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.No matter how much they secretly enjoy making you suffer, Puritans always see their actions as totally selfless.If they are annoying or punitive, it’s for your own good, or for the good of humanity.Before we consign these heartless vampires to the pit, we ought to make an effort to understand them.It’s possible that a little knowledge might help us make them a little less annoying.WHY ARE PURITANS SO MEAN?Puritans think that the world is unkind to moral people, so they feel justified in returning the favor.Actually, the world is more ambiguous than unkind, but Puritans seldom appreciate this subtle distinction.The problem lies in the typical Obsessive-Compulsive confusion of process and product.People with rigid black-and-white moral codes spend their lives following rather arbitrary rules because they expect concrete rewards for keeping the rules and punishment for breaking them.Puritans don’t understand that virtue is its own reward.They keep expecting some higher power to step in to praise the saints and punish the sinners.Puritans invented the idea of heaven and hell for this purpose, but for many of them, the afterlife isn’t soon enough to settle the score.They feel they have to step in and do God’s work, at least when it comes to punishing sinners.What Puritans are really looking for are a few earthly rewards.The problem is that here in the real world, rewards go to people who know how to get them, not necessarily to people who deserve them.Puritans scrupulously follow a process that they expect will lead to glory and riches, but all it gets them is stars in their crown.Following rules can reward people with a feeling of connection with something larger than themselves—namely, the rest of humanity.Unfortunately, Puritans, in their quest for bottom-line settling up of moral accounts, often miss out on the greatest reward life has to offer.No wonder they’re resentful.DEALING WITH PURITANS WITHOUT GETTING BURNEDThere are two basic ways to deal with Puritans: You can humor them and laugh behind their backs, or you can show them how to get the earthly rewards they really want.The first is easier, and far more commonly practiced.If you want to try the second, you need to point out, gently, that it’s their reliance on punishment and censorship that’s causing the problems.Gentleness is necessary because Puritans model their external strategies on what they do inside their own heads.If you’re too emphatic, they’ll point out proudly that such tactics have made them what they are.This may leave you in a rather embarrassing position.Punishment is a terrible strategy for improving other people’s behavior.Its main effect is making people want to avoid the punisher, or to retaliate.Censorship doesn’t work either.It just makes people more curious about what they’re not allowed to see.The Puritans’ process for dealing with sin generally causes it to increase rather than decrease.This happens inside the Puritans as well, but trying to explain that to them might just get you burned at the stake.Instead, try to explain the process for getting earthly rewards.Love goes to people who are nice, respect goes to people who give respect, and riches go to people who know how to seize an opportunity.Take Karma in our example.In addition to justice for the downtrodden, she probably wants influential people like Rebecca to respect her, listen to her ideas, and see her as a good employee, worthy of responsible work and possibly promotions.Karma is making just the opposite impression.What can Rebecca tell her? About the memo, nothing.Rebecca should thank her, and let the issue drop as quickly as possible.Rebecca needs to see the incident as an indication that Karma feels unappreciated, and that Karma is probably a bellwether for other moral and high-principled people in the office who aren’t willing to be as obnoxious.In most business settings, people who work hard and play by the rules are disappointed by their lack of success.At least part of the reason for this is censorship, which seems to be the strategy everyone thinks of when Puritans are involved.Nobody tells Obsessive-Compulsives what they really need to do to get ahead because the truth is a little embarrassing.Karma and her hardworking cohorts spend their days plugging away at the tasks they believe should make a difference and getting more and more resentful when their efforts don’t pay off.Rebecca needs to disabuse them of the notion that hard work, in and of itself, will be rewarded and let them know how to really get the goodies.She could start by explaining that doing a good job and succeeding are totally different concepts.Doing a good job means competently managing the people below you in the organizational hierarchy.Success comes from managing the people above you.The skills involved are usually very different, so it’s not a good idea to mistake one for the other.For example, the following activities are all part of doing a good job, but will probably not have anything to do with whether you advance in the corporate hierarchy:Working directly with customers.In most companies customer service is an important corporate goal, but it is not accomplished by important corporate people.Selling is a possible exception.If you want to get ahead and you have to deal with customers, it is much better to be close to the people who buy your product than to the people who use it.Serving on work groups at your level or below.Task forces and committees solve problems, organize work, and get things done [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]