So the scenario unfolds like this:

You are in the role of (choose one - manager, spouse, parent, friend). You say to your (employee, spouse, parent, friend) something along the lines of, “if you ever [fill in the blank here - fail, cheat, lie]… I will [again, fill in the blank here with some life changing threat such as, kill, fire, leave] you. What have you done? You have rolled a wood chipper into the room and told the person that if they mess up as described - AND YOU FIND OUT, their hand is going into the wood chipper!

Now. How likely is it that if, in the course of an ordinary life full of mistakes (as all of our lives are), our (employee, spouse, parent, friend) will disclose to us the fact that they have ‘messed up’, given the preconditions we have already described to them. In short - how many of them will VOLUNTEER to put their own hand into our wood chipper?

My point here is that too often we confuse management with coercion, leadership with control. Not only do these tend to be counterproductive - they create conditions in otherwise healthy relationships that are outright destructive. Let’s face it, the instinct for survival and as an extension the avoidance of painful situations is a powerful force. (After all that is how we learn basic survival as a toddler - hot stove hurts!) And so, given the choice between walking into the jaws of death and failing to disclose - many choose the latter. This leads to small lies, barriers, breakdown of communication and ultimately a failed relationship.

How does this manifest in business? Let me give you an example from a recent engagement:

Our client, a large international energy producer, was faced with a performance situation in which there were an unacceptably high number of emergency shutdowns in one of their plants. Each shutdown represented not only a potential hazard to human life, but the loss of many barrels of production and many thousands of dollars. After an extremely detailed six-sigma effort to address the issue, the problem continued. It was only after examining the situation through the lens of Human Performance, that is became clear that there was a human factor at play: in short - the wood chipper. Management had described very punitive conditions for errors. So people chose to hide the errors. Once the errors accumulated sufficiently - they resulted in an emergency shutdown.

Think about your own lives - both personal and business. How many of your relationships do you try to manage with a wood chipper approach? How much better might it be if we made it ’safe’ for those with whom we interact? This does not mean that we ignore failures, but rather that we approach them without devastating pre-conditions. After all - isn’t a mistake just another way to learn?

- Mason