Hi. This is Guy Harris. Welcome to Talk Like a Leader. This week's episode is titled Resolving Conflicts with Other Leaders in Your Organization. The origin of this podcast episode really comes from a workshop I was leading recently. And as we talked about communication skills for leaders, the general direction of the conversation was leader talking with members of the team.

They lead well towards the end of the workshop, A question came up, directed in a slightly different direction. It was in the context of conflict resolution and it was conflict resolution. With other leaders in the organization, more of a peer to peer conflict between different team leaders than as a leader navigating a conflict within your team or with a particular member of your team.

And the general concepts, as we talked about it, are basically the same with some qualifiers and caveats, because the nature of the relationship is different. The power dynamic is different, the organizational context is different. So there are a few things general principles, guiding concepts that are really the same, and then some subtleties that are specific to the situation of leader, the leader, the general concepts that are the same, really, regardless of the particular situation or the relationship dynamic, is that we want to approach the conflict conversation or the communication around the conflict, looking for some type of shared interest.

The place where we're likely going to find a resolution is where our interests are shared. Now in the workplace, that's typically something like the business impact or results of the larger business beyond our specific team dynamics, thinking a bit bigger than just the specific team we lead and how it's in conflict with a different team, or how I am a leader of a specific team and then conflict with the leader of another team.

How does our interaction affect the entire business or the entire piece of the business that the two of us work within? So shared interest is a common idea. Regardless of the specifics of the conflict. Something to look for as a place to resolve. Another general concept that applies really to all conflicts is this idea of focusing on the future in the conversation rather than trying to unravel the past and focusing more on solving the business problem than on the relationship problem.

Sometimes these get kind of muddy and co-mingled, and because we have a communication difficulty with a person just on a relationship basis, it causes us to have challenges on a business basis. So I'm not saying that we should ignore the relationship issue and never try to fix it. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that in the heat of the moment, in the middle of a conflict about a business issue is probably not the time to tackle that.

Another guiding principle is one issue per conversation as a good general rule for how to deal with conflicts with other people. The more issues you put on the table, the more complicated it gets and significantly more difficult to resolve. So when you're in the middle of a conflict with another business leader, let's focus on the business problem rather than the relationship problem.

And if you can add the context of a prior episode where I've talked about meta conversations or transition conversations, it might be worth visiting the idea with this particular person. How can we in the future work better together on a general basis? So on another day or at a different time, we might have a conversation about how our relationship could be better in the heat of a specific business issue problem, though.

Let's solve that first. OK, so the general concepts are shared interest, probably business impact. Focus on the future and then let's focus on solving the conflict in front of us right now. Rather than the global relationship issue. Those are two different issues. So one issue per conversation as a general rule. Now the specifics to consider the qualifying ideas when you have conflict with another leader in your organization usually comes up when you have conflicting interests that at least appear is that you can't resolve it or sometimes legitimately you cannot resolve it.

Sometimes what you're going to run into and a leader to leader conflict is that the two departments or two teams have legitimately different goals. This is frequently true if you report to different leaders yourselves. Sometimes it's true if you report to the same leader. You know, there are times I've seen in manufacturing world where maybe the quality department or the quality team, the lab team has different goals than the production team, and they might all report to the production manager.

So sometimes there are structural issues different goals between departments that cause conflicts between people. And when you run into these types of structural issues, it's important to view them through the lens of a structural conflict, not a personal conflict. And the way to resolve those is, again, keeping in mind the three principles we talked about prior and add to this the layer of maybe this is a conflict between our roles that we need to address, not a conflict between us as people and if that's true, then you have at least two things you could do.

There may be more, and there are two that come to mind immediately for me, or one thing you can do is go to the leader that you have in common, or go to the level of leadership that can help resolve conflicts between teams, that can mitigate goals, adjust goals, clarify expectations, help reconcile where boundaries are between people, those kinds of things.

So maybe an approach is to go to the leader that you have in common, or the leader who has the authority to reconcile the structural issues and work with them to find out where those boundaries lie and how you can get those structural issues resolved. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes it's inherent to the organization, and sometimes there are some friction or conflict between teams purely for the purpose of kind of like a checks and balances idea.

Like we balance each other out because we have conflicting interests. Kind of like the three branches of our U.S. government are supposed to work. So conflicting interests sometimes is applied intentionally so that we have checks and balances against each other to keep us in check as an organization. It does cause friction between people and if we can view it through the lens of this is a structural conflict between our roles and it doesn't have to become a personal conflict.

So the two things you can do are to go to the leader who can help you, help you resolve the structural issue. And if that's not possible because it's intentional and it's necessary for the type of teams you're working on, then what you can do is recognize it for what it is that it's a constraint on both people.

It's a role constraint rather than a conflict between people and in a respectful way, tried to figure out how to navigate that with your peer, with the presumption. Going back to something I've talked about in other episodes, the presumption of benign intent, the presumption that they are responding to what they see based on the constraints they face, rather than that they're just a person who's trying to get in your way and hopefully you can help them see that about you, too.

So the idea here is conflict between leaders and organization. Has the same basic concepts at its core, and it also has some qualifying or constraining ideas that might be driven by structural issues or role conflicts between people. And the way to look at that is from a mature perspective that we are just people who have different responsibilities and we are responding to the responsibilities, the constraints we have in our role rather than we're two people who want to be at war with each other in the workplace.

I hopefully shed some light and helps you think through and consider ways to resolve conflicts with other leaders. In the organization. I think if you can apply the general concepts about looking for shared interests, focusing on the future and focus on the business problem before you worry about the relationship problem, unless of course, it's a intentional murder conversation about the relationship and then view the conflict through the lens of role constraint or structural conflict rather than personal conflict.

Make sure that both of you see it through that lens. Have the conversation in that light in a respectful and honoring way. If you can do that, you can talk like a leader This has been the Talk Like The Leader podcast. You can listen to this show every week wherever you get your podcast. If you haven't be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

I'm Guy Harris and thanks for listening.

Hi. This is Guy Harris. Welcome to Talk Like a Leader. This week's episode is titled How to Discipline an Employee After You've Tried Everything Else.

This question comes specifically as the result of a question I got recently in a training class. I was leading and a version of this question or a question that basically becomes this question when you dig far enough has been asked in a long list a long set of circumstances I have seen as I've worked with new and frontline supervisors and I don't know exactly what your situation is or what you're bringing to the table.

As you're listening to this podcast episode, I can share with you what I've seen in most of the situations where I've either seen it personally and been involved in the situation or attempted to help a frontline leader navigate the situation. They're working with an employee that for the most part is doing an OK job. And there is one thing or a short list of things that are annoying.

Frustrating, not ideal or not perfect could be better described lots of different ways. But basically we're talking about an employee who mostly is OK, kind of mid-level to acceptable though not awesome performance. And there is something or maybe a set of some things about their performance or their approach to work or the results they get or their timeliness or something like that.

That is at least mildly frustrating or annoying. And as we start talking about this and how to deal with it, a couple of questions come to my mind, questions that I think we have to really understand and answer honestly if we're going to figure out how to deal with this situation. And a couple of the questions that are in my mind are things like, is the thing that you see that's not ideal?

Is it mission critical or is it just annoying if they're doing most everything OK does the thing or set of things, they're not doing OK overwhelm everything else so that that one issue makes their net performance unacceptable? Or is this a relatively minor thing compared to everything else they do? Another question to think about is if they don't change this thing, would you be willing to fire them over it or maybe less harsh?

If they don't change it, would would you refuse to give them an opportunity for advancement, a raise, a new position or a new opportunity, that kind of thing? These are the kind of questions I think you really have to wrestle with because it's easy to let the thing about a person's performance or behavior that is annoying on a personal basis start to be viewed and because you view it this way, dealt with as if it were a mission critical thing because it's annoying to you you really work hard to get rid of it, and if it is mission critical, harming the business, you'd be willing to fire them over it.

It has serious implications meaning like they are not going to get an opportunity for advancement or new opportunities because of this behavior. And I think you probably need to be honest with them and let them know that if it's simply at the annoying and frustrating level, then I think you need to proceed very, very carefully because you see, I think it's important to recognize that as a leader my job your job is not to eliminate every annoying behavior.

Your job is to achieve the business mission, to get the results necessary. For the business to satisfy customer needs, those kind of things. In the process of doing that, we're going to have to work with people who are less than perfect. And frankly, we are all less than perfect. So the truth is that all of us have something we do that is annoying to other people, and we probably wouldn't want that minor annoyance thing to be viewed as a business issue or a business critical thing.

Sometimes it truly is. Often it's not so you have to first separate whether this issue you're concerned about is a business issue or a personal issue. If it's hurting business, results, if it's limiting business performance, if it's hurting quality or safety or something like that, well then it's business critical. If it's just annoying to you, if it just could be better if it's OK and not perfect, that's probably more on the it's personally annoying range, and you have to remember that annoying to you is not a business problem.

It is just annoying to you. OK, so if it's just a thing that's annoying well I think you need to be careful about is asking the question or framing the question or thinking about the question in terms of disciplining the person to eliminate this annoying thing. Here's the reason why discipline, which usually has a negative connotation, meaning what am I going to do to a person or what negative consequence am I going to expose them to or give to them if they don't fix this thing?

Attempts to motivate by eliminating a thing that's frustrating through use of force or discipline or coercive power. And I'm not going to argue that it doesn't work, that it never changes behavior what I'm going to suggest is if it's not truly a discipline issue, meaning a do it or else scenario, then the use of, quote, disciplinary or negative motivators, negative strategies tends to disengage people, cause them to check out, cause them to pull away and feel less committed and engaged in the work of the business.

So when I think about mildly annoying behaviors or OK and not perfect behaviors, if I think about those in terms of how to correct or improve them from a disciplinary or negative motivation strategy, I'm really going to position my interaction with the employee or you're going to position the interaction with your employee in the negative context.

 And if as soon as you position it in the negative context, it's likely to have negative consequences, such as you might fix the one thing that's annoying to you and damage your relationship with the person you might get them to change their behavior in a begrudging way, which means they no longer bring an energy and enthusiasm to work, and they do things just enough to keep you off your off their back so a disciplinary approach for a thing that is not really business critical probably has more negative impact than positive impact.

And I would suggest be very careful with thinking about approaching the situation that way. What I would encourage is rather than thinking about how to discipline this person, I would think about what is this person's motivations, what would inspire them to want to change his behavior?

Because ultimately they're not going to change the behavior or get a different result until they want to. And you really big picture have two ways to do that. You can make it so painful to not get rid of the result that they choose to get, the result to get rid of the pain, which means they do it bare minimum, may not repeat it in the future, maybe causes other problems because you damage the relationship or you can find a way to incentivize them.

And that doesn't necessarily mean more money or rewards. It could be as little as thank you or the satisfaction they feel for having completed the project or seeing the thing that needs to be done in a different light.

For example, if I have a member of my team using the disc model as a way to talk about this, if I have a member of my team who has a lot of supportive traits and I'm coaching that person trying to get them to get better results that may or may not land with them, what might be better is to coach them in terms of how they can help the team, how they can make things better for their team.

Maybe a relational approach rather than the task accomplishment approach would sound better to that person. Now, I can't make blanket statements to say this will always be true. I'm offering that as an example, and I've often used the example of a mentor of mine who was trying to talk to me about the importance of learning how to smile in business interactions and to be friendly with people, which I have learned to do.

And I now, at this point in my career, see the value in doing it. At one point in time, though, it just made no sense to me, like, why couldn't we just get work done? Because we need to get work done. What's this smiling and being friendly thing got to do with anything? This mentor of mine said, Hey, guy, you're going to need to learn to smile, or people are going to feel like you like them.

Well, the problem with that statement at the particular time this was made to me was I didn't really care if people liked me yet. And so he attempted to inspire me with a need I didn't have. So I kind of looked at him with a blank face and stared. Now, the good news is that this particular mentor was wise.

He understood how to reframe things in a way that mattered to me. And he said, Let me try again. I think I didn't say that in a way that landed exactly the way I wanted it. Land Guy, would you like to have better results in your interactions with people in terms of getting better business results? And my answer was, Well, of course I like to get better business results.

He reminded me then he said, You know, we've talked about the DISC model. You know, that there's a good chunk of people that probably aren't going to want to do business with you, hire you, work with you unless they feel like you like them. Now, see how he phrased the issue in terms that mattered to me? Get better business results.

And then he tied it to people feeling like I liked them. He tied the two issues together for a person. He did not yet see that connection. Well, once I understood that smiling together, getting better business results, and it wasn't really an issue of whether I cared if people like me or not, it's whether they would do business with me.

Then I was willing to change my behaviors. Then I was on to learn how to smile and put effort into it might even sound like a silly issue. And maybe to you, from where you sit, you're thinking, What do you mean you didn't understand? You need to smile, Guy. That's just that's just a base level thing. You know the truth is now now that I understand it, I see it that way, too.

The point is, at the point in time we had the conversation, I didn't yet see it. And that employee on your team who you've tried everything you can think of to try to motivate them to change a behavior or get a different result might be in the same place. It might be not that they don't care so much is that you haven't given them a thing to care about.

You haven't tied the issue that you're trying to achieve or the result you're trying to achieve or the or the behavior they're using or not using to something that matters to them. You have attempted to sell it to them based on something that matters to you. And that's probably where the disconnect comes from. And as long as you continue to try to sell people on things for your reasons, they're probably not going to buy and you're going to be frustrated.

So how do you discipline an employee after you tried everything else? Well, the first step is to break it down and decide, is this really mission critical? Would I fire them when I limit their opportunity because of it? Is it really that big a deal or is it just annoying most of the time? Again, not all the time.

Most of the time, what I find is these are really annoying behaviors, not business critical behaviors. And if they're just annoying, then I would say stay engaged. Keep looking for ways to engage with the person. Be careful that you don't let the frustration turn into anger, keep encouraging them and keep looking for ways that connect with them. What is important to them for making this change or making this improvement or making this adjustment to their behavior?

When you can find the hook that works for them, they will probably find their own reasons to change it, and then you won't be frustrated. Now, the Disney model is a great place to start. It's not the only place, and we have a number of episodes in this podcast about the Disney model. We have several on change and on coaching, and I want to look back at those.

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Unknown
Or you can go to DISCPersonalityTesting.com take a look at the resources we have there, and hopefully that will give you some perspective on how to engage with the person who sees who sees things differently from you so that maybe you can find the hook that for them encourages them to change the behavior that's annoying to you.

If you can make that change, if you can find the hook, if you can shift from trying to discipline the behavior way to encouraging and coaching the behavior away or coaching into a better behavior, you can talk like a leader this has been the Talk Like The Leader podcast. You can listen to this show every week wherever you get your podcast if you have it, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

I'm Guy Harris and thanks for listening.

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Hi. This is Guy Harris. Welcome to Talk Like a Leader. This week's episode is titled Longing for the Past Versus Looking to the Future. We are late in the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. You know, I'm not a public health expert.

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I'm not able to declare the end of the pandemic. I can just say that what I observe is that many businesses are moving in the direction of operating without a lot of the pandemic induced, pandemic driven restrictions that we had for the better part of two years. And early in the pandemic period, something like 40% of people

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were able to transition from working in an office or physical location type setting to working remotely, working from home, working via computer, whatever you want to call it. And that 40% number doesn't include every type of business that was affected by pandemic shutdowns.

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Some businesses shut down entirely. Not only did they not come to an office or a physical location, they didn't work at all. So the 40% number, to the best of my understanding, applies only to those people who work remotely, which means that an even bigger number of people were affected by some kind of shutdown restriction or otherwise

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limited in their ability to work or location that could work. Basically, that says a lot of people. Now, I don't think this is news to anyone as everybody lived through this together. The issue, though, is that as we come to the end of that period and, you know, I'm not a public health expert, I am not going

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to declare the end of the pandemic, not my place, not my expertise. I am going to say that what I observed to be happening in the economy in general and businesses in general is that we're moving towards the end of that period.

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I don't know if we're actually at the end of it or just moving that direction. We're moving that direction. More and more people are working in their offices. More and more people are coming back to places that they weren't able to go to during the height of the pandemic.

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The number of people that are strictly working from home is reducing. We're seeing changes to where there was maybe hybrid work environments. All kinds of things have resulted from the pandemic period that are a little different from pre-pandemic.

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And we're moving in the direction where daily life resembles pre-pandemic a bit more than it did, say, in April of 2020. All that to say that what tends to happen or what I'm hearing happen in some of my interactions with leaders and workshops and in coaching conversations, is this thread of thought that basically says, when are we

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going to get back to normal? Or when is it going to be like it was before the pandemic? When will my team start operating like it did before the pandemic? So there's this backward focused looking at how we were two years ago compared to how we are now.

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And a bit of a longing to return to that kind of dynamic. And it varies a great deal for the specific situation you find yourself in. So I can't get to specifics of a specific situation necessarily. I'm addressing a pattern I see in a lot of supervisors, particularly front line supervisors, who are dealing with teams that basically

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just don't function the way they did two years ago. There are differences in interaction between teammates that are differences in level of the phrase I've heard used as commitment to work or enthusiasm for work. All kinds of differences today compared to two or a little over two years ago at this point, because of the changes that happened

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rapidly at first and then gradually we had more and more changes as restrictions lifted or changed or shift period of two years, where there have been lots and lots of changes that impact a number of things about people's work life, personal life, expectations, so many things.

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And it gets exhausting for leaders. You know, I get it. It gets exhausting. And hoping for relief is a completely normal emotional response to the situation. And that hoping for relief leads to the question when will it get back to where we were?

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When will it get back to, quote, normal? And I think we have to confront that. The short answer, the real answer is never. It's not going to go back to like it was two years ago. It can't. There have been simply too many changes, too many differences today that were not present two years ago or two and

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a half years ago that drive a lot of the dynamics we see in the workplace and how people interact and what people's expectations are. These things have changed permanently. And you can't go back to where you were. You know, there are people who were single who are now married.

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There are people who are married who are now not married. There are people who had no children and now have children. There are people who had children living at home who now do not have children living at home.

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There are people who had healthy parents that are now caring for their parents. There are people who had never worked from home before who have now done that and had that experience. There are people who were once uncomfortable with video calls and webinar platforms and meeting platforms and now their video call masters and very comfortable on Zoom

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and Microsoft Teams and GoToMeeting and all the various different platforms we can use for remote meetings. The list actually goes on bigger than that, just pointing out a few things that direct us to recognize that people's expectations about what the work contract looks like has changed.

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What is or is not possible in terms of doing work has changed. Expectations around that have changed people's life experiences have changed their home environment has changed. The nature and quality of their work, relationships have changed. And the combination of all these changes, frankly, makes it impossible to just presto change.

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You go back to the way it used to be. It's just not going to happen. It cannot happen. The world in general, your business, employee expectations, customer expectations, people's lives, things that happen outside work, all of it has changed.

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The challenge is that as we move from shutdown, which forces people to work remotely to more openness that allows the opportunity for either hybrid or work in the office or work in the physical location type situations. It puts all of these changes on the table almost simultaneously, and it becomes a daunting task to navigate it, which means

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that we look back in the past to what we view very favorably because one we're separated from it in time. And two, there's a little bit of a tendency to look at the past, the rose colored glasses. And three, it seems to have felt better at the time, or we remember it better.

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You know, much like as a parent and grandparent, it's easy to look back longingly at the days of when my kids were pre-teens and think, "Wow, it sure will be nice if we go back to that kind of relationship now that my kids are in their twenties and lives are more complicated."

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And you know, the truth is, when I was in the pre-teen years, there were struggles and frustrations then, too. It's just easy over time to start to forget those and maybe romanticize the past of it. It's a human nature tendency.

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As my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry says, "The status quo requires no leadership." And the point behind that is, as leaders, it is not our job to maintain the status quo. It is not our job to keep things the same.

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It is actually our job to lead into point towards help our teams move into the future. And the reality is that technology will continue to change. Our life situations will change. Our experiences will change. Business needs will change.

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Business environment will change. Legal requirements will change. It will continue to be so. And our hope lies in focusing on where we're going rather than longing for what was in the past. So we want to look to the future not long for the past, so that we can lead our teams in a successful way, not striving to

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recreate what was. But instead to create a better future. And if you find yourself longing for and hoping for the team the way it was before the pandemic, I get it. It's normal. It's human nature. I would encourage you, though, that rather than try to recreate the past and wish that it would come back, spend more time

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envisioning and driving for a better future, thinking about how you can take what you have and improve it in the future rather than can take what you have and drive it back to the past. If you do that, your team will perform better.

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You will feel more optimistic and energized and you will feel more hopeful about what you need to do as a leader. So if you can look to the future rather than long for the past, you can Talk Like a Leader.

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This has been the Talk Like a Leader Podcast. You can listen to this show every week wherever you get your podcasts. If you haven't, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'm Guy Harris and thanks for listening.