Who’s calling the shots?

Are you a team leader who wonders who is calling the shots? Or maybe, you have been trying to deliver a program of work for a while but have not made much progress due to your own staff's 'resistance'. In the midst of all this, I've recently witnessed three teams and their executive managers, where the one-up leader struggles with conflict, and therefore, providing clear direction and feedback has added to the confusion by reinforcing an avoidant culture.

I take a systemic perspective of all events in my work and in these recent examples, it's been really difficult to tease out what is happening and how to influence it. Here are some ideas that may help you find your way forward. I think the truth is that we are all affected by these dynamics, whether we are aware of them or not. The sources of the challenging situation are entangled and unclear. 

Here’s how we can approach each of these challenges in a strategic way. 

1. Engage Staff by Creating Space for Dialogue 

My first piece of advice to anyone wanting to lead change is to create an environment where open, honest conversations allow team members to express their insights and concerns without fear. Encouraging and facilitating such dialogues enables shared understanding, which naturally leads to staff feeling more involved and engaged. 

However, in two of the above-mentioned teams, this advice requires a bolder approach from the team manager. The teams involved and their staff are seemingly having conversations, but they're not exploring changes. The same conversations have been patiently held by the team manager, over and over, and nothing changes.

2. Stuck in habitual patterns 

Resistance to change often stems from unvoiced concerns or fears of the unknown. But it is also the case that we humans are creatures of habit. We like our habits - they are comfortable. And who doesn't like that feeling of comfort? In one team, the staff are resisting the implementation of a new platform to frame and deliver their work. They have been resisting it for years now. Are they aware they are resisting it? Preferring instead their comfortable way of doing things that have developed from many years of habit, which has also become cultural assumptions about 'how we do things around here'?

In these circumstances, the team manager's patience and gentleness can backfire. The team manager may need to add some 'heat' to the discussion, which is a risk. It risks the trust in their relationships. 

Lead a discussion, open and honest (which all three team managers were not doing because they were trying to remain 'nice') about what needs to be achieved, the pattern of discussion with the team to achieve it and point to the observation that it seems as though the change is being resisted - why? This is a bold conversation because it is about people and their behaviours rather than the more objective tasks.

3. Look in the mirror

As a precursor to beginning the above conversations, look into a mirror at your own habits and behaviours to consider how you are unconsciously fuelling the very dynamics you are concerned about.

As I have started sharing about the three managers I have worked with, each has wanted to be 'nice'. Their desire to not rock the boat has resulted in them not being honest with their own teams. They have not spoken about their desires and frustration at the lack of movement. They have not used the authority they have because they want their teams to come to their own decisions. They recognise that adaptive change is a meaning-making exercise for each person. From my perspective, though, they have not added enough 'heat' to the conversation to make the imperative for change clear. They have not provoked the system, their people to change.

Looking in the mirror can help you identify how your behaviour contributes to any dysfunctions and find ways to improve the nature and quality of your interactions. 

4. Get honest feedback from your boss

Organisations like Human Synergistics, which is continually 'measuring culture' of organisations, reveal that the dominant culture in Australia is avoidant. I believe that this points to a very human desire not to upset people, and to avoid difficult conversations. And difficult conversations are adaptive conversations. So, in the three cases I have seen recently, even the Boards and ED's have been involved in dynamics of unclear feedback.

Managing up involves helping your line manager understand the conditions you need to provide your best contributions. Recognise that your line manager, even though they hold a big title, may also find providing honest feedback difficult. They may well be perpetuating exactly the same pattern as you are entangled in.

Consider how you can open the door and enable them to provide you with the feedback you really need (even if you might find it confronting). There's no point waiting several years to find that frustration has built up in other parts of the organisation, only to be labelled as 'ineffective' - the three managers I am thinking of risk becoming scapegoats for cultures of avoidance.

Rather than directly confronting their avoidance, use your coaching skills to ask questions that open up new conversations. Seek permission to be open and honest (they will not refuse it) and then say what you really need to say. This can include facilitating discussions where they can contribute without feeling directly exposed. 

5. Consider the structures too

The application of systems thinking can provide valuable insights. This perspective helps to recognise these behaviours as products of larger systemic structures, rather than individual shortcomings. Understanding the impact of processes such as individual rather than team KPIs, budgets that restrict face-to-face meetings, the seasonal flow of work, and planning processes that are aspirational but then ignore the realities of how we each change behaviours and so on. These structures are said to produce 80-90% of organisational behaviours.

6. Integrate top-down and bottom-up

Of the three teams I am reflecting upon, one is dominated by a bottom-up approach to determining what is done operationally. I am usually 'fighting' to bring more of this dynamic into play in most organisations that are usually more top-down than bottom-up. But it's not that one dynamic is more right than the other. What we are seeking is the integration of all these perspectives to gain the best possible view of what the 'health of the system' needs now. 

Finally, leveraging positions of mutual concern for effective interactions and larger organisational goals can create an alignment that makes it easier for all parties to reframe resistance and avoidance into collaborative efforts. But we are all resistant in some ways - we all prefer the comfort of our habits (even if it's a habit of constant movement and no priority!) To bring attention to these habitual patterns of behaviour requires a provocation - some heat - to disturb the system as it is. 

How have you been avoiding appropriately disturbing the system? What comfort are you clinging to? How is this getting in your way and contributing to your 'stuckness'?