Learn the Secret to Great Working Relationships
It's so simple and yet 90% of people avoid these simple tactics 90% of the time.
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Stella left her last meeting of the day exasperated. Once again, her leaders were not collaborating effectively.
It was the small things — Bill (sales) not showing up on time, Donna (finance) and Sabrina (technology) talking over each other, Martin (legal) not responding to Sloane’s (customer success) messages in a reasonable time frame.
It was also the big things — Don (operations) not bringing up the issues he was observing to Donna (finance), Debbie (marketing) and Jessica (product) gossiping about Sabrina (technology) behind her back instead of directly addressing their issues, and Bill (sales) treating Sloane or her team (customer success) as adversaries instead of as partners on the same team.
The members of Stella’s leadership team were not asking the right questions, not prioritizing the right actions, and not modeling the behaviors and values they had carefully cultivated. They were not just wasting time, they were creating a toxic culture.
To top it off, Stella kept comparing her experience with her friend, Marina, who was the CEO of a similarly sized company, and finding hers wanting.
Marina had created a conflict-friendly work environment where issues were brought up in a timely manner and addressed head-on. Conflicts were addressed and people were collaborating well. No one was left wondering or whispering. Her company was not without challenges, but at least her leaders were spending their energy dealing with meaningful business issues and not with petty executive dynamics.
Stella felt incompetent and some measure of panic — why couldn’t she create a more productive and healthy culture?
Why were her executives struggling?
A pattern of unproductive behavior can easily spread.
Stella was struggling herself. She was trying to get the company on track, but there were some strategic issues with product market fit. The lack of effective collaboration at the executive level was starting to cascade into operational issues throughout the organization.
The most recent employee pulse survey confirmed Stella’s concerns. Employees were starting to feel distracted and there were clear indications of lack of engagement and retention risk.
Worried she couldn’t solve the issue alone, Stella called in a highly recommended executive coach and advisor to help her assess the situation and work with her to come up with a solution.
The coach conducted an assessment with Stella and each of her executives to determine how each person perceived the effectiveness of the executive team and how they were collaborating. Her findings pointed at two clear issues — fear around speaking up and distrust in each other. The worst part, each issue fed the other. It was a vicious cycle.
The most common root issue of poor collaboration is fear.
Fear is often the root of most behavioral issues. As humans, leaders are not immune to worry. Instead of either letting go of worries we cannot control or addressing those that we can, we ruminate, we suppress, or we explode when we can no longer handle the pressure.
Fear was causing Stella’s executive team to behave in a multitude of ways that all pointed to conflict avoidance. They were doing everything possible to not address what was really the issue.
In many ways, Stella reinforced this fear because when people raised issues, she would often get defensive or focus the conversation on who was at fault. This made her team more reluctant to bring issues up and more likely to talk behind closed doors where they piled onto each other’s grievances instead of solving them.
In addition, because the focus was on who was responsible versus what was the issue and why was it important, Stella had engendered distrust amongst her leadership team. Anyone who might want to bring up an issue spent their time concerned about whether they would leave with a target on their back or if they would be setting up a colleague to get one placed on hers or his.
Once Stella was aware of the issue, she was committed to improving her behaviors in order to improve the performance of her team. She worked with the coach to develop a plan to reset how they worked together.
Even difficult issues are easier to address when they are out in the open.
Stella started the process by having an open conversation with the entire executive team about the issues. This helped create trust by enabling information symmetry — everyone heard the same thing at the same time — and by allowing Stella to take responsibility and model how committed she was to changing her behaviors with the goal of supporting a shift in all of them.
Stella shared specific details from her observations and the findings from the assessment without naming individual people when she described each behavior.
In fact, the only person Stella named was herself. She purposely wanted the team to see that she was moving away from seeking out who was the cause and instead, wanted to create an environment where people felt safe to raise issues and where they were focused first and foremost on solving issues instead of assigning blame. Accountability mattered, but accountability would only be achievable when they trusted each other.
Members of the executive team unsurprisingly were quiet. You could sense their concern and skepticism.
Avoiding conversations about challenging topics or not executing those conversations well was what was hurting the executive team, but no one felt safe to speak up.
Stella acknowledged that this was going to take time, but that she had worked with the coach and wanted the team to leverage a proven model that would help them collaborate more effectively. They took their cues from the model described in the book, “Crucial Conversations” by by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, and Ron McMillan.
Issues of trust and relationships take time to resolve, however, using a shared language can accelerate the process.
A good model can help a team develop a new habit more effectively because it provides a common process and facilitates group learning. The one below is rather simple and can be employed over and over again across a variety of topics and for any group of people from two to ten.
The COLAB Method
1. C — Find COMMON ground
Make sure that the person you are talking to knows why you want to raise the issue. Starting with the why helps everyone calibrate on the importance and your intention. Perhaps you are concerned about financial loss or missing a goal. Saying why helps the other feel more connected to the conversation.
When we are working towards similar ends, it’s much easier to find alignment and to feel trust with the other person. Even something as broad as reiterating the mission of the organization or an annual goal can help. When you share a common priority, you are no longer on opposing sides — you are on the same side.
2. O — Choose ONE topic at a time
Especially when issues are complex or there is a risk of high emotions, focusing on fewer topics raises the likelihood that you will be talking about the same subject and reduces the likelihood that you talk past each other.
If you need to address multiple topics, schedule additional time to tackle each topic instead of trying to squeeze them in which won’t give you the time to resolve any of them. And don’t be surprised if some of the most complex issues require more than one meeting to resolve. Far better to take the time you need to methodically advance a topic forward than to waste time in chaotic discussions that amplify emotions but not outcomes.
3. L — LET go of your assumptions
Too often, our fears create a false narrative to help us make sense of what’s happening around us. Unfortunately, false narratives are just that… false.
Instead, enter conversations with curiosity and open-mindedness about what the other person might know or be intentionally doing. Asking questions allows them and you to learn what is really happening and why.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt creates the conditions for more productive dialogue that reveals root issues and allows for creative problem-solving.
5. A — Commit to one next ACTION — together
To ensure that conversations result in progress, end each with a clear next action that both parties can agree to. The action doesn’t have to be big — it can simply be another meeting to continue to work through the next set of topics or a decision to loop in other key individuals. Whatever it is, make sure you both agree to it. This will help strengthen trust and reinforce the positive value that collaboration can generate.
6. B — BE present
You can only truly hear what the other person is saying verbally and physically (if you are able to view their body language) if you are able to direct your full attention to the conversation.
At least half of the success of a conversation is how you made the other person feel, which can only be accomplished if you are distraction-free and actively listening.
The key to stronger collaborations is to respectfully say what needs to be said in a timely way.
In a matter of weeks, Stella started to see a shift in her leadership team.
It started off with the small items. Instead of waiting to raise an issue, her team was pulling each other aside throughout the week to find common ground, ask each other questions, actively listen, and advance initiatives forward.
Whereas in the past, executives might assume malintent and relationship fissures would expand and deepen, now they would heal quickly as explanations would clarify personal challenges like a sick child as the cause of a slow response. Even better, Stella’s team was more proactively communicating with each other, sharing constraints, concerns, or even personal challenges that then resulted in others offering support or even changing course to help maintain momentum.
Within a few months, they were a more cohesive team. They still had hiccups and Stella needed to remind herself daily of the behaviors she wanted to model and those she wanted to avoid. But even seeing Stella slip up and then try again was part of what made her leadership team work harder. Seeing their boss vulnerably commit and recommit each week motivated everyone around her to do the same.
By learning to how to say what needed to be said and stop avoiding conflict, Stella and her team turned around the culture of her leadership team and as a result, they turned around the direction of the company.
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Love it. So much good advice in this article.
I particularly like the emphasis on creating a no blame culture. If people are worried about punishment or criticism, they are unlikely to speak up.
Lots of thought-provoking concepts here. It's too bad that so many work relationships really do have alot of fear and/or distrust aspects. Makes for a tough working environment.