Month: August 2020

What’s Reasonable for a Leader to Expect Around Conflict? 

 THE CONFLICT CHALLENGE: I was coaching an executive recently who moved from a high conflict organization to one where most leaders avoided conflict. Both drove him equally batty. I had to agree that neither organization presented a skillful approach. If you treat every situation as one where you must draw out your knives, or the opposite, if you avoid issues that do need to be addressed, you will not lead your people to productive conflict management. Life is full of conflicts – large and small – and a reasonable approach is to make sure that you and your staff prepare for conflict as you would any other organizational challenge.

WHAT IS CONFLICT? I like to define conflict as “a negotiation that we don’t know we’re having.” Many people have good negotiation skills and most organizations would agree that leaders need to be able to negotiate well, but for some reason, assume that conflict is a different animal. If you have a difference with a group or individual that has an impact on you or your team’s productivity, that’s a conflict. Unfortunately, we tend to assume that differences that lead to conflicts are a sign of dysfunction, rather than assuming that a skillful approach should be a part of a leader’s essential toolkit.

What Should You Do?

PREPARE FOR CONFLICT: Inspire your team to take a matter-of-fact approach to conflict management, honing your resolution and negotiation skills before you need them.

FOLLOW YOUR VALUES: It’s easy to lose your way in the heat of battle. In order to avoid this fate, pause the action and come back to your values as leaders, teams and organizations. Make sure that these values are created, discussed and inculcated, not just slogans you paste on the walls and forget about. If you can remember why you are fighting and what would be a solution consistent with your values, making your way though the thickets of conflicts will be easier.

ASSUME LEADERSHIP DURING CONFLICT: Don’t assume that other leaders or organizations know what they are doing during conflict. Don’t wait for someone else to suggest a skillful approach to resolution, instead take the lead in a respectful and skillful way to help create a framework and process to resolve the dispute.

For more suggestions about skillful conflict resolution, read:

Three Steps to Resolve Conflict Quickly!

Want to Resolve a Conflict Fast? Here is How to Settle a Dispute Like Herb Kelleher

Do You Know What Conflict Style You Are? Knowing the Answer Can Make or Break Creativity, Productivity and Innovation

What Do You Think?

What expectations do you have around conflict? Call or write: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

Should You Test? The Dangers of Job Testing

THE HISTORY OF JOB TESTING: For a brilliant and entertaining peek into the history of various kinds of intelligence testing, listing to the Radiolab podcast, “Radiolab Presents: G“.

The podcast chronicles the controversial history of general intelligence – especially IQ – testing, and the racial and cultural biases of those tests. One of the more disturbing pieces of intelligence test history, is the way that the eugenics movement helped create such tests, and that the Nazis were so taken with the American tests that they modeled some of their exclusionary policies after them, as a part of their appalling efforts to create a more perfect race.

LEGAL JOB TESTING PROBLEMS: While most organizations today don’t use general IQ tests as a part of their interview process, many still use other kinds of intelligence and personality tests – most of which have not been validated. From a legal point of view, it is discriminatory to use tests unless you can show they have a real relationship to resulting job performance. In my experience, many organizations have not thought through the consequences of using some tests.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES: Most modern cognition researchers have agreed with the concept of multiple intelligences. Someone may, for example, have an innate ability to solve math problems yet need an incredible amount of training and coaching to give an effective speech in front of a live audience. Conversely, I tend toward high verbal intelligence, yet flounder when I need spatial intelligence. Visualizing what a house would look like from a blueprint, for example, or remembering directions to some place I have been many times before, remain challenging tasks for me. I am eternally grateful to the technology wizards for creating MapQuest and other directional tools so that I don’t spend all my time driving in circles!

And now we have emotional intelligence, social intelligence and even relational intelligence. Many experts agree that these kinds of strengths may predict someone’s success much more accurately than sheer IQ.

What Should You Do?

MAKE SURE THAT ANY TESTS YOU USE ARE VALIDATED AND JOB RELATED: If you require any kind of tests as a part of the interview, promotion or other job advancement processes, make sure that you can prove or “validate” that such skills or abilities lead to job success.

QUESTION BIASES AND PREJUDICES: I once consulted with an oil company, for example, who was integrating women into the group of workers who drove their fuel tanker trucks. Previously, the positions had all been held by men. Many of the men grumbled that the organization was “lowering” its standards by accepting women, especially because the organization was considering a change in the requirement that job applicants be able to lift a certain number of pounds. The reason they wanted to know that applicants would be able to lift 75 pounds, the company argued, was that they wanted assurance that employees would be able to lift the heavy hoses used to fill the tanks on the trucks. Yet when someone bothered to weigh the hoses, none of them weighed more than forty pounds. Many children that the women had been hauling around for years weighed more than that.

CONSIDER SCENARIOS OR BEHAVIOR-BASED INTERVIEWS INSTEAD: Tech companies, some airlines and others now use real life scenarios to test how applicants would handle challenges on the job.

“Tell me about a time when”, for example, “you handled an angry customer. What did you do?”

Some tech companies who need to hire developers or coders give them real life problems they are trying to solve to see how applicants rise to the challenge. These kinds of job or promotion assessments are more likely to survive legal challenges, as well as leading to more successful hires.

For other suggestions about how to hire more successfully, read:

Do You Know What Hiring Technique Really Works? 

Do You Know Why You Should Hire Optimists? What the Research Shows

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com

How to Lead Like John Lewis

The Challenge:  If you were lucky enough to see or hear any of John Lewis’ services last week, it was hard not to be moved by the eulogies for the iconic civil rights leader and congressman. Born to sharecropper parents in Floyd, Alabama, the third of ten children, Lewis went on to earn bachelor’s degrees from the Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, as well as joining Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement as one of the “Big Six” leaders who organized the march on Washington.

He held various political offices, culminating in serving seventeen terms in Congress, earning over 50 honorary degrees and many other honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Engaging in “Good Trouble, Necessary Trouble”: During numerous civil rights marches in the 60s, Lewis risked his life by suffering beatings from police, state troopers and angry mobs, as well as arrests and incarceration, the most famous of which occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He never hesitated to live his values, no matter the cost. Famously, he advocated a life of engaging in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” Lewis described his work as a spiritual practice, calling it “love in action.”

Famous Perseverance: While others in the movement would bring him challenges at the end of a trying day — perhaps even suggesting that they should abandon their plans — Lewis would listen attentively and then respond: “Tomorrow we march.” No matter what the problem, he never gave up or gave in. In Congress, he exhibited similar strengths, pressing endlessly for causes he believed in, including civil rights, gun control and other issues of peace and justice — even if the results were discouraging. Just before his death, he published an Op-Ed in the New York Times affirming that “we can redeem the soul of our nation.”

Civility and Respect: In Congress — throughout a polarized age — Lewis maintained friendships across the political spectrum, treating friend and foe with civility and respect. No matter how much they disagreed with his stance, the other members of the House and Senate were universal in their assessment that he served his country with the utmost conscience and dedication, always treating every one of them with his legendary listening skills and dignity. From a young age, he maintained his own moral compass, no matter the odds.

What Should You Do?

Use the Power of Models: In my book, The Power of a Good Fight, I write about how challenged we can be when sorting out conflict. What helps, I have learned, is looking for models, those who have lived lives we admire through all kinds of battles, while maintaining their own values and using outstanding conflict management skills. John Lewis’ legacy would certainly be one I would recommend. When our own situation seems hopelessly mired in unproductive conflict, we can visualize Lewis marching across challenging divides, through eighty years of challenges, with skill and grit.

Dignity No Matter What: Throughout his leadership, activism and work, Lewis modeled dignity, no matter what those who opposed, argued or even physically attacked him were doing or saying. Respect and civility will always serve you, even in the thick of conflict.

Train Hard: Make sure that you and your staff train hard to prepare for conflict and other challenges. In my work, I frequently point out how little we expect conflict, even though it is likely in our personal and professional lives. Read about managing conflict: Three Steps to Resolve Conflict Quickly!  What’s the Surprising and Most Effective Way to Resolve Conflict at Work?

I knew that Martin Luther King and his followers had trained in non-violent techniques before their marches and sit-ins, but I had no idea of the depth and detail of that training until Lewis died. In addition to understanding the history of non-violent movements by studying Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and other leaders, they studied the world’s great spiritual traditions on non-violence, practiced role-plays of likely scenarios and non-violent communication. These were not one-day events but weeks long and continual training through the movement’s history. For an excellent interview with Lewis on this training, go to the On Being podcast entitled “Love in Action“. The marchers did not go into their protests unprepared.

March On: Whatever our challenge, we can always use Lewis’ model of reminding ourselves and our associates: “Tomorrow we march.” Persistence pays in working through conflict and many other challenges.

What Do You Think?

What do you think? What is your theory about the current anger in our culture? Call or write us at: 303-216-1020 or Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com