[7] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

 

For Further Reading

Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

Interviewing for Values Alignment (Itamar Goldminz, 2020)

Hiring Isn't Rocket Science: Why the Most Boring Strategy Is Best (Laszlo Bock, Behavioral Scientist, 2019)

How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews (Iris Bohnet, Harvard Business Review, 2016)

Hiring as Cultural Matching (Lauren Rivera, American Sociological Review, 2012)

Look Beyond "Culture Fit" When Hiring (Dylan Walsh, discussing work by Amir Goldberg and colleagues, 2018)

How to Improve the Accuracy and Reduce the Cost of Personnel Selection (Don Moore, California Management Review, 2017)

What's going on here, with this human? (Graham Duncan)

How to conduct interviews so good, candidates will thank you for rejecting them (Jennifer Kim, Safe for Work, 2023)

 

Photo by West Point.

Take a Walk (Making Tough Conversations Easier)

A theme in my practice is helping a client prepare for a tough conversation. While it's not always possible to choose the setting, when a client has the option to do so, I encourage them to consider 1) investing the time and effort necessary to meet in person and 2) electing to go for a walk with the other party, rather than sit down. Why?

Less Eye Contact

Eye contact generally triggers strong emotions. [1] In some settings, particularly among young men, too much eye contact is perceived as a challenge and results in a fight. While at times we may want to capitalize on this dynamic, in many tough conversations we're better served by down-regulating any feelings of stress or hostility. This can be difficult when seated, where social convention usually mandates that we look at each other, but it's easily accomplished when walking side-by-side.

More (Acceptable) Silence

In contrast to eye contact, silence usually lowers our stress levels. [2] But again, when we're seated social convention usually compels us to maintain the flow of conversation. In seated settings, silence is often perceived as hostility or disengagement. (Consider being seated next to a couple at a restaurant who aren't speaking. Are they fighting? On a bad date?) But when we're walking silence can convey reflection and thoughtfulness, allowing for a slower pace and a lower temperature.

The Right Amount of Privacy

In choosing a seated setting, we run the risk of insufficient privacy. Other parties may join us unexpectedly, or we may realize that we're being overheard, or distracting noises may start up. But we also run the risk of too much privacy. A pleasantly isolated space may come to feel confining in the midst of a conflict. Taking a walk allows us to modify the degree of privacy as needed, so we feel neither intruded upon nor claustrophobic.

Logistics

Not every setting offers an optimal environment for a tough conversation, so consider the following:

• A route that fits your available time, preferably one that can be lengthened or shortened as needed.
• Easy navigation, with long straightaways and few intersections or obstacles.
• Sufficient safety so that neither of you feel the need to maintain situational awareness.
• An absence of distractions, particularly constant sounds such as freeway traffic, lawnmowers, etc.

For many years I conducted walking coaching sessions with my MBA students at Stanford. Eventually I was holding so many that I had to conserve my energy and returned indoors, but the experience taught me much about the value of walking even--and sometimes especially--when we have to have a tough conversation.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Eye Contact Is a Two-Way Street: Arousal Is Elicited by the Sending and Receiving of Eye Gaze Information (Michelle Jarick and Renee Bencic, Frontiers in Psychology, 2019)

[2] See the following:

• Speech is special: The stress effects of speech, noise, and silence during tasks requiring concentration (Jenni Radun et al, Indoor Air: International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health, 2021)
• Silence, please. (Amy Novotney, American Psychological Association, 2011)

For Further Reading

Better Working Relationships

Setting the Table (Difficult Conversations)

Learning to Yield (Navigating Tough Conversations)

Resolving a Protracted Conflict

Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

How to Deliver Critical Feedback

Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

Why Some Feedback Hurts (and What To Do About It)

Three Conversations (On Better Communication)

 

Photo by John.

Weak Ties, Well-Being and Work Today

What types of interactions support well-being? Who helps us feel a sense of belonging and how? And what are the implications for our professional lives today?

A body of research dating back half a century has explored the distinction between "strong ties" and "weak ties" among people, reflected in the amount of time spent together, the emotional intensity and intimacy of the relationship, and the degree of reciprocity. The former typically exist between family members and close friends, while the latter characterize relationships between more distant colleagues and acquaintances.

Influential work by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter showed that weak ties play a special role in the spread of information throughout social networks. [1] Because people who share a strong tie tend to be similar, and because strong ties often overlap, forming a node in a network, people in these relationships tend to have access to the same information.

Weak ties create more diverse connections across nodes, facilitating the dissemination of novel information. This is why you're more likely to hear about a job opportunity through a weak tie, from a colleague or acquaintance, which was one of Granovetter's most important findings.

More recent work by psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, among others, has demonstrated the impact of interactions with weak ties on our sense of well-being and belonging: "Community members who had, on average, more weak tie interactions than others reported greater feelings of belonging. Furthermore, people reported greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual." [2]

Subsequently Sandstrom and colleagues conducted a broad survey of related research, highlighting several noteworthy points:

• A more diverse social network (including both strong ties and weak ties) contributes to improved physical health.
• Weak ties are more likely to have helpful information regarding difficult life events.
• In some circumstances people prefer receiving support from weak ties rather than strong ties.
• Minor interactions with weak ties help satisfy our need to belong and contribute to well-being. [3]

That last point takes on a heightened significance when we consider that our understanding of what it means to "belong" is often focused on connections with strong ties. For example, in another influential paper psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary emphasized the extent to which our sense of belonging derives from relationships in which we experience lasting bonds characterized by emotional expression and intimacy. [4]

While my own work over the years has demonstrated the importance of safety, trust, and intimacy in supporting improved interpersonal performance [5], it's also been my experience that seemingly superficial "small talk" plays an outsized role in helping people develop these qualities in relationships and groups. [6] And it's clear that we can initiate such interactions more readily with weak ties--and that in many cases it's unlikely or unnecessary that weak ties become strong ones. [7]

Three years after the onset of the pandemic, I think these findings have meaningful implications for professionals who continue to work remotely and for leaders who are seeking to find the right balance of virtual and in-person work within their organizations. Recent data cited by The Wall Street Journal indicates that U.S. office occupancy is at 49 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and that figure has increased minimally over the past year, after rising from a low of 15 percent to over 40 percent in 2020-21. [8] It seems quite plausible that we've arrived at a "new normal."

I spend all day, every day talking with leaders in my coaching practice, and their experience mirrors these figures. With notable exceptions in fields such as biotech or manufacturing, my clients shifted to virtual work in 2020, slowly returned to spending some time in an office over the past two years, and have largely settled into a permanent-hybrid culture. Other than employees who never left the lab or the factory floor, almost no one is back in an office with all their colleagues five days a week. This has a number of benefits, as I identified in mid-2021:

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. The idea that remote work prevents hustle certainly hasn't occurred to my clients, although its impact on culture and idea generation is more complex. [9]

But this doesn't mean there aren't downsides to working virtually, or that my clients haven't struggled to address them, as I also noted: "It's becoming apparent that having every individual decide on a daily basis whether or not to join their colleagues in person will be sub-optimal and possibly dysfunctional. Instead, making the benefits of remote work sustainable will require a collective understanding of when, how, and why co-located work is necessary." [10]

The research on weak ties offers compelling evidence that organizations can support employees' sense of well-being and belonging by creating opportunities for such interactions among colleagues. I suspect that this is one of the most important benefits of in-person experiences, even (and perhaps especially) when they occur infrequently. But there are certainly ways to foster such interactions virtually, although this requires a much more deliberate and thoughtful approach than simply stringing Zoom meetings back-to-back-to-back all day. What might any of this look like in practice?

In-Person Events

As I wrote in mid-2021, my clients generally reject the idea that all employees need to be in the same building constantly, but they do agree with some of the concerns raised by leaders who want to get "back to the office":

They agree that aspects of organizational culture--specifically relationship-building and social cohesion--are supported by consistent in-person experiences, and they also agree that certain types of idea generation are more effective when people are physically present in the same room. However, they don't agree that everyone in the company needs to be in the office five days a week. Instead, they're determining which groups of people need to be co-located, for how long, and how often in order to accomplish these goals, and this can take any number of forms. Typically this involves more frequent in-person gatherings of the executive team and occasional in-person events for larger, more heterogeneous groups of employees. The key here is recognizing that in-person time is the scarce and valuable commodity, so long-term planning is critical, and time and effort must be expended to make the most of these opportunities. [11]

That trend has continued over the past two years. Most of my clients' executive teams conduct a substantial amount of their work virtually, and most of them include one or more members who live in different locations. But almost all of them get together in-person on a consistent basis, often for several days a month or even one or two weeks per quarter. And these events typically include a mix of structured activities and open, unstructured time intended to promote social interactions.

On a larger scale, most of my clients hold in-person events for functional teams and in some case the entire company. These occur less often, largely to minimize expenses and maintain productivity, but most clients who were holding such events pre-pandemic have continued to support them. And again, such events are generally designed to foster increased weak tie interactions.

Virtual Activities

Many in-person weak tie interactions occur as the result of serendipity and are unplanned--we encounter someone in a hallway, find ourselves behind them in a checkout line, or sit next to them at a meal. But virtual interactions that take place in real time, with both parties present, require advance planning and coordination. This not only adds a logistical burden but can also diminish the perceived value of the interaction, causing it to feel forced or awkward.

We're still in the process of identifying the best ways to encourage weak tie interactions in virtual settings, but there are steps we can take. At the outset of the pandemic when countless numbers of people experienced a dramatic decrease in weak tie interactions as the result of lockdowns, institutional closures, and social distancing, Sandstrom and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans suggested several strategies, including the use of asynchronous channels that maintain a connection without requiring real time presence:

1. Use informal modes of communication.

Phone calls can feel intrusive, and emails seem impersonal. Instead, try reaching out to a weak tie via text message or Facebook. This will allow the other person to respond whenever they can, so you don’t need to worry about reaching out at the wrong time.

2. Don’t expect a reply.

Rejection rates when reaching out to a weak tie are extremely low--in one of Gillian’s studies fewer than 12 percent of people who talked to strangers experienced a rejection. [my emphasis] However...if you don’t get a response, don’t take it personally.

3. Set an expectation for a short and simple conversation.

Your goal is to let the other person know you are thinking about them and open up the opportunity to chat, if they want to. It’s okay to keep the conversation short: In recent data one of us collected, a "just right" conversation with a stranger was about 10 minutes long... [12]

But relying upon individuals to take the initiative to reach out virtually to weak ties will always be a partial solution. Organizations bear a responsibility to develop a virtual culture that supports weak tie interactions as well. What helps?

• Experiment with a range of virtual activities that go beyond business-as-usual: Rituals for Virtual Meetings (Kürşat Özenç and Glenn Fajardo, 2021) [13]
• Create more space for small talk and serendipity by managing time effectively: Take Five (Stop Meeting Back-to-Back-to-Back!)
• Provide support so employees can invest in tools and equipment to improve their virtual experience: Better Conditions for Working Remotely.

And on occasion, even weak ties may want to invest some time and energy to get to know each other better and perhaps grow a little stronger:

• CONNECTIONS: Meaningful Virtual Conversations

 

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Footnotes

[1] The Strength of Weak Ties (Mark Granovetter, American Journal of Sociology, 1973)

[2] Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties (Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014). Sandstrom and Dunn acknowledge that their findings don't determine causality: "It is possible that feeling better causes people to interact with more weak ties; indeed these possibilities are not mutually exclusive." Even if causality runs in both directions, my work with many clients and personal experience leads me to find Sandstrom and Dunn's thesis compelling.

[3] Social support from weak ties: Insight from the literature on minimal social interactions (Joshua Moreton, Caitlin Kelly and Gillian M. Sandstrom, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2023)

[4] The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation (Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, Psychological Bulletin, 1995)

[5] Safety, Trust, Intimacy. Also see Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven Wolff, Harvard Business Review, 2001).

[6] Bosses and Birthdays (The Importance of Small Talk)

[7] Five Levels of Communication

[8] The Covid-19 Crisis Is Officially Over. Everything Changed. (Stephanie Stamm and Danny Daugherty, The Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2023)

[9] Four Buckets (On Co-Located Work)

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Why You Miss Those Casual Friends So Much (Gillian Sandstrom and Ashley Whillans, Harvard Business Review, 2020)

[13] Özenç, a user experience designer, has also co-authored a related book for in-person activities: Rituals for Work (with Margaret Hagan, 2019).

Photo by AJ Cann.

Compliance vs. Commitment (On Behavior Change)

At times a gap emerges between a leader's expectations and employees' behavior, and a theme in my practice is the question of how to close such gaps when they occur. Sometimes this entails adjusting a leader's unrealistic expectations, but most of my clients are striving to achieve something that's both ambitious and novel, and allowing the status quo to determine what's "realistic" may guarantee failure.

So in many cases the challenge is how to influence employees to modify their behavior in order to make it more likely that a meaningful stretch goal will be accomplished. This need not be limited to financial or technical milestones--it includes all efforts to develop a more functional organization. Broadly speaking, there are two very different ways to accomplish such behavior change: enforce compliance or build commitment.

Enforcing compliance is easy at first, but it becomes more difficult with time. People comply when they're either threatened with punishment or promised a reward. This is initially easy because some punishments and rewards are inexpensive and readily at hand: the leader's disapproval or approval, a reprimand or praise, the loss of a bonus or a minor bump in status or compensation.

But this approach imposes increasing costs on both leaders and employees. People comply when they're being policed, which requires management to expend time and effort identifying violations--which people will be motivated to conceal. Many people will find such oversight heavy-handed and resent it, and the best people--who have the most options--will tend to leave.

Further, the punishments and rewards themselves become more costly, both literally and figuratively. When disapproval and reprimands fail, the next steps are reassignment, demotion and, eventually, termination. When praise grows stale and the impact of minor bumps wear off, more effusive praise and major bumps are required.

Even more fundamentally, enforcing compliance fails to address any resistance to the leader's expectations. Debate is stifled via threats and bribes, differing points of view are squelched, and resistance goes underground. Compliance ultimately relies on coercion, and people comply because they fear further and more severe punishments, or they fear the end of the gravy train and the loss of future rewards.

I'm not suggesting that there's no place for compliance in organizational life. We rely on compliance all the time, but it works when there's a shared consensus on 1) what constitutes expected behavior and violations of same, and 2) the appropriate response for various violations. This is most apparent where organizational life meets the legal system, and a host of laws and regulations set out expectations for leaders and employees alike. Violations are met with punishments such as fines or imprisonment. The reward for compliance is simple: you keep your money and your liberty.

But in most of the situations I discuss with clients there's no applicable legal or regulatory structure, nor is there a shared consensus on expectations for behavior. In fact, it's the absence (or breakdown) of such a consensus that typically leads a client to raise the issue with me. How do we define excellence or best effort? How much time and what resources should be allocated to a given task or initiative? What constitutes a productive company culture?

Trying to resolve these challenges by enforcing compliance is often unsustainable and at times utterly impossible. But there's another way: building commitment. When people are compliant, they're essentially passive figures responding to external pressure and unlikely to expend further effort once a minimum threshold has been attained. But when they're committed, they're active agents who are internally motivated to take initiative and will draw upon their full capabilities to achieve--and surpass--a goal.

Enforcing compliance is relatively mechanical, reducing human motivation to avoiding punishments and obtaining rewards. In this regard it reflects the industrial-era managerial philosophy that M.I.T. professor Douglas McGregor dubbed "Theory X" [1], which "assumes that people dislike work and must be coerced, controlled, and directed toward organizational goals." [2]

Building commitment is a far more complex undertaking, but it's also far better-suited to the management of contemporary knowledge workers. And in this regard it's aligned with what McGregor called "Theory Y" [3], which "emphasizes the average person’s intrinsic interest in his [sic] work, his desire to be self-directing and to seek responsibility, and his capacity to be creative in solving business problems." [4]

There's also a relationship with the distinction that psychologist Frederick Herzberg made between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the job. [5] Herzberg's research suggests that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction aren't endpoints on a single spectrum, but two distinct scales. Satisfaction is derived from sources of intrinsic motivation such as a sense of achievement, recognition, responsibility, and opportunities for growth.

In contrast, sources of extrinsic motivation (also known as "hygiene factors") such as working conditions, compensation, status, and security generate dissatisfaction if they're perceived as inadequate. Compliant people remain so only as long as they aren't too dissatisfied, but the absence of punishment and the promise of rewards doesn't generate sustained motivation. Committed people are motivated, and the fulfillment they find in the pursuit of their aims makes them more likely to persist in the face of difficulties.

As noted above, it gets more difficult and expensive to apply the right mix of punishments and rewards necessary to obtain compliance. Commitment is also costly, but more than money it requires other equally precious and limited resources, most notably the leader's time, attention and creative energy. So what does this look like in practice? How does a leader build commitment?

Dialogue

There's a reason why we use the phrase "disagree and commit." [6] So the first step is ensuring an open dialogue in which disagreements can be aired and a range of factors addressed: the leader's expectations, employees' existing behavior, any gaps that exist between the two, potential explanations for said gaps, the organization's relevant goals, and the assumption that alternative behaviors will increase the likelihood of successful outcomes.

This inevitably requires a willingness on the leader's part to have some tough conversations in which resistance to their expectations can be safely expressed and explored. That doesn't mean leaders must defer to any resistance. But the absence of a free-flowing dialogue in which disagreement is welcomed ensures that any efforts to motivate behavior change will eventually default to enforcing compliance, whatever the leader's intentions.

Influence

Engaging in a dialogue presents a leader with opportunities to exert influence. And note the distinction between influence and coercion--the latter relies upon a simplistic formula of threats and rewards to induce behavior change, while the former is a much more nuanced process. The leader seeking to exert influence acknowledges and respects others' right to choose and expends time and effort to win them over.

This doesn't mean that people are free to opt out with no consequences. Rejecting the leaders' expectations may result in a loss of opportunities, a reassigned role, or expulsion from the organization. But the leader who is seeking to build commitment through influence will make these consequences clear at the outset (or restore clarity when it's been lost), so that people can make both positive and negative choices with full awareness and agency.

Work by psychologist Robert Cialdini identifies six factors that make us more (or less) open to another's influence. [7] While it may take years to master these principles, simply understanding Cialdini's framework provides a leader with a starting point to guide their efforts:

• Likeability: We respond to people who convey warmth.
• Reciprocity: We repay favors.
• Social proof: We follow others' example.
• Consistency: We strive to live up to stated commitments.
• Authority: We defer to experts and authoritative figures.
• Scarcity: We're anxious about potential losses or insufficiency.

Norms

The leader's aspiration is to have their expectations result in a set of behavioral norms, which are "social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave." [8] But it's important to recognize that compliant people have not adopted the leader's expectations as norms--they've adopted the norm of doing whatever it takes to avoid punishments and obtain rewards. When punishments and rewards no longer suffice (or grow too costly to implement), compliance will vanish.

In contrast, committed people have adopted the leader's expectations as norms, and in so doing have come to internalize such expectations as their own--very possibly because engaging in open dialogue enabled them to influence the leader as well. And it's absolutely futile to try to establish norms in the absence of dialogue and mutual influence. The results aren't norms at all, but merely a set of rules, and we only follow rules when we're being policed--which brings us right back to compliance and coercion.

But even arriving at a set of shared beliefs about how people should behave isn't necessarily sufficient to cause people to feel obligated to act accordingly. We've all participated in groups and organizations that proclaimed a lofty set of values that everyone agreed with in principle but were routinely ignored in practice--the proverbial "plaque on the wall." Once the dialogue and influence process has yielded a set of shared beliefs, what else is needed to transform those beliefs into norms?

• Sufficient mutual esteem among members so that its withdrawal would be felt as a loss by any individual.
• A willingness by members to openly acknowledge a norm violation by a peer.
• A willingness by members to withhold esteem from a peer as a consequence of a norm violation.

I define this as a high-accountability, high-empathy culture. [9] It's not merely a high-accountability culture, in which people are harshly punished for their lack of compliance, nor it is a merely high-empathy culture in which people are richly rewarded for following the rules. In such a setting leaders do very little policing at all--instead, employees hold themselves accountable because of their shared beliefs regarding productive behavior coupled with their desire to avoid the loss of mutual esteem.

Again, all of this takes ample amounts of time, attention, and creative energy--and even many well-intentioned leaders are unable or unwilling to make these investments, so they wind up relying upon compliance. Which works, until suddenly it doesn't.

 

This is a companion piece to the following:

• Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

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FOOTNOTES

[1] "The Human Side of Enterprise," page 6 (Douglas McGregor, Leadership and Motivation, 1966):

With respect to people, [Theory X management] is a process of directing their efforts, motivating them, controlling their actions, modifying their behavior to fit the needs of the organization. Without this active intervention by management, people would be passive--even resistant--to organizational needs. They must therefore be persuaded, rewarded, punished, controlled--their activities must be directed... Behind this conventional theory there are several additional beliefs--less explicit, but widespread:

• The average man is by nature indolent—he works as little as possible.
• He lacks ambition, dislikes responsibility, prefers to be led.
• He is inherently self-centered, indifferent to organizational needs.
• He is by nature resistant to change.

This essay is McGregor's best-known and most influential work--it originated as a speech on the Fifth Anniversary of the School of Industrial Management at MIT (later known as the Sloan School) in 1957, and was published in the American Management Association's Management Review in November of that year. It subsequently formed the basis of his 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise. My citations here are from a posthumous collection of McGregor's work issued by MIT two years after his death to commemorate his contributions.

[2] Beyond Theory Y (John Morse and Jay Lorsch, Harvard Business Review, 1970)

[3] McGregor, pages 15-16:

People are not by nature passive or resistant to organizational needs. They have become so as a result of experience in organizations.

The motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming responsibility, the readiness to direct behavior toward organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is a responsibility of management to make it possible for people to recognize and develop these human characteristics for themselves.

The essential task of management is to arrange organizational conditions and methods of operation so that people can achieve their own goals best by directing their own efforts toward organizational objectives.

This is a process primarily of creating opportunities, releasing potential, removing obstacles, encouraging growth, providing guidance. It is what Peter Drucker has called "management by objectives" in contrast to "management by control."

And I hasten to add that it does not involve the abdication of management, the absence of leadership, the lowering of standards, or the other characteristics usually associated with the "soft" approach under Theory X.

[4] Morse and Lorsch, HBR.

[5] One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (Frederick Herzberg, Harvard Business Review, originally published 1968, republished 2003)

[6] While the principle of "disagree and commit" seems to have originated with Andy Grove or Scott McNealy, Jeff Bezos provided a useful definition in his 1997 letter to shareholders:

Use the phrase "disagree and commit." This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, "Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?" By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time... [emphasis mine]

[7] The most concise articulation of Cialdini's model can be found in this classic Harvard Business Review article: Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (2001). Cialdini discusses his work more thoroughly in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2021, 3rd ed. / 1984, 1st ed.) He also explains the principles of persuasion on his own website. (On that page he adds a seventh principle--"unity"--but that was not an element in his original framework, and I omit it here.) For further reading:

• The Language of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2008)
• The Uses (and Abuses) of Influence (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

[8] From Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values). (The section above on norms is adapted from this piece.)

[9] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

 

Photos: Police car by Scott Davidson. Tug-of-war by Napat Chaichanasiri.

Exploring a Potential Partnership

If you're considering forming a partnership--for a project, a team, a firm or a venture--here are three exercises to complete and an agenda to help you discuss the results. This framework is inspired by a set of questions posed by the great management thinker Peter Drucker:

Most people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties. By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: "What are my strengths? How do I perform? and What are my values?" And then they can and should decide where they belong. Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong.

~Managing Oneself

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INDIVIDUAL PREPARATION (90 minutes)

1. What are my strengths?

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. ~Managing Oneself

Many personality tests lack validity and reliability, and I employ them sparingly in my practice and teaching. One of the few I've relied upon is the Values in Action Survey of Character Strengths, often referred to as the VIA, developed by Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson.

• Complete the VIA and return to the link below to review Section 7: Making Use of Your VIA Results.
• VIA Survey of Character Strengths

 

2. How do I perform? What conditions allow me to do my best work?

Too many people work in ways that are not their ways, and that almost guarantees nonperformance. For knowledge workers, "How do I perform?" may be an even more important question than "What are my strengths?" ~Managing Oneself

When we work with people who share our work style it may feel more comfortable, but homogeneous teams can have blind spots and be prone to groupthink. Teams whose members have a diverse range of styles can be more effective if they develop the ability to manage conflict successfully.

• Complete two versions of the worksheet linked below--one that reflects your personal preferences and one that reflects your best estimate of your partner's preferences.
• Work Style Differences

 

3. What are my values?

To work in an organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with one’s own condemns a person both to frustration and to nonperformance. ~Managing Oneself

A dilemma we face when discussing "values" is that their definitions are highly subjective--and when we arrive at a definition that's true for us, we still have to determine what it means to actually live that value. Here's an exercise to reach an actionable definition of your core values:

• Create a list of words that you think of as values that have some meaning to you. Don't worry about what that meaning is at this point.
• Keep writing until the words stop flowing freely. Don't worry about how many words are on the list.
• Take each word in turn and think of a story that demonstrates that value in action--an actual event you experienced or observed. Don't write out the entire story, but jot down a few notes so that you can readily reflect back upon it.
• Having illustrated each value this way, ask yourself:
  • What intrinsic rewards are the result of this value? In what ways does it fulfill me or create a sense of meaning in my life?
  • What extrinsic rewards--what forms of status or compensation--am I willing to sacrifice on behalf of this value?
  • How important is this value to my self-identity? How different would my life have to be for me to abandon this value?
• Use the answers to these questions to narrow your original list of words down to no more than five--and preferably as few as three. Consider the results your core values.

 

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PAIR (OR GROUP) DISCUSSION (1-2 hours)

(Here's a printer-friendly version of this agenda.)

If possible, share the results of your individual preparation with your partner/s in advance of your pair/group discussion. This will allow you to spend more time considering the implications of these results for a potential partnership. The times below are for a 1-hour pair discussion. Groups of 3 or more should allot 90 minutes to 2 hours.

1. Warming Up (10 minutes)

Presumably introductions aren't necessary, but a warmup exercise can set the stage for a more meaningful discussion:

The Most Important Year of My Life.

• Each person has 3 minutes to answer this question: What was the most important year of my life?
• Note that the question is NOT: What was the BEST year of my life? It's an important distinction.
• After each person has finished, take a moment to acknowledge them and express appreciation for their story, but don't do an extensive debrief or ask further questions at this point.
• Take a few minutes after the last person has finished to discuss the exercise: What was that like? How do you feel as a result? What questions are you left with?

2. Strengths (15 minutes)

• What items among your VIA results would you characterize as "signature strengths"? Your results should inform but not dictate your signature strengths--it's ultimately up to you to make this determination.
• What surprised you in your results? What surprised you in your partner's results?
• In what ways are your respective signature strengths complementary? How might they conflict?

3. Working Conditions (15 minutes)

• What items on your worksheet are most important to you? What items are least important?
• How accurate was your estimate of your partner's preferences?
• In what ways are your respective preferences complementary ? How might they conflict?

4. Values (15 minutes)

• What are your core values? (Again, identify no more than five, and preferably as few as three.)
• Share one of the stories that illustrates one of your core values. If time allows, repeat this step while taking turns.
• In what ways are your core values complementary? How might they conflict?

5. Conclusion (5 minutes)

You held this discussion because you're seeking more information about what it would be like to work with this person. Note that the discussion itself has been a type of "work," and how your partner has participated may provide some useful data.

• What has your partner done over the past hour that made you more interested in working with them?
• What has your partner done over the past hour that made you less interested in working with them?
• What questions do you have about their behavior?
• What feedback would you like to share with them?
• What questions do you have about your own behavior over the past hour?
• What feedback would you like to request from them?

Take some notes in response to these questions now, while the discussion is fresh in your mind. But don't jump into a feedback conversation immediately--take a day or two to digest everything first. And as always, bear in mind that feedback is not a gift--it's data.

 

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NEXT STEPS

Should you decide to work together, bear in mind that even the best partnerships experience difficulties over time, and this isn't merely inevitable--it's desirable. In my experience a "conflict-free relationship" is a sign that people aren't being candid with each other, perhaps because they fear that any conflict will put the relationship in jeopardy--which renders it fragile and unlikely to last. The key is learning how to engage in conflict safely, how to "disagree without being disagreeable," and how to repair when necessary. Here are a further set of readings on building--and sustaining--a stronger partnership:

Better Working Relationships

Feedback Is Not a Gift

How to Deliver Critical Feedback

How We Connect (and Why We Might Not)

The Tyranny of Feelings

You Make Me Feel... (On Language and Responsibility)

Authority and Control in Organizational Life

Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

The Toyota Production System for Relationships

Whether or Not to Fix a Broken Relationship

 

Photo by Wil C. Fry.

Classrooms, Churches, Cocktail Parties (On Norms)

Many of the situations we encounter in contemporary professional life take one of three cultural forms: A classroom, a church, or a cocktail party.

While there are countless variations among schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings, we can readily envision an idealized classroom, an idealized church, an idealized cocktail party, and these archetypes are useful lenses through which to view any number of situations.

So some meetings are like a classroom, others are like church, and still others are like a cocktail party. And some companies are like a classroom, others are like church, and still others are like a cocktail party.

Each of these forms involves very different norms, which I've defined as social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave. [1] To be clear, norms aren't rules. Rules are what we intend to do, or what we're supposed to do, or what we aspire to do. Norms are what we actually do.

The problem, however, is that schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings identify themselves very clearly through obvious signifiers. We know where we are, we readily grasp the norms, and we act accordingly.

But meetings and companies are much harder to interpret. They must serve different purposes at different times for different parties--and those parties may disagree. So the signs and signals are opaque and confusing, and it's easy to misread them.

The key is asking ourselves: Where do I think I am? In a classroom? In a church? At a cocktail party? And where does everybody else here think they are?

There's no implied value-judgment. We have need of schools, places of worship, and celebratory gatherings all. But if we think we're in a classroom, and everyone else thinks they're in church, there's going to be trouble.

The next question to ask is: Who do I think I am? A teacher or a student? An officiant or a congregant? A host or a guest? And who does everyone else think they are? We need all these roles, but again, if we don't have a shared understanding of who we are to each other, there's going to be trouble. [2]

A final question to ask is: To what extent is this cultural form serving our collective needs at the moment? Cultures are hard to change because people feel obligated to adhere to existing norms. So unless we step outside a given culture in order to observe it, we're likely to perpetuate it. We'll keep going to class, to church, to the party, without pausing to consider whether that's really where we want to be.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

[2] Role Clarity and Role Confusion

Photos: Classroom by Robert Couse-Baker. Church by Garry Knight. Cocktail Party by Yelp/Tom Pagut.

Some Crises Build Character. Others Reveal It.

Something bad happened, and there was a crisis. There are still many risks, and the situation could yet turn worse, but at the moment, catastrophe has been averted. If approached correctly, this can be a fruitful learning experience for you and the people around you. It may seem too early to learn from the crisis, but don't wait too long. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes an important distinction between our experience and our memories:

The experiencing self is the one that answers the question: "Does it hurt now?" The remembering self is the one that answers the question: "How was it, on the whole?"... Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion... The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self. [1]

So while events are still fresh in your mind, and the distress and anguish felt by your experiencing self are still vivid, here are some questions to pose to yourself and others:

What did you learn about yourself?

How did you respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

Crises evoke a sense of threat, which triggers the "fight, flight, or freeze" response. What did you learn about your tendencies?

How did you communicate with people (venue, channel, cadence, level of detail, tone)?

How did people respond to your communications? What does that tell you about your effectiveness?

How did you make decisions? What did you learn about your decision-making under stress?

What did you learn about the people around you?

How did THEY respond under pressure, anxiety, and uncertainty?

What did you learn about THEIR "fight, flight, or freeze" tendencies?

How did they communicate with you and others?

How effective were their communication efforts?

How did THEY make decisions? What did you learn about THEIR decision-making under stress?

 

Gathering this data is a useful exercise, and it's by no means sufficient. Awareness is always the necessary first step, but it rarely leads to growth on its own. Truly learning from this crisis will entail understanding your strengths and your weaknesses, and then engaging in an ongoing effort to maximize the former and address the latter.

More specifically, you'll want to understand how you can best prepare for the next crisis. Outdoor writer Tom Stienstra survived countless life-threatening situations during his decades roaming the wilderness by remembering a piece of wisdom from self-defense instructor Il Ling New: "Everyone thinks they will rise to the occasion. What happens instead is that you default to your level of training." [2] So here are some further questions to consider:

What do your responses above tell you about your strengths and weaknesses?

How can you be better prepared for the next crisis?

What might it look like to train for that crisis?

Who might you turn to, where might you go, to obtain such training?

 

The questions above are largely aimed at capabilities, but crises also teach us something essential that can't be learned under any other circumstances about character.

What did you do that you're proud of? What motivated those actions?

What did you do that you're NOT proud of? What motivated THOSE actions?

What do any of these actions say about your character?

What do the actions of others say about THEIR character?

What do you want to remember?

 

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Footnotes

[1] Thinking, Fast and Slow, page 381 (Daniel Kahneman, 2013)

[2] Tom Stienstra’s Tales of Survival (San Francisco Chronicle, 2023)

 

For Further Reading

How Leaders Overcome Adversity

Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial

The Importance of Slowing Down

From Peacetime to Wartime

 

Photo by GraceOda.

JFK on Doing Hard Things

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into orbit, known as Sputnik, which raised grave concerns in the United States and accelerated the "space race." [1] Having won election in 1960, President John F. Kennedy entered office the following year determined to increase U.S. investment in space exploration. This initiative took on new urgency in April 1961 when the Soviets sent the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, a dramatic development that caught U.S. leaders by surprise. [2]

In May 1961 Kennedy convened a special session of Congress to address "urgent national needs," including space exploration, in which he made a bold declaration: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." [3] In September 1962 he delivered another speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas--the home of NASA's "Mission Control"--in which he reinforced his determination to reach the moon within the decade. [4]

It's worth remembering that the international mood at the time was extremely tense. The U.S., the USSR and their respective allies had been facing off in the Cold War for over 15 years, a struggle that regularly broke out into armed conflict in proxy wars around the globe. [5] The U.S. was less than a decade removed from the height of the "Red Scare," when legitimate fears about Soviet agents escalated into hysterical paranoia.

And just four weeks after Kennedy's speech in Houston the nation would be gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, we now know, was the closest we've ever come to nuclear war. [6] So the space race wasn't just a spirited contest between international rivals, a high-tech version of the Olympics in which the winner would claim bragging rights. It was a new front in the Cold War, and the stakes were incredibly high.

It was also going to be incredibly expensive, and the benefits to the average American citizen were unclear and abstract. Going to the moon was going to be hard, but it might be even harder to convince the U.S. taxpayer to foot the bill. It was one thing for Nikita Khrushchev to order increased spending for the Soviet space program, as he did in the mid-1950s. But Kennedy would have to win Congressional and popular support for the U.S. efforts if he wanted to succeed while remaining a viable candidate for re-election.

Yet this is exactly what he accomplished, in part thanks to his speeches in 1961 and '62, which make them worth examining today for any leader who's asking people to do hard things. So what did Kennedy do that helped motivate his fellow Americans to do this hard thing?

He frames his goal in a larger context.

If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. (1961)

The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it--we mean to lead it. (1962)

For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. (1962)

He acknowledges the difficulties ahead and is candid about U.S. shortcomings.

The facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment. Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of leadtime, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. (1961)

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, materiel and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. (1961)

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. (1962)

To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead. (1962)

He stresses the need for shared sacrifice and collective agreement.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. (1961)

Let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal '62--an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all. (1961)

I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. (1961)

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year¹s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. (1962)

He expresses hope and optimism, and emphasizes America's capabilities and potential.

I have not asked for a single program which did not cause one or all Americans some inconvenience, or some hardship, or some sacrifice. But they have responded and you in the Congress have responded to your duty--and I feel confident in asking today for a similar response to these new and larger demands. (1961)

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor...

Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union. The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines. (1962)

He uses humor to lighten the mood.

I appreciate your president having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. (1961)

Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? (1961)

(Rice University, the setting for the 1961 speech, had a longstanding football rivalry with the University of Texas, a much larger school. At the time, Texas led the series 29-19, and Kennedy's line got a laugh from the crowd. Notably, a few weeks after Kennedy's speech, Rice eked out the only tie in the series--although since 1962 Texas has gone 44-2.) [7]

Finally, he closes on a note of transcendence and uplift.

It is heartening to know, as I journey abroad, that our country is united in its commitment to freedom and is ready to do its duty. (1961)

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there." Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. (1962)

 

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Footnotes

[1] Sputnik and the Space Race: 1957 and Beyond (Library of Congress Resource Guides)

[2] The Decision to Go to the Moon (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office)

[3] Address to Joint Session of Congress, May 25, 1961 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)

[4] Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, September 12, 1962 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library)

[5] Here's just a partial list: Vietnam 1945-46, Iran 1945-46, Greece 1946-49, Philippines 1946-54, Vietnam (again) 1946-54, Malaysia 1948-60, Indonesia 1949-62, Korea 1950-53, Egypt 1952, Vietnam (again) 1955-75, Laos 1959-75, Congo 1960-65, Cuba 1961.

[6] One Step from Nuclear War (The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: In Search of Historical Perspective), (Martin Sherwin, Prologue Magazine / National Archives, 2012)

[7] Rice-Texas football rivalry (Wikipedia)

 

Photo by Denali National Park and Preserve.