Thoughts Unlocked – The Hidden Cost of Labeling People

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Chapters:
01:12 – Insight into the upcoming book: Misdiagnosed
03:16 – Impact of labeling on behavior and leadership
04:54 – Fundamental attribution error and its effects
05:46 – How much of productivity is visible activity
11:18 – How label influence someone’s behavior
13:56 – Work, will, and wait
15:38 – Dangers of misdiagnosing
20:26 – Role of curiosity in understanding others

Skot Waldron (00:05)
I’m Skot Waldron, and when I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the globe, helping leaders and teams communicate better, build trust faster, and actually enjoy working together. I know, who would have thought? I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot, I’ve spoken at national architectural firms, at their sales trainings, off sites for major pharmaceutical companies, and industry associations.

A thousand of attendees who have read my sessions. With 99% of them saying they found the sessions valuable. 97% saying they’d actually attend again. I’ve had caterers come up to me afterwards and thank me because they actually got something they could use when they went home or when they went back to their own jobs. I mean, if every keynote delivered those types of numbers, nobody would secretly be refreshing their email under the table. And let’s be honest, that’s a little bit of my nightmare, maybe a little bit of yours. Yeah, something that keeps me up at night.

If you’re an event planner, looking for a speaker who’s easy to work with and delivers actual value that people can take away and use on Monday. Let’s make your event unforgettable.

Welcome back to Thoughts Unlocked. I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for my upcoming book. It’s right now, as you’ve probably heard if you’ve listened to past episodes, the title is revolving around this idea of being misdiagnosed, which explores procrastination, the idea procrastination, delay, and tapping into this idea of micromanagement and the stories we tell ourselves about people’s behavior.

One of the things I’m doing is interviewing people about their experiences. People who have been called slow, lazy, controlling, unmotivated, overanalytical, people who have made those judgments about others and people who have spent years applying these labels to themselves. And I’ll tell you, some of these conversations are challenging. They’re challenging in the sense that I thought I knew one thing, but then they’re like flipping the script on me. Like I have this hypothesis. And I heard, you know, back when I was doing some psychology work and studying and the idea of psychology, the idea of a good study is to try to prove yourself wrong. And it’s I try to make it, you know, you have your hypothesis but trying to disprove the hypothesis. And I’m finding that. It’s really interesting. I was hoping that would happen.

I didn’t want to write a book where I came up with this theory and went looking for people who agreed with me on all this stuff. That’s a pretty good way to, you know, write a book that confirms everything you already believe. And it’s a pretty terrible way to learn anything new. So, I’ve been asking questions, I’ve been listening, trying to understand what’s happening underneath the behaviors we tend to judge. And I want to share a few ideas. I’ve been exploring because I think they have some significant implications on how we lead others.

So, what we see isn’t always what’s happening. Shocker. I know. Let’s start with something that sounds a bit obvious. We don’t know nearly as much about other people’s behavior as we think we do. Imagine this. Imagine you’ve assigned someone a project. Three weeks go by and you haven’t seen much progress. So, what’s your first thought? Maybe they’re procrastinating. Maybe they’re not motivated. Maybe they’re just disorganized. Or maybe you start wondering whether you gave the project to the wrong person. Those are all possible explanations.

But what if that person has been waiting on information from another department? What if they don’t have the authority to make those decisions necessary to move forward. What if they’re working through a problem that’s more complicated than you realize? Maybe they’ve been prioritizing three other things that you also told them were urgent. Now, I’m not suggesting these explanations excuse everything. Sometimes, generally people really are not doing what they’re supposed to do.

But how would you know? That’s a question I’m becoming more interested in. Because I’ve noticed what we often make judgments about people’s character based on the small portion of their behavior we can actually observe. Our brains are pretty good at filling in blanks. They don’t love blank spots or loops or gaps in a story.

There’s a concept in social psychology called the fundamental attribution error. I talk about this often. It’s a tendency to explain other people’s behavior through their personality or character while giving more weight to the circumstances when explaining our own behavior. So, we judge other people for character, our own selves for our circumstances. If I miss a deadline, it’s because I had a lot going on. If you miss a deadline, it’s because you’re irresponsible. For example, right? Another one, if I’m asking a lot of questions, I’m being thorough. If you ask a lot of questions, you’re overthinking it. If I’m checking in on project, I’m just being accountable. If you’re checking it on project, you’re micromanaging me. Funny how that works, right? We tend to give ourselves context and give everybody else a label.

Here’s another thing I’ve been thinking about. How much of what we call productivity is actually visible activity? So let me ask you that question again. How much of what we call productivity is actual visible activity? So, it’s just visible stuff. We’re just doing stuff that’s visible. Imagine walking into an office, you see two employees. One is sitting quietly staring at a screen, the other is typing furiously answering emails, moving between meetings and looking really, really, really busy. Which one looks more productive? Probably the second one. But do we actually know? Maybe the first person is thinking through a complicated problem that could save the company tremendous amounts of money. Maybe the second person has spent the last two hours replying to emails that probably didn’t need to be sent in the first place. I know that’s happening. Trust me, y’all. I’ve done some audits on your emails. There’s about you know, 30% of them that don’t need to be sent in the first place. That’s for another podcast.

Yeah, one person looks like they’re working and the other person looks like they’re doing nothing. We’ve created some pretty strange expectations around what productivity is supposed to look like. Think about the person who leaves work at 4:30. Mm-hmm. You know what I’m talking about. People notice. But the person who stays till 7:00, now there’s somebody who’s committed, right? Unless, of course, the person who left at 4:30 accomplished everything they needed to. And the person staying late spent half the afternoon recovering from all the meetings they were in, probably didn’t need to be in in the first place, but feel like they’re going to miss out if they don’t, or they have to look like they’re present. So that everybody gives them credit for being involved. We just don’t know. And that’s my point. We make judgments based on visibility because visibility is often the only information we have.

This is where something called productivity shaming comes into play. And you probably heard me talk about this on past, past. What am I saying? Past podcast as well. Productivity shaming happens when we attach judgments about someone’s character, their commitment, or maybe value how productive they appear to be. We assume that someone who starts early is more disciplined. When someone who moves quickly is more motivated, someone who’s constantly busy is committed. But somebody who takes longer, they must be strong struggling with something. But what if, what if they’re working on exactly what they need to the way they need to? Or what if something’s happening that simply we simply can’t see?

Now the next idea is one I’m finding particularly interesting. And what happens after somebody gets labeled? Let’s say you’re a naturally thoughtful person. You like to gather information, ask questions. Maybe you consider different perspectives. Maybe make sure you’re making good decisions. Then one day your boss tells you this. He says, “You need to stop overthinking everything. You need to move faster. You need to have more of a bias for action.” These are all things I’ve heard, y’all. These are exact phrases that I’ve heard recently.

So, what do you do? Well, maybe you start making decisions more quickly. Maybe you ask fewer questions. Maybe you stop involving as many people. Ahh, some of you are like, exactly, that’s right. You need to start moving quickly and asking fewer questions and involving less people. And maybe that helps temporarily. And there are absolutely situations where people need to stop “overanalyzing,” and start making a decision. Stop bringing everybody into consensus is the lowest common denominator, said one of my past podcast guests on Unlocked.

But what if your thoughtfulness was one of the reasons you were hired? What if your ability to see complications that other people miss is what makes you super valuable? But because now what you’re doing, you’re suppressing a strength because you don’t want to be perceived as slow. And here’s the question that I’ve been wrestling with. What do people stop doing because of the labels we give them? Ahh, so, we put all this pressure and these labels on people, and they stop doing the thing that made them great in the first place because of a situation or some kind of issue, or maybe our internal problems with ourselves or what’s going on. Maybe the person who was called controlling stops following up on important commitments. Maybe the person who is called indecisive starts making decisions way before they’re ready. Maybe the person who was called lazy starts working longer than hours just to prove their value. And maybe that person who is called difficult stops challenging ideas that deserve to be challenged. We often think about labels in terms of how they make people feel, but I’m becoming increasingly interested in how they change what people do. Okay, you got me?

It’s not about how they make people feel. Like I agree. They are how maybe like that’s what got me into this. But now I’m interested in like, what’s the result? What’s the consequence of these labels? Is that now they’re changing what people do because a label can influence someone’s behavior long after that original conversation is over. And sometimes the person applying the label never even realizes what happened. The problem might be changing while we’re trying to fix it. So, let me say it. The problem, the problem thing out there might be changing. So, it might be morphing while we’re trying to fix the original thing. Because here’s something else. Think about a task you’ve been putting off. I know I’m getting a lot of scenarios here but still stick with me. These things are popping up in my brain because these are coming through the interviews. Think about a task you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s a difficult conversation. Maybe it’s that proposal that’s out there lingering. Maybe it’s something around the house you’ve been meaning to get done. At first, there’s a pretty reasonable explanation for why it hasn’t happened. You know, the stuff like, I’m busy, right? Who’s not busy? Everybody’s busy. Maybe you need more information. Maybe you’ve got competing priorities, but then another week goes by, and then another.

And now every time you think about that task, you feel a little bit worse inside. You start telling yourself, you should have finished it by now. You feel guilty, you know, all those things. You avoid thinking about it. And eventually something that might only take an hour or two feels like an enormous undertaking. Have you ever experienced any of that? I have. And I know people that have. I work with them. Some of them are my clients, I live with them.

What’s interesting is that the reason you’re avoiding the task today might be completely different from the reason you delayed it originally. Maybe it started out because maybe you thought you didn’t have enough time, which is, I would say, is a prioritization issue. Now it’s because you don’t want to deal with the guilt you’ve been attached, attaching to that thing. Maybe it started because you didn’t have clear instructions. Hey, maybe. But now you’re embarrassed to ask for clarification because you think you should have figured it out weeks ago. Ugh, yeah, that stings. There’s a pretty important distinction. Because if we’re trying to help someone move forward, we need to understand what’s keeping them stuck now. Not just what caused the delay in the first place.

In my research, I’ve been looking. There’s three different types of friction I’ve been discovering and unearthing here. Work, will, and wait. Some of you have heard this. Work, will, and wait. Work friction involves the task itself or the environment surrounding it. Things like unclear expectations, competing priorities, missing resources, broken processes, too many meetings. The task is too monumental, it’s too big, it’s just huge, there’s too many steps, it’s just daunting. That’s work friction.

Will friction involve motivation, autonomy, meaning whether someone really actually wants to engage with that work. Maybe they just don’t care about it. Maybe they don’t see the value, right? That’s will friction.

Wait friction involves the emotional and the personal load someone is carrying. Maybe they’re super stressed right now. Maybe there’s fear around it. Maybe some shame, anxiety, other things that affect their capacity to move forward.

And sometimes these things overlap. Someone might be begin a work problem that’s daunting. There’s too many things, there’s too many meetings, whatever, and end up with a wait problem. Now they feel the stress and the load. Maybe their job’s in jeopardy. Maybe something happened in the meantime where they have a sick relative, their parents are sick, something happened. Or maybe they’re struggling with motivation because they don’t have any real ownership of the outcome. So, there’s no autonomy. But here’s why that matters.

If you misdiagnose the friction, you’re probably going to prescribe the wrong solution. Telling someone to work harder won’t fix unclear expectations, y’all. Giving someone another deadline won’t necessarily resolve their fear of making a mistake. And checking in every two hours probably is not going to help someone who’s already feeling overwhelmed. Okay. Some of you think it will, but it won’t. Although, it will give them another thing to do, which I’m sure they’ll definitely appreciate, right?

We’re pretty good at misdiagnosing ourselves too. There’s another side I think deserves attention. Sometimes nobody else is labeling us. We’re doing it ourselves. Think about how often you hear people say things like, I’m such a procrastinator. There’s that P word. I’m terrible at managing my time. I’m so disorganized. Ugh. I’m just not as disciplined as those other people. We say these things almost a little too casually with a little bit of guilt, sometimes a little bit of laughing shame behind there. But I wonder how often we’ve actually examined whether they’re true. Maybe you’re incredibly organized at work but struggle to keep things together at home. Y’all, am I speaking to any of you? Maybe you’re fantastic at meeting deadlines for other people but have difficulty completing projects that only affect you. Am I speaking to some of you? Maybe you’re great at getting started, but you struggle to finish some stuff. Am I speaking to any of you? I say this because it’s true. Maybe you take longer to begin because you need time to think through what you’re actually doing. Does that mean that you’re lazy? Does it mean that you’re undisciplined? I think this is something worth improving.

A label doesn’t tell us very much about what needs to change. Sometimes it just keeps us from asking better questions. For example, instead of saying, “I’m a procrastinator.” What if you asked, “Huh, why am I having trouble getting started on this particular thing?” Wow. Y’all, that’s a very different conversation. Now you can start exploring. Do I need to understand what needs to happen next? Do I actually want to do this? Am I afraid of what happens if I fail? Work will wait. Right?

The work question, do I understand what needs to happen? The will question, do I actually want to do this? The wait question, am I afraid of what happens if I fail? Or maybe this is one we don’t talk about enough, and I’m afraid of what happens if I succeed, because success can create its own challenges. There are people I’ve met with that are afraid of success. They cap themselves. They sabotage the situation or they just don’t take that next step because they’re afraid of what that means. It might mean more responsibility, it might mean more expectations, it might mean more people are depending on you. Yes, it means those things.

Sometimes completing a project means making a decision about what comes next. And maybe we’re not quite ready to make that decision. Calling ourselves lazy, that doesn’t help us understand any of that. So why does this matter for leaders? What I’m taking away from all this? Well, I’m still early in my qualitative research, and I don’t want to pretend I figured everything out. But I am becoming more convinced that we need to be careful about how quickly we interpret behavior, especially when we’re in positions of leadership. Because when you’re the leader, those assumptions, your assumptions, they carry a lot of weight. If you decide someone isn’t motivated, that belief can influence the opportunities you give that person. If you decide someone is slow, you might stop trusting them with important assignments. If you decide someone is controlling, you might interpret every question they ask as some kind of form of micromanagement. And the person on the receiving end may never know that you’ve reached those conclusions. And that’s a problem.

I’ve talked about the importance of giving people the benefit of the question. And I think it applies here. People don’t need the benefit of the doubt, y’all. The benefit of the doubt, they need the benefit of the question. Because the benefit of the doubt still leaves us operating on assumptions. Okay. I’m making assumptions. But I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m not going to really going to ask you. I’m just going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Questions, they give us information. So instead of saying, you know, why haven’t you finished this thing, maybe it’s like, help me understand what’s getting in the way. Now I’m addressing maybe it’s work friction. Instead of saying, you need to stop overthinking this thing, maybe it’s asking, hey, what information are you still wanting before you feel comfortable moving forward? Again, we’re just starting off with work friction. Instead of assuming someone isn’t motivated, we ask, what’s making, you know, what’s making this project particularly difficult to engage with right now? Now I’m getting into maybe it’s will friction, maybe they don’t value it, maybe it’s wait friction, maybe it’s the stress and the fear of something happening.

But I do want to be careful though, here. I’m not suggesting that every performance problem has some hidden explanation that makes everything okay. Sometimes people miss deadlines because they’ve made poor decisions. And sometimes they aren’t putting in the effort, and sometimes they aren’t engaged, and sometimes they’re not motivated, and sometimes they need to be held accountable. Sometimes they’re simply in the wrong role. But shouldn’t we understand the problem before deciding what to do about it? I mean, imagine going to a doctor because you’re experiencing headaches, and you know, sometimes we y’all have experienced some of this, okay? And before asking you a single question, the doctor says, “Well, you’ve obviously you’re just dehydrated. Just drink more water.” And they ask you to check out and they leave. Here’s the thing. Maybe you are dehydrated, but would you want the doctor to ask you a few more questions first, I mean, I would. How long have you had the headaches? When do they happen? What else are you experiencing in life right now? What’s going on? I mean, those are the types of questions we expect.

We expect the kind of curiosity when somebody is diagnosing our health. So, I wonder why we don’t expect more of it when we’re diagnosing someone’s performance. Here’s what I want you to think about this week. Think about someone whose behavior has been frustrating you. Maybe they’re moving too slowly. Maybe they’re making too many asking too many questions. Maybe they’re not following through. Maybe they’re doing something that just doesn’t make any sense to you. So, I want you to ask yourself what have I decided about this person that I haven’t actually verified? What have I decided about this person that isn’t necessarily truth? It’s my truth, maybe, but it’s not the truth. And then considering having a conversation because the story you’ve been telling yourself might be accurate, but it also might be completely wrong. And the only way you’re going to know is if you get curious. Give them the benefit of the question.

I’m going to keep exploring these ideas as I work on my book and I’ll share more of what I’m learning along the way. I hope this is helpful for you. It’s been super enlightening for me, and talking it out with you is helping me even more. So, if you’ve ever been labeled at work, if you caught yourself putting a label on someone else, I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks for joining me for another episode of Thoughts Unlocked. And until next time, stay curious, ask better questions, and keep unlocking what’s possible.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay on Unlocked.