No one likes being told what to do
Have you seen the movie of the Broadway musical Hamilton, on Disney Plus, yet? Watching it recently, I was reminded that Americans have always been ungovernable. It’s in our DNA, and the desire to rebel against the rule of law is in fact the critical component that led to our forefathers rebelling against the British rule of law and becoming our own country. Sometimes a rebellious spirit leads to a revolution and the birth of a new nation, and sometimes it leads to a significant portion of the population protesting the use of face masks during a global pandemic. The bottom line is, no one likes being told what to do.
This makes my line of work as a business consultant particularly interesting- if no one likes being told what to do, why would anyone ever hire me to tell them how to run their business? I believe that although we all like to believe in the narrative that we’re independent, free-thinking adults who can make their own decisions and don’t need anyone else to tell them how to think or what to do, most of us actually crave instruction and guidance when it comes to making many of the decisions in our lives.
In fact, most of the “choices” that we make every day aren’t really choices at all- they are habits that we’ve built up over time for the express purpose of not having to make so many choices in a day. Freedom of choice can actually be quite a burden to bear moment by moment. Habits allow us to avoid decision fatigue by putting our brain on auto-pilot mode and giving us a reprieve from having to think so much about all the basic things we do every day- things like brushing our teeth, making lunch, driving to work, answering emails, paying our bills, perhaps even many of the routine parts of your job are executed through the habits you’ve built up around doing them. In fact, if you look at the most successful people in the world, you’ll notice that their time and choices are governed by strong habits and routines. They rarely force themselves to have to “choose” what to do- instead they put in the hard work of forming success-building habits, and then let those habits make good decisions for them.
So, when we are faced with decisions that we don’t have habits built up around, we often look to outside sources for guidance. For example, when I was working in my record store, I often had customers come in and ask me to help them choose a record to purchase. They didn’t really want me to just hand them a record and tell them to buy it though, what they wanted was for me to ask them questions about what they liked, narrow the options down from thousands of records to two or three choices, and tell them a little about which one I would recommend most and why. Because I had knowledge and expertise about music that they did not, they trusted me to narrow down all of the options and just present them with the best choices, as long as I did it in a way that was friendly and they felt heard in the process. Then, because I had done the heavy lifting, they were empowered to make a choice to take my recommendation and purchase a record that they would love.
How does this relate to business? Well, when a business owner realizes that the things he has been doing (his habits) won’t get him to the place he wants to go in his business, he calls someone like me, who has expertise in making the decisions he is faced with around growing his business. He looks for someone with experience to tell him what to do. No one who calls me will ever say that they want me to tell them what to do- instead they say they want guidance or coaching or advice. However, ultimately, what they are looking for is someone who has more information or experience than they do in a subject to help them narrow down the countless options and guide them to make a good, informed decision. They want their freedom of choice, but they also want to borrow the perspective and experience of someone who knows more than they do to make that choice. That is essentially what a business consultant does- we lend our perspective and experience to a client so that they can use it to make the best decision for their business.
An important thing to remember in all this is that how you say something is just as important as what you say. For example, if I said to someone, “Here is what you have to do with your business,” they likely wouldn’t listen to me. However, if I ask them questions about what they want, present different options and talk them through the pros and cons of each, and then offer a recommendation, they are much more likely to listen to what I have to say. Our ego’s are fragile, and even when we know deep down that someone else is better equipped to make a decision about how we should act in a specific situation than we are, we still don’t like the idea of being told what we have to do. We would much prefer suggestions and gentle guidance.
There is an idea that people in our country don’t like being told what to do, but I don’t think that's quite right. I think most of us don’t like being yelled at- we are happy for people to tell us what we should do, as long as its done in a gentle, loving way. If you have questions about your business and want to talk to someone who won’t yell at you, but will offer you gentle guidance and recommendations based on your goals, I would love to talk with you.
If you have questions about whether or not you should do the work of forming a new habit and wearing a mask in public, you should ask a doctor. I think they have some thoughts on that.
-barney
