How to Stop Manipulating People Around You

Do you find yourself constantly manipulating people around you? 

Most of us do. It’s okay. It’s not even our fault. It’s just the way we’ve been trained to behave. 

Many organizations and relationships today are based on manipulation, overtly or covertly. This is because the most common attitude in the world is to measures effectiveness by how good you are at getting others to do what you want them to do. 

If your company is running on manipulation, you’ll face roadblock after roadblock to doing good work. You’ll be slowed down at every opportunity by personality issues, drama, dissent, pettiness, and politics. Everything will take longer and cost more. 

If your relationships are running on manipulation, you will face pain, strife, stress, and drama, drama, drama. (And did I mention drama?)

The reason is that human beings don’t like to be manipulated, and as people get better and better at manipulating others — the exact behavior that is rewarded and therefore cultivated in such an organization — most human beings push back, or retaliate, or become resistant.This slows everything down, & makes things cost more. Suddenly, the organization is fighting itself.

How do we shift this dynamic in an organization?

Here’s how:

The majority of the people in your organization must go from a daily orientation of “trying to get everyone else to do what I want them to do” to a daily orientation of “doing my best to ensure that everyone can succeed.”

How do we shift this dynamic in a relationship?Here’s how:

You — not your partner — need to go from seeing your partner as the solution to any of your pain or problems to seeing your partner as an unlimited perfect manifestation of Universal intelligence, deserving of unconditional and eternal Love.

There was a very distinct period of my life when I understood relationships as mainly about manipulation. That is to say, about getting my own needs met. 

(This is, by the way, a default mode of behavior for the majority of humanity in the modern world.)

It’s not a conscious descent into evil; it results from the ego. The fragile and afraid ego sees itself as the center of its universe, and from that perspective, the universe only exists to serve the ego’s needs and desires.

When people put their egos, or selves, or their self-pity at the center (of their experience), the surrounding world becomes a resource that is subject to unlimited exploitation by the ego and the hubris. – C. Otto Sharmer, MIT

Through a series of painful but entirely necessary experiences, I realized that the most important thing is not to get everyone to do what I want them to do. The most important thing is to treat others well and, in fact, to help them achieve what it was that they wanted to achieve.

A life in service-to-self is inherently empty and destined for failure. A life in service-to-others is comprehensively fulfilling and destined for success.

After you cross this threshold, there are a few things you might notice happening:

• Arguing over rightness. Before, you would have argued with your partner or colleague about who was “right.” (There’s a huge amount of energy invested in t his concept of “rightness” in our present culture.) Who has the facts, or who can manufacture the facts, to prove their side right, and someone else wrong? After, you accept fully their actions and emotions and say, “You’re right. I’m sorry. What is it that you need? How can I help you achieve that?”
• Making it someone else’s fault. Before, you would have pointed the finger and said, “That department needs to clean up its act! That manager should be fired!” After, you just remind yourself that they are doing the best they can, and you think about ways you could help them do their job better (or maybe help someone else help them do their job better).
• I was wronged. Before, you would have gotten angry when your honey canceled a date on you. How dare they treat you like that, such disrespect, blah blah. After,  you wonder what it means, without ego attachment or involvement or making it about you.

How do you know which side of the fence you’re currently on? Try answering these questions:

• Where is the source of the problem? Is it within you, or in someone else? If you are locating the problem in someone else, you’re giving away power.
• Are you angry or otherwise emotionally upset because other people are behaving in a way that you find irrational or dumb? If so, you’re still looking for others to behave in a way that pleases you and meets your needs.
• Are you focused solely on what you can do to improve the situation? If so, you are taking responsibility for your own power.
• Do you find yourself doing translating work that actually helps people calm down and communicate? If so, you’re bringing integration to your relationships or work environment.
• Are you keeping your priorities straight — and there’s only one priority, and it’s always the same, and it is to create the environment conducive to everyone’s best efforts and best joint results? That’s holding closely to the path of integrity and the path of integration.

It’s really important to make this switch, and to stop manipulating people around us.

It’s also really hard. It requires getting over yourself, and mastering the ego, and that’s the work of a lifetime.

It’s worth it though. We are all on the journey from manipulation to integration. It’s up to us how fast we want to go.