Who knows best?

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.
Daniel Pink
1964 –

As a parent, friend, relationship partner or manager, do you try to force those in your circle of influence to do things the way you think they should be done? I’ll answer first. I admit that I’m often guilty of thinking I know best. If you’re honest about it, I suspect that you’ll also confess to behaving this way at least some of the time. But even though we think we know what’s best, we may actually be setting the person up for performing below their potential.

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki talks about a famous psychology experiment. Participants were divided into two groups and given the tasks of solving some puzzles and proofreading some documents. The groups were placed in two separate rooms and each room had an intrusive recording playing in the background. The only difference was that the group in one room had a button that would silence the background noise. In the other room, the individuals did not have a way of eliminating the noise.

As you might suspect, the group with the silencer button scored much better in comparison, rating higher on the proofreading tasks and solving five times as many puzzles as the other group.

Here’s the real twist. Although any individual in the room with the mute button could have pressed the button, no one did. So it wasn’t the noise that affected performance levels, but the fact that one group had the ability to exercise control over their environment.

So back to my original question. Do you try to exert too much control over the people in your circle of influence? If you do, you’re taking away their sense of autonomy, which in turn diminishes performance.

There are certainly times when it wouldn’t be wise to give people total control over how they do things. But if you want more optimal levels of performance, learn to set standards and then allow people to figure out the best way to achieve them. Learn to let others have more control over how they do things. You’ll find it pays significant rewards.

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.
St. Thomas Aquinas
1225 – 1274