7 People or Objects
“How do you know her?” I asked worriedly. “And how’d you hear about what happened?”
Bud smiled reassuringly. “Don’t be fooled by the distance between buildings. Word travels fast. I heard about it from a couple of your quality team leaders who were discussing it over lunch in the Building 5 cafeteria. It seems you made quite an impression.”
I was regaining some composure and had managed to control my expression.
“As for knowing her,” he continued, “I don’t really, except that I try to know the names of as many people as I can around the company. It gets more difficult by the month with all of our growth, though.”
I nodded, amazed that someone in Bud’s position would worry about knowing the name of someone who was at Joyce’s level in the company.
“You know those pictures we take for clearance badges?”
I nodded.
“Well, the executive team members receive copies of all those pictures, and we try to familiarize ourselves with, if not completely memorize, the faces and names of the people who join the company.
“I have found, at least with me,” he continued, “that if I’m not interested in knowing a person’s name, I’m probably not really interested in the person as a person. For me, it’s a basic litmus test. Now, it doesn’t necessarily work the other way—that is, I can learn and know people’s names and have them still be just objects to me. But if I’m unwilling even to try to remember someone’s name, that itself is a clue to me that he or she is probably just an object to me and that I’m in the box. Anyway, that’s why I know her—or at least how I know of her.”
As Bud talked, my mind was taking inventory of the people in my division. I realized that of the 300 or so people in my part of the company, I knew only about 20 by name. But I’ve been here only a month! I said to myself in protest. What more could you expect? But I knew better. I knew that what Bud said about himself was true of me as well. The amount of time I had worked at Zagrum was a red herring. The truth was, I hadn’t really tried to learn anyone’s name. And as I thought about that now, it seemed clear that my lack of interest in as basic an issue as others’ names was a pretty clear indication that I probably wasn’t seeing them as people.
“I guess you think I really messed up,” I said, my thoughts turning back to Joyce.
“It’s not important what I think. What’s important is what you think.”
“Well, I’m kind of torn. On the one hand, I feel I owe Joyce an apology. But on the other hand, I still think she shouldn’t have gone in that room and erased everything without checking first.”
Bud nodded. “Do you suppose it’s possible that you’re right on both counts?”
“What? That I was wrong and right at the same time? How can that be?”
“Think of it this way,” offered Bud. “You’re saying that Joyce shouldn’t just haul off and erase things that other people have written without finding out if that’s okay first. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“That seems perfectly reasonable to me as well. And you’re saying that the right thing in the situation was to tell her that she must never do that again. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s the way it seems to me.”
“Me too,” said Bud.
“Then what did I do wrong?” I asked. “That’s exactly what I did.”
“Yes, that is what you did,” Bud agreed, “but here’s the question: Were you in the box or out of the box when you did it?”
All of a sudden, a light went on for me. “Oh, I get it. It’s not that I did the wrong thing necessarily but that I did what I did—maybe even the ‘right’ thing—in the wrong way. I was seeing her as an object. I was in the box. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Exactly. And if you do what might on the surface be considered the right thing, but do it while in the box, you’ll invite an entirely different and less productive response than you would if you were out of the box. Remember, people primarily respond not to what we do but to how we’re being — whether we’re in or out of the box toward them.”
This seemed to make sense, but I wasn’t sure it was realistic for the workplace.
“Is there something you’re wondering about?” Bud asked.
“Not really,” I said without conviction. “Well, I am struggling with one thing.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“I’m just sitting here wondering how you can conduct a business seeing others as people all the time. I mean, won’t you get run over doing that? I can see it applying to family life, for example, but isn’t it a bit unrealistic to think that you have to be that way at work too, when you’ve got to be fast and decisive?”
“I’m glad you asked that,” Bud said. “It was the next thing I wanted to talk about.” He paused and then said, “First, I want you to think of Joyce. The way you handled the situation, I’d imagine that she won’t ever be using your conference room again.”
“Probably not.”
“And since that’s what you wanted to convey to her, you might think that your meeting with her was a success.”
“Yeah, in a way I guess that’s right,” I said, feeling a bit better about what I’d done.
“Fair enough,” Bud said. “But let’s think beyond the conference room. Do you think that by being in the box when you conveyed your message, you invited in her more enthusiasm and creativity about her work or less?”
Bud’s question caught me up short. All of a sudden, I realized that to Joyce Mulman, I was like Chuck Staehli. I remember being dressed down by Staehli, who seemed always in the box as near as I could tell, and I knew firsthand how demotivating it was to work with him as a result. To Joyce, I must seem no different from Staehli. The thought was terribly depressing.
“I guess that’s right,” I answered. “I might’ve solved the conference room problem but created other problems in its wake.”
“It’s worth thinking about,” Bud agreed, nodding. “But your question actually goes to something deeper than that. I’ll try to address it.”
He stood up again and resumed his pacing. “Your question assumes that when we’re out of the box, our behaviors are ‘soft,’ and when we’re in the box, our behaviors are ‘hard.’ That’s why you wonder, I take it, whether one can actually sustain a business being out of the box all the time. But let’s think about that assumption a little harder. Is the distinction between being in the box and being out of the box a behavioral one?”
I thought about that for a minute. I wasn’t certain, but it seemed like it might make a difference in behavior. “I’m not sure,” I said.
“Let’s look at the diagram,” Bud said, pointing to what he had drawn on the board earlier. “Remember, this woman and I exhibited the same outward behaviors, but our experiences were completely different—I was in the box and she was out.”
“Okay,” I nodded.
“Here’s an obvious question, but its implications are extremely important,” he said. “Where on this diagram are behaviors listed?”
“At the top,” I said.
“And where are the in-the-box and out-of-the-box ways of being listed?”
“Beneath that, at the bottom.”
“Yes,” Bud said, turning away from the board and toward me. “What’s the implication of this?”
I didn’t know what he was after and sat silently, groping for an answer.
“What I mean,” Bud added, “is that this diagram suggests that there are two ways to do … what?” I studied the diagram. Then I saw what he was getting at. “I see—there are two ways to do the behaviors.”
“Right. So here’s the question again: Is the distinction we’re talking about fundamentally a distinction in behavior, or is it deeper than that?”
“It’s deeper,” I said.
Bud nodded. “Now, let’s think of Lou again for a minute. How would you characterize his behavior toward me? Remember, in a public forum, in front of my colleagues, he took from me a responsibility I had failed to accomplish, even though I’d accomplished everything else he’d asked me to do. And then he asked me if I would ever let him down again. How would you characterize his behavior toward me—would you say it was soft or hard?”
“That would definitely be hard,” I said, “too hard, even.”
“Yes. But was he in the box or out of the box when he did it?”
“Out of the box.”
“And how about you? How would you characterize your behavior toward Joyce—was it soft or hard?”
“Again, hard—perhaps too hard,” I said, squirming slightly in my seat.
“You see,” Bud said, as he walked back toward his chair across from me, “there are two ways to be hard. I can engage in hard behaviors and be either in the box or out of the box when I do them. The distinction isn’t the behavior. It’s the way I’m being when I am doing whatever I’m doing—be it soft or hard.
“Let’s look at it another way,” he continued. “If I’m out of the box, I’m seeing others as people. Fair enough?”
“Here’s the question, then: Is the thing that a person needs always soft?”
“No, sometimes people need a little hard encouragement,” I said with a wry smile.
“That’s right. And your situation with Joyce is a perfect example. She needed to be told that it was wrong to erase other people’s notes from the board, and passing on that kind of message could be thought of as behaviorally hard. The point is that it’s possible to deliver just that kind of hard message and still be out of the box when doing it. But it can be done out of the box only if the person you are delivering the message to is a person to you. That’s what it means to be out of the box. And notice—and here’s why this is so important—whose hard message likely invited a more productive response, Lou’s or yours?”
I thought again of how demotivating it was to work for Chuck Staehli and about how I probably had the same kind of influence on Joyce as Chuck had had on me. “Lou’s, I’m afraid.”
“That’s the way it seems to me too,” Bud said. “So regarding hard behavior, here’s the choice: We can be hard and invite productivity and commitment, or we can be hard and invite resistance and ill will. The choice isn’t to be hard or not, it’s to be in the box or not.”
Bud looked at his watch. “It’s now 11:30, Tom. I have a proposal. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to break for an hour and a half or so.”
I was surprised by the time. It didn’t seem like we’d been at this for two and a half hours, but I was grateful for the break all the same. “Sure,” I said. “So we’ll get going again at one o’clock, here?”
“Yes, that would be great. Now remember what we’ve covered so far: There’s something deeper than behavior that determines our influence on others—it’s whether we’re in or out of the box. You don’t know much about the box yet, but when we’re in the box, our view of reality is distorted—we see neither ourselves nor others clearly. We are self-deceived. And that creates all kinds of trouble for the people around us.
“With that in mind,” he continued, “I’d like you to do something for me before we get back together after lunch. I’d like you to think about the people here at Zagrum—both in and out of your department—and ask yourself whether you’re in or out of the box toward them. And don’t lump the people you’re thinking about into an impersonal mass. Think of the individuals. You may be in the box toward one person and out of the box toward another at the same time. Think of the people.”
“Okay, I will,” I said as I started to stand up. “Thanks, Bud—this has been very interesting. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“Not nearly as much as you’ll have to think about by this afternoon,” Bud said with a chuckle.