Page 222 - Make Work Great

You . . . as the Defi ner

To be a rescuer, however, is to be set up for a fall. As you com-
plete this book, you should have some good ideas about how to bring
more functionality to your workplace. You may also have some notions
about how to better manage your peers and employees. But, as you well
know, you still don’t have all the answers to life. If anything, the tools
offered here have equipped you to uncover even more unanswerable
questions than you faced before and, at best, to feel somewhat com-
fortable with the resulting ambiguity. You’re not imbued with magical
powers to make everything better, and you certainly won’t be able to
solve every problem or slay every dragon set before you.
Should anyone mistakenly begin to regard you as if you had such
magical abilities, it’s in your best interest to put a stop to it quickly.
Such treatment quickly leads to jealousy on the part of former rescu-
ers, who perceive themselves as having been dethroned, and to unre-
alistic expectations on the part of your worshippers. Either of those
misperceptions has the potential to sabotage you and destroy your
credibility, your effectiveness, and your ability to increase the reach
of your new cultural patterns.
Instead, be quick to share credit and recognize the culturally ben-
efi cial contributions of others. Be gracious but fi rm: “I appreciate the
encouragement, but as I say at every opportunity, I was only a piece
of a larger puzzle, a cog in a much larger machine. Jane did such
a good job defi ning the goal in terms of the customers’ needs, and
Terry was so effective at giving us visibility about our progress, that
my part of the solution happened automatically.” Courteously accept
compliments, but don’t allow them to defi ne you.

Don’t Be a Persecutor
As you achieve a modicum of success with your culture-building
efforts, you will also begin to regard your new patterns of behavior
as giving some good answers to the question of how people should
behave at work. Add some pressure to produce output and a bit of
responsibility over projects, peers, or staff members, and you have the
recipe for a persecutor in the making.

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