Success: The Palmer Rule

Have you ever wondered why some of the brightest people deliver lackluster results? Have you ever dealt with someone using disruptive behaviors and wondered why your approach failed?

Years ago, a friend shared something about success that was as obvious as it was simple. It brought incredible clarity and made such an impact on me that it has become a key principle in our course development and consulting practices.

We call it the Palmer Rule…

“As a leader, if you don’t tell your employees what success looks like, they will always deliver results – but rarely the ones you wanted.”

The idea of the Palmer Rule is simple: good leaders communicate clear success models. In an organization, people need to know what success looks like and they need to hear it from leaders and trainers. And it’s no different in our personal lives.

You need to know what success looks like – the success model. And you need to regularly and effectively communicate it. There may be no arena in which this is more important than safety – especially concerning disruptive behaviors and de-escalation.

But what if you don’t know what success looks like? What if there’s no shared success model? Well then, you’re not likely to get the results you want.

Let me share an illustration. A while back, I spent nearly a decade as a leader in the security department of a well-known entertainment company. It was a long decade. It was one of those jobs that was both rewarding and aggravating. One of the aggravating parts was trying to understand what success looked like. See in this company, the success model wasn’t always clear so success could be elusive.

Now, please, don’t get me wrong. We did great things. This large group of security professionals accomplished important and life-impacting work. When we faced a crisis, we succeeded, and then some. But on the other days—when we were simply “running the business”—some of the brightest people were left wondering how to succeed. And that led to scores of talented people frustrated and failing to reach their potential.  

In one case, we were moving our offices, and the project manager had designed a perfectly functional office space. It was refreshing to see things being planned with success in mind.  

That is until a certain group told us the offices were 'too big' for our level of management. The solution? Build long, awkward closets in the back of each office—making the office more expensive and less functional.

Now picture this… the visible part of our offices was smaller, but with the awkwardly shaped closets, they were still the same size. And more expensive! I’m not sure I can properly convey the humor of all this in writing. It felt like a cartoon caricature of corporate America that you’d find in a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams.

There was no shared success model. We wanted to build cost-effective office space that worked. Someone else wanted to reduce visible office space regardless of the cost, impact, or actual size of the office. This was absurd. And it was common. Knowing what success looked like often eluded many in the company. And so, each person or group pursued success that seemed right to them. 

Now, getting back to the Palmer Rule and disruptive behaviors... you’ve got to have a clear success model! If someone is escalating, what would the success model look like for de-escalation?

When I ask this, I usually hear that success means the person who escalated has de-escalated. That’s clearly what we want to happen, but what if it doesn’t happen? Did you not succeed? Is your success model entirely defined by someone else’s choices and behaviors?

I know that’s a whole lot of questions there, but they need to be both asked and answered. How you see success impacts how you pursue success. Your success model will drive what you say and do.

Whether it’s building offices or addressing disruptive behaviors, I’ll tell you what success is not. It’s not putting on an act or doing things that don’t work. As a stockholder in my former company, I can guarantee you I didn’t want needless money spent to reduce an office size by 50 square feet so that some arbitrary number could be realized.

And, as someone who helps others with de-escalation, I don’t ever want them using ineffective tactics, acting nice, or trying to get in the last word. None of that drives success.

I also don’t want my success to be entirely based on someone else’s choices and behaviors. That’s a fool's errand.

So, when it comes to addressing disruptive behaviors, what does your success model look like? Whether you’re leading, training, or facing behavior challenges, defining success will always be your first step toward achieving it.

Ready to learn how to succeed when addressing disruptive behaviors?  We offer training and consulting services for individuals and organizations of all types and sizes.