Businesses win when they create novel or unique value. And businesses create that type of value when they optimize the relationships between the leaders responsible for creating it.
Ever had your success stalled by a siloed work environment? Ever wished you could harness conflict to aid creativity and innovation? Ever failed to instill the collective accountability of your team toward a common aim? Ever agreed on a decision and found out later your interpretation of it was much different than that of the others?
Organizations invest millions annually to solve these challenges, often with solutions that are only surface deep, so the challenges remain. These superficial solutions fall into one of three types: Digital, Environmental, or Financial.
- Digital Solutions promise to streamline information sharing and aid virtual teams who are required to work together effectively.
- Environmental Solutions promise to remove the physical barriers that keep leaders from getting face time with each other.
- Financial Solutions promise to incent leaders to work together.
However, these digital, environmental, and financial solutions fail to address the working relationships that create the value between them. They bring everyone’s information closer together more quickly but they fail to help leaders understand why they believe information hoarding or withholding is necessary in the first place. Toppling office walls increases geographic proximity but fails to address the reason for avoidance in the first place. Pay-for-performance compensation puts financial teeth to collaboration but fails to instill a norm that teaming is profitable even when individuals do not financially benefit.
These solutions are worthwhile endeavors if they are paired with the deeper work required to strengthen the partnerships between the leaders involved. For instance, Healthcare research of Accountable Care Organizations shows that financial incentives only work when paired with training team members to team effectively. Furthermore, this McKinsey study shows that relational incentives are less used and more effective than financial incentives.
Addressing the root of ineffectiveness between you and others requires attention in the following areas.
Prioritize the “how” of your working relationships. Too often the “what” of work trumps how it is accomplished. Both are required for success. If you do great work and kill each other in the process, you’ll lose in the long run. Prioritizing the “how” requires a give and take by each leader – ultimately the “how” must accomplish the work in a way that is accepted by all. Get under the surface by identifying the similarities and differences of each leader’s preferred way to work together.
- What do you believe about information and how will you share it?
- What do you believe about feedback and how will you give and receive it?
- What do you believe about development and how will your work incorporate it?
- What do you believe about trust and how will you extend and build it?
Find something that matters to everyone. You won’t move forward together if you only focus on your differences; they’re important but only tell a divided story. The sooner you can surface a common story, the sooner you will begin to gain traction as a collective. If you’re struggling to find something that matters to everyone, reflect on your experiences across three-time horizons.
- Past – What was the impetus for my involvement today? What are the experiences that brought me into this room, meeting, work? How did my history prepare me, serve as a catalyst, or compel my involvement?
- Present – What do you want to give and get from the time spent together? How do you envision participating? What do you believe about the others who are present? How does that impact how you will or will not participate?
- Future – What hopes, aspirations, or beliefs do you hold that will make this meaningful over the long haul? Do you have a specific goal or objective you’re working toward? What stories do you want to tell about this work and the group’s involvement in creating it?
Individually reflect on your time horizons. As a group look across your reflections and name the commonalities you notice.
Let those insights be the common ground on which you collectively stand and work from – those patterns are the epicenter of your collective value creation. A word of caution – when differences run deep aligning on something is more important than aligning on the thing. Eventually you must get to “the” thing but aligning on something pulls individuals out of isolation, helps build necessary relationships, and creates movement in a common direction even if it doesn’t immediately create the outcome you’re initially fighting over.
Flip the script and normalize a new way. The longer you have worked with someone, the deeper behavioral patterns are ingrained. Over time norms create scripts or patterns of behavior that are enacted unconsciously. Some of the following scenarios may feel familiar. Each includes a suggestion for how to flip the script of the working relationship between you.
- Is your function at odds with another function? Do you spend a portion of your team meetings complaining how they’re not doing what you need them to do? Flip the script. Tell your Marketing team you’ve invited Sales to your next meeting and asked them to share how Marketing makes their life difficult.
- Are your leaders conflict avoidant? Do they skirt difficult topics and lead unilaterally so they don’t have to confront others? Flip the script. At your next team meeting spend the entire time debating avoided topics and making decisions you know will speed results.
- Are your expectations falling on deaf ears? Has HR told you to institute a 90-day PIP? Flip the script. Instead of imposing more expectations on your leader, give them a framework (I need you to accomplish X by Y) and have them detail accountabilities and metrics in their PIP.
- Has decision-making created churn and confusion rather than direction and action? Do you spend time after making a decision convincing others of the outcome or changing plans because you’re heading in the wrong direction? Flip the script. Appoint a note taker for every meeting. Have them capture decisions, conversation and debate, and outcomes with actions and accountabilities. Distribute the notes after the meeting.
Prioritizing how you work, surfacing commonalities, and actively working to flip the script between those involved will get you well on your way to doing the deeper, more reliable work required for thriving workplace relationships and the value they create. Then you can be confident the investment in the digital, environmental, and financial solutions will be worth the resource and live up to their promised results.