Page 25 - Performance Leadership

14 • Part I A Review of Performance Management

Not taking people’s objectives and their behaviors into account leads
to dysfunctional results. In essence, people want to do a good job and
want to do the right thing, but they are often driven in the wrong direc-
tion, playing number games and displaying political behavior. This is
clearly not a good start for alignment in the organization.
Dysfunctional behavior causes misalignment, yet at the same time is
caused by misalignment. Organizational misalignment starts at the per-
sonal level. Social psychologists talk about people being aligned, or
authentic, or “in their middle.” A person is considered aligned if the self,
the person’s perception of the self, and the external world’s perception
of the person match closely. In this verbiage, the person’s “self” repre-
sents who he or she really is, with all the positive and negative behaviors
he or she exhibits. An individual’s self-perception may be quite different.
Ego may stand in the way of an accurate view of the self, or a lack of
reflection may inhibit the person’s understanding of his or her behaviors,
motivators, and values. A healthy person’s self-perception improves over
time, with that person becoming wiser, and more self-reflective through-
out life. In other words, ideally you develop and mature as a balanced
and authentic person when the perception you have of yourself closely
matches your true self, and when ego doesn’t stand in the way and you
accept yourself the way you are, without false pretenses.
People’s self-perception can be unrealistic, with a gap between an
idealistic self-perception and one’s true behaviors. This leads to what
is called cognitive dissonance, which is what happens if one cognition
does not match the other, self-observed behavior does not match ide-
alistic self-perception. For instance, “I do not like being lazy” versus “I
don’t feel like cleaning up and would rather read the newspaper.” This
dissonance is an unpleasant experience, leading to negative emotions
such as anger or frustration if the dissonance cannot be lifted.
There might also be a gap between external perception and self-
perception. “External perception” means how others view a person,
which impacts on people’s behaviors again. For instance, you may have
a senior position in business or society that calls for certain behavior
that may not be your natural behavior. Not acting that way may lead
to losing that position. As such, group pressure might lead to conform-
ist behavior. You play a role, showing behavior that is not internalized.
This is called role distance. Again, this is a form of cognitive dissonance,