By Ben Morris, Head of People and Performance, Mogers Drewett
Unless your organisation has a shut-down, the summer is not quite as definitive a holiday period as it was when we were children. The world of business continues to turn, and at all levels of an organisation we find ourselves navigating holidays within the team, within the family units of team members, as well as for customers. This creates a blend of relaxation and tension unevenly spread. We may be on the same journey, but we have different start-lines. That shift of pressure can have a way of magnifying fault lines
For those who do get a break, it creates a good chance to catch our breath, assess our relationship with the what and who of work. If you are a recruitment agent, that will have you licking your lips. But all is not lost, this is also a good chance to appreciate what we do have, a chance to check our understanding and re-engage.
“You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice”
Richard Powers
Why DEI Matters
Thinking of the groups you belong to, how many of those are teams? OK, let’s try an easier one. Of all the groups you belong to (it might be 2,013, it might be in the hundreds – the number doesn’t matter), how many do you believe are important and meaningful to you?
We can discuss the semantics of teams (and good teams indulge in some antics from time to time) but a large amount of it boils down to sense of “Us-ness”. At the point we start feeling and talking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘we’ we are tapping into social identity and starting to draw on the strength from greater connection.
If you’re the nominal lead of any of those groups and they don’t matter to you then our quest to re-engage the team starts with us. How can we expect to connect with others meaningfully on something that doesn’t matter?
Refreshing
Take the time to remind ourselves of the purpose, the objective and the values we hold helps us figure out if, and how “this” matters.
Now we’ve got a basis for considering what we are going to do and how we do it. Both planning our actions & reviewing them. We also have a basis for prioritising actions, how we can show up and demonstrate what matters.
Taking this up to a team level we can articulate purpose, expectations and boundaries (the edges of what our interest, skills and responsibility).
Friction
That is all good for smooth movement but how do we deal with the inevitable moments of friction between people?
The answer lies in social skills. ‘Knowing is not enough’, the question is whether we can apply that knowledge. Do you feel able to say how you think and feel? Do you listen enough to understand how your team think and feel? Do they see and feel that?
Assuming positive intent, taking a stance that people are doing their best to be good, as opposed to assuming that they are being wilfully difficult is a helpful perspective. It helps us switch from personal criticism to critique of what is being done. Giving our team-mate a chance to explore what they need to do what needs to be done (and swallowing our defensiveness if it feels that what we are already giving is being overlooked) buttresses any relationship. Especially so when combined with considered and clear expression of our team’s purpose and what we need.
Conflict is not necessarily bad. It can be helpful in terms of learning and performance and is almost inevitable with a diversity of personalities and perspectives. But we need to work to argue in the right way. To borrow from Stanford Professor Robert Sutton people “should fight as though they are right and listen as if they are wrong”.
Mogers Drewett, St James House, The Square, Lower Bristol Road, Bath BA2 3BH