Chapter 18.
Manage Agreements,
Not People

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Does anybody here work with a person who seems unmanageable?” Steve asked as he opened one of his leadership seminars.

The managers who filled the room nodded and smiled. Some rolled their eyes skyward in agreement. They obviously had a lot of experience trying to manage people like that.

“How do you do it?” one manager called out. “How do you manage unmanageable people?”

“I don’t know,” Steve said.

“What do you mean you don’t know? We’re here to find out how to do it,” someone else called out.

“I’ve never seen it done,” Steve said. “Because I believe, in the end, all people are pretty unmanageable. I’ve never known anyone who was good at managing people.”

“Then why have a seminar on managing people if it can’t be done?”

“Well, you tell me, can it be done? Do you actually manage your people? Do you manage your spouse? Can you do it? I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, is class dismissed?”

“No, certainly not. Because we can all stay and learn how great leaders get great results from their people. But maybe they do it without managing people, because basically you can’t manage people.”

“If they don’t manage people, what do they do?”

“They manage agreements.”

Managers make a mistake when they try to manage their people. They end up trying to shovel mercury with a pitchfork, managing people’s emotions and personalities.

Then they try to “take care” of their most upset people, not in the name of better communication and understanding, but in the name of containing dissent and being liked.

This leads to poor time management and a lot of ineffective amateur psychotherapy. It also encourages employees to take a more immature position in their communication with management, almost an attempt to be re-parented by a supervisor rather than having an adultto-adult relationship.

A leader’s first responsibility is to make sure the relationship is a mature one.

A skillful leader does not run around playing amateur psychotherapist, trying to manage people’s emotions and personalities all day. A skillful leader is compassionate, and always seeks to understand the feelings of others. But a skillful leader does not try to manage those feelings.

A leader, instead, manages agreements. A leader creates agreements with team members and enters into those agreements on an adult-to-adult basis. All communication is done with respect. There is no giving in to the temptation to be intimidating, bossy, or all-knowing.

Once agreements are made on an adult-to-adult basis, people don’t have to be managed anymore. What gets managed is the agreement. It is more mature and respectful to do it that way, and both sides enjoy more open and trusting communication. There is also more accountability running both ways. It is now easier to discuss uncomfortable subjects.

Harry was an employee who always showed up late for team meetings. Many managers would deal with this problem by talking behind Harry’s back, or trying to intimidate Harry with sarcasm, or freezing Harry out by not returning his calls, or meeting with Harry to play therapist. But our client Jill would do none of that.

Jill co-authored an agreement with Harry that said Harry (and Jill) would both be on time for meetings.

They agreed to agree, and they agreed to keep their commitment to the agreement. It is an adult process that leads to open communication and relaxed accountability. Jill has come to realize that when adults agree to keep their agreements with each other, it leads to a more openly accountable company culture. It leads to higher levels of self-responsibility and self-respect.

The biggest beneficial impact of managing agreements is on communication. It frees communication up to be more honest, open, and complete.

A commitment to managing agreements is basically a commitment to being two professional adults working together, as opposed to “I’m your dad, I’m your father, I’m your mother, I’m your parent, and I will re-parent you. You’re a child, and you’re bad and you’ve done wrong, and I’m upset with you, and I’m disappointed in you, and I know that you’ve got your reasons and you’ve got your alibis and your stories, but still, I’m disappointed in you.” That kind of approach is not management, it’s not leadership, it’s not even professional. That kind of approach, which we would say eight out of 10 managers do, is just a knee-jerk, intuitively parent-child approach to managing human beings.

The problem with parent-child management is that the person being managed does not feel respected in that exchange. And the most important, the most powerful, precondition to good performance is trust and respect.

Let’s say my project leader has been assigned to get the team to do something. The team all agreed to watch a video and then take a certain test about it given on the Internet. But then they don’t do it! What does it mean that they won’t do things like that? What does it mean about them? What does it mean about me?

All it means is that the person in charge of getting that project done is someone with whom I need to strengthen my agreement. It’s not someone who’s done something “wrong.” I don’t need to call them on the carpet. It’s someone with whom I don’t have a very strong agreement.

And so I need to sit down with him or get into a good phone conversation with him, and say, “You and I need an agreement on this because this is something that must be done, and I want to have it done in the way that you can do it the most effectively, that won’t get in the way of your day-to-day work. So let’s talk about this. Let me help you with this so that it does get done. It’s not an option, so you and I must come up with a way together, that we can both co-author, together, an agreement on how this is going to get done.”

Then I should ask these questions of that person: “Are you willing to do this? Is this something you can make sure your people follow up on? Do you have a way of doing it? Do you need my support?”

And finally, at the end of the conversation, I’ve got that person agreeing with me about the project.

Now, notice that this agreement is two-sided. So I also, as the co-professional in this agreement, am agreeing to certain things, too.

That person might have said, “You know, one of the hard things about this is we don’t have anything to watch this video on, we don’t have a TV monitor in the store.”

And so I would say, “If I can get you a TV for your store, will that be all you need?”

“Yes, it will.”

“Well, here’s what you can count on: By Friday, I’ll have a TV monitor in the store. What else can I do for you?”

Because a leader is always serving, too. Not just laying down the law, but serving. And always asking, “How can I assist you? How can I serve you and help you with this?”

Because the true leader wants an absolute promise and absolute performance.

And now that we have agreed, I ask very sincerely, “Can I count on you now to have this done, with 100-percent compliance? Can I count on that from you?”

“Yes, of course you can.”

Great. We shake. Two professionals are leaving this meeting with an agreement they both made out of mutual respect, out of professional, grown-up conversation. Nobody had to be “managed.”