Consider the following scenario: you're a mid-level manager and find out that a layoff is coming. You're about too lose one of your best direct reports, but you have no ability to influence the decision to lay them off.
 |
| Oy! My head hurts! |
Oftentimes, I find that people - when presented with situations where they feel compelled to act but have no ability to change the outcome - enter a state of mental lethargy. They don't know exactly what it is they should do but, "gosh darnit!", something has to be done. When they realize how helpless they actually are, they start lamenting about the situation, how they are backed into a corner, etc.
In a very real sense, they go through the five stages of grief.
I'd like to offer the following alternative way of approaching these and other situations: I call it the COSMIC method, not only because it sounds cool but also because I like science fiction ("Lisan al Gaib!").
COSMIC is an acronym for control the situation and mitigate the impact. Many times, complex situations will have components that you can control and some that you cannot. Identifying what goes in which of these two buckets will allow you to more effectively formulate a response that addresses the situation in a positive way.
For each of the following situations, ask yourself how you would react:
- A coworker asks you for help with something late in the evening on a Friday of a holiday three-day weekend and gets upset when you are unable to assist.
- You're about to walk into a meeting with someone that has historically had a very negative relationship with the company for whom you work.
- Due to corporate politics, a former coworker now in a leadership position puts you on a PIP for fabricated reasons.
All of these situations happened to me at one point. In each of these, the temptation to just throw up your hands and say "there's nothing I can do!" is strong. But if you examine each of these from the COSMIC perspective, you'll easily be able to separate out what is controllable and what isn't.
Let's see how I applied COSMIC to each situation.
The Long Weekend
For the first situation, I was very patient with the coworker in question; acknowledged that they've been under a lot of stress recently; pointed out that our working relationship had changed over the past month; and asked if I had done something to upset them. Then, to kill them with kindness, I sent a small gift card to their favorite coffee shop. I couldn't control how they felt, but I mitigated the impact of their emotion-based response by leading with empathy. I showed compassion for the situation, which (if I'm being honest) was easy to do because I genuinely liked working with the person.
The Burned Relationship
For the second situation, we were told in our first meeting with the CTO, "I realize it's not your fault but because of [historical context] yours is the first company I've considered initiating litigation against." That put my colleagues and I on the back foot immediately, but we controlled the situation by understanding what their current points of friction were and taking all steps possible to resolve those with expediency. We couldn't control their feelings, but we could control the actions we took to change the relationship in a positive way. (Even better, our efforts were so successful that, six weeks later, we closed a mid-six-figure deal with them.)
The Targeted Criticism
For the final situation, I recognized that I could not undo the process that had been started with Human Resources. This was especially maddening because the Global Head of Human Resources told me that, in 20 years, they could count on one hand the number of times a situation similar to mine had occurred and agreed that something didn't add up (but couldn't change it because protocols had to be followed). I couldn't control the situation, but I was able to mitigate the impact by doubling down on the quality of my work. And, in spite of being kept on a Performance Improvement Plan for a full five months - they really wanted me out! - they ultimately had to acknowledge that they had no reason to implement it in the first place and eventually took me off. (I gave notice the day after I was told I was off of the plan.)
In Summary
In your professional life you will always have things you can control and things that you cannot control. For the things you can, take whatever actions are needed to positively influence the outcome. But there will always be more aspects of any situation where you are not able to control anything. What do you do? You then anticipate the outcomes for these parts of the situation and take steps to minimize the negative impact of those parts. By doing this, you'll have a greater ability to arrive at a net positive result overall.