Ed Batista

Power Struggles Among Nice People

Most of my clients are CEOs of growing companies, most of the rest are C-level executives in similar settings, and a number of others are leaders in investment or professional services firms. In order to be effective in these roles they must be able to influence others, wield authority, and maintain status. At the same time my clients are conscientious people who care about the well-being of their employees and colleagues, aspire to make a positive difference in the world, and are striving to do their best.

As a result of these factors, a theme in my practice is what I describe as "power struggles among nice people." And yet a challenge is that many of us imagine that people who engage in power struggles aren't very nice, and that nice people shouldn't struggle for power. This leaves us with a stark choice: Be an asshole and win, or be a decent person and lose--but it doesn't have to be that way.

1. The Ubiquity of Power Struggles

We often think of a power struggle as a rancorous, zero-sum battle between bitter enemies, but that's just one version, and it's relatively rare. Far more common are the everyday efforts noted above: influencing others, wielding authority, maintaining status. Consider how often we engage in these activities every single day, and how infrequently we employ formal decision-making frameworks or conflict-resolution tools in the process. From this perspective we can define a power struggle in much less charged terms: any situation in which the parties must assert themselves to overcome resistance and achieve their preferred outcome.

There are no cartoon villains and few outsized expressions of force in these everyday power struggles. As I've noted before, force and power are not the same thing--force is "strength or energy as an attribute of action," while power as "the ability to produce an effect." [1] Most power struggles are rather mundane affairs, and in this sense we might think of them as the "dark matter" of organizational life--they affect almost everything but escape observation unless we're paying close attention. [2]

Why are power struggles so common? There's certainly a connection with our origins as a species. Primates rely on social structures to obtain resources and to defeat or evade threats, and humans possess the singular advantage of being able to cooperate in larger groups than our evolutionary rivals. [3] This has allowed us to dominate the planet, but as a consequence we face much greater competition from within the group, and we've had to develop a complex set of social skills to assert our preferences while minimizing intra-group conflict. [4] A similar pattern of constant, non-violent power struggles can be observed in the chimpanzee, which, notably, is the only other species of great ape whose social groups include multiple males that co-exist in a shifting dominance hierarchy. [5]

But we may wonder why humans continue to rely on informal displays of power to accomplish these goals. Why don't we utilize the other decision-making frameworks and conflict-resolution tools that we've developed more frequently? Because power struggles are often more effective than those alternatives.

2. The Desirability of Power Struggles

When defined as "zero-sum battles between bitter rivals," power struggles are obviously undesirable. Such efforts waste time and resources, cause needless division, and serve as distractions from more productive activities. But when we recognize a broader definition, it becomes apparent that power struggles are more efficient or less costly than the alternatives, which generally fall into one of three categories: voting, consensus, and hierarchy.

Voting is possible only under a highly specific set of circumstances: Decision-making authority can be fairly apportioned by vote, whether by person, ownership share, or some other method. All parties agree that a decision must be made at a certain point in time, after which further efforts to influence the outcome will be counter-productive. And the most powerful parties can be trusted to abide by the outcome when a vote doesn't go their way. We can easily see why voting is used so rarely in organizational life--although it's worth noting that votes are preceded by campaigns to win support in which expressions of power may figure heavily.

Consensus also comes with necessary preconditions: All parties must reach agreement in order to move forward, and even the least powerful figure has the authority to withhold approval. Complicating matters is the contemporary preference for the appearance of egalitarianism, which often results in a half-hearted attempt at obtaining consensus that inevitably stalls, at which point the most powerful party pulls rank and dispenses with the charade, resulting in a full-blown power struggle. But even in an authentic attempt to reach consensus, the discussions and debates that comprise the process are themselves a type of power struggle.

While there are companies, industries, and even parts of the world where hierarchy remains a primary means of decision-making and conflict resolution, that's not the case in my clients' organizations. To a large extent this is the result of two related trends in management over the past century: the increasing importance of the "knowledge worker" [6] and the move away from centralized command-and-control structures. [7] My clients and almost all of their employees and colleagues are knowledge workers of one sort or another, and in this context the leader who merely issues directives will eventually pay a price. Knowledge workers put a high value on latitude and autonomy, and they have a low tolerance for being repeatedly overruled.

But while leaders might refrain from relying explicitly on hierarchy to avoid alienating their employees, this isn't to suggest that hierarchy is absent or irrelevant. Hierarchical distinctions are a constant presence even in the flattest organizations [8], and parties engaged in a power struggle may exploit any such advantages in their efforts to prevail. But the subtle use of a hierarchical distinction while conducting a power struggle is very different than a dictatorial command. In these settings, most directives imposed via hierarchy can be viewed as the outcomes of failed power struggles, in which the leader had hoped to avoid "giving an order." [9]

So we see that alternative means of decision-making and conflict-resolution come with constraints that render them impractical in many circumstances, and that even when such means are employed the process typically involves a series of power struggles. Given these conditions, we might imagine that anyone who aspires to succeed as a leader would be ready to engage in power struggles on a regular basis--and yet that's not always the case. Many leaders in my practice report feeling surprised when power struggles occur, resentful of the obligation to participate in them, and depleted by the demands of the process. Why is this? What prevents these leaders from being better prepared for and more effective at engaging in this fundamental feature of organizational life?

3. The Problem with Nice People

As noted above, my clients can be characterized as "high-achieving nice people," and in my experience many nice people are uncomfortable with displays of power and put a premium on maintaining interpersonal harmony, which puts them at a disadvantage when they're obligated to assert themselves and overcome resistance in order to obtain a desired outcome. Further, if they continue to emphasize personal achievement over cultivating power and influence, they eventually limit their professional success.

To understand why, we turn to the work of the eminent 20th-century psychologist David McClelland, one of the leading scholars on human motivation, who theorized that people are driven primarily by three distinct needs [10]:

• The need for achievement, or "doing something better for its own sake, or to show [that one] is more capable of doing something." [11]
• The need for power, or concern "about having 'impact, control, or influence over another person, group, or the world at large.'" [12]
• The need for affiliation, "or the need to be with people" and a concern with "establishing, maintaining, or restoring a positive affective relationship with another person or persons." [13]

McClelland also studied people's capacity for "activity inhibition," or impulse control, and his research showed that the most successful senior leaders display 1) a relatively high need for power, 2) a relatively low need for affiliation, and 3) a high degree of impulse control, a distinctive pattern that he called "leadership motive syndrome." McClelland found that people who possessed this combination of traits were most likely to obtain senior leadership positions, ultimately outpacing those who merely had a high need for achievement. [14]

The latter group's focus on improved performance and desire for personal feedback helped them succeed at the outset of their careers, but limited their effectiveness at scale when results must be obtained not merely through individual effort but through the ability to lead others, and when feedback cycles are long and unpredictable. [15] In addition, McClelland noted that people with a high need for affiliation often have shortcomings as leaders as they strive to avoid conflict and prioritize warm relationships. [16]

These conclusions pose some significant challenges for "nice high-achievers":

• Nice people underestimate the importance of power and influence in long-term success at senior levels.
• They overestimate the importance of personal achievement and being liked.
• A consequent reluctance to engage in everyday power struggles prevents them from learning how to display power and exert influence effectively.

But a deeper understanding of this research makes clear that "nice people" aren't doomed to underachieve--and even possess several key advantages.

4. The Opportunity for Nice People

Let's highlight the relative dimension of McClelland's "leadership motive syndrome." It's not the case that effective senior leaders must possess the greatest possible need for power, or that a high need for affiliation is an inherent barrier to a senior role. The point is simply that their need for power must be relatively higher than their need for affiliation--in other words, senior leaders can't allow a desire to be liked or a preference for harmony to prevent them from displaying power or exerting influence when necessary.

Further, note the importance of impulse control in the most effective senior leaders. An alternative pattern of traits identified by McClelland was 1) a high need for power, 2) a low need for affiliation, and 3) a low degree of impulse control, which he called "conquistador syndrome." [17] Leaders who exhibit this pattern may enjoy some success, but their self-aggrandizing displays of power limit their effectiveness at senior levels, as McClelland and his colleague David Burnham concluded in a summary of their research:

The top manager of a company must possess a high need for power--that is, a concern for influencing people. However, this need must be disciplined and controlled so that it is directed toward the benefit of the institution as a whole and not toward the manager's personal aggrandizement... We discovered one more fact in studying the better managers... They were more mature. Mature people can be most simply described as less egotistic. Somehow their positive self-image is not at stake in their jobs. They are less defensive, more willing to seek advice from experts, and have a longer-range view. [18]

Put differently, the most successful senior leaders have a substantial capacity for emotion regulation. [19] They don't allow fleeting feelings to translate into counter-productive behavior. As McClelland noted, people with a high need for power think about "carrying out a number of impulsive aggressive acts...but they did not in fact do them more often" than people with a low need for power. [20] And nice people typically share that capacity for emotion regulation (even if it's often put to use in efforts to generate warmth and evoke positive feelings in others.)

Finally, observations from my practice suggest that nice people are likely to rank high on two dimensions of "emotional style" identified by neuroscientist Richard Davidson that are relevant here: 1) context-sensitivity, or the ability to grasp what will be perceived as appropriate in a given situation and tailor one's behavior accordingly, and 2) social intuition, or the ability to assess others' mental and emotional states on the basis of body language, tone of voice, and similar data. [21]

In sum, while nice people may have to overcome some self-imposed obstacles in order to engage in everyday power struggles, they're also likely to possess several characteristics that will enable them to be more effective in the process. So if you identify with this description--if you're a "nice high-achiever"--where do you go from here?

5. Putting It Into Practice

A note on social identity, including, but not limited to, gender and orientation, race and ethnicity, education and class background: I'm keenly aware that in many settings the behaviors that convey power and influence are historically associated with people who already hold power and influence. I realize that if you don't match that description in your organizational context you may well face additional obstacles when your efforts to exert power and influence run counter to the expectations imposed upon you as a result of your social identity. That said, I'm equally aware that merely conforming to those expectations is a likely path to frustration and underachievement. When we're not in a position to change the surrounding culture, one of the key steps is determining how to conform just enough to that culture to avoid being rejected by it while also ensuring that the culture doesn't dictate our behavior to our disadvantage--which is a challenge I've addressed with many "nice high-achievers" in my practice over the years. [22]

Our needs for achievement, power and affiliation are informed by a range of sources, from our family environments as children to our education and professional training to the culture at large. But if we determine that our current needs are resulting in behaviors that make it more difficult to achieve our goals, we can change our approach with a degree of self-awareness, deliberate effort, and practice over time. (McClelland noted the efficacy of management training workshops in helping leaders modify their styles and deliver improved results. [23])

It's also evident to me from my years as a coach and experiential educator that we can (and must) distinguish between our personal preferences and what is being asked of us in a given situation, and that effective leaders consistently get out of their comfort zone to experiment with new behaviors, even (and especially) when such efforts feel awkward or inauthentic. If you identify as a "nice high-achiever," I suspect that being more assertive to overcome resistance and obtain your desired outcome will feel uncomfortable--and I'm absolutely certain that you needn't allow such feelings to stand in your way. I'm hopeful that this reading provides a useful starting point in that process--and it's just a starting point. What's next?

Consider your beliefs about power and influence and how they affect your approach to everyday power struggles:

• Self-Awareness, Empowerment and Choice [PDF] (Patricia Day Williams, Chapter 7.10 in Reading Book for Human Relations Training, edited by Alfred Cooke, Michael Brazzel, Argentine Saunders Craig and Barbara Greig, 1999)
• Interpersonal Power
• Corn Mazes and Mental Models

Learn more about the means by which power and influence are displayed and the behaviors that convey power and influence:

• Force Isn't Power
• Weather Systems (Power, Charisma and Leadership)
• The Value of a Good Fight
• Power Play (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Harvard Business Review, 2010)
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't (Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2010)
• Political Skill at Work: How to Influence, Motivate and Win Support (Gerald Ferris, Sherry Davidson and Pamela Perrewé, 2005 / 2nd edition, 2020)
• Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001)
• The Language of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2008)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, 1984 / 3rd edition, 2021)
• Why It Pays to Be a Jerk (Jerry Useem, The Atlantic, 2015)

Actively experiment with alternative approaches, especially any that feel uncomfortable or inauthentic:

• Attitude and Behavior
• Conscious Competence In Practice
• Why Change Is Hard
• Comfort with Discomfort
• Leadership and Authenticity
• The Tyranny of Feelings

Get regular feedback and integrate it into your ongoing efforts:

• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful
• Learning How to Learn

 

Dedicated to Jeffrey Pfeffer.

I didn't take Jeff's class "Paths to Power" when I was an MBA student at Stanford, but I discovered his work on power as a coach and it deeply informed not only my work with clients, but also my teaching when I later joined the Stanford faculty and became a junior colleague to Jeff. It's my understanding that I'm the only faculty member who ever taught Interpersonal Dynamics (aka "Touchy Feely") and included Jeff's work on my syllabus, in part because I believe the course's T-groups are one of the best settings in which we can learn about power.

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Footnotes

[1] Force Isn't Power

[2] What Is Dark Matter? (Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com, 2019)

[3] Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates (Robin Dunbar, Journal of Human Evolution, 1992)

[4] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, page 32 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)

[5] Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes pages 104-105 (Franz de Waal, 2007). My understanding of De Waal's work suggests that while chimpanzee power struggles can turn violent and occasionally prove fatal, the vast majority involve dominance displays and the re-shuffling of hierarchical relationships rather than the elimination of rivals.

[6] The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done (Peter Drucker, 1966): "Today...the large knowledge organization is the central reality. Modern society is a society of large organized institutions. In every one of them...the center of gravity has shifted to the knowledge worker... The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped." (pages 3-4)

[7] Beyond Theory Y (John Morse and Jay Lorsch, Harvard Business Review, 1970): "With highly uncertain tasks that require more extensive problem solving...organizations that are less formalized and emphasize self-control and member participation in decision making are more effective."

[8] Organizational Preferences and Their Consequences (Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens, Chapter 33 in the Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010): "The production of hierarchy is a central and omnipresent component of organizing."

[9] Leaders sometimes express a desire to operate in a more hierarchical environment where they could just "issue orders, like in the military." But I once asked a Navy SEAL officer how often he had given an order overriding a subordinate's dissent. "Twice," he said, "in thirteen years." Here, too, I'm reminded of a comment from Frans de Waal's research on chimpanzees, cited above, in which he notes that high-ranking members of a group seldom show their teeth in aggressive displays, presumably because they don't need to. (page 21)

[10] For an extensive discussion of each of these needs, see Human Motivation, Chapters 7-9 (David McClelland, 1987). Having developed his "motivational needs theory" around these three drives in the 1960s and '70s, later in his career McClelland suggested that a fourth such drive is the "avoidance motive," characterized by a fear of failure and a need to minimize anxiety and reduce distress (and discussed in Human Motivation, Chapter 10.) However, while McClelland's research on leadership identifies a relationship among the first three needs, he doesn't integrate the avoidance motive in the same way, nor is it included in most discussions of his theory, so I've omitted it here as well.

[11] Ibid, page 229.

[12] Ibid, page 271. (McClelland cites a definition made by his colleague and former student David Winter: The Power Motive, 1973.)

[13] Ibid, page 347. (McClelland cites a definition made by his longtime collaborator John Atkinson with Roger Heyns and Joseph Veroff: The effect of experimental arousal of the affiliation motive on thematic apperception, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1954.)

[14] Ibid, page 313:

"By way of contrast, those with high n Achievement peaked in their careers [earlier]. The nonlinear trend is significant. The explanation seems to lie in the fact that individuals high in n Achievement are used to doing things by themselves and for themselves... They are able to advance in the company as long as their job involves the individual contributions they make. However, at higher levels the focus on the job shifts to influencing others. The greater success of those with the leadership motive syndrome at this level can be explained on the grounds that they are interested in influencing others (the high n Power score), they are not unduly concerned about whether they are liked or not (the low n Affiliation score), and they are self controlled (the high Activity Inhibition score)."

[15] Ibid, page 254.

[16] Ibid, pages 354-355.

[17] Ibid, page 312.

[18] Power Is the Great Motivator (David McClelland and David Burnham, Harvard Business Review, originally written 1976, revised 1995, republished 2003.)

[19] The Tyranny of Feelings

[20] Human Motivation, page 281.

[21] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

[22] Conform to the Culture Just Enough

[23] "Power Is the Great Motivator" (McClelland and Burnham)

Photo by KAZ Vorpal.

Make Feedback Normal. Not a Performance Review.

I first expressed this idea in 2015 during a webinar I conducted for the Harvard Business Review [1], and apparently it continues to resonate with people. [2] The slide above from my webinar is based on a passage in the HBR article that preceded it:

We should strive to create a culture in which feedback conversations are less stressful for all members of the organization. Among other steps, this involves giving and receiving feedback more frequently so that it becomes a normal aspect of organizational life, making it OK to both postpone feedback conversations until a better time, and ensuring that senior leaders walk the talk by offering and inviting direct feedback on a regular basis. [3]

One reason why this concept struck a chord is our continued reliance on traditional performance reviews, despite a growing body of research suggesting that such practices not only fail to have the desired effect, but may even be counter-productive. [4]

I don't think reviews are going to disappear, in part because they serve a number of purposes other than motivating learning and growth, such as creating a predictable calendar for discussions about compensation and career progression, or documenting poor performance as prelude to a termination. In this regard they are similar to interviews, which are deeply flawed as predictors of a successful hire and yet will undoubtedly continue to play a role in the hiring process. [5]

But the persistence of performance reviews need not prevent you from "making feedback normal" in your organization. What might that look like in practice? It's a topic I've explored numerous times over the years:

Make feedback less stressful:

• When delivering feedback, be mindful of subtle steps that might inadvertently trigger a sense of threat in the recipient.
• When receiving feedback, note that how your perceive or frame the experience will affect your stress level.
• Over time, build stronger relationships with the people who'll provide and receive feedback in your organization.

Build a feedback-rich culture as a leader:

• Foster an increased sense of safety and trust.
• Balance critical feedback with heartfelt appreciation.
• Seek out opportunities to give--and receive--feedback in public.
• Ask for feedback from your employees.

Build a feedback-rich culture from the middle:

• Cultivate support among senior leadership.
• Make a case that better feedback supports better business results.
• Ask for feedback from leadership.

Deliver more effective critical feedback:

• Clarify your motivation and intentions.
• Acknowledge and question your need for control.
• Be behaviorally--and emotionally--specific.
• Ask how you're contributing to the problem.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Making Feedback Less Stressful (Harvard Business Review Webinar)

• HBR webinar (1-hour video)
• HBR's summary of my remarks (8-page PDF)
• Webinar slide deck

[2] "Make feedback normal. Not a performance review." on Twitter.

[3] Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful (Originally published at Harvard Business Review)

[4] David Rock and his colleagues at the NeuroLeadership Institute have been making thoughtful critiques of traditional performance review practices for nearly a decade:

• Give Your Performance Management System a Review (David Rock, Harvard Business Review, 2013)
• Kill Your Performance Ratings (David Rock, Josh David and Beth Jones, strategy+business, 2014)
• Why More and More Companies Are Ditching Performance Ratings (David Rock and Beth Jones, Harvard Business Review, 2015)
• Why Performance Management Needs to Become Feedback Management (David Rock, Your Brain at Work, 2019)

[5] Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews

 

For Further Reading

Coaching and Feedback Tools for Leaders

 

Your 360 Report Is Ready

You're a senior leader who's initiated or agreed to participate in a 360-degree feedback assessment, with input from your direct reports and other colleagues, including (if applicable) peers, Board members, investors and other stakeholders. A coach or consultant has conducted a series of interviews with your feedback providers and distilled and edited their responses, or perhaps the qualitative feedback was entered directly by your providers and will be shared with you unedited.

If your 360 also included a quantitative component, your providers rated your capabilities on a number of items on a multi-point scale, and your feedback will be compared with others' to illustrate perceived strengths and weaknesses. Your ratings will probably be compared with those for all the leaders in your company who participated in the process, but the 360 provider may also have a larger data set derived from other organizations to provide a baseline.

You've just learned that your 360 report is ready, and you're about to review it for the first time. What can you expect? I no longer conduct 360 assessments, but I have in the past, and today I often work with clients to help them make sense of their reports. Here are four themes that characterize the 360 reports I've observed over the years:

1. It will be full of negative feedback and criticism.

It's typical for 360 reviews to be conducted in organizations where feedback is relatively infrequent, occurring at lengthy intervals in the context of formal processes, rather than on an as-needed basis in normal conversations. Anonymous 360s are often proposed as a way to navigate around a reluctance to share feedback more freely or discomfort with face-to-face dialogue. As a result, negative feedback is stored up instead of being discharged, which gives it more force and intensity when it finally finds expression in a 360. Further, in a 360 a number of separate incidents and situations are often distilled into a single comment, which can take the form of global criticism, rather than thoughtful critique, to use a distinction derived from the work of psychologist John Gottman: "[Criticism] is different than offering a critique or voicing a complaint. The latter two are about specific issues, whereas the former is an ad hominem attack: it is an attack on [the other person] at the core." [1]

2. It will have positive feedback as well, which you will discount or ignore.

One of the most reliable patterns in human psychology is the strength and duration of negative emotions and the relatively weak, fleeting nature of positive emotions. [2] This clearly benefits us as a species--evolution has selected for this response because it focuses our attention on potential threats and keeps us safe from harm--but at the individual level it also imposes a cost. We have to work much harder to acknowledge or even notice forms of appreciation and encouragement. As a consequence of this dynamic, every single time I've reviewed a 360 report with an executive they've rushed through all of the positive feedback it contains, or ignored it entirely, and focused almost exclusively on the negative.

3. If you have peers who provided feedback, they'll be the most negative.

This is a function of hierarchy and the role it plays in our working relationships. Even in relatively flat organizations, we consistently establish hierarchies--research psychologists Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens have noted that "the production of hierarchy is a central and omnipresent component of organizing." [3] We typically make a greater effort to regulate our behavior when interacting with someone who's more senior or junior to us in a hierarchy, and when a conflict occurs across a hierarchical boundary, the shared knowledge that the senior figure may choose to resolve the dispute by exerting their authority usually limits the extent of the struggle. In contrast, we're less regulated with people who occupy the same level in a hierarchy, and we often lack clarity on how to settle conflicts with peers, resulting in more rivalries and rancor. A predictable consequence of these factors is that 360 feedback from peers is more critical than feedback from superiors or subordinates. Executives are often surprised by this and may even feel betrayed because they view some of their peers as friends--and yet this, too, is a result of the relaxed boundaries and broader range of emotional expression that we allow ourselves with peers.

4. The feedback will focus on your agency to the exclusion of other factors.

In other words, you'll be portrayed as responsible for all of the problems cited in the report. (This will be more pronounced if you're the CEO, but it will be a theme in your report no matter what your title.) This is the result of another aspect of human psychology, a cognitive bias known as the "fundamental attribution error" which leads us to ascribe greater causality to individuals than to situational factors. [4] But this bias is heightened by the construct of the 360 itself, in which you're positioned as the player on the field and your feedback providers are positioned as "objective observers." What this framing fails to take into account is that the "observers" are also players, whose actions have shaped and influenced your own--but don't expect your feedback providers to take responsibility for their contributions, because being asked to provide feedback to someone else rarely prompts self-reflection.

So you've read your 360 report. Now what? What should you do with it?

Digest It

Most people initially have a negative response to their 360 report. This can be confusing, because in contemporary business culture we're so often told, "Feedback is a gift." And yet in my experience much feedback is stressful and unwelcome--some gift! The key is recognizing that all feedback, including your 360 report, is data. [5] And as you would with any data, you have to separate the noise from the signal. This is the essence of my commentary above--there's plenty of noise in your report, but there's also some very valuable signal. The task is to identify and focus on the latter without being overwhelmed by the former.

Specifically, be sure to thoroughly review and fully acknowledge the positive feedback in your report--it may be even more useful to you than the negative feedback, as the great management thinker Peter Drucker noted:

Waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. Concentration should be on areas of high competence and high skill. It takes far more energy and far more work to improve from incompetence to low mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. [6]

Acknowledge It

Reviewing your report may feel like the end of the process, but it's really just the beginning. Once you've digested it, the next step will be to talk about it. This may seem paradoxical--didn't you go through the trouble of an anonymous 360 to avoid having these awkward conversations? That may have been the original plan, but organizations make a huge mistake when they imagine that leaders will read their 360 reports and magically transform themselves without any messy dialogue. The real value of a 360 report is in providing a shared data set and a common starting point for a series of conversations, and while these conversations won't necessarily be easy, they can be made less stressful. [7]

In many cases this process begins with the person who interviewed your feedback providers. They'll be able to clarify any ambiguous remarks and provide additional color. But there are limits to what you can accomplish here, especially if you feel inclined to argue with them about what you perceive as flaws or shortcomings in the report. Once they've answered your questions and provided some further context, stop. Don't argue with them. Go talk to the people whose perspective matters most--your feedback providers and other stakeholders:

• One-on-one: At the very least, I highly recommend meeting individually with each of your feedback providers to discuss your report. This will require a significant investment of time, but it will be the best way to separate the signal from the noise, because it will be easier for both parties to speak candidly. These conversations may still feel risky, but that's actually a reason to have them. [8]
• In a small group: Also consider meeting jointly with a subset of your feedback providers, typically your direct reports. This may also feel risky, even daunting, but it will be a unique opportunity to model how to respond to feedback, which will make it easier when you have critical feedback for them. [9] It will also create an opening for the other members of the group to consider their contributions to the problems identified in your 360.
• In larger settings: Finally, it may be advisable to share some remarks with a larger group that includes people who didn't provide feedback but still have a stake in your performance in some way. If you're a CEO or a functional leader this could be at an all-hands or an offsite, which is one of the most effective ways to build a feedback-rich culture. [10]

Respond to It

In whatever settings you choose to acknowledge the feedback you've received in your 360, it will be necessary to also respond to it by indicating what will happen--and what will not happen--as a result. Once again, positive feedback is often overlooked here, so be sure to articulate what you'll continue to do (or do even more of) in response. It's harder to determine how to respond to the negative feedback, but you don't need to agree with it or treat it like a set of obligatory duties. That's a sure path to overwhelm and resentment. But it's essential to avoid responding defensively or to reject it out of hand. Instead, recognize that every piece of negative feedback contains a request for change and that all change carries a cost. With that as a guideline, you can distinguish among the following:

• Easy changes you're happy to make: Your 360 report undoubtedly includes negative feedback on certain behaviors or aspects of your management style that you're not attached to and can modify without undue effort. Remind people that we all have blind spots, and they don't need to wait for a 360 review to give you similar feedback in the future.
• Hard changes you're willing to attempt: Your report probably also includes negative feedback on behaviors or aspects of your style that feel more deeply rooted or will be more difficult to change. Invite people to partner with you in this process, by offering help, support and understanding, and possibly by taking some responsibility for their contributions to the issue.
• Changes that will be too difficult or costly to undertake: By no means should you feel compelled to accede to all of the negative feedback in your report. Some of the changes people are asking for will either impose an intolerable burden on you or will prevent you from accomplishing your goals as a leader. But bear in mind that they're requesting these changes because these behaviors or aspects of your style are imposing a cost on them. You need not grant their request or agree with their point of view, but you can empathize with it. [11]

 

This is a companion piece to The Problem with Anonymous Feedback.

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Footnotes

[1] The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling (Ellie Lisitsa, The Gottman Institute, 2013)

[2] Bad Is Stronger Than Good (Roy Bauermeister, Catrin Finkenauer, Ellen Bratslavsky, and Kathleen D. Vohs, Review of General Psychology, 2001)

[3] Organizational Preferences and Their Consequences (Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa Tiedens, Chapter 33 in the Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010)

[4] The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (Lee Ross, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1977)

[5] Feedback Is Not a Gift

[6] "Managing Oneself," Chapter 6 in Management Challenges for the 21st Century (Peter Drucker, 2001)

[7] Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful

[8] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[9] How to Deliver Critical Feedback

[10] Building a Feedback-Rich Culture

[11] Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)

Image by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Skating Lessons (Advice from an Olympic Champion)

Ben LeBlanc, a former coaching client, referred me to How to Skate a 10K, by Swedish speed skater Nils van der Poel, an Olympic gold-medal winner and world record holder. [1] It includes a great deal of information that's only of interest to aspiring speed skaters (including a detailed training regimen that fills a 33-page spreadsheet!) But it also contains several passages that are relevant to anyone who's serious about their profession. I've reproduced them below and appended a set of related questions:

KISS - Keep it simple, stupid

My training program was very simple and therefore very robust. It was cheap and reliable. Not fancy nor extraordinary. I tried not to involve things that I could not control. I did not become reliant on equipment that I could not easily access. I did not make plans that I did not understand. I did not follow a culture of buying a bike too expensive to bring about in the rain. To me speedskating was just a one legged squat, repeated over and over during maximum heart rate. It was all just very simple and I kept it that way. [2]

• How might you simplify your work?
• Where have you created or tolerated unnecessary complications?
• What is within your control? What is not within your control?
• What are you pretending to control?
• What expensive tools are getting in your way?
• What is the most basic repeatable motion?

Creating an environment, part 1

My job as an athlete was simple: set myself up for success. I could not control all aspects of the outcome of the competitions. But the things I could control I made sure to give an effort to control, at least to the extent I was willing to go to. I believed that the more stress stimulus I could give my body through training the more my body would develop. But the thing is, I could only withstand a certain level of total stress in my life. If I had problems in my life outside of training this would increase the total amount of stress on me and so I had to drop the amount of training I could perform, in order to drop the total stress volume to a comprehensible level. So, therefore, in order to be able to train at a high level I also needed a good social environment. [3]

• What enhances your capacity to tolerate stress?
  
• What diminishes that capacity?
• What stressors in other domains of life are undermining your work?
• To what extent are you tolerating stressors you could eliminate?

Creating an environment, part 2

I tried to only work with people I liked, I was fortunate enough to be able to choose this to some extent. Also, I always aimed to solve problems as soon as they occurred in order not to ache and waste energy on things not worthy of my attention. I was the one held responsible for solving those problems, even though my friends, family, coach etc. would help me. But since I held myself responsible for the solution to resolve itself, I wasn’t able to be upset that other people had not solved my problems for me. In this manner, I didn’t get stressed over other people not doing their job properly (or the way I wanted them to) and I had more energy to spend on training. I held myself responsible for setting myself up for success, but whether or not I succeeded in the end was not only up to me. I didn’t consider losing honorably a waste of time either. Since losing didn’t scare me too much, I was relaxed and could take on even more stress and more training. [4]

• What do you like about the people you're working with?
• If you're not working with people you like, why?
• What problems are you allowing to linger?
• How are you asking other people for help?
• How are you blaming other people?
• If you weren't scared, what would you do?

Creating an environment, part 3

I aimed to lower the resistance as much as possible, by creating a smooth environment, free of hassle. It is not the one who suffers the most during preseason who prospers when the winter comes, but he who gets the most aerobically fit. I wasn’t proud when I hated my session because I knew that in the long run I risked starting to drop hours if they weren’t fun enough. Doing boring sessions I considered to be a failure of making the training stimulating. I assessed this issue. For example, I hated bike trainer rides, so I bought Gore-tex clothing, mudflaps and spike tires (for the winter); I did not enjoy running in the fields, so I moved to the mountains. I set myself up for success by regarding my weaknesses. [5]

• Where is there resistance? What could be made smoother?
  
• What makes work fun? What would make it more fun?
• What are your weaknesses? What weaknesses are you hiding from?
• If you couldn't hide from those weaknesses, what would you do?
  

Being serious enough

It’s obvious at this point that I considered my performance to be altered by numerous different factors. I realized this in my early teens. However, back then I put lots of effort in trying to control all these factors and it drained me of energy and motivation. Then, very unexpectedly, I won the junior world championships and I came to realize that the award was not worth the cost. I felt like I had turned every stone and struggled so hard which had totally drained me of my motivation. When I was 18 years old I was going purely on autopilot. A few years later I accepted that my motivation is not infinite, but rather finite. Some efforts helped me approach my goals very rapidly while other efforts, also helping me fulfill my goals, did it a lot slower and not as efficiently. Some of these actions inspired me to take on even harder challenges, they increased my motivation! But some of them drained me of motivation instead. My entire training program was predicated on a foundation of inner motivation. If it ran out I could no longer keep up the hard work. Therefore I did not only evaluate my training, food, sleeping [and] living strategy on how successful it was, but also on how it made me feel and what it did to my motivation. The Olympic season of 2022 I was very dedicated to reach high goals and live up to a high standard on the competitive stage. But other years having fun was a lot more important as that made me want to keep on going, and to achieve big goals I had to keep on going. Therefore, even though it was sub-optimal considering my physical development, most of the time, for the sake of my long term inner motivation to keep up, I was just serious enough about being an athlete. [6]

• What awards are you striving for?
• What is the cost of your regimen?
• What practices boost your motivation?
• What practices demotivate you?
• Are you having enough fun? If not, why not?
• What would "just serious enough" look like for you?

 

Thanks to Nils van der Poel for the advice and to Ben LeBlanc for the pointer.

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Footnotes

[1] How to Skate a 10K (Nils van der Poel, 2022)

[2] Ibid, page 18.

[3] Ibid, page 23.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, pages 27-28.

Photo by Thomas Hawk.

Take Five (Stop Meeting Back-to-Back-to-Back!)

Most of my clients who worked remotely during the pandemic have resumed a range of in-person activities, from occasional days in the office to executive offsites to full-company retreats. And yet almost all of them expect to continue working remotely, at least in part. In some cases this is because they or their employees have relocated, or because they've hired in new geographies, making a full-time return to an office logistically infeasible. But in addition, unless they're involved in the production or transport of physical goods or the delivery of in-person services, they've recognized that the nature of their work has changed, as I noted last year:

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. [1]

But even as my clients begin this next chapter in which remote work will be a normal part of their daily or weekly routine, a surprising number of them are persisting with a practice that I view as one of the most toxic by-products of the hastily arranged transition to remote work at the start of the pandemic: Back-to-back-to-back meetings, without a single break in between, sometimes for hours on end.

Not only does the lack of a break between meetings exacerbate mental and physical fatigue, it also prevents effective context-shifting. In the blink of an eye, people go from a detail-oriented tactical agenda to a high-level strategic discussion, or they're thrust out of a large group setting into an intimate one-on-one, or vice versa. (It's grimly fitting that the service so many of us are using to facilitate these abrupt jumps is called Zoom.)

These problems are only made worse by the complexity of the current environment. War, climate change, political polarization and the persistent effects of the pandemic are taking a toll on even the most resilient people and organizations. My clients and their employees are finding themselves in unexpectedly emotional conversations with colleagues and that's unlikely to end any time soon. [2] In this context it's more important than ever to take a moment to reset, compose ourselves, and prepare for the next event on our calendars.

The solution, as with so many issues in my practice, is simple but not easy: End every event at least five minutes before the next one begins. This may seem patently obvious, but as with many potentially productive behaviors, it's very easy to create a set of aspirational rules and very difficult to change actual norms, as I've discussed previously:

You've probably worked as a group to identify some "ground rules" to improve the quality of your meetings--that's a common exercise and one I've conducted myself. But despite these efforts, your meetings haven't really improved. One reason why is the difference between "rules"--which are what we intend to do, or what we're supposed to do, and "norms," which are what we actually do... To repeat: Norms are informal social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave. [3]

So what are the keys to putting this simple guideline into place? As I describe in the piece cited above, there are four necessary conditions for the establishment of a productive norm:

1. A set of shared beliefs regarding productive behavior.

This is the easy part--the group simply needs to agree on a guideline that every event will end at least five minutes before the next one begins. But note that this won't be enough to change behavior, because rules aren't norms. Behavioral change only occurs when all of these conditions have been met.

2. Sufficient mutual esteem among group members so that its withdrawal would be felt as a loss by any individual.

Here's where it starts to get harder--the members of the group need to care about each other. This is why it's so important to invest in relationship-building and cultivate a sense of social cohesion, in ways that range from making small talk to in-person experiences such as offsites and retreats. So the leader has a special responsibility to promote these activities, because a group's mutual esteem can't be summoned at will--it can only be created over time.

3. A willingness by members to openly acknowledge a norm violation by a peer.

The degree of difficulty continues to increase--group members must be willing to speak up instead of silently colluding when the guideline is violated (as it inevitably will be). When the leader violates the guideline (also inevitable), other members must speak up and the leader must be receptive to their input. But when other members violate the guideline, speaking up can't be the sole responsibility of the leader--members must be willing to call out their peers.

4. A willingness by members to withhold esteem from a peer as a consequence of a norm violation.

Finally, group members must be willing to hold each other accountable, and the easiest way to accomplish this is by withholding esteem, as noted by legal scholar Richard McAdams:

Withholding esteem is, under certain conditions, a costless means of inflicting costs on others. These costs are often extremely small... But...dynamic forces can cause the weak desire for esteem to produce powerful norms, sometimes because individuals struggle to avoid deviance, sometimes because they compete to be heroic. [4]

The withholding of esteem need not be harsh or rancorous, and it's actually most effective when conveyed with a light touch or even a sense of humor. But yet again, peers can't leave this task to the leader--on occasion the leader may have to enforce a rule, but that doesn't make it a norm.

 

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Footnotes

[1] Four Buckets (On Co-Located Work)

[2] The prescient historian Peter Turchin didn't predict the pandemic, but in a 2010 essay in Nature he noted that we were entering an era of sustained instability and discord and tumult:

The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe... Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. Very long 'secular cycles' interact with shorter-term processes. In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020.

[3] Rules Aren't Norms (On Better Meeting Hygiene)

[4] "The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms," page 342 (Richard McAdams, Michigan Law Review, 1997)

 

For Further Reading

Dysfunction Isn't Heroism

Better Conditions for Working Remotely

 

Photo by PeakPx.

Why Executives Derail (and What You Can Do About It)

A theme in my practice is the CEO or senior leader who's hired or promoted an executive into a new role only to find that the executive fails to fulfill their initial promise. It's not a complete disaster--my clients are generally skilled at identifying executive talent, and it's rare that they utterly botch a hire.

But it's definitely not a success, and as the executive struggles to meet expectations, my client is wondering why this is happening and what can be done to salvage things. While every situation is unique, there are some factors that show up repeatedly which can explain what's going wrong and may point the way toward a solution. The relevant term in the management literature is "derailment," described by Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor of the Center for Creative Leadership as follows:

The derailed manager is one who, having reached at least the general manager level, either leaves the organization nonvoluntarily (through resignation, being fired, or retiring early) or is plateaued as a result of a perceived lack of fit between personal characteristics and skills and the demands of the job. [1]

It's likely that up until this point in the executive's career they've experienced substantial and perhaps even continuous success. This track record put them in the position to be selected for their current role, but it may have left them unprepared to cope with professional difficulties, as suggested in prior research cited by Leslie and Van Velsor:

Executives who derailed also had run up a string of successes early on and were seen as technical geniuses or tenacious problem-solvers. Yet as they moved up in their organizations and job demands changed, some early strengths became weaknesses and some early weaknesses began to matter. [2]

But if a string of sustained success may have set the stage for the derailing executive, what are they doing in their roles today that's causing their current problems? Here Leslie and Van Velsor build on and update prior research to identify a set of likely culprits, and their work is consistent with what I see in my practice [3]:

Derailment Factors	Percentage of Cases
Inability to develop or adapt	61
Poor working relations	57
Inability to build and lead a team	32
Poor performance	23
Authoritarian	23
Too ambitious	17
Too narrow functional orientation	17
Not prepared for promotion	14
Conflict with upper management	12
Organizational isolation	7

I've highlighted the top three, which I see as closely interrelated. In Working with Emotional Intelligence, the science journalist Daniel Goleman drew upon Leslie and Van Velsor's work on derailment and characterized an "inability to develop or adapt" as "rigidity":

[Derailing executives] were unable to adapt their style to changes in the organizational culture, or they were unable to take in or respond to feedback about traits they needed to change or improve. They couldn't listen or learn. [4]

Executives with a rigid style who resist feedback also often struggle interpersonally, and Goleman concisely described what Leslie and Van Velsor call "poor working relations":

Being too harshly critical, insensitive or demanding, so that they alienated those they worked with. [5]

And it's common in my practice that the derailing executive is having trouble recruiting and retaining talent or is alienating the team that they inherited. While there may be a number of causes, it's almost certain that a rigid management style, resistance to feedback or defensiveness in response, and difficulty in building strong relationships are contributing factors.

So if you're a CEO or senior leader with a derailing executive, what can you do?

Talk About It

You may have hired this executive with the expectation that they would require minimal management, but as a result, even if you're having one-on-ones to address tactical issues, you may not be holding a consistent dialogue in which you're sharing critical feedback with them on their leadership style and interpersonal behavior. And their resistance to feedback or defensiveness in response may understandably make you less eager to get started. But waiting until the next review cycle will only waste time and make the problem worse--people rarely respond well to unpleasant surprises. Instead, as I've noted before, it's preferable to make feedback normal--not a performance review.

This doesn't mean that you should simply unload your feedback without worrying about its impact. As Carole Robin, one of my mentors, used to remark, "When people say they want to be 'brutally honest,' there's usually more brutality than honesty." It's essential for you to learn how to deliver critical feedback in a way that this executive will find motivational. And this will be a joint undertaking--the executive will also have to consider how to make getting feedback less stressful.

Work On It

Initiating a dialogue and conveying the existence of these problems to the executive is just the first step. Next they'll need to commit to addressing these issues, both with your support and on their own. This won't be easy--change is hard. It will take deliberate and sustained effort for them to become more adaptable and receptive to feedback, to develop better interpersonal relationships, and enhance their ability to build and lead teams.

But in the right circumstances these are eminently learnable skills. An essential foundation is an environment in which the executive can acknowledge and deal with the uncomfortable feelings that inevitably accompany professional struggles. This will require you to take the initiative to create sufficient psychological safety and avoid triggering a sense of danger or threat. This does not mean failing to be direct or candid with the executive, but while you highlight the costs of their behavior you'll also need to empathize with the challenges they're facing. And you and your executive need not do this work alone--coaching can help.

Resolve It

Whether or not your executive is willing to join you in this work, allowing the situation to persist unresolved will carry a cost. Given the interpersonal impact of their rigidity, poor working relationships, and ineffective teamwork, the longer they remain in the role without trying to improve, the more likely it is that they'll have a negative impact on the performance and retention of their direct reports and peers. This is one of the main reasons why my clients' biggest regret is waiting too long. It may be possible to level the executive, but even if you decide to fire them, note that this may be the merciful choice.

Learn from It

However the situation is resolved, even--and perhaps especially--if you determine that it was a failure, it will present you with a valuable learning opportunity. You'll likely want to reflect on the process that led you to hire this executive in the first place and consider how you might conduct better interviews. A related theme in my practice is adapting hiring procedures to test for defensiveness, resistance to feedback, or a tendency to blame others, all of which are red flags. I'm reminded of the value of experiencing difficulties early in one's career, a point made years ago by the Reverend William Swing in a speech at Stanford: "Some people don't conspicuously fail until they are 45 years old, and it devastates them." [6] In some cases, rather than view a candidate's prior setbacks as negative indicators, we would do better to ask what they learned as a result.

 

 

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Footnotes

[1] A Look at Derailment Today: North America and Europe, page 1 (Jean Leslie and Ellen Van Velsor, Center for Creative Leadership, 1996)

[2] Ibid, page 2.

[3] Ibid, page 11. The original data includes separate figures drawn from North American and European research, while the figures shown here are an average of both data sets.

[4] Working with Emotional Intelligence, page 40 (Daniel Goleman, 1996)

[5] Ibid.

[6] William Swing advises graduates to follow their passions, not someone else’s (Stanford Report, 2007)

 

For Further Reading

Talk About It

• Making Feedback Less Stressful (HBR Webiner Slides)
• How to Deliver Critical Feedback
• Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful.

Work On It

• Why Change Is Hard
• Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination
• How Leaders Create Safety (and Danger)
• Accountability and Empathy (Are Not Mutually Exclusive)
• Getting Coaching for Your Team

Resolve It

• Don't Wait
• The Fine Art of Levelling
• On Firing a Senior Team Member
• Merciful Exits (On Under-Performing Executives)

Learn from It

• The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)
• Daniel Kahneman on Conducting Better Interviews
• Learning How to Learn

 

Photo by Brendan Zim.

Resources for Managing Up

Although my clients are typically senior leaders, over the years I've worked with many people at earlier stages of their careers who had to "manage up" effectively--and even the leaders I work with face similar challenges in some of their relationships with their boards, investors and other stakeholders. I was recently asked to recommend some resources in this area--the list below is by no means comprehensive, but I think it's a useful starting point.

What we call "managing up" usually involves better understanding and being more effective at dealing with power dynamics, influence, culture and emotion regulation. (Note that by "regulation" I don't mean "suppression"--I mean being deliberate and thoughtful about how we express emotion in order to better accomplish our goals.)

1. Power Dynamics

I've learned much about power from my Stanford colleague Jeff Pfeffer:

• Power Play (Jeffrey Pfeffer, Harvard Business Review, 2007)
• Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don't (Jeffrey Pfeffer, 2010)

Here's some of my work that incorporates Jeff's perspective:

• Force Isn't Power
• Cautionary Tales (Authenticity at Work)

Psychologist David McClelland's "motivational needs theory" is very illuminating in this context:

• Power is the Great Motivator (David McClelland and David Burnham, Harvard Business Review, 2003)

Here's are two posts of mine on the same topic:

• Power Struggles Among Nice People
• McClelland and Burnham on Power and Management

Physician and organizational consultant Patricia Day Williams offers another useful perspective:

• Self-Awareness, Empowerment and Choice [PDF] (Patricia Day Williams, Chapter 7.10 in NTL's Reading Book for Human Relations Training, 1999)

And here's a post of mine that discusses Day Williams' work:

• Interpersonal Power

Other related posts of mine:

• Weather Systems (Power, Charisma and Leadership)
• Competence Isn't Power
• Three Definitions of Power

 

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2. Influence

I continue to find the framework first developed in the 1970s by Arizona State psychologist Robert Cialdini the most compelling and useful way of thinking about influence:

• Principles of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini)
• Harnessing the Science of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2001)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, 2021, 3rd ed. / 1984, 1st ed.)
• The Language of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2008)
• The Uses (and Abuses) of Influence (Robert Cialdini, Harvard Business Review, 2013)

Here Jerry Useem, the longtime Senior Editor-at-Large of Fortune and previously a Research Associate at HBS, draws on research by Pfeffer, Wharton's Adam Grant, and others--ignore the silly headline, which is just clickbait and doesn't accurately represent Useem's point of view:

• Why It Pays to Be a Jerk (Jerry Useem, The Atlantic, 2015)

It's vitally important to exert influence effectively in a negotiation. As I've noted to clients countless times, we don't get what we deserve, we get what we negotiate:

• Culture, Compensation and Negotiation
• Negotiating with Your Own Side

We begin to wield influence--or fail to--at the moment we first express interest in the role, well before our first day on the job:

• It's Time to Stop Interviewing

 

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3. Culture

First, what do we mean by culture? Author and management educator Michael Watkins offers a useful definition:

• Consistent, observable patterns of behavior.
• A process of "sense-making."
• A carrier of meaning.
• A social control system.
• A form of protection evolved from situational pressures.

Watkins' article and a related piece by management thinker Jon Katzenbach and colleagues are useful primers on the concept:

• What Is Organizational Culture? (And Why Should We Care?) (Michael Watkins, Harvard Business Review, 2013)
• 10 Principles of Organizational Culture (Jon Katzenbach, Carolin Oelschlegel and James Thomas, strategy + business, 2016)

It's essential to distinguish between an organization's explicit rules and its often implicit cultural norms:

• Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

Our efforts to manage up take place within a specific culture, which contains a set of expectations--often implicit and unstated--about how to be effective and influential. We hold ourselves back when allow such expectations to dictate our behavior, and yet we're likely to have the greatest impact when we're perceived as a member of the culture and not an outsider:

• Conform to the Culture Just Enough

IBM researcher Geert Hofstede pioneered the study of how national cultures differ, and although we need to apply his insights with caution to avoid reductive stereotyping, his model can be immensely useful. INSEAD professor Erin Meyer has built upon Hofstede's work to address its implications for cross-cultural communication:

• Geert Hofstede on the Dimensions of Cultural Difference
• Erin Meyer on Culture and Communication

Some cultures are particularly challenging, and we need to learn how to take care of ourselves without their support:

• Surviving in a Toxic (or Merely Dysfunctional) Culture
• How to Feed a Monster (Leading in Elite Organizations)

Managing up often involves encouraging senior leadership to be more open to feedback:

• Building a Feedback-Rich Culture
• Building a Feedback-Rich Culture from the Middle

 

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4. Emotion Regulation

This starts with understanding emotions' function, and I find the work of neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and Richard Davidson tremendously useful here:

• Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason
• The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)

Managing up means interacting with people in more senior hierarchical roles--sometimes challenging them, sometimes appeasing them--typically in circumstances when we feel a lack of authority or control and a degree of vulnerability. These situations often trigger strong emotions, and the goal of emotion regulation isn't simply to diminish what we're feeling and dampen our expressiveness, but to be deliberate and intentional in leveraging our emotions to help us accomplish our goals more effectively, both by managing ourselves and by having the desired impact on others:

• The Tyranny of Feelings
• Talking About Feelings
• Attitude and Behavior
• The Value of a Good Fight
• Neuroscience, Leadership and David Rock's SCARF Model
• Relating to Our Inner Critics
• Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)
• On Speaking Up and Shutting Up
• Leadership as a Performing Art

More specifically, effective managing up also entails "empathizing up," recognizing that senior leaders are human beings like everyone else:

• The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

 

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5. Coaching

Finally, consider working with a coach. Executive coaching isn't exclusively for senior executives. There are many outstanding coaches who offer a sliding scale or a range of services that make them affordable to early- and mid-career professionals. Here are some questions to ask yourself and a prospective coach:

• How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

And here are some coaches I recommend for early- and mid-career professionals:

• Agnes Le, Executive Coaching
• Angelos Georgakis, Personal and Executive Coaching
• Celine Teoh, Executive Coaching
• Cristina Celis, Executive and Leadership Coaching
• Dana Bilsky Asher, Executive Coach and Facilitator
• Elena Chen, Executive Coaching
• Glenn Terrell, Shinji Consulting & Coaching
• Gwen Mellor Romans, Circle Hill Advisory
• Jennifer Ouyang Altman, Inner Radio Leadership Coaching
• Natalie Guillen, Advant Coaching
• Nikki Turner, C3 Impact
• Rodrigo Lopez, Rodrigo Lopez Coaching
• Stephanie Stevens, Authentic Leadership Coaching

 

Photo by Diane Cordell.

Extending Your Personal Runway

When a company isn't yet profitable, leadership is always keenly aware of their runway. The amount of cash at their disposal net ongoing expenses will determine the length of time they can continue to operate before something has to change: achieving profitability, raising additional capital, major cost-cutting, or ceasing operations. A theme in my practice is the leader who's assessing their "personal runway," which isn't quite as easy to calculate but has similar implications: There's a limited amount of time that they can sustain the status quo before something has to change.

My clients typically begin a coaching engagement occupying a leadership role that they expect to hold for the foreseeable future. But we work together for relatively long periods of time, so it's not uncommon for me to talk with a client about the possibility of a professional transition. In some cases this is a result of a change in the business, such as a potential sale to an acquirer or a major shift in strategy.

But just as often there's a change in my client, and they unexpectedly find themselves staring down the runway, wondering how far it extends. They're not planning to leave suddenly--which would be neither feasible nor desirable--but they've realized that they have a finite capacity to continue in their current role, and they're unsure how much time they'll have before they feel compelled to act.

Why does this happen so often? Senior leaders do enjoy many advantages: They're well-compensated, have a great deal of autonomy, and often feel a strong sense of purpose. But such roles also come with significant downsides. Senior leaders are the subject of intense scrutiny, receive little developmental feedback, and are rarely viewed empathetically by others. [1] So despite the many benefits of these roles, feelings of stress, fatigue and isolation can cause senior leaders to entertain thoughts of leaving.

If you're a senior leader and this resonates with you, what can you do about it? My work with clients in this area involves what we might call "extending your personal runway": Taking steps that will enable you to remain in the role long enough to engineer a desirable transition, rather than feeling obligated to make a suboptimal move. (Most of my clients are CEOs, and there are some factors that apply specifically to that role, but many of the issues I address here are relevant for anyone in a leadership position.)

 

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Get Support

I'm biased, of course, but consider working with an executive coach. This need not be "career coaching," which involves helping you source and obtain a new role, should you choose to pursue one. It may be useful simply to have a trusted thought partner who understands the complexities of your role while remaining independent from the company. [2]

A personal coach can play a special role as a dedicated professional, but they're just one potential member of your "coaching team." There are undoubtedly other people already in your life or within reach who can also serve as sources of support, but you have to identify them--and understand the limits on the support they can provide. Family members and friends may be eager to help, but they may not fully grasp the challenges you face--and your need to talk about these challenges may exhaust their capacity to be present. In addition, cultivate relationships with peers--not just friends, but other senior leaders in similar roles. [3] The key in all of these relationships is letting the other party know what you need--people are often quick to jump in with advice, when you may just want to unburden yourself to an empathetic listener. [4]

A sometimes overlooked source of support is a truly outstanding executive assistant. If you don't have one, why not? As I've noted before, "a CEO who's spending time on tasks that could be delegated to an EA isn't being 'lean and scrappy'--they're stubbornly clinging to an outdated job description and hurting the business as a result." [5] Or perhaps you have a shared EA, or an "EA/office manager" for whom the role is merely a stepping stone to something better. In my experience when a leader finally finds a "professional EA" who views the role as a career path, the leader is not only much more effective, they're also far less stressed.

Finally, assess your finances. You needn't be motivated primarily by money to feel a heightened sense of opportunity cost as your tenure in a role lengthens. Perhaps your base compensation hasn't kept pace with the market, or a lack of liquidity is imposing constraints that are no longer palatable, or you're fully vested with no refresh on the calendar. We fail to obtain the financial support we need for many different reasons, but a common dilemma is the expectation that the necessary conversations will be uncomfortable or fraught. This may be true, but as I've noted before, "If it feels risky to say, saying it will carry a short-term cost [and] NOT saying it will carry a long-term cost." [6] I'm not suggesting that all you need to do is ask--you may face substantial resistance. But we don't get what we deserve--we get what we negotiate. [7] And a reluctance to thoroughly explore the possibilities will almost certainly shorten your personal runway.

 

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Redefine Your Role

Your current responsibilities were determined at a particular point in your company's evolution and in your own growth and development as a leader. Some of the stress and fatigue you feel today are likely the result of gaps that have emerged over time among A) the tasks you do because they're "your job," B) the tasks you do that create the most value, and C) the tasks you find most fulfilling. While you undoubtedly face constraints in re-defining your role, all too often I see leaders laboring under outdated job descriptions that should be updated--and this is as true of CEOs as it is of anyone else. It's important to distinguish between the value you create through specific tasks and the extent to which those tasks are personally fulfilling:

This is obviously an oversimplified version of reality, and there are probably few, if any, neat and tidy divisions among your duties that correlate perfectly with this model--but it may still highlight some useful distinctions. As I've noted before, "I define 'work' as a vocation--a calling or a personal mission that provides us with an intrinsic sense of meaning and purpose. A 'job,' in contrast, is a set of responsibilities we fulfill in exchange for various forms of compensation. We get paid to do the job, but the work is its own reward." [8]

If you're like many senior leaders these categories overlap substantially but have drifted apart in recent months or years, which may be one of the primary reasons you're considering the length of your runway. Almost certainly there are a set of tasks that you find unfulfilling but through which you generate so much value that it's unrealistic to consider delegating or abandoning them, at least at present. You may conclude that this is The Job, i.e. the reason you get paid. But what's in the top-right quadrant? What responsibilities are both value-generating and fulfilling? And what might enable you to operate here as much as possible?

At the same time, there are almost certainly a set of responsibilities are are neither value-generating nor personally fulfilling, although perhaps they were in the past. A cynic might say, "This is The Job--this is why I get paid." But in my experience that's not true for senior leaders who enjoy a degree of control and agency in their work (although it may well be for people in other roles in dysfunctional bureaucracies.) Instead, senior leaders typically find themselves performing these tasks either because they have an outdated idea of the value being created, or they've placed insufficient value on their time and attention. Once these factors are recalculated, it can be surprisingly easy to...stop.

To help assess your current role in light of this model, here are three questions to ask (which I've discussed at greater length previously [9]):

1. What are you uniquely qualified to do?

This is likely a function of the talent you can attract and retain at present. You probably own certain responsibilities because no one better qualified is available, and efforts to delegate these tasks will have to wait. But consider whether you're holding on to these responsibilities because of an outdated belief that certain tasks are too important to delegate, a counterproductive need to maintain personal oversight, or difficulties in building scalable systems. Your unique qualifications may be less expansive than you think.

2. What are you obligated to do?

All leadership roles come with some responsibilities that can't be delegated, no matter how talented your team or successful the company. But while these tasks may well be yours as long as you hold the role, it's often the case that as the company grows and your role becomes more prominent, the stakes will be higher, requiring more thorough preparation and a greater amount of your attention. Consider how narrowing the focus of your role might allow you to perform these duties more effectively and efficiently.

3. What are you free to do?

I'm not suggesting that you should prioritize personal preferences over organizational imperatives--this is not an excuse to hold on to responsibilities that should be delegated. But in addition to the work that you're uniquely qualified to do, and the work that you're obligated to do, consider what work you're free to do, what tasks might lift your spirits and make the job more intrinsically rewarding. Some of this will be value-generating, while some will simply be play--and although we may need to impose limits on the amount of play in our professional lives, a little goes a long way toward making stressful and fatiguing experiences more sustainable.

 

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Slow Down

Whatever steps you can take to extend your personal runway, it's also worthwhile to examine the forces that are causing you to accelerate toward its endpoint. It may be possible to slow down and lengthen your tenure in the process. Here are three factors that may be propelling you forward:

1. Inadequate Boundaries

If you're like many of my clients, you're not necessarily seeking "work/life balance," but at the same time, you're disinclined to devote the same amount of time and energy to work as you did in the past. This can result from many factors: Increasingly complex personal obligations, such as the needs of children, aging parents, a spouse or partner; or diminished personal well-being, ranging from the typical ailments of middle age to serious health issues. Or you may simply feel discontented or bored--the passion that once fueled your appetite for work has waned.

But while balance may be unattainable or even undesirable, you will almost certainly benefit from better boundaries. A healthy boundary isn't an impermeable barrier, but, like a cell membrane, it keeps the right things in the right places in the right proportions, while altering its permeability to adjust to changing conditions. As I've noted before, "Temporal boundaries designate certain times exclusively for family, friends, exercise, and other non-work pursuits... Physical boundaries ensure that we get out of our offices and workplaces at regular intervals and create actual distance between us and our work (which includes not only the office itself but also all our professional tools and artifacts–laptops, tablets, phones, papers, everything) [and] cognitive boundaries help us resist the temptation to think about work and focus our attention on the people or activity at hand." [10]

2. A Sense of Urgency

In this context it's important to distinguish between importance and urgency, which I define as follows:

Important activities are truly meaningful and fulfilling--to you, to the people who matter to you, to your organization, or to some cause that you believe in. They’re not necessarily time-dependent; they can be accomplished almost anytime, and if they go undone for a short stretch no one may even notice.

Urgent activities have a deadline attached to them that matters to someone—although not necessarily to you. They are time-dependent, at least in someone’s mind, and if they go undone that someone is going to be unhappy. They’re not necessarily meaningful or fulfilling, and accomplishing them may not actually make a significant difference. [11]

The dilemma, of course, is that "the time and attention we would otherwise devote to Important But Not Urgent activities is often sacrificed to address Unimportant But Urgent matters. The challenge is that we’re the only ones who care about the former, while the latter have many advocates." [12] You'll accelerate when you allow others' sense of urgency to dictate your priorities--and you'll slow down when you commit to such important-but-never-urgent activities as time with loved ones, a mindfulness routine, a workout, a good night's sleep.

3. Your Competitive Drive

Humans evolved to compare ourselves to others, to have a keen sense of our relative status, and to compete for resources and opportunities. We can't turn off these drives, nor would we want to. As with so many other confounding aspects of our psychology, they're features for the species that as individuals we often experience as bugs. [13] Even if you don't feel overtly competitive, if you're like many of my clients your sense of disenchantment with your current role is related to a perception that you're behind in some way--lagging after peers, classmates, siblings, or (most importantly) your own expectations.

The feeling of being behind inevitably provokes an urge to accelerate--you must catch up with whoever (or whatever) you're trailing--which will shorten your runway, potentially leading you to make suboptimal choices. There's no simple solution, but a starting point is considering the possibility that your competitive drive and the threat of loss that exacerbates it are, at least in part, illusions. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you should accept your current situation or stop striving to improve it.

But a counterpart to our proclivity for social comparison is the process of hedonic adaptation: We readily accommodate and soon take for granted changes in our circumstances. [14] The things we think will make us happy rarely make us as happy as we think they will, and the happiness they bring never lasts as long as we want it to. This is not a reason to stop trying to change your life for the better, but it may allow you to view your present condition with more equanimity, and to pursue your hopes for the future without rushing to get there.

 

This is a companion piece to Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise).

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Footnotes

[1] Watch That Next Step (CEO Problems)

[2] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[3] The Friendship of Wolves

[4] What Do You Need Right Now? (Advice, Listening, A Hug?)

[5] Three Stages of Executive Assistance

[6] Risk Management (The Importance of Speaking Up)

[7] Negotiating with Your Own Side

[8] The Work and The Job

[9] Three Buckets (On CEO Job Descriptions)

[10] Happy Workaholics Need Boundaries, Not Balance

[11] Importance vs. Urgency

[12] Ibid.

[13] The Trap of Competition

[14] Stop Trying to Be "Good Enough" By "Getting Better"

Photo by Victor.

Getting Coaching for Your Team

It's common for a leader I'm working with to consider professional coaching for one or more of their employees, and I've explored this topic with clients many times over the years. (In my practice this typically involves a CEO and their executive team, but the issues discussed here are relevant for leaders at all levels of an organization.) In some cases this is simply because my client has found our work together valuable, and they believe that their employees could benefit from a similar relationship. In others they envision coaching as a means by which a specific employee could make the most of their potential or overcome a particular challenge.

While I believe that leaders should be able to coach as part of their repertoire [1], there are limits on the efficacy of coaching as a managerial tool. As I've noted before, "We invest in people, and being invested in someone means we care about them and want them to succeed... But if we invest in people, we're attached to outcomes. We want something specific to happen." [2] Good leaders find the right balance between investment and attachment, and as a result their employees feel like valued partners, not means to an end. But even when leaders strike that balance, there are inevitably gaps between the organization's goals and individual employees' interests and aspirations. This is where a professional coach can play a particularly helpful role as a third party, because in most circumstances the coach is unattached to any particular outcomes for the organization or the individual.

If you're thinking about recommending coaching for your employees, here are a number of issues to consider that can affect the extent to which they embrace coaching as a source of support:

What Coaching Is (and Isn't)

In an increasing number of industries and geographies coaching is viewed as a source of support routinely utilized by conscientious professionals, or even as a special benefit for high performers. But in some organizations and places coaching still carries a stigma, which often derives from outdated models or fundamental misunderstandings. In years past it wasn't unusual for coaching to focus on corrective measures for poor performers, but these days those types of engagements are less common. A formative text in my own development as a coach was Co-Active Coaching, written by the founders of the Coaches Training Institute (now the Co-Active Training Institute). As they note in the Second Edition, "From the...coach's point of view, nothing is wrong or broken, and there is no need to fix the client." [3]

This doesn't mean that coaching avoids difficult or even painful issues--in my practice it's not unusual for a client to initiate coaching after encountering a setback or receiving some critical feedback. But even in those cases that's usually just one of several factors that led them to consider coaching in the first place. And while coaching can and should result in a range of improvements from the client's perspective in areas related to their professional performance, I don't believe coaching is particularly effective as part of a formal "performance improvement plan." Many PIPs are merely preliminaries to a foregone conclusion, and in those circumstances it's difficult for coach and client to develop a trusting relationship. (And I've never taken on a client in which coaching was viewed by the organization as a last-ditch effort before termination.)

Coaching can also be confused with therapy, which reflects a misunderstanding of both disciplines. [4] The distinction is often less about the topics being addressed and more about the degree of severity. For example, I regularly talk with clients about anxiety, a common experience for leaders facing daunting responsibilities. [5] Everyone is subject to anxiety at times, and coaching can be helpful in managing it at moderate levels. But severe anxiety (e.g. lasting for an extended period of time, pervasive across many domains of life, impeding normal functioning, accompanied by other physical or cognitive symptoms) requires treatment by a trained mental health professional, not a coach.

The key is ensuring that your employees view coaching as a desirable source of support and not as a threat to their status, security or sense of esteem. Skillful coaches will take great care to address this from the start of every engagement. As longtime MIT professor Edgar Schein notes in Helping, another of my primary texts, "The focus of the earliest interactions between the client and the helper must be managed by the helper toward building up the client's status and identifying appropriate roles." [6] But this process begins the moment you first mention coaching to an employee--and optimally you're able to share with them your own experiences with coaching, past or present.

Agency and Choice

It's essential that employees feel sufficient agency and choice in this process. While in some circumstances it may feel tempting to make coaching mandatory, such an approach will likely undermine the process and may doom it to failure. An employee who feels required to work with a coach will be slow to develop a sense of trust and may never be willing to speak candidly. That said, it's entirely appropriate for you to indicate that there are problems with the status quo that coaching could address.

My initial exposure to coaching came as a client in my first leadership role after business school. At the time I was entangled in a series of conflicts with my Board of Directors. A member of the Board who became a mentor took me aside and said, "You're a talented guy, but you have some rough edges, and you're turning potential allies into adversaries. I advise you to invest in yourself and get a coach." This recommendation wasn't made in a threatening way, but it was made clear that my current trajectory could have negative consequences, that I was facing an important opportunity to become a better leader, and that I was being invited to step up to the challenge. (I did, and this decision to seek coaching ultimately led me to begin coaching others in 2005 and launch a full-time practice the following year.)

Similarly, it's preferable to allow employees to choose their own coach, although there are some caveats. In some cases you may want a single coach to work with an entire group of employees, either one-on-one or in a team coaching capacity. (See below.) Your organization may already have a relationship with a coaching firm or a group of coaches (although even then the coaching providers will typically have individual employees choose from among several potential coaches.) Your employees should have a sense of ownership and responsibility so that coaching is not something "happening to them," but, rather, a process in which they're active participants.

The Leader's Agenda

As noted above, in some cases you may want an employee to address a specific set of issues in coaching. But even when you simply view coaching as a source of support that will benefit an  employee in a generalized way, you likely have a variety of hopes and aspirations for the process. Your agenda shouldn't predominate, and you may need to rein in your directive impulses, but it's neither realistic nor helpful to pretend that you have no agenda at all. Instead, you, your employee and the coach need to collaborate to ensure that your interest in coaching is understood by both employee and coach, and, where possible, integrated into the coaching process without preventing the employee from focusing on other issues that are meaningful to them.

There are a number of ways to accomplish these goals. It's imperative to respect the confidentiality of the coaching relationship, but that doesn't mean you have no access to the coach. You will need to accept limits on what the coach will share with you, and the coach may want to limit the information that you share with them. [7] But you can meet with the coach at the beginning of the engagement in order to convey your agenda and at various times throughout the engagement to assess progress. You may want to include your employee in these meetings, and at times you may want to meet separately with the coach--although if the employee isn't present they should be aware that the meeting is taking place.

You can also discuss coaching with your employee in your regular one-on-ones, although I'm in agreement with the late Intel CEO Andy Grove: "A key point about a one-on-one. It should be regarded as the subordinate's meeting, with its agenda and tone set by [the employee]." [8] If you try to compel transparency, your employee may actually feel less willing to be open with you. But coaching need not be a black box, and you can express your interest in hearing more about the process and extend an invitation to be more candid by being more candid yourself. Once again, it's optimal to be able to talk about your own experience with coaching, which normalizes the idea of having a coach and makes it a safer conversation for your employee.

Think Systemically

It's not necessary for all members of a team to have a coach, and coaching shouldn't be made mandatory. But if coaching is perceived as a perk rather than a punishment, once a member of the team has a positive experience with a coach it's likely that others will want the same access. So consider the implications for your team as a system--including the possibility that everyone might want to participate--and what model for the program will best meet your team's needs. Here are four potential options:

1. In the most basic model each member of the team who wants coaching has their own coach with whom they meet individually, and the coaches have no other exposure to each other or to the group as a whole. This maximizes confidentiality and makes it easier for employees to decide when to begin or conclude coaching, but it requires your organization to maintain relationships with multiple coaches. In a variation of this model coaches may work with multiple employees in separate, parallel individual engagements--this allows you to work with fewer coaches, but it heightens the need for trust among those team members who share a coach. (In these situations it's preferable that employees know who each coach is working with, as that may influence their choice of coach.)

2. In another model the leader and each employee works individually with a coach (and coaches may or may not work with multiple individuals), but in addition the coaches meet separately to share information on the team's overall progress. Such engagements typically focus on group dynamics and interpersonal issues and are often relatively short, lasting just several months. Further, this arrangement is usually only feasible with a group of coaches from a single firm--it's difficult to organize this sort of collaboration when the coaches are independent providers.

3. In a third model each employee has their own coach, but there's also a coach who works with the group as a whole--this coach may also work individually with the leader, but not necessarily. The "team coach" can facilitate offsites and other special events, conduct 360s or other assessments [9], or shadow the group during regular meetings and offer guidance based on their observations.

4. And in yet another model a single coach works with members of the team individually and with the group as a whole. This requires not only a coach who's equally skilled in these disciplines, but also a high degree of trust among the team. When friction among team members is one of the motivations to initiate these activities, it's vital to initially establish a requisite degree of trust, psychological safety and emotional intimacy to serve as the foundation for subsequent work. [10]

Each of these models has its benefits and its disadvantages--there's no one right way to provide coaching for a team, and there are certainly additional models beyond these four. Think about your needs as a system, as well as the capabilities of the coaches available to you. Coaching is an idiosyncratic profession, and every provider has their own approach to the process, whether they're a consolidated firm, a platform that aggregates independent coaches, or a sole practitioner like myself. You should expect providers to have clarity on their approach and to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses relative to your needs. It's not helpful when you ask a coach, "What do you do?" and their first response is, "What do you need?"

 

This is a companion piece to How to Find (and Choose) a Coach.

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Footnotes

[1] How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize

[2] Investment vs. Attachment

[3] Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success, page 4 (Laura Whitworth, Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House and Phillip Sandahl, 2007)

[4] Therapy Referrals

[5] Attention Surplus Disorder (Anxiety and Distraction)

[6] Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help, page 46 (Edgar Schein, 2011)

[7] The corollary to confidentiality is a duty to disclose, which I define in my practice as follows: "My primary obligation is to each individual client, and I have a duty to disclose to each client any information that I believe they would view as material. This includes any information shared with me by a client's employees, employers, colleagues, board members, investors, friends, or family.  As a consequence, I cannot maintain confidentiality with any other party if doing so would prevent me from sharing material information with a client."

[8] High Output Management, page 75 (Andy Grove, 1983 / 1995)

[9] For more on 360s, see The Problem with Anonymous Feedback.

[10] For more on these qualities in organizational life, see Safety, Trust, Intimacy and Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination.

Photo by Angelo Juan Ramos.

Group Dynamics: Norms and Emotion

A frequent theme in my work is the leader who's striving to help a group be more effective. In my practice this typically involves a CEO and their executive team, but similar challenges occur at every level in an organization. One of the most useful resources I've encountered on this subject is a classic Harvard Business Review article by Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven Wolff on "Building the Emotionally Intelligent Group":

Study after study has shown that teams are more creative and productive when they can achieve high levels of participation, cooperation, and collaboration among members. But interactive behaviors like these aren't easy to legislate. Our work shows that three basic conditions need to be present before such behaviors can occur: mutual trust among members, a sense of group identity (a feeling among members that they belong to a unique and worthwhile group), and a sense of group efficacy (the belief that the team can perform well and that group members are more effective working together than apart). At the heart of these three conditions are emotions. Trust, a sense of identity, and a feeling of efficacy arise in environments where emotion is well handled, so groups stand to benefit by building their emotional intelligence. [1]

To specify the meaning of "emotional intelligence" in this context, Druskat and Wolff refer to the work of author and science journalist Daniel Goleman, who defines someone with high emotional intelligence as both "aware of emotions and able to regulate them--and this awareness and regulation are directed both inward, to one's self, and outward, to others. 'Personal competence,' in Goleman's words, comes from being aware of and regulating one's own emotions. 'Social competence' is awareness and regulation of others' emotions." [2] (Note that emotion regulation is not suppression. [3])

However, Druskat and Wolff add, it's insufficient for a group to simply rely upon individual members' capacity for emotion awareness and regulation. Individuals' behavior in a given group is highly influenced by that group's norms, which I've defined elsewhere as "social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow, and patterns of behavior based on shared beliefs about how individuals should behave." [4] And it's essential to distinguish between norms, which are what we actually do, and rules, which are what we intend to do, or what we're supposed to do, or what we aspire to do. 

So a group's emotional intelligence is a function of the norms that A) create awareness of emotion and B) support emotion regulation during group activities, and when considering how to help a group be more effective, it's important to analyze group behavior in these domains. To help in this process, I've adapted the table below from Druskat and Wolff's much more comprehensive selection. In my work with executive teams as well as in T-groups at Stanford [5], I've found that these 14 behaviors are more than adequate to enable a group to understand and assess how their norms support--or inhibit--emotion awareness and regulation. (Here's a one-page, printer-friendly worksheet.)

Norms That Create Awareness of Emotion
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
1. Spend time getting to know each other personally.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
2. Ask how people are doing (e.g., check-ins at the beginning of meetings).
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
3. Share our thoughts and emotions in the moment.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
4. Ask those who have been quiet in a discussion what they think.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
5. Fully explore resistance to decisions.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
6. Discuss and evaluate our own effectiveness as a group.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
7. Acknowledge and discuss the feeling in the group in the moment.
Norms That Help Regulate Emotion
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
1. Have clear ground rules for productive behavior in meetings.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
2. Call out behavior that violates those ground rules.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
3. Express acceptance of others' emotions.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
4. Discuss difficulties within the group and the emotions they generate.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
5. Use playfulness and humor to acknowledge and relieve stress.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
6. Express optimism about our capabilities as a group.
We never...	We always...
•         •         •         •         •         •
7. Provide positive feedback to each other in the moment.

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Putting It Into Practice

In some groups it may be enough to review this framework before holding a frank discussion about norms and emotion. But in my experience most groups find it difficult to analyze their own behavior without first making some dedicated time for such an activity and then conducting an exercise designed not only to surface the necessary data, but also to foster a sense of psychological safety that will encourage greater candor. [6] Below is an exercise intended for groups up to approximately a dozen people--my slides generally include minimal text, so the outline provides some additional guidance for a group or facilitator. An hour is sufficient, but the time can be extended up to 90 minutes. (Allotted times for each segment are suggestions, not exact figures.)

Step One: Conceptual Framing and Worksheets (15 minutes)

• Explore the concepts that underlie the exercise. (It may be useful to read Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups or the other readings linked below in advance, but this isn't necessary.)
• Druskat and Wolff define group effectiveness as high levels of participation, cooperation and collaboration, and their work suggests that these behaviors are fostered by the presence of mutual trust, a sense of group identity, and a sense of group efficacy.
• In turn, these characteristics derive from a group's emotional intelligence, which is a function of the group's norms regarding emotion awareness and regulation. It's often helpful to note that emotion regulation is not suppression.
• The fundamental purpose of this exercise is to identity productive norms and make them more explicit, a process that should be repeated at regular intervals, not conducted once and forgotten.
• Distribute the worksheets and allow several minutes for their completion. Be sure to note that norms aren't rules--it's important to assess actual behavior, not aspirations.
• Also note that people will not have to share their actual worksheets, but their responses will be disclosed via the group activity below--this helps to create safety.

Step Two: Partner Identification and Group Activity (15 minutes)

• Have people find their partners, which should be assigned in advance, either randomly or deliberately. (Choosing partners at this point tends to create unnecessary anxiety.) If there's an odd number of people participating, form one trio.
• Everyone will observe their partner during the group activity and then have a pair conversation afterwards.
• Clear sufficient space in the room, and spread out 6 cones in a curved line--use as much space as is available. (Small playing field cones are perfect. I've also used 7 cones, which allows people to register a neutral opinion, while 6 cones compels people to express a positive or negative opinion. Note that the worksheet linked above has 6 points on the scale.)
• Start by having the group stand behind the curved line of cones. (The curve will allow people to see where others are located.)
• Go through each of the 14 norms in turn, having people place themselves along the spectrum behind the cone that reflects their response to the question "We always..." or "We never..."
• Proceed slowly, and pause once everyone is settled so that they can note their partner's position, as well as make general observations about the group consensus.
• The exercise generates an immense amount of data in a short amount of time, which is why the partners are so important. It's not possible to track the entire group at once (beyond general observations), but it should be possible for partners to track similarities and differences in their responses.
• Note that if there are any outliers in a given set of responses, this is extremely important data, and these individuals may feel exposed or vulnerable. This is one reason why attending to psychological safety is so important. If the group is experiencing conflict, this exercise may well provoke further distress for some individuals. That's not necessarily a reason to avoid the exercise, but the group should be prepared to address these issues and spend more time in discussion as a result.

Step Three: Pair Discussion (15 minutes)

• After the conclusion of the group activity, pairs should spread out and discuss their observations. It's preferable to keep the pairs in the room and maintain the momentum and energy in the exercise, rather than having people leave the room and return for the group discussion.
• Three questions are suggested:
  • What norms are working well?
  • What norms are getting in our way?
  • How do our actual norms differ from our goals?

Step Four: Group Debrief (15 to 45 minutes)

• Following the pair discussion, the group reassembles for a full debrief. Optimally all members are seated in a circle without a table, so that everyone has equal access and can see everyone else.
• Four questions are suggested (although the three questions above can simply be repeated):
  • What did we learn?
  • What’s working?
  • What’s not?
  • What might we do differently?
• As a final step in the debrief, consider the conversation that was just held:
  • How did the group conduct this discussion?
  • What norms were enacted in the process?

Slideshare: Group Dynamics: Norms and Emotion

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Footnotes

[1] Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups (Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff, Harvard Business Review, 2001)

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Tyranny of Feelings

[4] Rules Aren't Norms (On Company Values)

[5] "Building the Emotional Intelligence of Groups" was on my syllabus when I taught Interpersonal Dynamics at Stanford, and the exercise described above is adapted from my Group Norms and Roles class.

[6] Safety Is a Resource, Not a Destination

Photo by Woodley Wonder Works.