Look closer at what you do
Look closer at what you do
Your actions reveal what you truly value. They also tell you more about the impact you’re having on others.
“When you do that, it’s really irritating to the person you’re talking to,” she said over the click-clack sound of the turn signal.
I crossed my arms in the passenger seat. Yeah, yeah. I thought, looking out the window. It’s not a big deal.
My mother was trying to impart the sage advice that interrupting people — even if it comes from a place of enthusiasm for the topic — doesn’t bode well for your reputation or relationships. As a know-it-all teenager, I tuned her out.
Until I was confronted by an award-winning interrupter whilst attending a banquet dinner.
I sat at a round table large enough that most people took to conversing with those closest to them.
Not this individual.
He not only cut in on those sitting next to him, but when their conversation didn’t provide sufficient openings, he’d insert himself into conversations on the other side of the table. Loudly. In doing so, he successfully interrupted not only the conversation he barreled into but every other conversation at the table. I ultimately succumbed to pushing mediocre chicken around on my plate so as not to invite an interjection.
My mother sat at the same table. On a trip to the bathroom, I said, “I get what you were saying about interrupting people. I’m not going to do that anymore.”
Actions speak louder than words.
I'm sure you've heard this phrase before. It's a truth so commonly held that we say it out of habit. Yet I’ve noticed that while people mumble the adage and dutifully nod along, their actions suggest they more readily live by the phrase “Do as I say, not as I do.”
The digitization of our lives inflates the importance of what we say to the point that we think it dwarfs our behavior. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
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We first learn from what we see at home.
The phrase, “Family takes care of family,” was repeated often enough when I was growing up that my brain now completes the sentence instinctively.
But what does it mean, exactly? I could have used the dictionary to put something together. Or my family could have written a process doc and told me to read it. Neither would get at what they wanted to pass on.
Their actions showed me what I needed to know.
My Mom Mom looked after me and my brothers when we were small. She simultaneously provided a place for her parents to come during the day. I remember eating hoagies and trading my tomatoes for my Pop Pop’s shredded lettuce, as well as the way my Nana tended to lose at Pig, so focused on her cards we had to fight to keep from giggling.
My mom held weekly family dinners that included my grandparents and great-grandparents. She also included my Nana every time we went to Applebee’s.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I thought little of helping my mother when she fractured her hip this year. I also travel home to spend time with my grandparents. When my brother calls because he needs something (generally the only reason he calls), I answer and help however I can.
For me, this is what normal looks like. And it’s normal because my parents and my grandparents modeled this behavior for me.
No amount of telling would have made the same impression.
There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about phones and childhood lately. The fashionable position is to blame the phone and call for legislation to put an end to its danger.
I think we would get farther by reassessing our behavior.
Take, for example, the average family out to eat: four people sitting silently at a table, heads bowed over their screens. Despite being together physically, they’re in their own worlds.
“That’s because phones are addictive,” you say. “The companies design them so we can’t stop scrolling.”1
Maybe, but I question your argument. Are you truly addicted? Or have you simply gotten used to checking your phone which serves as an endless source of distraction? Or more specifically in this situation, is it easier to blame the phone than to admit that what your phone can serve up is more interesting than a conversation with a first grader?
If you truly value your kids spending less time on their phones, then you need to spend less time on yours. It’s that simple. You need to show them that it’s not only possible to do, but that it’s desirable to do. You also need to show them what to do instead of turning to the phone.
I’m certain my conversational contributions at Applebee’s all those years ago couldn’t match the latest TikTok video. But if my parents didn’t model family conversation including asking questions, taking an interest in others, and not interrupting, how would I learn how to do those things?
How would I learn and internalize that they were desirable things to do?
We also learn at work.
Leaders have a tremendous effect on their team members. Yet many leaders invest more time in telling than showing.
I get it. As a leader, you need to say things many times to get them to sink in. I also emphatically support writing things down and revisiting them routinely (how can you stay on the same page if there is no page?). But even if your team dutifully listens to what you say and reads what you’ve written, they’ll instinctively adapt to the behavior they see around them every day — even if it is contrary to what you’ve communicated.
This misalignment often fuels an endless cycle of redoing the telling part (look, new values!) without changing the action part, which results in people believing what you say less and less each time.
If you choose not to work on weekends as part of your culture, then you as the leader can’t send emails on a Saturday. If you decide you won’t use messaging apps, you can’t text asking for an update. If you say you value learning from all perspectives, you can’t go into a meeting with your mind already made up. Your actions tell your team members that what’s written isn’t what you value, and thus isn’t what they should value.
The leaders I work with know their actions matter. They strive to model the practices and attitudes they’ve defined as part of their business culture. And yet, they act differently when surprises show up, their plate runs over, or they have a team member who isn’t getting it.
They see their in-the-moment rule-breaking as taking one for the team. They’ll get back to doing it right when things slow down; they just need to make it through this part.
Unfortunately, difficult times do not permit misaligned behavior. If anything, the stressful and difficult times are when your actions matter most.
Whatever you permit during this stretch gets into the marrow of your culture and it will take you twice as much effort to get it out again. That includes tolerating poor behavior. No matter how good someone may be at their job, how much you might like them, or how much you don’t want to lose a team member right now, their behavior screams that what they’re doing is okay.
And the longer you tolerate it, the more it becomes what your team learns to value.2
And we have the opportunity to learn from our actions.
Words come easy in a digitized world. We can write them, publish them, and distribute them with less friction and to vastly more people than ever before. We use them to construct the person we want to be.
Moreover, our screens provide a false sense of separation. We come to believe that others only see our words3 and that if we say the right things — and scrub our past words as needed — we can create a new identity. This belief has spread to businesses as seen in efforts like pledge porn.
Unfortunately, we mistake reach for impact. And we certainly mistake talk for truth.
Our commitment to our verbal selves robs us of a better understanding of our actual selves. Our actions reveal what we truly value. Our habits then go on to shape our lives — far more so than any words we could say.
They also shape the lives of others: if we aren’t paying attention to our actions, we’re likely unaware of our true impact.
Pick something you say you value. Now review the last week or month. What actions supported what you said? What actions didn’t?
If your immediate reaction is to blame someone or something else for the misalignment, that’s normal. It’s human. It also won’t get you where you say you want to go.
Determine what your actions say you value. Then ask yourself if you’d like to continue with that value or change your behavior to align with what you profess to value.
Speaking for myself, I recognize that while I profess to value healthy eating, my actions reveal that I value comforting myself with food. I can either accept that or I can take steps to change my behavior.
As a leader, assessing your behavior has greater implications. You’re not only affecting your life; you’re influencing the lives of those around you.
While impacting the lives of the twenty to fifty people on your team may not feel as impactful as a post that reaches thousands, you will more deeply impact those exposed to your behavior than those who aren’t.
Make sure you’re building a world you want to live in.
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Herein lies my first big nit to pick: are we arguing that phones are the problem or the apps on those phones are the problem? While we say phones, most of what I read seems to mean apps. If it is the apps, then why not simply remove them and use the phone for, well, phone things? And why aren’t we also talking about smart devices, tablets, and computers, all of which can use the same (or most of the same) apps? I smell an easy enemy and a silver bullet solution.
Your team will either learn that, say, steamrolling over others to get the job done is how I’m supposed to work despite our values saying the opposite, or they’ll internalize that you don’t mean what you say. Both are bad outcomes.
Yes, I know there are YouTube videos. But your head talking at me is still just that: talk.