“I’m trying to change, but every time I interact with Joe, it is the same old thing over and over again. I find myself slipping back into my old dysfunctional behaviors. I just can’t work with the guy.”
In this third posting of our “coming up short” coaching series, we explore the last common pattern we see – Organizational Hypoxia.
The “oxygen supply” for healthy organizations is the strength of its working relationships. Strong working relationships in organizations fuel increased creativity and insight, support more informed risk taking and speed, and provide greater energy, productivity, and resilience in the face of adversity. The reverse is also true. Dysfunctional working relationships are a stressor on the system in the same way hypoxia leads to tissue damage and death in the human body. Broken working relationships destroy value in myriad ways, both visible and invisible.
Organizational hypoxia can take several forms. We have seen senior executives who are “nice” create chaos in organizations because they avoid tough decisions, don’t constructively confront non-performing people on their teams, and don’t set clear expectations regarding desired leadership practices. Dysfunctional working relationships present a business risk to organizations precisely because conflict is an inherent part of organizational life. At the other extreme, we all know leaders who deliver the numbers, but trash the work climate. They get passed around to various departments because no one is willing or able to help them address their relationship issues.
Effective coaching should be focused on multiple levels at the same time with the boss fully engaged. Executive coaching aimed at transforming leaders has to be grounded in fostering, enabling, and developing strong working relationships with all the key stakeholders of the leaader being developed. Coaching work that fails to address the various relationship interfaces of a leader’s role is limited in its ability to achieve sustained transformation, and can sometimes result in increased dysfunction.