Managing without "should" to reduce anxiety

I've been working on understanding and managing anxiety for a long time, but right now I have a unique opportunity to observe myself because I am theoretically without any job related stress at all. I've found Dr. David Burns and his cognitive distortions to be supremely helpful in understanding where my anxiety comes from, and in particular his view of the word "should" and how it interacts with our mental state. This led me to believe that I had already recognized this in the workplace to some extent, even if I hadn't formally understood to what degree this was the underlying concept for the philosophy that I tried to have in leading and managing.

I'd like to try to explain this philosophy and how it is related to the word "should" but first a few assumptions that I am making:

1. I believe Dr. Burns' assessment that negative thoughts lead to cognitive distortions cause anxiety and depression.
2. The focus of my experience is leading creative folks on highly technical challenges and I realize that my philosophy may or not extend beyond that particular group. I'll explain how I see things, and then others can decide if that makes sense in their world as well. I certainly do not claim this approach to be for everyone in every situation.
3. I believe there is already too much anxiety in the world, and adding more through the workplace will only make overall productivity worse. Note: there is a difference between "extra" anxiety and "productive" anxiety and the terminology on how to characterize that varies a bit. For the purposes of this column, I'll use the word anxiety to represent the extra anxiety that does not add any value but instead hinders an individual from accomplishing their goal. An example of productive anxiety, maybe we should call it "motivation", would be a nervousness for a public speaking engagement that causes the speaker to practice extra and polish their talk so it turns out great. That is anxiety that may not be worthwhile or desirable to remove. The extra anxiety would be the anxiety that the speaker has which makes them so nervous they have a panic attack leading up to the talk, are unable to prepare, and the talk ends up being too overwhelming to even give. That is an extreme example, but the point is that there are degrees of anxiety, and I believe there is too much unproductive anxiety and it would be helpful to specifically target reducing that in the workplace.

Dr. Burns suggests there are three valid uses of the word should:

1. To describe a physical process: "The ball should fall when I let go of it."
2. To describe legal rules: "I should drive under the speed limit to avoid a ticket."
3. To describe moral rules. This one gets a little tricky because it can still lead to anxiety, but how each person interprets it is really up to them. The moral code can be defined by their local community, religion, family, or potentially their workplace culture.

So those are the acceptable "shoulds," what are the "shoulds" that can start to cause issues? Here is an example: "I should go visit my grandmother because I know she likes it and I don't do it often enough." The "should" paints you into a corner because you feel like your grandmother forced you to go visit her and then you may be resentful about having to do it if you do. But if you don't, you may feel guilty, like you owed her something and let her down even though she may not even know you planned to see her at all. All of these emotions are negative and anxiety producing as a result of the arbitrary rules that stem from "should".

Instead, replace that same statement with: "It would be nice to visit my grandmother because I know she enjoys it and my relationship with her is important to me." This statement provides a positive motivation for going to see her and emphasizes what it does for you - strengthen your relationship. On the flip side, it also gives you the freedom to not go if you aren't able to because there was nothing owed or any guilt associated with choosing not to. Leaving the opening to choose not to go also triggers another concept that Dr. Burns talks about: the acceptance paradox. The way human brains work, there is a huge difference in your behavior and attitude towards these two statements even though the express 98% the same idea: going to visit Gramma is good.

Now let's take the whole concept and see how it applies to the workplace. First let's look at the three valid "shoulds." Physical should rules still hold. Legal should rules still hold. Moral should rules can be applied as part of the code of conduct or company culture. "Everyone should treat other employees with respect at all time" would be a valid workplace should statement (in my opinion) because it is an application of the desired moral code for a company to have. Also, why would anyone want to work someplace where that was a question or caused any anxiety?

The real difficulty comes when looking at employee performance in terms of quality, schedule, and cost. I would guess that most managers, consciously or subconsciously, use the word should when thinking about and talking to their employees many times per day. "They should have been able to finish that on time." "You should be able to figure this out." "This should only cost X amount of money to accomplish." It's an easy shortcut in your brain to express a ton of additional information; basically your expectations for everyone all the time. Unfortunately, if you agree with everything I've said so far, you will see that taking that shortcut actually has a pretty big cost associated with it. It is likely causing extra anxiety in at least some of the employees, and it may be draining the motivation of many of them by making their job into something they feel forced to do. For the recipients of the "should" statement, doing their job (like going to Gramma's house) just went from a treat to a chore.

How do managers get employees to do their work and be motivated if you don't ever tell them what they "should" be able to do? Should statements can be arbitrary, and if you are managing by constantly making them, you are implicitly making a lot of assumptions about how things are and what people can do. I hate to break it to you, but those assumptions are likely wrong. My guess is it is probably a lot of left to right thinking - this is what we need, and you "should" be able to do it for cost X by date Y. An example: a desperately needed task comes to you, and now you have to use your team to get them to contribute. The first part of the task can be done by one person, so you tell them, "We just got this task. You should be able to do your part by Tuesday." Now you have managed! But, you have taken a not great situation and passed the entirety of the stress of it onto your employee based on what you perceived to be a reasonable timeline.

In this statement, you are doing a lot of fortune telling about what needs to happen along the way to reach that particular milestone, but you probably haven't accounted for everything that it takes or what could go wrong, and you also haven't explained why that date. In fact, you may be amazing at knowing all those factors, estimating them, and coming up with an extremely accurate likely cost and date to complete the task; that is probably one of the things that highly skilled managers, leaders, and executives do. I am not suggesting all that thought and input needs to be ignored; all that data and insight is critical for getting the business to cruise along. I am merely suggesting that the way all that information gets into the business needs to be a little bit more extensive than tossing "shoulds" around.

Instead, imagine you passed along the task with the phrase, "I know it is last minute, but I would like to have your part done by next Tuesday. If you can do that, I think we can get the response back by the end of the following week, and that is a timeline I can give back to the customer. Does that work?" First off, we check for "should." Nope, clear. In this statement, we have still communicated our desired date, but left the door open for the doer to give feedback and also for them to better understand why Tuesday was selected. It still factors in when you need the theoretical response by, but doesn't put the pressure onto the person with the task. It is a shared conversation, and much like the example about going to gramma's house, now you have provided positive motivation (they want to help you help the customer) instead of negative anxiety and guild inducing (I should be able to do this, and now there is a potential value judgment on me if I am can't.) It may seem subtle, but the difference in language between using "should" and where you take the extra time to explain what you want and why can be a huge change in the anxiety caused by this new task.

Image credit: https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/sarahlethbridgelean/right-to-left-technology-thinking/

Right to left thinking can provide the ability to convey what is needed for the business without needing the "should" statement. You can put all that beautiful insight and fortune telling you have into a schedule that ties directly to the business needs. Once that exists, you can provide the employees with a much better understanding of the milestones and costs, and it is easy to phrase those to the employees as, "To accomplish Z, we would really like to have this completed for cost X by date Y." No "shoulds" needed! Plus, now you aren't trying to constantly guess at what each employee can do, what hurdles might exist, and how to squeeze the last drop of productivity out of them.

Of course you can cheat. If you do all the "shoulds" in your head and then make a schedule to justify them, you may be able to accomplish the same statement above. If the employees pull on the threads though, it may expose that the schedule really boils down to what you think can be done, and you will be right back where you started. On the other hand, if you work together with employees on the milestones and get their buy in on how the business needs will be met, you not only are taking away the "shoulds" and the anxiety they cause, but passing along the responsibility for the project planning onto the folks that are charged with accomplishing it. The hard thing is to be able to push in all directions to find the right balance so that people are able to do the work they say they can, the deadlines still meet the business needs, and that as leaders we are not accomplishing them by constantly squeezing more juice out of the employees lemon.

In retrospect, this approach is generally how I tried to run things, I just didn't understand that the goal of what I was doing was to avoid "should." If a deadline wasn't met, I always try to start from "what error in my thinking led to this" as opposed to "they should have been able to accomplish that." There are generally three options, and I try to search out which one is the culprit by going through the following order:

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/59632563@N04/6460660699

1) The task was harder than we expected - the person/people I asked to do this are really smart and driven, but due to some complications or unexpected difficulties, they couldn't meet the deadline. Maybe it was as simple as a skill mismatch and more learning was needed. Maybe something in the technology stack didn't work exactly the way somebody thought and that required more integration than we had planned for. Whatever. Usually all it takes to determine this was the case was to hear what the employees have to say and we can quickly determine this was the culprit - in which case I completely let it go. Being upset when we collectively learned something helps nobody. Essentially I am giving them space to try hard and not reach the deadline (would be good to have) vs calling the deadline an arbitrary black and white line ("should" have been able to do it)

2) There was something else going on that caused this - either other work priorities got in the way (fine, my job to help them manage that and if they got misled on which ones they were, that's on me as their manager) or maybe something non-work related interfered. That's ok too - life happens to all of us, and I want my team to have the trust that if they need some relief because of life, they can tell me and I won't punish them, and similarly I trust they won't use it as an excuse when it isn't the real answer. In this I am avoiding the notion that work "should" be their #1 priority all the time because that is unrealistic and again, just makes people feel anxious when they do things that aren't work (like hobbies, time with family and friends, heck even sleep), which I absolutely want them to do so that they are able to do work with a full spirit. This just boils down to a scheduling learning opportunity at worst.

3) They didn't try hard enough. It is easy to start from this one because it immediately passes all the blame onto the employees, but I try to end here if all other possibilities have been exhausted. Then I ask why - if the hiring process has gone correctly, I can assume that the person is smart, driven, and capable; therefore something has gone wrong to make them not feel motivated. If I can figure that out, then we can repair and move on. If I can't, then there is no percentage in me trying to motivate them by counting hours at their desk, berating them daily, etc. That is just saying they "should" try harder, but why? The only reason I can think of is that it is what I want them to, but being their boss doesn't really give me the right to tell them how to feel, so if they aren't motivated then more should statements aren't going to help. This paragraph will especially make sense to any parents who have encountered the daily power struggles with kids; pushing harder on them to do something they weren't interested in doing is like using gasoline to put out a fire.

My limited experience with a highly driven team of extremely brilliant, hard working folks told me that the better a job I did at keeping my "shoulds" out of the workplace, the happier the team was and the better the results were. I believe it created a culture where everybody was driven by helping the business be successful and not just what I thought we should be doing and me being the driver for motivation and hard work. What I didn't realize until I read about cognitive distortions was how one simple word could do so much damage, but in looking at my life both in and out of the workplace, I can see how being mindful of how I use the word "should" makes such a big difference.