Alicia looked puzzled. “But I think I really need to have a heart to heart talk with my two project leaders, away from the team. When we have that kind of friction, out in the open, I don’t think the team can be very productive.”
“I agree you need to have a heart to heart talk with your project leaders,” I replied. “But what would happen if you had that talk in the meeting instead of away from the team?”
“I don’t get it,” Alicia explained. “We just had a meeting on how to rescue this stalled project. No one came up with any ideas. For an hour. It was like waiting to go see the dentist.”
“So, your team didn’t isolate the problem,” I prompted.
“Oh yeah, they did, just not in the meeting. We wasted an entire hour. Only when the meeting was over, I find out, at the water cooler, the project is stalemated because the two project leaders are angry at each other.”
“Someone told you at the water cooler?” I asked.
“Oh, no, I only found out by accident. There were two people whispering a little too loud. I put two and two together.”
So, why didn’t this come up at the meeting?”
“I don’t know,” Alicia wondered out loud. “It’s like it was a secret. A secret everyone was too scared to talk about.”
“I thought I was very clear,” Marianne grimaced. “It was important for the team to understand and take ownership. This is a very important team goal.”
“Describe what you see?” I asked.
“Their words are supportive, but their actions are passive. There is no skip in their step, no sense of urgency, no critical eye for detail. It’s as if they are just going through the daily motions.”
“You described the project, what you are trying to accomplish. Whose goal is it?” I wanted to know.
“Well, it’s a team goal,” Marianne explained, sounding like I should have figured that out on my own. “I need the team to work together, support each other, cooperate. That’s why it’s a team goal.”
“Have you ever heard that if it’s everyone’s accountability, it’s no one’s accountability?”
That was a stumper to Marianne. A slow burn in her brain. “So, I have to single one of them out?”
“If it’s not the team’s goal, whose goal is it?” I repeated.
Marianne did not like the realization. “If it’s not the team’s goal, it must be my goal,” she flatly stated.
“And, if that’s the case, what changes?”
Reggie was adamant. “I believe that using a written memo is the best approach to communicate my vision of the project, because it ensures consistency and allows everyone to refer back to the information whenever they need it. I feel that face-to-face communication might lead to misinterpretation or forgetting important details.”
“Written memos are useful,” I replied. “Tell me more?”
Reggie was quick to continue. “Sometimes I feel like the message gets lost or diluted when I communicate verbally. There have been instances where team members seemed distracted or didn’t grasp the complete vision during our face-to-face discussions. That’s why I thought a written memo would provide a clearer message.”
“Maybe that’s the downside of a verbal conversation. What about the upside?” I pressed.
There was a pause. Lasted forever, but silence often does the heavy lifting. “A verbal discussion, in a meeting, allows for immediate feedback on the project, understanding its purpose, its scope, its sequence. It may also surface questions that everyone has, but most are too timid to ask about. It might also create a sense of connection and trust in the team.”
“In what way could you combine both the clarity and consistency of a memo, a written description, with the improvisational value of a robust discussion?”
I was walking the floor. The drone of the saws was dampened by my ear protection. The conversation with Lloyd could barely be heard above the din.
“What’s with all the green shirts?” I yelled.
Lloyd looked around. “It’s green shirt day.”
I nodded as we ducked around a corner where the noise wasn’t so bad. I popped out my earplugs. “What’s green shirt day?”
Lloyd smiled. “It’s like the difference between a light bulb and a laser light. 100 watts from a light bulb will light up a room, but with all the light beams focused together, a 100 watts of laser light will drill a hole in the wall. Same thing works with my team.”
“In the heat of the moment,” I started, “you may not have had the words or the stomach for it, so you adjourned the meeting. But, this team will have to gather again. When?”
“Wednesday,” Ron replied. “We meet every Wednesday.”
“And, the team had an entire week to ruminate about the conflict last Wednesday. What do you think their mental state will be when you reconvene the group?”
“Well, I hope things will have settled down between the two managers, we can let bygones be bygones and get on with the agenda,” Ron said.
“Does your team have that short of a memory?” I asked.
Ron was quiet. “No, they will all be thinking about the altercation last week.”
“An altercation which has not been discussed since, at least that is what you hope.” My turn to pause. “But, you can bet there has been plenty of discussion outside of that conference room. They are not unspoken words, they are just unspoken in public, with the group. What are you pretending not to know?”
“I don’t know how the team will respond if we bring it back up. We might get a repeat performance and be right back where we were last week,” Ron grimaced.
“And, how will people’s stomachs be feeling if you bring it back up?” I asked.
“My stomach is in a knot right now, just thinking about it.”
“Then, you know you are dealing with a real issue.”
“Things didn’t get nasty,” Ron reported, “but, I think it’s because I put the brakes on the meeting, and simply adjourned it pretty quickly.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Two of our managers went after each other in the meeting. One complained about the other in front of the rest of the executive team. That immediately turned into defensiveness. I stopped the conversation from escalating and told everyone we would pick this up next Monday.”
“Timeouts are not necessarily bad, especially when the emotions speak so loudly that we cannot even hear the words. But, tell me what impact this had on the rest of the team? What did this exchange teach them about how things work around the company?”
“Well, for one thing, it clearly communicated that I will not tolerate rude or insulting behavior,” Ron explained.
“And, what else did it teach them?”
“That if the behavior persists, I will shut it down. I won’t tolerate it and I will take action.”
“And, what else?” I pressed.
“You have something in mind when you ask the same question three times,” Ron chuckled.
I nodded yes.
“Okay. The team learned that when things get rough in a management meeting, where emotions surface in the conversation, we will avoid the confrontation and kick the can down the road.”
“Now, we are getting somewhere,” I said.
From the Ask Tom mailbag –
Question:
Our company is growing. I used to make all the decisions, but I delegated some decisions to my newly formed executive team. I made it clear which decisions I would retain as President, and which decisions I expect them to make. The team knows the guardrails I set and my expectations of discussion that would occur in the team prior to their decisions. But, what I am seeing from them looks more like a land grab with hidden agendas. There is posturing, hints of passive-aggression, smiles and promises without delivery, ass-covering, ass-covering for each other. They are a team of very bright people, who make good decisions within their own departments, but just having difficulty working together.
Response:
First, this is all normal. Organizationally, this is moving from S-III (single serial system, or at least a focus on one or two core systems) to an organization at S-IV (multi-system integration). It’s easy to talk about the content at S-IV, looking at work hand-offs, outputs that become inputs to the next function, optimizing output capacity of each function as it sits next to its neighboring function. That’s the highbrow stuff above the surface. But, underneath the surface is “how” that stuff gets done. Underneath the content is the process.
If we skip the process stuff, because it takes time away from the analytic content stuff, we may never get to the analytic content stuff. Pay me now, or pay me later.
As a team forms, from a group with disconnected goals to a team with a common goal, there is a predictable process that must occur. We can spend a reasonable time up front dealing with the process, or we can spend an unreasonable time on the back end trying to manage dysfunctional behaviors.
That process always starts with trust. Much of the behavior you describe indicates the team has not learned (yet) how to trust each other. When each member of this new team was solely accountable for their function and their function alone, you gave them marching orders to be internally focused, efficient, internally profitable (to their own budgets). You now expect them to lift their eyes and see the other parts of the organization they have to integrate with. It requires a subtle shift from an internal focus to an external focus. Each has to keep their eye on the ball with a peripheral vision on and responding to neighboring systems.
There is risk to each individual on this new team. The risk is, working in this new way, their own department (function) may suffer for the benefit of the organization (total throughput). When managers are first put in this new situation, their first response is to armor up. There is a very real lack of trust and likely evidence to prove that lack of trust.
The first step to create trust among the team members is to create a context in which they allow themselves to trust. This is messy. In the sequence of forming-storming-norming-performing, this is the storming stage. Windstorms, gusts, occasional lightening. As the President, it is your job to convene the team and create a safe space for this to happen, and it cannot be skipped. On the other side of the storm, the team will learn, set its own guardrails, determine what is okay and what is not okay (norming) and then get on with the work.
“In evaluating the health of any team, I need to look for states of connection and disconnection?” I asked.
Pablo nodded. “When you see a team in disarray, you will find disconnection. The team doesn’t go there intentionally, it goes there without thinking. Facing any dilemma, the team wants to remove the discomfort. The four typical responses of any team under stress is to fight, flight, freeze or appease. When they do, the group panics and fractures.”
“And the leader?” I asked.
“The inexperienced leader follows. In a meeting, you have seen it. A project is behind schedule because someone dropped the ball. Everyone knows who dropped the ball, but no one wants to call it out. People get defensive, engage in blaming behavior or avoid the subject altogether. There is silence, eyes look down. Then someone looks at the leader, who becomes the target for all eyes around the table. The body language clearly communicates that it is the leader who must save the team.”
“You said inexperienced, how so?” I prompted.
“The leader is being seduced,” Pablo replied. “The seduction is subtle, for the team is looking to be saved by the leader, but needs the leader to be complicit in the saving. And, the leader cannot resist the opportunity to be the savior. It is the hero incarnate. I know it sounds religious, but the mythology is there to illustrate the principle.”
“So, how does the leader prevent the seduction?” I looked sideways at Pablo.
“The team is attempting to put the issue squarely on the shoulders of the leader. The leader must resist and put the issue back on the team.”
“But you already described that the team is in panic, a state of fracture and disconnection?” I said.
“The leader must simply outlast the panic. The issue that has the potential to blow the group apart, has the same potential to weld the group together. It’s all about connection and disconnection.”
Naomi had several sheets in front of her, spread out like a game of solitaire. “I don’t understand,” she remarked. “I thought I had this group nailed together.”
I dug deep into my bag of diagnostic questions and asked, “How so?”
“Our company has really been working hard this year on teamwork. We know that higher levels of cooperation and cross support make a big difference on our output. I thought I had this team dialed in, but sometimes cooperation seems to be the last thing on their mind.”
“What makes you think you had this team dialed in?” I asked.
Naomi was quick to respond, “Oh, we started out this year with a big retreat, back when we had budget for it. It was a great team building experience. We had a ropes course and we did group games. I mean, we didn’t sing Kumbaya, but, you know, it was a great weekend. Everyone came out of there feeling great.”
“And how long did you expect that to last?” I probed.
“Well, the consultant told us we needed to create some sort of team bonus, you know, where every one depends on the rest of the team to get a little something extra at the end. That way, if one makes it, they all make it. Shared fate, he called it.”
“I see. And how is that working out for you?”