Default to Good

Our behaviour is shaped by many things; our experiences, our values, the environment around us. At work we have to make decisions about things we may not fully understand. We have to explain our decisions, and convince others to join us even when we’re not sure of the way.

Sometimes things are easier, maybe you work for an ethical company that’s clearly doing things to make the world a better place. Working somewhere like this, I imagine, would easily lead to good choices.

For the rest of us things are more blurry. You might work for a fantastic company for the wrong reason. You might work for a friendly company that don’t make the world a better place. You might work for a downright bad company for very good reasons.

As you go about your job, and life, you have to make decisions. If you’re a manger some of those decisions will be about how other people should live and work. You oversee goals, objectives, promotions, and pay rises. You might make decisions about hiring or letting people go, re-locating teams or ending projects, These things can be hard. The right decision might not always feel good, maybe people are being made redundant, or you’re forced to u-turn on a hiring decision. Generally decisions like this come after a long, well-considered period of evaluating the options. There are laws and guidelines to make sure we do the right things in these circumstances even if they still feel nasty.

But not all decisions are so big.

As we go through our day-to-day life we make decisions about all kinds of things. Many of these decisions are made with little data, or even very little consideration but they can have big implications. You might need someone on your team to do some additional work, or work late in the office. Maybe they need to stop what they’re currently working on, or join a different team.

Sometimes it can feel even more minor, maybe someone wants to leave early for an appointment, or work from home. Even if we don’t have a full picture when we make these decisions we can make the right decisions by simply doing what’s right as a human. We can make sure they understand what we’re asking, and why. We can give them space and time to articulate their concerns or questions, in the format that best suits them.  We can trust them.

When asking people to do something different or new we can remove a large workplace stress by simply making the priorities clear. Adding more work to a busy workload is a common and unfair practice. We should clearly state out expectations of where this fits into someone’s work, and if we don’t know what else they’re working on we should make sure to find out before deciding to allocate more work.

As managers we will often have more context on situations and are well placed to drive direction through a team but we should treat that context as a privilege. People choose to work with us, and by taking just a bit of time to work with them we can remove so much of the work-place frustration and stress.