• Gain insight into your preferred behavior style at work.
• Build awareness of your strengths.
• Explore when those strengths may become a liability.
• Plan for those instances in which you may need to shift gears to be more effective

To register, e-mail gary@glfordconsulting.com

• Shift your employees to a place where they are more willing to tackle their own conflicts
• Coach your employees on how to broach difficult topics effectively
• Create a culture where managers aren’t called upon to referee

To register, e-mail gary@glfordconsulting.com

• Explore the physiological responses that short-circuit our effectiveness when in conflict
• Learn how to defuse your emotional response when co-workers push your buttons
• Learn a method of broaching difficult conversations without creating defensiveness

To register, e-mail gary@glfordconsulting.com

This indirect response (and sometimes lack of any response) to behavior that undermines an employee’s reputation and effectiveness is very common in organizations. Out of fear of demotivating technically strong employees, feedback about unprofessional behavior or underdeveloped interpersonal skills frequently isn’t provided or isn’t provided directly.  And there’s a sucker’s choice at the root of it:

“I can talk to my employee directly OR I can avoid damaging the relationship.”

This is a sucker’s choice because it limits solutions and sets them up as mutually exclusive one to the other—I can be direct OR maintain the relationship. To avoid the sucker’s choice, one must get creative and ask “How can I be direct AND maintain the relationship?” or even better, “How might I be direct in putting an end to unproductive behavior AND strengthen the relationship at the same time?”  The answer lies in conveying one’s positive intent. 

When coaching managers, I help them strengthen relationships with their staff while addressing issues directly.  At the end of 20 minutes, I had helped the manager on the other end of the line come up with a plan, which her “indirect” director approved.  Here’s how the manager planned to broach the issue with her new employee.  “I’m excited to have you as a new member of the team because of your expertise.  As your manager, I see it as my role to help you navigate the culture of this organization.  There are two things I’ve noticed since you started that don’t work here…  Your reputation inside and outside the team is important to me.  I want you to be successful.”  Her employee was very appreciative of her manager’s directness and caring—the relationship was strengthened.

The preceding story had a happy ending.  Unfortunately, it is not unusual for managers to withhold feedback–especially when it’s less directly related to the work, but still reputation affecting.  What are the long-term affects on these individuals and organizations?

•    Behaviors outside the cultural norms frequently continue unaddressed until reputations are irreversibly damaged. 
•    Ideas about what’s expected and what’s appropriate may erode as less-than-professional, less-than-positive interpersonal behavior goes unchecked.
•    HR is frequently called in at the end of a long painful period to provide the mechanics to “document” an employee with strong technical skills out of the organization when they aren’t successful in the company’s culture.

All of this can be avoided when managers provide early and direct feedback to employees, feedback that strengthens rather than harms relationships between manager and direct report.

What can you do in your organization? 

1.    Communicate your expectations to your managers: they are responsible for helping new employees navigate the culture.  They must provide guidance early on to new employees to ensure their success, not just on job tasks, but on anything that affects their employees reputations and therefore effectiveness.
2.    Provide skillbuilding for your leadership group so they are skilled at addressing unprofessional behavior, interpersonal skill deficiencies, and behaviors that are simply outside the predominant company culture.  

If you would like to ensure employees with strong technical skills are successful in your organization, make sure their managers are helping them navigate the culture from day one. Contact Gary Ford for assistance in implementing leadership development programs that build these competencies within your management group. 

In this short 2-hour session, participants will…

• Learn how to assess your team’s current level of effectiveness
• Engage in easy to reproduce activities that increase trust, accountability and healthy debate
• Explore the dynamics common to high performance teams

Here’s an example of what I mean.  If I’m in conflict with a colleague, and I’m a human being, I’m more likely to talk to a third party before I address the conflict with my "adversary".  Why would I go to a third party?  Here are the four primary reasons I’ve found for this typical human response:

1. To recruit the third party to "save" me from my workplace adversary.
2. To recruit the third party to join my side against my adversary.
3. To receive sympathy from the third party.
4. To solicit coaching on how to resolve the conflict or neutral mediation from the third party.

From my experience in Corporate America, receiving sympathy from a third party is the most prevalent reason, and in this process we trade power for sympathy.  To go for sympathy, we need to paint ourselves as a victim, and to do that we have to relinquish our power. 

Don’t buy that?  When was the last time, a colleague said something like this: "I was in a meeting, and my colleague made a comment that I thought reflected badly on me in front of the CEO.  I could have checked in with her in the moment, so I didn’t leave feeling offended.  I could have followed up with her immediately after the meeting when I wasn’t feeling such strong emotion.  I could have waited until the following day, to get her perspective on what she meant.  Instead I’m coming to you to vent.  Isn’t she horrible?!"  Seeing yourself as having power–and options–and receiving sympathy are simply incompatible.

Beyond The Self-Inflicted Wound
If you’re trading your personal effectiveness for sympathy and the reinforcement that you have the moral high ground, you’re doing damage to more than just your sense of self.  According to the American Management Association, managers spend at least 24 percent of their time resolving conflicts at work.  If you do the math, 24 percent of the combined salaries of your management staff represent a significant chunk of change. 

So how do we stop the personal and bottom line impact caused by unresolved conflict?  An organization’s culture has a significant impact on whether unresolved conflict is tolerated and enabled or quickly addressed.  Here are some powerful ways to ensure your culture supports the quick resolution of costly interpersonal strain:

1. Across your organization, visibly value the quick resolution of interpersonal and interdepartmental conflict.
2. Engage not only in teambuilding retreats for intact teams, but in retreats for two interdependent departments if tribalism is hurting necessary collaboration.   
3. Adopt group norms that dictate that when team members involve third parties in their unresolved conflict, the goal must transition quickly from sympathy-getting to coaching on how to effectively resolve the interpersonal strain.
4. Provide skillbuilding for your leadership group and individual contributors so that everyone has the skills to address interpersonal conflict productively. 
5. Make external mediators available to your staff if there are no internal resources.
6. Enroll internal volunteers to learn simple peer mediation techniques.

If you would like to assert your power for positive change in your organization, take measures to ensure unresolved conflict isn’t wreaking havoc in your workplace.  Contact Gary Ford for assistance in implementing any of the above interventions in your organization.

The articles will reflect my ongoing experience and current thinking about:

• building high-performing teams,
• management/leadership development,
• and resolving workplace conflict  

I’ll also be posting news stories relating to work I’m doing in the realm of training, offsite facilitation, and mediation.  Thanks for visiting the site!  

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