Free The Hands-Off Manager by Steve Chandler Page A

you used to think you had to do, and when you finish your one thing—doing it thoroughly, slowly, and well—put another task from the possibility list on your fresh to-do list. Just one thing.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Practice Finding an Inner Vision
You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
    —Jerry Gillies
    We were working with Jack and Melissa, a husband and wife team of business owners who had just suffered the pain of trying to train an incompetent employee for four months to no avail.
    It took them all four months to realize they were not going to succeed. They were trying to force their new hire into being able to do her job as a division leader. The problem was that the new hire hated the work and was constantly making absent-minded mistakes. She didn’t have the skills and talents necessary to do the job.
    We asked Jack and Melissa about the hiring interview.
    “We had a bad gut feeling,” said Jack. “But her resume looked so good and her references were great. And we needed that position filled so badly. I guess we were hoping for too much. Letting our wishes get in the way of good judgment.”
    “But Jack, it wasn’t good judgment you were ignoring. Good judgment said to hire her based on the resume and references. You were ignoring something else. Something more valuable than good judgment.”
    “What was that?”
    “How you felt about her. Your instinct. The voice inside. It was trying to tell you she wouldn’t work out and you didn’t listen.”
    Learning to make your decisions based on this kind of inner listening is different from trying to judge what the “right” or “wrong” thing to do would be. That’s the old school of management—to take “right and wrong,” make them absolutes, and try to impose them on the workplace. Just because almost every manager does this doesn’t mean it works. It seldom ever works.
    Go deeper. Find what you are aligned with and what feels natural to you. With every decision you think you have to “make.” (Actually, for the hands-off manager, decisions have a way of making themselves, of becoming such obvious choices that no real decision is necessary. You just instinctively know what to do next.)
    Interview a candidate using your inner listening and you’ll know if he or she is a fit.
    Then, as you bring people onto your team, you’ll become skillful at choosing the people with whom you feel a sense of alignment. You’ll know them. You’ll feel a sense of wellbeing when you’re around them.
    Now it’s time to do the same thing with your thoughts. Don’t try to ignore or overcome any negative thoughts. You don’t have to make thoughts wrong, because that’s focusing your thinking on them all the more! Just notice the thoughts that produce the bad feelings, notice their lack of validity, challenge their truth, and then turn and go another way.
    Picture two paths opening in front of you. One is the path of alignment; one is the path of misalignment. One is the path of what feels good for you; the other is the path of what feels “off” to you. Not “right” and “wrong” for the world; we’re just talking about you, now.
    If you spend your time thinking about where you don’t want to go, then that path will call to you. And then you’ll be frustrated because that’s where you end up. And now you can see why.
    Some top leaders say a great leader is a visionary. And we know they are referring to market trends, product and service development, and all the things business magazines tell them to talk and think about. Visions of the future.
    The hands-off manager is a different kind of visionary. The hands-off manager’s vision is not a vision for what the company will be in 10 years. It’s a vision that sees the potential of his people right here and now.
    Your success as a hands-off manager will be directly related to your ever-increasing ability to see