You Don't Act the Way You Say You Do

Do you do what you say? Do you practice what you preach? If people watched your behaviour, would they say it was consistent with how you typically describe yourself? Probably not, especially if the situation is potentially challenging, threatening, stressful or embarassing. Like, oh let's say, almost all management and business activities.

Each of us has what Chris Argyris calls an espoused theory of action; what we believe we'd do when faced with a situation; it's how we describe ourselves to others; how we think we normally behave. Our espoused theory of action closely fits our values and beliefs, and supports our self image in a way that's comfortable and consistent with our ideas about right and wrong. Unfortunately, what we think we'd do is usually incorrect, and is quite different from our theory-in-use, the actual behaviours we resort to when the going gets tough.

This disconnect between what we say we do (our espoused theory of action) and what we actually do (our theory-in-use) is obvious to those around us. Yet very few of us are aware of how inconsistent we are; of how much contradication there is between the two.

We say that we value family over work, yet we routinely work late every night, go in on weekends and keep our BlackBerry's on when we're on holidays, neglecting our spouses and short-changing family time with our kids. We say that we treat people fairly, yet we regularly point the finger of blame at our employees whenever something goes wrong. We say that we value input and want engaged employees, yet we impose decisions and change on our people, and discount their comments as whining and complaining.

According to Argyis, when faced with challenge we tend to take actions that allow us to:

• stay in control,
• maximize winning and minimize losing,
• suppress negative feelings, and
• be as rational as possible.

If a problem happens on a customer order, it is so much easier on our ego to blame an employee than to accept that our system of production is out of control; it's so much easier on our self-image to have people think Joe was the culprit, rather than risk them thinking poorly of us; it's so much easier to bury our fears and doubts about our leadership ability and point a finger at someone else; it's so comforting to rationalize that "if only they'd do their job right, we wouldn't have these problems."

We're very inconsistent, and we're blind to our own inconsistencies. To protect our fragile self-image, we believe we act in ways that are good and right, however we define those terms. Yet, also to protect our fragile self-image, we actually act in quite different ways, with actions that are unconsciously designed to keep us in control and minimize our personal exposure to loss and negative emotions. Because of this, we fail to learn more effective behaviours, to actually behave consistently with our values. After all, why should we change if it wasn't our fault?

When crises happen, take the risk to examine your own behaviours, rather than the behaviours of others. Turn off your rationalization programs, and look for the disconnects between how you think you behave, and how you actually behave. Allow yourself to see that they are quite different, and take true responsibility for yourself, your management, your company.