After I left the British military I spent 6 months back-packing through Asia, mostly Nepal, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore*. With the exception of Singapore, wild monkeys were ubiquitous – and they were ubiquitously ‘wild’ in both the undomesticated sense and the pain-in-the-proverbial sense!
India was probably the worst overall back then – I can remember one particular place a group of us travelling together stayed at. It was pre-monsoon and one of the hottest Indian seasons on record. Daily temperatures were in the low-to-mid 40s Celsius, and the humidity was almost suffocating.
None of us could afford airconditioned rooms, and there were few available anyway, so we had rooms with just a fan. I can remember sitting under the cold shower at night trying to cool down.
In our ‘hotel’ there were posters telling us to keep the windows closed – no reason why, just keep them closed. In the oppressive heat, that was the last thing we wanted to do!
One day, returning from sightseeing in the delightfully choreographed chaos that India can be, I heard a piercing shriek from my friend Heather in the room across the corridor. I dashed across wondering what the hell was happening, and burst through the open door…then stopped dead in my tracks.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – to say the sight before me was unexpected would be the understatement of the decade, and it took me a while to comprehend what had happened!
The room looked like a winter wonderland! There was what looked like fluffy snow literally everywhere, carpeting the floor and bed in a soft white haze! What the…?
What had happened was an entire troop of wild monkeys had got in through Heather’s open window and had a wild party!
They’d systematically rifled through all Heather’s possessions including her toiletry bag. Sanitary products were hard to get in India in those days, so Heather had stocked up big when she could.
Unfortunately, the monkeys seemed to hone-in on them…They’d shredded everything fibre by fibre, and literally spread everything across almost every surface across the entire room, helped by the whirring fan on top speed. It looked like they’d had a cartoon pillow fight with burst white feather pillows!
Now we understood the warning posters about closing the windows🤦♂️
I stood there agape at the scene trying to comprehend what was in front of me. I saw Heather was fine, and as we looked at each other, she burst into laughter, with tears of laughter rolling down her face as she described what had happened – she’d disturbed to monkeys and they’d all fled out of the window when she arrived.
The ChatGPT AI-generated photo is actually a pretty good rendition of the situation (I can’t find my original photos, they’re buried in a box somewhere).
So what has this monkey-business story got to do with leadership? Well, it demonstrates the chaos that monkeys can cause, and I hope it gives you a bit of a laugh getting back into work after the break 😂
Monkey chaos segues neatly into my main point – which is, I see a lot of leaders and managers who inadvertently become ‘monkey collectors’ – and end up with ‘an office full of monkeys’
From the story above, I think we can all agree that is NOT a good thing 😂
Most of us have probably heard of a variant of the saying ‘to have a monkey on your back.’ If you haven’t, the saying means ‘to have a persistent, nagging problem or burden, that’s difficult to get rid of, or a major worry or responsibility that constantly troubles you.’
The analogy here is that when a direct report (or anyone else for that matter) comes with a problem they want you to solve, it’s like they’re bringing you a monkey to look after.
If you take on responsibility for solving the problem and provide the person with the solution, you’re effectively taking on the monkey and it becomes yours to feed, look after, etc.
This continues, and pretty soon you end up with ‘an office full of monkeys’ distracting you, clamouring for your attention and taking up all of your precious time.
A big part of the problem is that when a person comes to a manager with a problem, our usually conditioned response is that we want to – or feel we need to – solve that problem. After all, the natural assumption is: “isn’t that why we were put in the management position? Because we have the expertise and we’re supposed to pass that on?”…Wel, not necessarily, please read on…
And you can see why that cycle of solving other people’s problems perpetuates when we look at what’s happening in our brains.
Firstly, our brains are wired to find the easiest route with minimal effort. And when people are busy, its worse because we want things done even more quickly – asking someone for an answer rather than stopping and thinking about it is often the easiest option. So people seek the easy route.
Same for leaders. If often feels faster and easier to tell someone the solution, or what to do, or do it ourselves – we’re busy, we want what feels like the easiest and quickest way too, because our leader/ manager brains are also wired for minimal effort and we’re also incredibly time poor.
Plus, from a neuroscience perspective, when we help someone and provide the answer to a problem we get a hit of reward neurotransmitters including dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin – it makes us feel good! So we want to do it again. And again!
So, this cocktail fuels the cycle of giving people the answers they seek.
However, by doing this we effectively condition people to keep coming back and relying on us.
If you, even inadvertently, made their lives easier last time by giving them the answers, you condition people to come back for more.
If you keep telling people what to do, people will also keep coming back to you for answers.
If you keep correcting their mistakes and not teaching them how to do things properly in the first place, you’ll keep getting shoddy work – that you’ll have to keep correcting yourself.
One Director at a very large NSW Government agency stood up in a moment of insight in one of my Leader as a Coach – T.O.A.D. Coaching training programs and said:
“Now I get it – we’ve been spoon-feeding them [their staff] for so long, they don’t know how to feed themselves!”
He was spot on! Most people will eventually ‘hand in their brains’ – stop critically thinking and thinking for themselves, and resign themselves to the status quo.
People quickly stop taking accountability and ownership for things: “it’s not my problem, the boss/ someone else will sort it out” type attitude.
Same thing happens with over-regulation – over-regulation is effectively constantly telling people what they can and can’t do. Most people get used to that and, sheep-like, do as they’re told and stop questioning and critically thinking.
Then, in that over-regulated environment when something happens, the attitude is it’s always someone else’s fault for: ‘not putting a sign up’ …’not putting a warning on it’… People absolve themselves of personal responsibility! Pet peeve of mine, sorry – deep breath Simon… Keep Calm and Carry on!
The other problem with leaders ‘spoon feeding’ and ‘monkey minding’ – telling people what to do and giving the answers or doing it themselves – is it can come across as a lack of trust in someone’s ability/ potential – it sends the message that they can’t work it out themselves without the manager’s ‘expert’ input.
Some people are happy with that, and will trot along quite happily bringing their manager their monkeys to deal with. A manager may feel happy with that as it makes them feel ‘important, busy and invaluable’ – they get lots of dopamine & oxytocin.
However, other team members – the ones who want to learn and grow, have autonomy, be trusted and think for themselves – are not so happy! They don’t get much, if any dopamine or oxytocin! The opposite!
They feel under-utilised, under-appreciated, under-developed, untrusted, and very likely micromanaged.
Managers may even chastise them because they challenge the status quo, ask ‘awkward’ questions, try and do things their way not ‘The Manager’s Way’…
Those people are the ones who actively disengage and simply leave and go elsewhere, looking for someone who sees and trusts them, recognises their potential, gives them autonomy, and gives them career development and a chance to shine, learn and grow.
Unfortunately for the manager, those leaving are the ones who are probably most capable and willing to look after or learn to look after their own monkeys!
The manager then gets left with a team of ‘monkey off-loaders’ – people not taking ownership, not being accountable, not taking responsibility, not thinking critically, not learning.
“Hi boss, my monkey is hungry, what do you recommend I do?” “Feed it a banana.”
Next time… “Hi boss, my monkey’s still hungry, what can I do?” “Feed it 2 bananas”.
Next time… “Hi boss, my monkey’s STILL hungry, what can I do?” “Oh, give it to me, I’ll feed it properly, I can do it faster and better myself!.”
Welcome to another monkey to the party!
And so the situations compounds.
Those ‘monkey-offloading’ people are also most likely to use ChatGPT as the easy option – and not critically think and analyse the AI response.
The manger then receives AI-slop^^ – and that’s a whole truckful of monkeys that the manager has to deal with!
In this increasingly-AI-driven-world, we want to foster more critical thinking, taking ownership and responsibility, not less! Especially to do the things AI can’t do (yet, anyway!).
The Solution
What I’d like you to do from now on is to visualise problems and questions coming to you as ‘monkeys.’
If you give someone the answer or tell them what they ‘should’ do, imagine that monkey is now yours! It will join the growing troop of other monkeys having a pillow-fight party in your office 🥳
More noise, more distractions, more cleaning up and reworking, more doing it yourself, and so on. All ‘monkey-business’ that takes you away from what you actually need to be doing!
Then the creep starts – you start earlier, stay later or take work home to get it finished in peace and quiet away from all the monkeys!
Suddenly you’re deep into burnout, working 12-15 hour days and wondering how the hell you got there – with no idea how to get out as you ‘have no time’ to coach and train people because you’re too busy with an ‘office full of monkeys’ that you think you never asked for in the first place!
One of the most effective solutions – and the most effective solution in NOT taking in monkeys to create the ‘monkey party’ is lean into becoming more of a Coaching Leader.
Coaching Leaders are curious – they ask questions and genuinely listen (see my article “Did Curiosity Kill the Cat?”)
Coaching leaders don’t tell people what to do. Coaching Leaders ask questions. They ask the monkey-holder what they think they need to do. And ask them to go away and explore options that will help them to learn how to take care of or get rid of their monkey themselves.
A Coaching Leader asks the ‘monkey owner’ questions to get the owner to stop, critically think and work out how to look after their monkey and solve its problems themselves.
How many times have you come back from annual leave to emails or a stream of Teams messages asking you questions – then when you follow up, hear “ah, all good, I worked it out in the end,” or similar?
“Where did you file the XXX briefing?” Silence…“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve found it.”
“Where’s the yoghurt, I can’t find it in the fridge?”…”oh, don’t worry, I’ve found it”
Coaching Leaders don’t spoon-feed people with answers. A Coaching Leader gives people autonomy, gets people to take ownership and responsibility, and take time to think and work things out themselves.
Interestingly, when a person solves a problem the leader has refrained from giving an answer to and trusted the person to go away and come up with a solution, both the person AND the leader get hits of dopamine – and oxytocin, which strengthens the relationship.
A Coaching Leader gives people ‘The Why.’ Why this needs to be done, why it matters, why it’s important, why it links to the team’s and organisation’s purpose.
Remember my India monkey story – if the poster about keeping the windows closed gave us the why i.e. monkeys may get in & trash your room, Heather would very likely have been more careful about keeping the windows shut!
Coaching Leaders trust and push back and allow people to find and try out solutions and learn to fix ‘problem monkeys’ for themselves.
Instead of correcting the problems in a piece of work themselves (because it feels quicker), Coaching Leaders ensure their people clearly understand what’s required in the first place and coach or when necessary teach people how to fill the skills gaps so people can do it themselves in the future.
Yes, that may feel like it takes time – and indeed sometimes it may take some actual time. But it saves SO much more time in the long run…you stop that ongoing stream of monkeys!
Coaching Leadership is a Growth Mindset in action. It says: “I trust and believe in you to have a go at working it out for yourself. I see you and trust in your potential to learn and grow.”
A Coaching Leader creates a truly psychologically safe environment where people feel genuinely safe and know if they make mistakes they can learn from those mistakes rather than being chastised. People know the difference between when they can safely make mistakes and learn and when there is genuinely no time or no room for mistakes.
Of course, if someone genuinely doesn’t don’t know how to do something, there may be a time to tell them – especially in a crisis-type situation.
However, it’s surprising how often, when people have to do it themselves, that they can work it out. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” as the saying goes.
Conversely, if a manager keeps telling people what to do and how to do it there is no ‘invention’ – innovation stops.
The only ideas come from the manager’s head, not using the Collective Intelligence of all the team’s brains.
Coaching Leadership improves critical thinking and innovation.
A Coaching Leader focuses on solutions, not problems and blame – they focus on people finding a way forward, finding solutions, brainstorming options, then taking appropriate action.
Coaching Leadership also demonstrates practical Emotional Intelligence in action. It shows people that you care; that you’re curious and interested in what they have to say – and you’re interested in their thinking, solutions and ideas.
Coaching Leaders empower and develop people, and build deep engagement and trust.
Of course, nothing works ALL the time – if someone tells you that, it’s just marketing BS!
There are always some monkeys you DO need to take on yourself. And there are always times when you do have to tell instead of ask, and take ownership and responsibility yourself.
The art of being a Coaching Leader is knowing when to do all that, and which monkeys you really DO need to look after and which ones you need to say no to and push back on others to look after.
From our research and practical observation, we’ve found being a Coaching Leader 60-70% of the time is where you realistically need to be. Every day. Every week. Every month.
(my kids will cringe that I’ve found a way to work 6-7 into this article 🤣 – google ‘the 6-7 craze’ if you don’t know what it is… warning: it’s a MASSIVE and very needy monkey!)
The problem is, most Coaching models are actually surprisingly difficult to apply, especially in day-to-day leadership.
Most Leader as a Coach programs focus on models like the GROW Model or some version or extension of it – great for a 1-hour career development conversation, but very tough to practically implement in day-to-day situations.
However, our Leader as a Coach program is based on my unique, super-practical T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership Model.
“SO much easier and better to use than GROW” was the feedback from participants, including a highly qualified and experienced executive coach who was on a T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership program I ran in December.
Accredited with the International Coach Federation for 8 CCUEs (Continuing Coach Education Units), the T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Model is a proven, easy to use, everyday Coaching Leadership tool that leaders (and anyone, for that matter!) can put into action.
We’ve proven it works for leaders at all levels: new managers, middle managers to senior Executives. And self-leadership, and managing up – yes, you can T.O.A.D.™ Coach your boss!
We have proven case-studies demonstrating where T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership was delivered across the Australian and Asia Pacific Japan Region for a global listed company. They built a T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership culture that improved productivity by over 30% and led them to being Region of the Year for 2 consecutive years (after previously being the second worst out of 11 global regions)!
T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership helps leaders develop a day-to-day Coaching Leadership style to get teams to take more responsibility and accountability for their work, boost engagement, collaboration and innovation.
T.O.A.D.™ Coaching Leadership ensures leaders live the everyday behaviours that underpin Coaching Leadership and Adaptive Leadership – and Emotional Intelligence.
If you or your team want to learn how to be a practical, real-world Coaching Leader, get in touch.
