I have a love-hate relationship with these situations because I am attracted to the opportunity to show real value and change that will improve people’s lives at work, yet challenged by the difficulty of making a positive impact on a situation others have failed to change.

In the following article by my colleague Patrick Reilly, who is President of Resources in Action and a highly successful and experienced executive coach, Patrick provides thoughtful yet practical ideas for working with this type of leader.

Thoughtful, because Patrick deals first with understanding why this happens, including a systems or cultural view (vs. only focusing on the difficult individual), and practical because it provides immediate actions one can take to start to shift behaviors and outcomes.

I especially appreciate the following key points:

• Individuals act in part because of the system or culture they are in: if the people around the leader tolerate and adapt to the abrasive behavior (“Yes,  Bob is a real bully, but he gets things done, so…”), its no surprise the leader does not change.  One must take a systems view and understand what Kurt Lewin called “the field” the behavior is occurring in.
• Patrick’s focus on understanding and valuing Dignity as a driver of change. Toxic behavior is just that: poisonous.  A business case based on the impact on human beings must be built to motive change and measure results.  Your company’s value and vision statements may help here.
• Coaches, consultants and HR professionals need special skills, tools and experience to assist abrasive leaders in understanding their impact.  These leaders are usually clueless.  All self-development starts with increased self-awareness.  As a leadership coach, my tools to improve self-awareness include 360 feedback, self-assessments, and direct observation.   If self-awareness is successful and the leader makes a choice to change, I can then help them develop their skills in inquiry/advocacy, agreement building, exchanging (not just giving) feedback and resolving conflict.

Dealing with the Abrasive Leadership Style at Work        

By Patrick Reilly, President, Resources In Action, Inc.

 Abrasive employees rub their coworkers the wrong way. The aggressive management style of abrasives creates interpersonal friction that grates on subordinates, peers, superiors and even customers, paralyzing productivity and disrupting the smooth flow of work.

These disruptive individuals also present particular challenges from the Human Resources perspective as HR professionals must deal with distressed employees who feel marginalized by them, as well as senior managers who are often reluctant to take the bull by the horns and rein in the abrasive manager.

Recent research by Donna Hicks PhD (Author of: Dignity-The Essential Role it Plays in Conflict has identified 10 elements of dignity:

*Acceptance of Identity         *Fairness

*Inclusion                               *Benefit of the Doubt

*Safety/Comfort                     *Understanding

*Acknowledgement              *Independence

*Recognition                          *Accountability.

When any of these elements of dignity is infringed upon – the frequent result of an abrasive’s impact on others — there is a potential for withdrawal, conflict, fatigue or lack of focus from impacted individuals that limits any potential synergies in the work place. Abrasive leaders can impact the dignity of a broad spectrum of employees over time driving productivity and satisfaction down while the associated costs soar.

Most abrasive leaders perform and produce results. So why should we care about the impact they have on others if they get the job done and generate revenue or develop new products?

It is simple – these types of leaders often put significant projects at risk because other employees withdraw, don’t work as hard as they need to, or spend too much time talking with others about how to deal with “him or her.” Good people quit and some customers move to other service providers because they don’t or can’t work with this person because of the abrasive interpersonal style. It becomes “too much.”

The way in which these leaders communicate to others and how they conduct themselves becomes more important than the work itself. To work with them is trying and emotionally draining. These interactions cost your organization time and money. Can you continue to tolerate disruptive behavior when it detracts significantly from work quality, timely delivery and increased customer complaints? We think not.

What can we do from an HR perspective? There are three areas of management expertise that need to be strengthened:

1) Develop specialized executive coaching expertise in working directly with extremely competent but abrasive individuals who humiliate, threaten and act in condescending ways to other employees or customers

2) Provide influence and management tools and skills that support those employees who have to deal with abrasive leaders

3) Learn how to work within an organizational system that permits unacceptable workplace behaviors

A problem in many organizations today is that HR professionals are limited in their capabilities for dealing with abrasive leaders and are ill equipped to handle the impact they have. (In some instances HR also becomes the target of this type of behavior.)

Step one on the path to improvement in all three areas is new knowledge or awareness.  In our experience — the biggest learning in dealing with abrasive leaders is that their “bad” behavior is not intentional. They most times are clueless about their impact on others.

We have gained greatest success using a systematic coaching approach that focuses directly on the abrasive leader and includes senior management, HR support, clear, specific data from targeted interviews and a business coach skilled in working specifically with these types of individuals. Helping the abrasive leader become more effective usually requires actively supporting the individual in changing some non-productive behaviors. The first critical step is that they need to become aware of their impact on others.

Abrasive leaders require special handling because they usually can’t change as quickly or easily as others. Here is what we suggest:

• A robust support structure
• Precise, specific feedback that helps them learn how they come across to others
• Knowledge about the impact they create
• Focused coaching on the most important behaviors
• Deliberate practice to learn new and more effective behaviors

To support employees who need sophisticated influence tools to deal with abrasive leaders we have found that an integrated set of tools originally designed by the Navy Seals to handle extreme pressure to be most helpful. Developed from recent brain science research, this integrated set of tools enables employees to calm and focus themselves during periods of high stress. The tool set consists of a brief centering meditation like activity, goal setting, goal visualization and positive self-talk.  Clients report the tools to be most helpful in dealing with both abrasive co-workers as well as organizational stress.

Another area of awareness required deals with the organizational system itself. Why do certain organizations permit or tolerate abrasive behavior? Usually it is “bottom line blindness” and lack of leadership courage. Business is essentially about profit and in those organizations that tolerate abrasive behavior we find there are frequently two main reasons for accepting it:

1)    It is tolerated because the abrasive leader performs at a high level. She or he is usually very smart, talented and contributes significantly to the profitability the organization demands. Once the business decides that profit is paramount it essentially chooses to ignore the long-term costs of the abrasive behavior usually resulting in:

• Lowered work group morale
• Increased turnover
• Diminished long-term profits

2) The abrasive leader’s superiors do not have the courage or skills to tackle the unacceptable behavior of the troublesome person. They tolerate the behavior for fear of losing profits or because they truly don’t know how to help the abrasive individual change his or her ways.

Our experience has taught us that the biggest impact HR professionals can bring in this area is to develop a compelling business case that addresses the costs and consequences of abrasive behavior. When costs are clearly defined they can compel senior management to resolve the problem. By learning to develop a compelling business case about an abrasive leader’s impact, HR professionals can help to implement reasonable and cost effective solutions.

We know that it is tough to mount arguments that counter bottom line profitability. We also know how tough it is to tackle the problems that abrasive leaders present. But because of our work and expertise in these matters we have developed understanding and compassion for these challenges.

Sometimes the work is not very enjoyable and it is hard.  A leader who takes on the abrasive employee must be a skillful communicator, be clear within themselves what makes certain strategies work and be committed to tackling tough interpersonal issues.  These are not necessarily the types of challenges most leaders have been trained to deal with.  But can you allow abrasive behavior to hamper project success or even derail entire business outcomes?

Our mission is to reduce workplace suffering. We accomplish that by working directly with abrasive leaders, providing powerful tools to help those who must work with them and by helping organizations to develop strategies to facilitate leadership courage and eliminate “bottom line blindness.”

If you have questions about what is possible or need tools or other resources to enable you or your company to deal with the tough challenges surrounding abrasive leaders, we’d love to hear from you.

www.resourcesinaction.com

2012 All Rights Reserved

510-524-4934

(Specialists in dealing with the Abrasive Leader @ Work)

Reactions to the idea that Democrats and Republicans sit together at the upcoming State of the Union speech have ranged from humor from Jon Stewart to cynical dismissal by Rush Limbaugh.   I think the idea, while not the cure for all that ails Washington, does have some potential to impact the quality of discourse in our government, and the idea that seating arrangements are trivial is foolish.

The seating arrangements at a SOTU speech are the product of long tradition and the room the speech occurs in.  While the House Chamber is an amazing and beautiful place, it is not the best room from a facilitator’s point of view.  However, just the act of mixing the parties across the room vs. sitting separated by political party would be a very interesting “action learning” experiment in group dynamics.

Anyone organizing any meeting or conference knows that seating arrangements say a lot: are we in a circle, with no power positions, or are we in rows, with a clear front and back to the room?  Are we sitting by department (e.g. all of IT together, all of Sales together) or are we mixed across functions?

If how we sit reflects the level of collaboration (or lack there of), could this work in reverse?  Could changing the way we sit, impact the culture we operate in?

Closer proximity can improve relationships.  Often one of the first positive steps in improving any group dynamic is the agreement to “sit down together” yet the Congress only seems to sit down separately.    The only goal all sides in DC seem to share is the search for new ways to change Washington, so why not put deeds to words and give this a try?   Maybe a change in physical position could help lead to changes in policy positions.

If you have ever watched a State of the Union address, one of the key aspects is the applause and standing ovations: when does only one party stand or applaud, and when is the ovation bipartisan.  This behavior is used by the Congress as a way to send a message to all those who are watching: these ideas we agree with, these we do not.  If the parties are mixed across the room, what will the message be when some applaud and some do not?  Often we applaud or stand at a speech if those around us do.  Would sitting together increase the reaction of Republicans?  Will this cause less applause by Democrats?   Will there be more unity and less hostility? How would it feel if we could no longer immediately identify by party who was standing and who was not?

At the last joint address, one Congressperson called out “You Lie!” during a part of the speech about health care, apologizing very soon after.  Would that breech of decorum have happened if the speaker were not sitting in his camp, as if at a football game far away from the “other side”?  It’s a lot harder to vilify someone you are sitting right next to.

By treating the idea of sitting together at the SOTU as merely symbolic, the congress may be missing a simple, no cost, low risk idea for moving towards the more civil and effective dynamic they all say they want

What is happening to you is not the end of the world and does not have to be the end of your project (or career).  You are just experiencing what we call “The J Curve” of change (see below).

Study this well, because if you do not manage this curve the right way, the dip in the J could become the final resting place of your project, known as “The Valley of Death” (VOD), where change initiatives go to die.

Change we can believe in?

When implementing a change, whether it is a new IT system, a new product or a new compensation plan, we usually spend some period of time at the beginning of the change effort on what we call the vision or the desired end state.   This is extremely valuable because it gives us inspiration and motivation to change and identifies the gaps between today and the future. However, focusing on this vision can create unreasonable expectations among the stakeholders.

People hear about (and hopefully help create) the exciting new vision, and they get very excited about the benefits.  Most people expect things to start improving immediately (“at last we are dealing with this!”). Inevitability, however, there is a time at the beginning of the change when productivity or other results we are focused on go down instead of improving.

This is due to the disruption caused by the natural process of learning and implementing something new.   The bigger the change, the more disruption you will experience.  So the very thing you want to improve gets worse.

“How long, how deep?”

I was working recently on a large IT transformation and the CIO told me “ I understand about the J curve, and the executive board gets the concept, but they will not tolerate decreased performance for very long.  The real question is, how can we make the curve as short and shallow as possible?  How can we sustain the change past the dip?”

The stress of complex change with big goals, tight deadlines and strict budgets can become too much during the “dip” in the J.   Even the most well intentioned leaders can become frustrated because they feel caught between the high expectations they set to justify the costs of the change and the resistance or lack of progress they perceive to be happening.

Leaders can make the situation worse by pushing too hard during this phase and thereby prolonging it.   Employees are reminded, yet again, of the vision and how important it is. Town Hall meetings are held, emails are crafted and distributed, middle managers are pressed to do a better job “cascading”, employees are told to hurry up and tune into “WIFM” (what’s in it for me).

Some managers, hearing the message from above, may even push employees to “get over it”, or “get on the bus” with the clear implication that those who do not get on will be run over.

Unfortunately, this behavior cuts off honest communication between the stakeholders, drives any real barriers to change underground, and stifles ownership of implementation.

The First Rule of Holes: Stop Digging

Do not make these mistakes and dig an even deeper hole for your change effort.  If you instead help everyone anticipate this phase, you can minimize the impact of the J curve and keep your project alive and well.

To avoid letting the dip in the J curve become the Valley of Death, use the following strategies:

1. Make sure all the key stakeholders, including executive sponsors know about the J curve and are prepared to recognize initial issues as part of the change process, not evidence of disaster.
2. Identify potential problems in advance, remove the ones you can and mitigate the others (postpone other changes so they do not all hit at once, obtain advance funding for added temporary costs, prepare customers for the change, have a team in place accountable for tracking and resolving problems, develop back-up plans).
3. Provide multiple sources of support for the change: technical, social, educational, physical, emotional.   Successful change is usually supported by the application of a number of overlapping strategies and not by finding the one silver bullet.
4. Remain calm and focus on solving problems so people can change. Never kill the messenger when learning “bad” news.  Rather, reward the identification of problems with resources and energy to create solutions.

When less power means faster progress

There’s an old saying in sailing that has saved many boats (not to mention lives): “if you think it’s time to reef, it probably is.”  The reason we need this saying is because reefing – the act of shortening sail in rough weather – is hard to do.  Not so hard to actually execute, but hard to decide to do.   Why?  Because when you need to reef, you are usually moving along quickly, having fun and making progress. Of course, the drawback to this is that an unbalanced boat (or team) is less safe and less efficient, resulting in the need to reef.  I have been sailing on San Francisco Bay for many years.  The Bay is well known for extreme weather, tides and currents.  This makes sailing fun but also quite dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The typical day is a morning of great sailing; then, in the afternoon, the wind gets fiercer, and the boat heels further and further over.  This is so fun!  Right?

But, at some point, someone finally gets up the nerve to say “maybe we need to reef?”

Why was this hard to say: because now someone has to (on most boats) go forward and leave the safety of the cockpit; the boat will stop its forward progress in order to make the sail change; and it will stop heading in the direction it’s going.  On most boats, this also means releasing different lines in parts of the sails, creating a lot of noise and resulting in a boom that might be flopping around the boat – truly unnerving if you aren’t expecting it.

Needless to say, all this can feel like quite a chore.

But I bet you know another reason why it’s difficult to decide to reef: it’s not macho.  It’s always better to be tough than suggest powering down, right?. Sometimes everyone but the skipper can see it.  That’s the worst feeling – when the captain’s own ego blinds them.  Or maybe the team have set unrealistic goals and fear failure. But, the bottom line is that the boat is not a place where people want to hear about reefing.

Of course, the reality is that the longer you wait to make that decision, the more severe the conditions will be when you finally deal with it. The longer you wait, the harder it gets.  Indecision has a clear cost.

A safer boat is a faster boat

The boat is a system designed to work a certain way, and it goes its fastest when it’s trimmed well. The boat is actually more stable, flatter and will go faster.  Reefing correctly will help you arrive at your destination sooner (let alone in a much safer manner).

This all seems pretty simple, right?

Yet, I can’t tell you how many times my friends and I have talked a bit too long about “if we should reef”.  When you are making progress, it’s hard to make the call, even when you sense the boat is starting to tip too far over and the steering isn’t quite as accurate.

Trust your mind

In The Human Element, Will Schutz writes that if an item is too trivial to be brought up with someone else, it’s probably not something you would be thinking about it in the first place.  If something comes into your mind multiple times then it’s time to ask: why does this keep coming up for me?

It certainly can seem very inconvenient to try to discuss the item or issue. We may fear there will be a lot of noise and lines flying around.  That boom could swing around and nail us.

Just like out on the water, in organizations and in teams the longer we wait the worse it’s going to get.  As such, when we wait until the trouble has gotten so obvious that everyone is screaming for someone to do something (and somebody says “we better reef”), we pass up an opportunity to come up with an easy and simple correction. That said, when we finally do decide to reef, we usually find reefing takes a lot less time than we thought and was not as inconvenient as we feared. We also notice that we are making way much more effectively, efficiently and more enjoyably.  Now that we stopped for a moment and trimmed our sails to the actual conditions, we are better off.

I predict you’ll find the same experience when you address the issues in your team.  It probably won’t be as bad as you think and you’re in for a big pay off.

Above all, do not punish the person on your team who calls the question.  Keep them on the boat.  You need their leadership.

“He really annoys me”, John told me.   “Robert seems to have no respect for the fact that we have all been here for years and do know what we are doing.  Yes, we have made some mistakes, and yes, we need to change, but who does he think he is?   He is so condescending in his emails and other communications to us!  All he cares about is looking important to the CEO, as if we were not the ones who will make any changes actually happen.   I want our transformation to succeed, but frankly I would rather see Robert fail. He tries to pressure me to do what he wants and has even cut me out of key meetings with the executive team.  He wants to be the big boss?  Well, I promise you, I will be here long after he is gone.”

I knew that neither Robert nor John was going anywhere soon.  Since they needed to work together to achieve the goals of the change, the relationship had to work. I spoke with Robert and got an earful.

“I want to be collaborative and work well with the managers, but frankly why should I bother?   If these people had any real skill or expertise, they wouldn’t need me to begin with!   If it was up to me, I would replace the whole management team, but I know the CEO will not support that.  Why should I try to get their input when they created this mess to begin with?   If I tried to get every one of these ‘stakeholders’ all aligned and in agreement, it would 1) take forever and 2) result in failure.  I am here to get results.  They just need to get on board.”

Robert was quite skilled in his specialty and had advice to offer that would help the organization, but he also had some blind spots when it came to interpersonal skills and relationships.   John knew a lot about the business and the organization that Robert, as an external, did not know, but John had made some poor decisions over the years that had lead to the current unsustainable situation in the organization.

John and Robert were in a bind that seemed intractable: both had very strong beliefs about the other person, and both felt he was completely right and the other person was wrong.  Their inability to work well together was wasting time and energy, and adding drama and complexity to an already difficult change effort.

John agreed to have me attend some of his meetings with Robert so I would “see how bad he really is.”  After observing a meeting, I debriefed with John, who started out by saying, “See!  Now you know what I am dealing with!  Can you believe this guy? Now will you talk to him and get him to change, or at least support me with the executive team so we can get rid of him?”   Though we were in the exact same meeting, I did not have the same experience as John.  To me, Robert did have a different communications style from the internal managers, but had not said or done anything I felt was over the top or justified the strong feelings John had.

But what I thought was irrelevant.

How to Change Results by Changing Perceptions

I suggested to John that there was a way for him to improve his working relationship with Robert, even without Robert’s explicit agreement or awareness.   The first step would be for John to examine his assumptions and beliefs about Robert and gain awareness of how that impacts John’s behavior when he interacts with him.   John did not see how this would help and was even a bit insulted that he might have any role in the problem, but agreed to give it a try before he escalated this issue to senior management.

My hypothesis was that John was stuck in what Chris Argyris, in his book “Overcoming Organizational Defenses”, calls a “reflexive loop”. This is when we have a strong belief (Argyris calls them ‘noble certainties”), which drives us to ignore data that would not fit that belief and ‘select’ or emphasize data which supports that belief.  We also know from recent breakthroughs in neuroscience that our brains physically create these loops, which then become stronger over time (“neural binding”) and actually force out alternative views.   John had an existing belief that Robert was mean and arrogant and as a result only experienced Robert that way, interpreting anything he did from that perspective and discounting any signs to the contrary.

Was John ‘justified’ in this belief?   Sure.  The arrogant and ambitious consultant is a character we all know well.   Was it “the truth”?   Maybe not.   In “The Political Mind”, author George Lakeoff explains that our minds, even our eyes, do not act as recorders, but more as storytellers: everything we experience is interpreted by our brains and placed into an existing neural pathway or “frame”. Changing our perceptions requires changing the ‘story’ we already have in our minds and creating a new frame into which we can fit the information. John had reached the point where he believed Robert to be either mean, crazy or stupid.

All too often in organizations I have heard a similar refrain: if only the other person or group was not “so crazy” everything would be OK.   We see this in our national discourse as well.  Leaders of countries that oppose US policies are “crazy”. Political opponents of new programs are “mean” and don’t care. Advocates for spending (or taxes) must be “stupid”.

This framework does not tend to lead to resolution of conflict, but rather to escalation, as John was anticipating.   Do we expect that the other party will suddenly agree:  “You know, you are right, I am stupid”?  Exactly what actions can one take with someone who is crazy? How would you react to someone who treats you as if you were mean? John’s across the board resistance was also supporting Robert’s existing frame that the internal managers were “stupid”.   Their reflexive loops were reinforcing each other.

Breaking the Dynamic

I asked, “John, what if we assumed for a moment that Robert was not mean, crazy or stupid.  How would you explain his behavior?”    With this question, I was suggesting we entertain the possibility of a different reason for Robert’s behavior.  Although he was initially resistant, John was able to brainstorm some alternative explanations for Robert’s behavior.    Without accepting that Robert was not mean, John started to list other“reasons for why Robert might take the actions he does.    After listing some possibilities, John was now open to hearing my suggestions, which included the frame that Robert was doing exactly what the internal executives wanted him to do, and was under massive, maybe unrealistic, pressure from them to achieve results quickly.

Without easy access to his “this individual is to blame” frame, John started to focus more on the systemic forces that were acting on Robert and driving his behavior. In my discussion with him, John did not have a resounding insight or moment of clarity.  What he did do was critical: he understood his own reflexive loop. He started to form some empathy with Robert and replace his righteousness/defensiveness with curiosity.

I spoke with John after his next meeting with Robert.  He was very excited: “I think maybe something has shifted,” he said.   “Robert seemed to be much more open to my ideas, and I was less intimidated by him, less pushed around.   I was even able to give him some feedback about going behind my back.   I don’t think he will do that again.”   John and Robert never became best pals, but they were able to achieve important results and work together with much less stress.

When John started to treat Robert as a whole person and not a caricature, Robert responded in kind.

The experience with Robert also had an impact on John’s other relationships at work and even at home.   John is starting to change a meta-frame he has held with many people.  He is able now to notice when he is acting from “noble certainties” and instead use a new frame of empathy for the other person.   His new frame causes others to create new frames as well.

*Names and other details have been changed to protect individual identities.

While most leaders would agree with this analogy, most do not ensure that regular feedback is a part of their organization’s culture. They miss an easy way to make performance improvements, improve morale and develop employees. Feedback is avoided for many reasons: fear of an emotional reaction, fear of retaliation, or the lack of a strategy for having the conversation. The problem is, the issue that is driving a need for feedback will not go away on its own, but tends to get worse until the person cannot stand it anymore. This leads to “drive-by” feedback: a quick hit of why you are driving me crazy, then a quick escape. On the receiving side, even employees who want to improve fear having to defend themselves or agree to something they do not really believe.

The solution lies in leadership modeling of feedback, and the use of some simple but powerful guidelines for giving, or better yet, exchanging, feedback. It is an organizational truism that the higher one goes in an organization, the less feedback one gets. So start by asking for feedback from others, and then be very careful not to get defensive. Then try to act in a visible way on the feedback. This will show the organization you are willing to “go first” and lead the way before you ask others to make a change. If feedback is the “breakfast of champions,” you will need to eat the first meal yourself.

Successful feedback must be focused on three key dimensions: results, process and relationship. The feedback must increase results, use a clear process and lead to enhanced, rather than diminished, relationships. This can be done by following these guidelines:

1. Choose when to give the feedback: If you are too angry or upset yourself, you will not be able to give the feedback in a respectful way. Wait until you cool down. Also, find a time and place which allows the employee to hear the feedback (especially negative) in private and a time when they can handle it emotionally, but do not wait so long that they can no longer act on the input. Positive feedback should be given quickly, when the employee is still “sweating from the effort.”

2. Describe the behavior in as objective language as possible and be specific. Words like “bad attitude” will not be understand and will seem judgmental.

3. State the impact of the behavior on you, the team, the goal, the client, etc. Saying what the impact is allows the receiver of the feedback to better understand why they should change or at least consider the input.

4. Make a suggestion or request. You may ask them to change a behavior that is not working, to continue or do more of an effective behavior, or to simply understand your point of view. “You are not well organized” is a criticism, not feedback. Have a concrete action in mind so the employee has a clear path to improvement.

5. Lastly, check for understanding and be open to alternative views. There may be relevant facts you are unaware of and asking for a response avoids just dumping on the employee and damaging the relationship.

Originally published at interationassociates.com. Used by permission.

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“The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. . .”

Accidents dropped by 44 percent, compared to a 17.5 percent drop across the city. Today the scheme’s champion, councillor Daniel Moylan, said it would be copied nationwide. . . “It is about re-establishing eye contact between road users. They are now looking at each other instead of just signs.”

As we posted previously, reducing road signs tends to boost drivers’ spirit of collaboration. Drivers are obliged to slow down and interact with other drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists, not just obey posted signs. The street becomes not “my road,” but “our road.” As the responsibility shifts – from “I do what the signs let me do,” towards, “I do what is best to do, in my judgment” – shared responsibility increases, and the road becomes a better place to be.

When navigating our way in business, we need to engage in similar behavior. Ideally, the number of processes, policies, and rules we establish will be the minimum we need to succeed. This leaves space for personal choice, which leads to personal accountability. The definition of a dysfunctional bureaucracy is a place where human choices and decision-making have been replaced by a thousand-page policy manual and miles of unnecessary red tape. This is a losing battle. The more detailed control you try to put in place, the more people focus on “not making a mistake” instead of “doing the right thing” . . . and the worse your ultimate results will be. If you are experiencing “malicious compliance”, maybe it’s time to see if treating people like thinking adults helps them act accordingly.

Often, fewer agreements are the most strategic, because just the right amount of process is the right amount of process.

Originally published at interationassociates.com.   Used by permission.

In the Dutch Province of Makkinga, motorists drive around uninhibited by signs instructing them to stop, yield, or merge. They don’t have any parking meters to feed, red zones to avoid, or yellow lines to follow. Makkinga — as well as some other small towns in Denmark, England, Germany, and Belgium — are participating in a project implemented by the European Union to increase socially responsible behavior on the road. Proponents of this new lawlessness have a motto: “Unsafe is safe.” The thesis is that an unmarked intersection forces motorists to slow down and communicate with other drivers in order to proceed.

Traffic planners for a town of 45,000 in the Netherlands enforce only two rules: “Yield to the right” and “Get in someone’s way and you’ll be towed.” They report that the number of accidents there has drastically declined. One German borough is even ripping up its sidewalks and asphalt streets and replacing everything with cobblestones. The mayor doesn’t want any division between pedestrians and motorists, in hopes that each will become more aware of the other and make for safer streets. What’s at work in the EU is the ultimate in accountability. Anybody’s road trip is now a Shared Responsibility for Success.

To achieve success, drivers (and leaders) must focus not just on results, but on rules of the road (process), and the way people treat each other (relationship). Interaction Associate’s Dimensions of Success model illustrates why a healthy and strategic balance of Results, Process and Relationship makes for happy motoring. When one of the dimensions gets out of whack, you’ve got yourself a traffic jam.

Germany has 648 traffic symbols. You might say that they’ve gone overboard, relying too much on process to manage traffic flow. That much regulation just leaves drivers looking out for their own best interests: gunning it through intersections on yellow lights, preventing pedestrians from crossing the street, and nudging out other cars that are trying to merge. Drivers abandon the relationships they need on the road to travel faster and safer. Instead of “looking out for the other guy”, there’s competition, generally bad manners and a “this is my own private highway” kind of attitude. You see this behavior in San Francisco at rush hour. Drivers avoid eye contact (relationship) so they can cut someone off and gain a car length or two.

Towns and cities that put up copious numbers of signs have an underlying belief about drivers: “Left on their own they are going to screw things up.” So they make up a lot — maybe too many — rules. This leaves drivers resentful of the “big” process and more apt to act out. With fewer rules, people feel like they are being treated as grown-ups, so they act like grown ups. The EU discovered that insisting on too many signs or rules isn’t a strategic use of process. They have chosen to reverse the over-processing to get safer results. Balance.

With the EU’s switch in priorities, drivers stop relating to signs and begin relating to other drivers. They’re not responsible for following the rules, but for the safety of themselves and others on the road. There is a spirit of collaboration: “I’ll go a little slower so everyone can go a little faster in the long run.”

Street signs for traffic are like ground rules for business. They answer the question, “What am I responsible for?” The essence of collaboration is to have a few agreements that people can actually follow. Often, fewer agreements are the most strategic, because just the right amount of process is the right amount of process.

Deciding what to focus on in the RPR model is an art and a strategic decision. If you neglect the relationship dimension, you might get the results you set out for — and never want to work with those people again. If process is poor, the project may take too long and cost too much. As a leader, you need to be thoughtful when you focus on one over the other. Whether collaborating in the workplace or maneuvering on the road, a balance of Results, Process and Relationships will make your journey a breeze.

Originally published at interationassociates.com. Used by permission.

With all these new technologies at the ready, all we need to do is “get on line” and collaboration just happens, right? Not exactly — in fact, not by a long shot for many teams and work groups that still struggle with productivity, effectiveness, or plain old getting things done.

A vital question is at the core of this issue: Are you using technology — or is it using you?

Consider this: A high-tech network solutions company and leading innovator of collaboration technologies recently sought training in how to run successful virtual meetings. An interesting paradox, no doubt, but do they know something we don’t?

It turns out, the answer is that the company understood to make their own excellent collaboration technology pay off, they must remove the human hurdles to collaborating effectively. That’s right:  Regardless of the promise of new technologies, the key success factor for collaboration is still how people think, make decisions and resolve conflicts. So, while technology itself gets better and smarter, our human ‘operating system” needs an “upgrade”.

Collaboration: What It Takes

In the rush to adopt the latest technology platform, interfaces, and operating systems, many companies often overlook an important distinction: Technology doesn’t collaborate, people do.  And what people need for effective collaboration — the essential ingredients for working together successfully in strong teams — has not changed over the years. Those ingredients include getting buy-in, reaching agreement, navigating conflict, achieving alignment, telling the truth to each other.

Technology has made some of those challenges easier, but others have become harder — and more daunting — with technological advances.

And here’s why: New technologies exaggerate the failures of not working together effectively. It’s one thing if we fail to work together when we’re all in the same room. It’s a whole different kettle of fish if we fail when attempting to work together across the Internet or on a Wiki.

Obstacles to collaboration

The obstacles to face-to-face collaboration are many and varied. What’s more, they get worse when you take them into virtual space. Most of the obstacles are recognizable — including:

• Organizational hurdles: such as silo-ed departments, complex and unclear roles, and cultural norms with varying rates of dysfunction

• Failure to focus: on just one decision at a time and therefore failing to reach lasting agreements on anything

• Confusing what and how: Focusing only on the “what” (the content) of an interaction vs. understanding the impact of process (the “how”) on collaboration.

• Power dynamics: these thwart full team participation and restrict open communication.

• Wrong assumptions: Not checking assumptions and forming inaccurate conclusions

• Hidden agendas: unseen agendas and conflicts with no method for resolution

• “I Can Do It Myself” attitudes

A recent study on international collaboration from Frost and Sullivan, sponsored by two of the largest technology providers in the world — Verizon and Microsoft — found that a “culture of collaboration” was the differentiator between effective and ineffective companies, and was more correlated to success than the specific technologies in use at the organization.

When people are collaborating globally, cultural issues can be an impediment to effective collaboration. It becomes even more of a necessity to listen, to check assumptions, and be aware of such concepts as “saving face” and mutual respect as reflected in different cultural settings.

The Collaborative Team Profile
Five key attributes are foundational to the success of any collaborative team. A team that is missing one or more of these attributes is at risk for failure.

Briefly, they are:

1. Shared and Meaningful Purpose: The team’s task or reason for existing that is shared by all team members and, in some way, motivates and inspires each.

2. Specific and Challenging Goals: The measurable results the team agrees to produce that will satisfy an important organizational need and demand extraordinary performance by team members.

3. Clear Roles: A shared understanding by team members of how the responsibilities for specific team functions and tasks will be distributed and how the team will make key decisions.

4. Common and Collaborative Approach: Commonly understood plans and methods for accomplishing the team’s goals in ways that facilitate participation, cooperation and mutual support.

5. Complementary Skills: The right combination of knowledge, ability and experience required to perform effectively.  In their rush to adopt the latest collaboration technologies to enhance team performance, companies typically overlook an important element in team success: The team’s operating system — what we’ve identified as a set of five key collaborative behaviors required for effective team collaboration.

These team member behaviors enable individuals to act with clarity and integrity, supporting the principle of shared responsibility. What’s more, they form a stable ground upon which teams can work in virtual environments — on the phone, via the web, or by email. While these behaviors are highly effective in face-to-face collaboration, they become even more important in virtual teaming and interacting.

These five behaviors include:

Listen In
Inquiring about what your teammates are saying so that you truly understand their ideas and concerns.

Many team members struggle with the temptation to interrupt colleagues in order to insert their own points of view. Consequently, many teams display a chronic pattern of interruption and evaluation which undermines trust and stalls progress. On collaborative teams, individuals honor each other by listening to understand and validating others’ opinions before advocating for their own ideas. In turn, being heard often enables the speaker to soften his or her own position and search for solutions that work for everyone.

Observable actions include:
• Paying attention until your teammate has finished speaking.
• Checking for comprehension by asking clarifying questions.
• Showing curiosity about your teammates’ views by probing for more information.
• Receiving and validating your teammates’ ideas by responding with summative, reflective and supportive statements.

On-line it means:
• Matching the communication method to the complexity and conflict in the topic or issue. For example, if someone’s email or text message seems “way off” or “antagonistic”; it may be time for a phone call or face to face meeting.
• Leaving time in the agenda for understanding and inquiry.

Speak Out
Advocating for you own point of view while representing the views of others.

Knowing when and how to make your voice heard is a key competence for team members to have.  For some, the biggest challenge is to avoid dominating the conversation. For others, it’s taking the risk to voice their opinions and share their points of view. The consequences for the team of either behavior are often the same – stifled creativity and loss of energy and momentum. By stating their views in an honest and timely way, facilitative team members can reduce unnecessary conflict and enhance team productivity.

Observable actions include:
• Offering information at the time it is most useful to the team.
• Saying what’s going on when you realize the group is stuck.
• Putting challenging or difficult information in a context that helps others to hear and understand it.
• Explaining your point of view by sharing underlying assumptions.

On-line it means:
• Reviewing email or other electronic communication from the receiver’s point of view. Might a comment or idea be misunderstood? Are there underlying assumptions you can make explicit, to prevent confusion?
• Considering how the receiver’s cultural environment might impact the reading of your message.

Facilitate Agreement
Helping team members to work through the agreement-building process.

A team often experiences frustration when its members work at cross-purposes. This can lead to the feeling that no agreements are being made and nothing is getting done. This “wheel spinning” and confusion most often occurs because the team has no common understanding about the desired outcomes of their meetings and how they want to proceed. When at least one team member focuses on managing the process and facilitating team member agreements, the whole team can move ahead more easily. By directing the flow of information, team members help to build the understanding and agreements the team needs to take concerted action.

Observable actions include:
• Assessing the situation and making proposals for how to move forward.
• Helping the team stay focused on its desired outcomes and the process for reaching them.
• Finding small agreements and building on them.
• Focusing the team on agreement, not disagreement.

On-line it means:
• Appointing a team member as process facilitator, who has the skills to ensure the process used is effective, clear and followed throughout the meeting. For example, each location in a conference call or video meeting should have a local facilitator who makes sure all ideas are heard and agreements are understood and supported by each team member.

Reconcile Differences
Resolving conflict and working through differences of style or opinion.

Differences of opinion and work style are a natural fact of team life. They can be the source of innovation and creativity as well as breakdowns. Breakdowns that erupt from significant differences in opinion and style often escalate unnecessarily into personal disputes and can be especially challenging in an on-line or other non-face–to-face environment. Resolving these conflicts – instead of withdrawing from them – is one of the most valuable and difficult of all team member behaviors.

Effective team members reconcile differences by focusing on underlying interests (versus surface positions), and by building small agreements into lasting solutions. Only by working through conflict can a team take advantage of its diversity of thought and opinion to create inspired results.

Observable actions include:
• Legitimizing all points of view.
• Identifying the critical issues that need to be addressed.
• Surfacing common interests.
• Highlighting areas of agreement.

On-line it means:
• Assessing in advance how much conflict might occur and selecting a technology that will support a safe environment.
• Having a short but enforced list of “ground rules” or “working agreements” which require respectful inquiry rather than only combative debate.

Exchange Feedback
Strengthening team member relationships by speaking about the impact each others’ behaviors have on individuals or on the team as a whole.

Feedback is an invaluable tool for learning. Yet hearing the phrase, “I’d like to give you some feedback” causes many people to cringe with dread. Effective team members give and receive feedback in the spirit of mutual support and respect. Providing complimentary feedback or requesting someone to change their behavior are normal parts of a team’s daily communication and relationship management. By giving and receiving feedback, team members increase their ability to work together successfully, and expand their collective skill base.

Observable actions include:
• Acknowledging another team member for something he or she does that supports you and/or the team.
• Requesting that a teammate change his or her behavior by describing the behavior, its negative impact, and suggesting an alternative.
• Asking for and listening to feedback without defending your own actions.

On-line it means:
• Leaving time at the end of the meeting to share positive feedback and acknowledgements as well as ways the process could be improved.
• Using a private/secure technology to give any feedback that may be hard for the receiver to hear.

Final thoughts

The late historian and chronicler of technology, Daniel Boorstin, once observed a central paradox about modern technology: It connects people and brings us together, but often at the cost of pushing us apart. No doubt anyone who’s ever been caught in a room full of people working their Blackberries can relate to what Boorstin meant.

In terms of working together effectively, the key question is: Are you using technology in ways that augments other processes and mechanisms for collaborating with colleagues? You might ask if you’re more engaged with the features & functions of a tool or technology — and less so with your colleagues or fellow team members. And that brings us back to a central question posed at the outset: Are you using technology — or is it using you?