The Root Cause and Cure for Most Team Conflict

Recent research into team dynamics by the Quantum Group has led to extraordinary revelations about the root of conflict--in particular, the morale-sapping and productivity-killing kind that develops within teams. You know what I mean. You assign a group to a project, and the next thing you know, World War III has broken out in your conference room. Or people start knocking on your door to complain about one another. Or you observe that one of two people are carrying the whole effort and running themselves into the ground, getting more resentful and burned out by the day, while the rest of their so-called team order pizza and surf the Internet. 

Teams in conflict cost millions of dollars a year in lost productivity and generate untold ill will among coworkers.

In the Quantum study, high conflict teams were asked to identify the source of their conflict. Nearly 100 percent of them said that the main problem was other people.

Two root causes emerged from these conversations. The first root cause of conflict that people reported was personality clashes: that some people are difficult to work with. They're jerks, basically. The second root cause of conflict that people identified was that some people on their teams--although perfectly nice--just had no idea what they were doing. For sake of simplicity, let's call them idiots. (You will already be familiar with jerks and idiots from your commute--jerks are the ones driving faster than you, and idiots are the ones driving slower than you. [Thank you George Carlin!])

Let me back up for a moment: in all fairness, it is completely human, and natural, that when we meet someone new, within minutes we try to label them. We want to know: Does this person like me? (Is this person like me?) Do we agree? When we find someone who agrees with us, we label them immediately. (We call those people geniuses.) And when we meet somebody who does not agree with us, very quickly we have to figure out whether the person is a jerk or just kind...flawed in some way. So, it's not at all strange taht we heard people attributing conflict to the personalities and incompetence of others.

There's only one problem with this theory that the roots of conflict are personal. It sets up a paradigm in which there is no real solution. If the root causes of conflict could be reduced to jerks and idiots, then there would have to be a way to nicen up jerks and smarten up idiots. I'm not sure if you have ever tried that, but my attempts have not been very successful. The Quantum research would uncover a truth more heartening than that. There is indeed a way to help teams resolve conflict.

AMBIGUITY IS THE SOURCE OF MOST CONFLICT

The researchers solicited more information from the groups in conflict, asking them to rate their level of clarity around three categories of work: their team's goals, roles and procedures. The teams in conflict had a high level of ambiguity in all three categories. The researchers concluded that the root cause of conflict is very rarely personality or incompetence. The breakthrough understanding that resulted from this research is that most conflict comes from ambiguity.

There are three basic types of ambiguity that can derail a team. First is ambiguity about goals--a lack of alignment of a lack of clarity that causes people to work against each other without realizing it. The second ambiguity is about roles. When people don't have a clear understanding of who is doing what, and where the boundaries between the roles are, it leads to conflict. Finally, there is ambiguity about procedures--a lack of agreement as to how to get the work done. When we operate in the state of nonalignment, it's no wonder we judge each other as jerks and idiots. That's why, when we work with other people, we really have to get clear on what we want to create, what each person's role is, and how we are going to proceed. Those questions drive much more professional conversations, prevent conflict, and move us toward our ultimate goal a lot more efficiently.

Ambiguity About Goals

Think about how your staff's lack of clarity on goals affect your department and organization. I guarantee you that some of your people have no idea what your main goals are or how their efforts can fit in and support those goals. You have to tell them. Never take for granted that everyone is on the same page. At times, you will have to negotiate with other teams or departments to coordinate your goals in a way that's respectful of everyone's time, expertise, and effort.

Ambiguity About Roles and Procedures

The same kinds of conflicts erupt around roles and procedures. We all make assumptions about what other people should be doing or what their roles encompass. But instead of of discussing our expectations with them, we usually save it for the agenda after the meeting, talking about them only after they have left the room. In addition to being unfair, it's unproductive. Many of us, in order to avoid having to talk to or confront each other, look to job descriptions. But these are not fixed---they're always changing, and people's interpretations vary. So making assumptions leads to conflict, whereas talking about roles ensures that everyone is in alignment. When roles and procedures are transparent, teams rum much more smoothly and efficiently.

Once leaders learn to facilitate clarity around goals, roles, and procedures, and people get used to initiating those conversations, they can't understand why they had conflict at all. So why don't people come to it intuitively. Why does conflict keep happening?

It takes a lot of courage to ignore our visceral emotions and instead have a professional clarifying conversation. It's easier in the moment to come up with a story to justify not taking the initiative: we just tell ourselves it wouldn't make any difference, because other people are unreasonable or incompetent. But the moment we make it personal, we are no longer dealing with reality. And when we start making decisions out of that kind of story, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I see someone as a jerk, I only collect evidence that proves my point. That story feels safer than stepping and providing real leadership: having to clarify, to reach out, to communicate, to empathize and respond. In the long run, though, it's much easier and more efficient to have that honest conversation than to live with the long-term conflict. When you finally figure that out, it is life changing.

We tend to think that clarity is a byproduct of a highly functioning team, but it's the reason why they function well. As a leader, you do not have to resolve conflict--just provide clarity about goals and roles. Clarity gives employees the freedom to operate within their roles and be as effective as possible. And it stops conflict in its tracks.

Communicate consciously. Make sure everything you are asking people to do ties back into a strategic plan that you have shared with them. Never assume people will fall into place. If you are a leader at the managing director or vice president level, you should be spending a significant of your time with people clarifying goals and roles. If you're doing your job correctly, you should not--brace yourself---have to get very involved in the procedures piece. People who are clear on their goals and roles should--and will---devise their own procedures for getting the job done.

Finally, the best things you can do do for building an effective team is teach you people one key question: "How can I help?" This question, and the spirit in which it is asked, are the heart and soul of a healthy group dynamics. In most workplaces, both the question and attitude are all too rare.

I suggest that you adopt the golden rule of teamwork for your group: 
Stop Judging and Start Helping.

To your greater success and harmony,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, trainer and Culture Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning we can help you create a high performance teams? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com    or    Mobile: 323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, branches, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Is Your Feedback Invisible to Your Direct Reports?

The reason for most feedback — both constructive and complimentary — is obvious. The conversations that your people managers need to be having are right there in the open. Managers clearly see the need for constructive feedback when a teammate has poor time management or communication skills for instance, negatively affecting those around them. On the flipside, they notice those who are deserving of complimentary feedback, positively contributing to their team by showing up engaged and on time.

With all of the talk about managers needing to give more feedback, it’s worth asking the question: Is the problem a lack of feedback regarding these things, or is it something else?

What if the problem isn’t that employees aren’t getting enough feedback but that they’re getting too much? Or, said another way, that they’re hearing a lot of words that are intended to be feedback but aren’t actually effective at inciting change?

Consider this: If you ask managers what the people on their team need to get better at — the time abusers, the non-responsive communicators, the passive aggressive commentators — don’t they recognize what’s happening already? Wouldn’t they also tell you that they’ve tried talking with those people about those things?

If you look more closely, you’ll see that usually people have gotten feedback, but they didn’t realize it was feedback they were getting.

If feedback doesn’t incite change, it’s just noise.

If you could be a fly on the wall and listen to managers give feedback, you’d hear some version of that seeming paradox — manager-speak intended as feedback but not being received that way.

Let’s imagine Molly Manager is talking with Eric Employee about missing an important deadline. You’d probably hear her say something like:

“Eric, do you have a minute? You seem to be running behind on some things. It’s really important that we stick to our deadlines, is there something I can do to help? Do you want me to sit in on this afternoon’s meeting?"

Does she think she gave Eric feedback? Almost certainly she does. Infinitely more importantly, did Eric get — or think he got — feedback? What if the answer is no?

Let’s unpack how that might be. Here are three ways that Molly unintentionally took all of the juice out of her feedback, leaving Eric with, at best, a vague notion that he needed to change something, and more likely, a conversation that he forgot 30 seconds later.

She forgot to include the specific problem. Molly diffused her feedback by mentioning a general issue (running behind) instead of a specific action Eric took or didn’t take that she could point to and convey the importance of.

General rather than specific feedback makes it much harder for your direct report to self-reflect.

She made a conclusion instead of asking a question. Perhaps Eric was pulled into two other projects by Molly’s fellow managers without her knowledge and he didn’t feel safe to push back with them.

What makes feedback good isn’t its ability to solve a specific problem and cause the behavior to never happen again. That almost never happens. What typically does happen is that the first round of feedback uncovers a deeper theme or pattern. Great feedback is a diagnostic tool, not a corrective one. It’s not a gotcha moment, it’s a curiosity one. 

By re-orienting your feedback this way, to think about the goal differently, you're far more likely to surface the types of deep issues that employees are understandably reluctant to talk about, but which can have enormous traction for your culture change project once out in the open.

She undermined the value of her feedback by taking the work on herself. Molly didn’t miss the deadline or forget to communicate the delay to her colleagues. But, like most of us, out of a desire to be liked or to avoid an awkward moment, that’s the message she unintentionally sent.

Disarming your feedback by making it a “we” thing or prematurely asking “how can I help?” is a subtle but powerful form of enabling, the exact opposite of what human beings need when they’re trying to move through a stuck place.

How should good feedback feel? What should it sound like? Every situation has its own unique characteristics, that’s the art of great people management, but here’s where it might start:

“Eric, I didn’t get the summary from you by the time we had agreed on. I know things come up, but it caused some frustration for me this morning as I had to scramble to fill in the gaps at the last minute. Will you spend a few minutes taking inventory of what happened and then we can reconnect later today to chat about it?"

Our teams — our direct reports, our peers and our bosses — need a colleague who is willing to do the right thing even when it hurts a bit or makes them uncomfortable. More importantly, it’s who we want to be for ourselves. Leadership happens far more often in the small moments than in the big ones.

If you want to deliver better feedback, focus less on who said what and more on who owns what as a result. Look for the subtle but outcome-shaping way that your direct report or collaegue is thinking they’ve given feedback but actually haven’t.

Reflect on this: What could you and other managers create if you spent half as much time giving feedback to your employees and colleagues, because when they did, it sparked genuine change the first time?

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Learn and Grow from Feedback, Especially If It's Constructive

 

Sooner or later, all of us receive constructive (AKA corrective) feedback, whether it's in the form of poor results, a talking-to from a supervisor, or a colleague who cares enough to be honest. It can be hard to take, even when you know you deserve it, or the bearer of the news is doing you a favor. So, what do you do (And what do help your team do?) when the voices of doubt are coming at you from the outside?

Here are five steps for gleaning the maximum benefit from constructive feedback. Corrective feedback does not have the power to stall your career, but an unwillingness or inability to absorb it and act on it does. Don't avoid the teachers in your workplace. Treat them as valued coaches who show you what you need to work on.

1. The first step is to welcome the news. This message has come to you as a sign of the next thing to work on to be successful. Even if you disagree at first, commit to the possibility that the messenger might be right. Respect and gratitude should be your default setting.

2. Check your ego and see what you can learn. The ability to receive feedback from the market, a customer, our coworkers, or any other source without defensiveness or reaction is key for reality-based employees and leaders. Reactions come from our egos; right action comes from our commitment to work toward a goal greater than ourselves. Always respond to feedback with openness and willing to change.

3. If you struggle to take the message, try this exercise one of my mentors gave me when I was very young and hated getting feedback. (It will stop you from doing what I used to do, which was to personalize it and get defensive and angry.) She gave me five options, and when I got feedback, I could only react by choosing one:

  a. Saying "Thank you" should be your default response.  You could add..."for caring enough about me to give me that feedback."
  b. "I've noticed that about myself too, and it's something I'm working on."
  c. "Will you help me improve?"
  d. "I am willing to see if I can find some truth in that."
  e. "I used to think that about myself, too, and here is what I did to change it."

When somebody says something to me that it is surprising, and I need to center myself, (d) is my favorite option. But any of these reactions will neutralize your defenses and give you a chance to go away and think things through befrore responding further. If you can admit to the fact that, as a human being, you are imperfect and you are still developing, it shows thoughtfulness and humility.

4. If you have the urge to ignore constructive feedback, or quit, first ask yourself if the universe is trying to tell you something! When faced with a situation that has the potential to be our greatest teacher, the first thing we usually think about is how we can extricate from it. That's a normal, human reaction. But if you stay, and wholeheartedly confront the message you have been given, you move from being a victim of you circumstances to a professional, who can account for the actions and thoughts that led to his results. You come away from this experience stronger than before. If you decide you're unwilling to learn and grow and address the situation, and you walk away, know that what you don't welcome and address head-on in your life will reappear again until you get the intended lesson. 

Are you willing to do whatever it takes to learn and grow from constructive feedback? If so, on to the fifth step.

5. Stay in your lane, and you will be on the fast track to recovery and improvement. Focus on yourself--your development, your assumptions, your choices, and the actions you can take to regain your credibility and improve. Resist the urge to point out how others were involved in the poor outcome. It will only slow your progress and compound negativity. Turn this into a positive experience by focusing only on what you can affect--your own thoughts and behavior.

The most important integrity gut check comes in the form of a simple question: "Can those around me identify my organization's goals from watching my behavior?" If not, change your behavior in support of the goals. I'd found it helpful to try every day to let go of the need for approval and appreciation, because when we operate from those motives our behavior deteriorates quickly. If instead of focusing on what we can get, we focus on what we can give, we will always be happier and more energetic. 

When we act in the best interests of the organization and enjoy the results of our effort, we lose the appetite for approval. We are free to act without fear, sugarcoating or tiptoeing around others, resulting in higher productivity, more respect, and less stress all around. That is the mark of a true professional.

Click here to read a related post: Constructive Criticism: Five Ways to Get Your Point Heard, Every Single Time

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Lack of Feedback is the Main Cause of Most Employee Issues

Employees who have bad attitudes or whose skills and abilities are irrelevant to your organization today were likely valuable employees once. Their irrelevance and resistance were, in part created by leaders who were not relentless and consistent in giving feedback. To be clear: Lack of feedback is the main cause of all employee issues. Leaders who get lazy about giving development and performance feedback create resistant employees of many stripes. 

The three most common types:

1. Tenured employees whose skills are not current. This problem is created by leaders who do not challenge their employees to grow and develop by raising the bar for performance each year and offering new assignments. When job descriptions and responsibilities do not evolve over time, people stagnate and become bitter and unproductive.

The top 20 percent of employees will seek out such opportunities and hold themselves to a high standard of performance, but you can't rely on the other 80 percent to do that. If you do not consider coaching part of your job description, you may end up with an office, plant or field full of mediocre people who are no longer fully qualified to do their jobs but are too senior and/or too well behaved to fire.

2. Employees at the of their pay scale who no longer deliver top value.

This happens when leaders over-reward and under-coach employees over the course of their careers. Rewards start to seem like entitlements, and employees become convinced that they are far more valuable to your organization than they are. They respond to coaching and criticism with resentment.

Every time you see someone underperforming and you ignore it, you set a new standard. If you are someone's manager, the first time the person underpeforms, it is her performance issue, but if you fail to confront it, and it's still a problem months are years later, it has become your performance issue. If you are the sort of leader who loves to give feedback in the form of encouragement and rewards but hates to coach and provide constructive feedback, beware of the long-term consequences: an office that runs on pure ego, full of people who can't imagine what you would do without them.

3. Righteous top performers. These are otherwise great employees whose contribution is compromised by their righteousness and judgment of others. Too many leaders allow--even encourage--their top performers to criticize other team members. They collude with these employees, granting them an inappropriate view into others' performance and their leadership decisions.

You are at particular risk of nuturing this brand of resistance if you have been promoted to a leadership position over your peers at work. Perhaps you feel a bit guilty--and they feel a bit jealous--about your new role. It will be tempting to show that you are still one of the gang by being indiscreet with them--resist! Working with the willing is not about forming a clique with your favorites and excluding others from the in-crowd.

The only way to avoid perpetuating these toxic dynamics is to give frequent, honest performance and development feedback. Be consistent, be kind, and get it done. Don't wait for yearly or biannual review; meet with your people one-on-one on a regular basis and keep detailed notes about their progress. It is vital that you get very clear about the mindsets and actions that will generate results for your organization. You will be contributing to a legacy of relevant, ready, and willing employees.

Check our related posts 1)  How To Create A Feedback Culture

2) Is Your Feedback Invisible to Your Direct Reports?

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership training and coaching can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

6 Words For Stopping Blame And Increasing Accountability

Sometimes when people mess up at work, they dodge accountability and shift the responsibility to someone else. This is called blame.

Far too many of us have experienced an employee missing a deadline and trying to throw a colleague under the bus for their mistake, like:

“I couldn’t get this report done on time because of that bozo Pat in accounting. Pat’s the one that never gives me the data on time, and that’s the reason my report was late. How can I be expected to get the report done on time when Pat is always holding up my data?”

Everyone is going to mess up at some point, but blaming others for mistakes is not a healthy or responsible coping mechanism.

One reason that blame is so unhealthy is that it’s aggressive and attacking. It’s one thing to make an excuse like “the internet crashed,” which points fingers at an inanimate object, but it’s quite another to cast aspersions about another person (or group of people). Those ‘other people’ will learn of the blame, hurt feelings will abound, the blame may be reciprocated, and on it goes. In other words, blame is highly contagious.

So when employees blame each other, it’s up to leaders to turn that blame into accountability. How? By using 6 simple words: “Let’s discuss what we CAN control.” Let me explain…

When someone blames, they’re basically trying to shift attention away from themselves. They’re saying ‘don’t look at me, look at that other person.’ And they’re doing it because they don’t want you to pin them down for whatever mistake they made. It’s similar to a magician distracting the audience while they’re pulling off the real trick somewhere else.

Blamers are typically quite good at derailing conversations and sending them in another direction. Let’s imagine your employee Bob is late with a report. You call Bob into your office and have this brief dialogue:

• Supervisor: "Bob, the report I needed from you is past deadline."
• Bob: "Well, I can't possibly control that because Pat in Accounting didn't give me the numbers I needed to finish the report."

If Bob says their line with enough intensity, many supervisors will get sucked into a conversation about Pat and how Pat didn’t get the numbers, or the Accounting Department, or whatever. And this allows Bob to sidestep any real accountability. 

Bob may escape a conversation about why they didn’t inform the boss of this problem sooner, or why they didn’t work more effectively with Pat, or why they didn’t submit the other parts of the report, etc. And all of those topics are more actionable than griping about Pat and the Accounting Department.

So instead, let’s redo that conversation using the 6 words I mentioned above: “Let’s discuss what we CAN control.”

• Supervisor: "Bob, the report I needed from you is past deadline."
• Bob: "Well I can't possibly control that because Pat in Accounting didn't give me the numbers I needed to finish the report."
• Supervisor: "OK, I hear that, but let's not talk about Pat right now. Let’s discuss what we CAN control.
• Bob: "I told you, I don’t control anything. It's Pat's fault, not mine."
• Supervisor: "Listen, let's not talk about Pat. Let’s discuss what we CAN control. Let's not talk about anybody else. Let's not talk about anything outside of our control. And right now, there are things we control. We control our reactions, we control certain parts of the reports, etc."

In this scenario, you’re directing (and redirecting) the conversation back to the central issue: what you CAN control. This approach doesn’t allow the employee to dodge accountability, but neither is it a vicious reprimand. It’s a simple statement that says ‘we’re not changing topics, we’re not discussing other people, we’re only talking about what we CAN control.’

By not allowing the conversation to veer off track into an emotional blame game, the employee will be forced to start taking ownership. It moves the conversation away from fixing blame and onto fixing the issue.

Talking about issues we don’t control is, by definition, an exercise in futility. If we don’t control something, what’s the point of spending the next 30 minutes griping about it? We may as well gripe about the weather; it’s a waste of time and has absolutely no bearing on the weather.

But when we keep redirecting the conversation back to issues we actually DO control, we teach our employees that there is something controllable in every situation. And that, in turn, improves their accountability.

To your greater success,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership training and coaching can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Personal Accountability in the Pursuit of Happiness

There is a competency that we have disregarded in the workplace for some time, and that is personal accountability. Personal accountability has great benefits for organizations, but is has an equal, if not greater value on the individual who practices it. (Pay attention because I'm about to give you one of the best reasons of all to work on it.)

Those who study positive psychology used to think that happy people were the ones who were not under stress. They have since discovered that happiness is not correlated with a lack of stress or perfect environment. (IF it were, how many people could really describe themselves as happy?) It is correlated to the amount of accountability you accept in your life. 

That's right: the more responsibility you take for your results, the happier you will be. Which is really great news. Because seizing responsibility is a choice: to find peace and be happy and productive no matter what your circumstances. It has to come from the inside. No one can give it to you, but no one can take it from you, either.

HAPPINESS IS NOT CORRELATED TO PERFECT CIRCUMSTANCES OR A LACK OF STRESS IN YOUR LIFE, BUT TO The AMOUNT OF PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY YOU ACCEPT.

If you are feeling deflated at the end of the your day--or even sometimes at the beginning--I guarantee you that the stories your telling yourself are like holes in your tires letting all the air out. 

You will be happy and will have peace of mind to the exact degree that you accept responsibility for your results. Those who have learned this and other tools of reality-based living leave the office energized because they have had an impact and they have dealt with reality the entire day, to the best of their abilities.

At this point, you might be wondering what the appeal of arguing with reality and learned helplessness could possibly be. If this mindset is the root of all unhappiness, reduces productivity, increases drama, and poisons organizations, why does it persist? For one simple reason: It feels safer and easier to blame than to act. As long as we can blame something outside ourselves for our problems, we don't have to take responsibility for our actions. Often this is not conscious thought. It manifests itself as frustration and poor results.

The best news of all this is that through awareness comes change. 

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how leadership coaching and training can benefit your organization? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

When an Employee Needs To Get Better at Problem Solving

Managers have asked me how to deal with employees who are "not good at problem solving." That always makes me wonder:  "How many problems come up that truly haven't been solved before? Why don't your direct reports have more ready-made solutions to use--at least for the problems that recur on a regular basis--so they don't have to problem solve on the fly?"

Why would you want employees on the front line or even supervisors to make important decisions on the basis of their own judgment if they could instead rely on accumulated experience of the organization?

Show me any employee who is making lots of bad decisions, and I'll show you someone who needs to be making a lot fewer decisions, at least for a while. And most of those decisions have already been made. Most "mistakes" in problem solving are decisions that were never up to that employee in the first place. Instead of trying to "make a decision," that employee should have just implemented the ready-made solution--a decision that was already made a long time ago.

Ready-made solutions are best practices that have been captured, turned into standard operating procedures, and deployed throughout the organization to employee for use as job aides. The most common job aid is a simple checklist. Imagine how much better most employees would solve the regularly recurring problems if you were to prepare them in advance:

If A happend, you do B
If C happens, you do D
If E happens, you do F

Many organiztions are able to provide not just step-by-step checklists, but automated menu-driven systems. These systems, like checklists, are frequently used in situations where errors could be catastrophic. If you have ever been in a hospital, you have seen these tools in action. Health care professionals are among the most highly educated, highly trained people in the workforce. Yet, rather than just count on their education and training, they are constantly using checlists and menu-driven systems as job aids to make sure they do not deviate from best practices.

As a leader, the question you need to ask yourself is this: What kind of job aids do you have at your disposal to help your employees master best practices for dealing with recurring problems, so they don't have to "problem-solve" anew each time?

If you do already have such job aids at your disposal, them make sure everybody on your team is using them. Go on a campaign. Spread the tools and spread the word. Use them as a centerpiece of your regular one-on-one dialouge with each person until they know the checklists backward and forward and use them without fail.

If you do not already have good job aids at your disposal, then you need to start working with your direct reports to create some!

If several people on your team are doing the same work and facing the same problems, pull them together as a team. Otherwise, take it one person at a time and brainstorm:

• Make a list of every recurring problem you face.
• Take each problem one by one, ask:

        - Is there an established policy or procedure for this problem?
        - What resources are available?
        - How much discretion will the individual have to improvise? 
           What is the best solution here?

• Spell out the best practice for each problem, step by step.
• Make that spelled-out best practice a standard operating procedure.
• Turn those standard operating procedures into simple job aids, like checklists or automated menu-driven systems.
• Make sure everyone starts using them.

Once you have created these job aids, you will get an enduring return on the investment of creating them. You can use them for training and retraining and, of course, in your regular one-on-one coaching. "Remember, if A happens, you do B. When was the last time A happened? Did you do B? What did you do? If A happens today, then what do you do? Yes, B! Right. OK. Now let's talk about C."

Every step of the way, as you use these job aids to coach your employees, pay close attention. Do the ready-made solutions work? Can they be improved? Are there permutations and nuances that have come up that the checklist does not anticipate? Job aids should be dynamic living tools that you can revive and improve over time.

Sometimes managers ask me, "Yes, but doesn't this approach actually end-run teaching problem solving? If they never have to puzzle through a problem, how do employees learn to solve problems on their own?"

For starters, they will learn and practice the best step-by-steps solutions to as many recurring problems as you can possibly think up in advance. Over time, together, you and they will add more and more recurring problems--and solutions--that that list. Employees who study those best practices and use those job aids will develop a steadily growing repertoire of ready-made solutions. There will be a lot of problems they can solve very well.

"But wait," a manager might protest. "What happens when the employee runs across a problem that was not specifically anticipated? If they are taught to implement ready-made step-by-step solutions, like robots, they won't know how to think for themselves. Won't they freeze up in the face of an unanticipated problem."

The answer is no. It turns out that by learning and practicing ready-made step-by-step solutions, employees get better not only at solving the specific problems anticipated but also a solving unanticipated problems. By teaching employees to implement specific step-by-step solutions to recurring problems, you are teaching them what good problem solving looks like--like so many case studies.

This is the point at which some managers will say, "I'm sorry, you never really learn unless you face some big problems and make some of your own mistakes. I like to let people learn from their own mistakes." Why not help them avoid making unnecessary mistakes? It is simply nonsense that a good way to learn problem solving is to stumble through problems alone, unguided, trying out solution based on relatively inexperienced guesses. Why would experience having unsuccessful encounters with problems be a good way to learn problem solving? Experience in problem solving successfully is what comes from learning and practicing ready-made solution. Employees get into the habit of solving problems well.

In your one-one-ones, when you talk about those ready-made solutions, you have the opportunity to help your diret reports begin to understand and appreciate the common denominators adn underlying principles. Talk through with them how they might draw on those common denominators and underlying principles when facing an unanticipated problem. Talk through how they might draw on elements of ready-made solutions, even mixing and matching to come up with solutions to an unanticipated problem. Talk about how they might extrapolate from ready-made solutions, should the need arise to improvise.

With this approach, you can radically improve your team's--or any individual employee's--record on basic problem solving. You will have fewer problems because anticipated problems with ready-made solutions are not really problems anymore. You will have many more problems that are solved quickly and easily. You will have fewer problems that are mishandled and fewer problems that hide below the surface and fester and grow unbeknownst to anyone.

On top of that, you will have given your direct reports a strong foundation in the fundamentals of problem solving. On that foundation, they can build more advanced problem-solving skills.

WHAT ABOUT MORE ADVANCED PROBLEM SOLVING?

"OK, said one director in an engineering firm. "But does this approach actually make employees smarter?"

I don't know whether you can make anybody any smarter. But I am pretty sure you can teach employees to steadily improve their judgment.

You do not want your employees improvising most of the time. You want them following established procedures. Best practices whenever possible. But it's just not possible to have procedures for everything. You can try very hard to anticipate every situation and help employees prepare. But you can't anticipate every possible situation. There are times when they just have to use good judgment.

HOW TO YOU HELP AN EMPLOYEE DEVELOP "GOOD JUDGMENT"?

Good judgment is the ability to see the connection between causes and their effects. A good judgment allows one to project likely outcomes--to accurately predict the consequences of specific decisions and actions. And good judgment allows one to learn from the past; to work backward from effects to assess likely causes, to figure out what decisions and actions led to the current situation.

If you are really trying to help an employee improve her judgment, then start spending time in your one-on-ones discussing with her waht she is doing to purposefully and systematically draw lessons from her experience at work. One day at a time, in your one-on-ones, spend time talking about her day-to-day actions:

+ Does she think about cause and effect?
+ Does she stop and reflect before making decisions and taking actions?
+ Does she project likely outcomes in advance?
+ Does she look at each decision and action as a set of choices, each with identifiable consequences.

Have you ever played chess? The key to success is any game of strategy is thinking ahead. Before making a move, you play out on your head likely outcomes, often over a long sequence of moves and countermoves. If I do A, the other player would probably respond with B. Then I would do C, and he would probably respond with D. Then I would do E, and he would probably respond with F. This what strategic planners call a decision or action tree, because each decision or action is the beginning of a branch of responses and counter-responses. In fact, each decision or action creates a series of possible counter-responses.

When you are workinbg with an employee to help him improve his judgment, start talkinbg in your one-on-ones about decision or action trees. Teach him to think ahead and play out the likely sequence of moves and countermoves before making move. Talk it through, play it outloud together: "If you take this decision or action, who is likely to respond, how, when, where and why? What set of options will this create? What set of options will this cut off? How will it play out if you make this other decision or action instead?"

Another way to junp-start an employee's growth in problem solving is to teach him to turn his own worlplace experiences into case studies from which to learn on an ongoing basis. This is like a case study method that is used by most business schools. Who were the key players? What were their interests and objectives? What happened? How did it happen? Where? When? What were the outcomes? Students are then taught to apply the methods of critical thinking to the facts of the case. They are taught to suspend judgment, question assumptions, uncover facts, and then rigorously analyze the decisions and actions taken by different key players in the case study. The pedagogy is simple: look at the outcomes, and trace them back to see the chains of cause and effect. You can teach employees to apply the case study method to their own experience:

What actually happened?

WHEN   WHO     WHAT    WHERE   HOW   WHY

What decisions were made? Who made them? Why? What was the outcome?

DECISIONS    WHO     WHY     OUTCOME

What actions were taken? Who made them? Why? What was the outcome?

ACTIONS     WHO    WHY   OUTCOME

What were the leading alternative decisions that were not made? What different outcomes might have occured?

ALTERNATIVE DECISIONS POSSIBLE DIFFERENT OUTCOMES

What were the leading alternative actions that were not taken? What different outcomes might have occured?

ALTERNATIVE ACTIONS POSSIBLE DIFFERENT OUTCOMES

Maybe the most important thing you can do to jump-start your employee's development of advanced problem-solving skills is to teach them to scrutinize their own experiences, both while they are actually happening and afterward. Teach them to stop and reflect, after making decisions and taking actions, as well as when considering outcomes and consquences.

Use you one-on-ones to teach your employees to subject their own decisions and actions to much greater scrutiny every step of the way. What were the specific causes and of each outcome of consequence? Help them analyze their own decisions and actions on a ongoing basis.

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Optimize Your To-Do List with this One Simple Thing

You probably fall into one of two camps: you make to-do lists (Or a Prioritized Do List if you use our "A-B-C Prioritization Process"), or you don’t. If you are a to-do list person, what I am going to share with you today will instantly make your list more helpful and enable you to get more done. If you aren’t a to-do list person, read on, because this advice may change your mind.

First off, we need to understand a key problem with most people’s to-do lists.

They are too big or broad. Most people will put items on their lists that look more like projects. Have you ever looked at an item on your to-do list and been immediately overwhelmed? If the item on the list is too big, it will be hard to accomplish it today, especially with all of the rest of the items also on the list.

They are stream of consciousness.  While a to-do list can be a memory aid; a repository for actions that we can’t forget, that creates problems of its own. Yes, we need a way to remember what we need to accomplish, but if that is all it is, it is no wonder it becomes unmanageable.

They aren’t clear enough. If you are using the list to guide your activities during the day, you should be able to read them and know what needs to occur. If you have ever looked at an item on your list then had to think through what it meant, or what you had to accomplish, you have experienced this problem.

The Solution

To make your to-do list as helpful as possible, the items on the list must be action focused. After all it is called a “to-do” list. When you turn every item on your list into an action with a clear outcome, you will be more focused and better able to get it done. How do you do that? First, let’s look at items on a typical list:

+ Budget

+ Blog article 

+ Project plan

These may trigger our memory, but they aren’t very actionable or clear, are they? Instead, let’s write them as outcomes to be achieved. Specifically, write them in a noun verb, past tense format. Here are some examples:

+ Budget reviewed

+ Blog article written

+ Project plan updated

This makes them all bite-sized, clear, and actionable. It also makes it completely clear when you can get the satisfaction of crossing the item off your list.

While I don’t use this format as religiously as I could, I know this for sure – when I do, I am more productive and get better results. Since I know it works and don’t always do it, a couple of other lessons for you when it is new to you.

The format may feel strange. It will take awhile to get used to it. Like any new habit, it will take a while. Part of it is habit, and part of it is simply getting clearer on what you actually need to do. It is worth the effort.

Does the format matter? You may wonder can you write “Update project plan” instead of “Project plan updated.” Of course you can (and that is far better than “Project A”). However, when we write it as noun verb past tense, we are helping our brain get closure by stating it as if it is already achieved.

Give this approach a try (And share it with your team), and I bet you'll see improvement in your and your team's productivity almost immediately. As a side benefit, you will get the smile and the endorphin release that comes with crossing more items off your to-do list every day.

Kaizen!

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant
SMART DEVELOPMENT

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.