LACT WORKSHOP EXTRACT
LACT: We very frequently receive local managers or even young people in the company who find it difficult to set limits. For everyone, the pressure is very strong, both for young employees and the most senior. There is a strong will to want to stay in the job, coupled with today's very present economic uncertainty, which puts enormous pressure on everyone.
And the answer to this situation is that everyone must be perfect.
It is an injunction which is perceived as such emanating from the company, but which everyone also gives to themselves. What is underlying behind it is obviously fear: fear of being judged imperfect, ineffective at some point, fear of finding oneself unemployed, fear of being unmasked as the impostor that one has been, fear of the collapse. Behind all this, there is therefore a very strong emotional problem that guides action: having to be perfect in response to this fear.
A problem of an emotional order, with worrying people in certain cases, but in the face of which we will say that they should be in a less perfect, more degraded mode.
This perspective is extremely distressing for them; at best they conceive it, they agree on the principle, but once they have conceived it, once in a situation, that makes their fear rise even more. These people feel even more incapable because they say to themselves: I know very well that I should go in this direction but in fact I am quite incapable of it.
We are not going to go into more detail because it could be the subject of a workshop in itself, but indeed we can obtain very rapid results with this kind of people because they feel so fragile and so bad that they are very mobilized to make an effort.
These are people who are already making a lot of effort in their activity, so by asking them for a very difficult last effort, we can challenge them on this, with action logic in terms of communication, action strategy and relational attitude which will be non-rational logics.
We are going to use stratagems to somehow create a greater fear than this person's fear so that he mobilizes differently, that is to say that he finally dares to show himself to be less perfect and that suddenly he experience that by being less perfect, well, it's not the end of the world.
And precisely when you are in an environment like yours… I thought I understood that the objectives given were unrealistic…? Participant: Yes I find it indeed.
LACT: So if it's unrealistic maybe there is also an action to be done so that, in a constructive way, we can see and reconsider maybe at the level of the hierarchy... but at some point we have to employees dare to show their limits.
Participant: Yes and without being afraid of being perceived as incapable.
