ISSUE 4

IN THIS ISSUE:

Team Work

In our work we assist many clients who are seriously committed to teamwork, understanding that in today’s environment it’s the collective entrepreneurship and leadership rather than any individual’s contribution that makes the difference. But we have found that most organisations do not have a practical model that they can use to develop superior performance in teams. We have built a workshop around Dennis Kinlaw’s model for superior work teams that helps plug this gap and builds on the Emotional Intelligence Frameworks we have previously discussed.

In his research, Kinlaw found that superior work teams produce results that are quantitatively and qualitatively different from other work units. These results include:

• Maximum use of a team’s human resources;
• Superior outputs against the odds; and
• Continuous improvement.

Second, superior work teams use distinctive, day-to-day informal processes like

• Communicating and contacting;
• Responding and adapting;
• Influencing and improving; and
• Appreciating and celebrating.

Third, superior work team members have persistent positive feelings of:

• Inclusion
• Commitment
• Loyalty
• Pride, and
• Trust.

None of this will come as much of a surprise. What is surprising is the results organisations get when they focus on recruiting and developing emotional intelligence in their organisations, some of which we outlined in Issue 2 and this issue of PeopleFit news. And these results occur across industries!

We recently had the privilege of facilitating negotiations between the NZ Nurses Organisation and the 21 District Health Boards in New Zealand to achieve a settlement of their collective employment agreement. This agreement covers 20,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants across New Zealand. Following this piece of work we facilitated a Heath Sector Relationship Agreement between the Ministry of Health, the CTU and the Health Sector Unions and the DHBs.

The learning that we facilitated in for these organisations goes across industry and is largely irrespective of the size of business whether it is public or private sector. Key points emerged as follows:

There is a world of difference between real dialogue and debate. With debate, so easy to get into for people with strong mental agility and ideology, the objective is to win the argument. To illustrate, if you take a position on an issue which is significantly different to mine, I fundamentally believe your position is wrong. I can’t think anything else if I believe in my own position. With dialogue, our interest is in sharing a greater collective understanding of the issues we face together. We recognise we will come at issues from different perspectives but are genuinely willing to surface and explore the validity of our long held assumptions. To do this we have to balance advocacy with inquiry. We reject verbal ping-pong, the absence of inquiry and the absence of exploring options so characteristic of debate. With debate we often end up with a result where one’s view is imposed on another, or at best, compromise. In a sense win-lose or lose-lose. With dialogue, we are much more willing to face issues of joint interest and arrive at solutions that meet both our needs. We get to a point where we have a shared understanding of the complexities and some acknowledgment of the areas where there is no certainty. It is from this state we can create win-win solutions. In debate we are position focused. In dialogue we are relationship focused, recognising that this focus delivers the most effective and enduring solutions.

Defensive routines are entrenched habits we use to protect ourselves from threat or embarrassment. They don’t exist out of our desire to preserve social relations as much as they do out of the fear of exposing the thinking that lies behind our views! We don’t want people to find errors in our thinking – this starts early in life at school with "the trauma" of not having the right answer and being publicly exposed. Agyris says defensive routines are so common place they mostly go unnoticed. See how many of these defensive routines work in your organization.

Defensive Routines

1. "That’s an interesting idea" as a response from a person who has no intention of taking the idea seriously,

2. Confronting someone to squash an idea or avoid having to consider it,

3. Sheltering people from criticism (under the guise of being supportive) but in reality the person providing the shelter changes the subject to avoid discussing a difficult issue,

4. The forceful expression of an idea about something that matters e.g. a leader’s forceful commitment to a vision can also be a defensive strategy because it shuts out public questioning or dialogue. A CEO might think (s)he is provoking others into expressing thoughts but an overbearing manner prevents them from doing so, protecting his/her own views from challenge and therefore threat or embarrassment.

Defensive routines are supported and remain hidden by the way we use mental models about our roles. For example if a person "must know what is going on" (s)he will feel the need to be confident in expressing that belief to prevent someone later thinking they are incompetent. Internalising this model leads to difficulties. The first is that the person convinces themselves they know the answers to the most important questions. But to protect this belief in their self-efficacy, it becomes important to close off alternative views. In doing so, they make themselves "un-influencable". To remain confident they must remain rigid – some limited debate and what may be characterised as "consultation" may be permitted, but no real dialogue.

The variation to this is the person who believes they are expected to know what is causing problems but deep down recognises that there is genuine uncertainty. The bind they are in is one where they feel the need to maintain a facade of confidence whilst obscuring ignorance. Either way, people with a mental model of needing to show they are in control and have the answers, become skilful at defensive routines and closing off real dialogue. If they are in positions of authority, they genuinely don’t want to let others down – they want to repay the confidence placed in them. In turn, this leads to avoiding discussing uncertainty and uneasiness about meeting expectations.

The more effective the defensive routine, the more effective the cover up of underlying problems and the greater the likelihood the problems will get worse. Consequently, there is a paradox. That when defensive routines work to prevent immediate pain they prevent us from learning how to reduce what causes the pain in the first place. As can be imagined, there are a myriad of downstream consequences following successful implementation of defensive routines and the absence of dialogue in organisations and their decision making processes.

Happily, the NZ Nurses Organisation and DHBNZ teams we assisted recognised they needed some help and they had enough collective self-awareness and relationship management skills to do something about it. As at the date of our newsletter going to press, their agreement is one of the few that has been settled without industrial action or the threat of such action.

Primal Leadership authors Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee identify four emotional intelligence "domains" which bridge 18 leadership "competencies," the majority of which depend upon skills in listening to one's self and to others.

Domain 1, Self Awareness includes the competencies of emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence.

Domain 2, Self-Management includes the competencies of emotional self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement, initiative, and optimism.

Mastery of domains one and two, which the authors describe as personal competence, depends heavily upon listening to one's self, becoming aware of one's emotional state, values, standards, and impact upon others. Self-examination and gathering feedback about oneself through coaching and 360 reviews assist with the development of personal competence.

Domain 3, Social Awareness includes empathy, organisational awareness, and service.

Domain 4, Relationship Management includes inspirational leadership, influence, developing others, being a catalyst for change, conflict management, and teamwork/collaboration.

Mastery of domains three and four, which the authors describe as social competence, flows from empathic listening and resonating to others' thinking to develop one's thoughts and actions, which enables a leader to provide both unified and individual senses of direction for his or her group. Empathic listening is a skill that requires a basic level of understanding along with regular practice.

Finally, the authors set forth a five-step process for learning better leadership skills. These steps also focus primarily on listening skills, once again requiring both listening to oneself and to others (including through self-awareness, empathic listening, 360 feedback, and coaching).

Step one is identifying our ideal self, which is to say, uncovering and listening to our own core values and beliefs to draw a picture of the person we aspire to be. What's important to me? What am I passionate about? What does my "gut" say to me?

Step two is identifying the real self, which is to say, discovering how we appear to others, regardless of how we see ourselves. (For the uninitiated: people who have tried this sometimes find the two views startlingly different.) This is done by listening to our thoughts and beliefs (self awareness) and others (empathy) to gauge the effect we have as well as through coaching and 360 feedback from peers, subordinates, supervisors, customers, and others.

Comparing our ideal self to our real self is a powerful tool because it helps identify strengths (where one is as capable in areas as one expected to be) and gaps (where one isn't as effective as one desires to be). For example, a manager might think that she is strong in both listening and in follow-through, while the people the manager works with might find her strong in listening but desire improvement in her follow-through.

Step three is to make a plan to build on strengths and reduce gaps. We obviously needn't be strong in every area. Realistically, no one is but we can choose to improve in areas that are important to ourselves and others.

Step four is to experiment deliberately with and practice new skills to bring about change according to steps one to three in the plan.

Step five which the authors note should take place concurrently with steps one through four--is to develop trusting, encouraging relationships that provide support during the learning process.

In summary, the theories set forth in Primal Leadership suggest that advanced listening techniques are essential to learning to become, and being, an effective leader.

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee
Primal Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 2002)