Resolving Conflict

All of us at some point in time will have conflict and disagreements with someone else either in our personal lives or professionally at work.  These situations can be painful at times but seeking resolution is the only way to maintain positive momentum in your life.

There are at least three critical steps that you must take if you want to restore the relationship and move forward in your own life.

1.       Own Your Part—In every disagreement there are always two sides to the story.  I have never known a situation where there was not some responsibility for the problem with both parties.  If we think the other party is the major offender then we tend to wait for them to make the first move.  Instead we need to take whatever percentage of the problem is ours even if it’s minor and do what we need to do to admit it and ask for forgiveness regardless of what the other person does.

2.      Talk Person Privately—Most of the time when we are having problems with another person we tend to go to other people first and complain or try to find emotional support.  What we should do is go privately to the person who offended us first and tell them in a respectful way why we are offended and give them a chance to respond.  When we are talking about someone else to another person rather than talking to them the situation will only get worse.

3.      Give Benefit Of Doubt—When we sense that a conversation is not going well and we can tell it may hurt us we have a decision to make.  We can either assume the worst about the other person’s motives or we can believe the best.  Many times if we can give them the benefit of the doubt at this critical moment then even though it may still hurt there will be no lasting damage because we give them a pass because we trust their heart.

What’s Next?

This phrase became the mantra on the award winning series The West Wing.  After every serious issue that had to be dealt with not matter how long the conversation or difficult the task the president would always ask what’s next?

That is a very good question that all of us have to answer each and every day regardless of whether we realize it or not.  Inherent within the question is the intention to find the most important things on our must do list and place them at the top.

Most of us allocate a considerable amount of time to plan our weeks and certainly each individual day with pre-determined goals and priorities.  However in today’s wired culture we are constantly receiving new information throughout the day that must be processed.

David Allen is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on time management and personal productivity.  In his book Getting Things Done he list four key criteria about processing new information that help him to answer the what’s next question:

1.       Context—A few actions can be done anywhere but most require a specific location or having some productivity tool at hand, such as a phone or a computer.  These are the first factors that limit your choices about what you can do in the moment.

2.      Time available—When do you have to do something else?  Having a meeting in five minutes would prevent doing many actions that require more time.

3.      Energy available—How much energy do you have?  Some actions you have to do require a reservoir of fresh, creative mental energy while others need more physical horsepower.

4.      Priority—Given your context, time, and energy available, what actions will give you the highest payoff?  This is where you need to access your intuition and begin to rely on your judgment call in the moment.

Pull The Trigger

There may be nothing harder to do as a leader than make the decision to terminate an employee.  To be honest we feel to some degree we have failed and that is hard to accept.

This is especially true if we hired the person in the first place.  Not only have they failed but now our performance as a leader may be in question also.  We cannot let our own emotional need for personal success stand in the way of doing what is right for the organization.

There are three critical things that I must do as a leader before I feel that my responsibility has been completed prior to any termination.  The first is to provide clear expectations of what is required in their job description.  It is impossible for someone to meet your expectations if they have not been clearly communicated early and often.

The second important thing is to make sure the person has had adequate training and resources to complete their job successfully.  It is not fair to ask someone to grow a particular area and not give them the financial and manpower assets they need to be effective.

The last issue for me is a comprehensive and ongoing feedback system that lets a person know exactly where they stand in the area of performance.  It is not right to see someone make mistakes day after day and stick your head in the sand hoping it will go away only to drop a bomb on them at annual review or even worse an unexpected termination.  If you do not have the leadership skills to positively confront someone about what they are doing wrong then you may be the one in the wrong job and not them.

If you have done all of these three things well and given this person every opportunity to improve and they don’t then you should feel no guilt or sense of failure.  Never obsess on the five to ten percent of your staff that may need to go every year. What is extremely important is to remember the ninety to ninety five percent who are doing their jobs well and are watching to see if you have the character as their leader to pull the trigger.

 

Coaching

If you need help in making some major decisions in your life coaching may be exactly what you need.  There are many types of coaches available from executive, life, fitness and even spiritual.

The one major thing you need to understand about coaching is that it is not counseling or therapy.  The major focus will not be your past and the things that have gone wrong but the future and how you want it to look.

Great coaches don’t have the answers to all your questions.  Their role is to help you by knowing how to ask the right questions so you can see why you may be stuck and what your options are as you move forward.

A coach might ask, What is the one major area in your life you would like to change that would improve your life?  Then, What do you want that area to look like six months from now?  Finally, What do you need to do this week to start closing that gap?

Another important aspect of coaching is accountability.  It really helps when you have someone who is on your side and offers the necessary what do you want to accomplish before our next time together type questions.

With this accountability comes encouragement that reminds you of what you said you wanted to do to change your life and gives you the confidence that you can make it happen.

My experience in using a coach was incredible.  So what are you waiting for give them a no charge to you first call and see if it feels like a good fit.

The Power Of Momentum

There are very few things more difficult to deal with in your personal or professional life than a loss of momentum.  It can be brought on by some major tragedy or a series of small compromises over a very long period of time.

Eventually we get to a place where we start worrying about things outside our control and that drains us of what little emotional energy we have left.  Also because we are so focused on the negative we stop doing the things we should and can do and that brings even more despair.

The only way to break this cycle is to start doing what you can do and build some small daily wins into your life.  This principle works with individuals as well as organizations.

With every small win comes movement and that generates confidence that things are finally headed in the right direction.  When we regain our confidence then we attempt even more things that product even bigger wins and the power of the momentum begins to put the wind back in our sails.

It is very ironic that when we get to the places of greatest difficulty in our lives it is the very smallest of things that can break the downward cycle.  We are desperately searching for the big answer that is going to solve all our problems when the solution was right in front of us all the time.

The good news is that the power of momentum works in a positive way to an even greater degree than it does toward the negative.  When you repeatedly do what you can do daily the positive flow of your life moves you beyond all the negative issues that may still be there but now they are in the proper perspective.

Clock Building Not Time Telling

The days of all decisions being made solely at the top with a few people involved are fading fast.  Throughout the Industrial Age of leadership during the last half of 20^th century this was the only model of leadership.  The overwhelming percentage of the workforce was for the most part simply telling time based on the clear instructions that were given for them to follow.

Today we are leading from an Information and Idea Age model of leadership.  The entire development process has been delegated to various teams so that everyone who can contribute will be involved.  In essence people are now being asked to help build the clock.

Most people think the changing role of the top executives is by far the most dramatic shift that has occurred.  In a sense of scope that may be true.  Key leaders today do not have to know all the answers to all the questions they only need to know what are the right questions to ask? 

There primary responsibility today is to make sure they have the best possible people on their team because the quality and success of the clocks they are making will determine the future success of the entire organization.

The most dramatic shift in leadership today certainly from a standpoint of scale is not at the top but in the middle of organizations.  There is a big difference in telling time compared to building clocks.  Today people are daily being asked what do you think and what would you recommend?

Many organizations are caught in the middle of this transition and seem to be stuck.  The problem could be that you are asking people who only know how to tell time to build clocks and they are not capable of making that change.  Don’t give up on clock building just find the right people who know how to build great clocks and you will be fine.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

There has always been a delicate balance in goal setting between what can be done and what could be done.  Goals should be realistic and achievable but they also must be courageous and challenging.  Safe is not good enough anymore and we must be willing to take risks that stretch us outside our comfort zone to achieve greatness.

I absolutely love this quote that is extremely timely in our current environment, “Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much no suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.”  Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

When President Kennedy said in the early 60’s we are going to land a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of this decade the overwhelmingly majority of people thought he had lost his mind, and yet we did it.

The world has changed dramatically in the last decade.  The power of technology and the globalization of all the world economies are driving change in unprecedented ways that no one could have imagined either just a few years ago.  When this recession is over we are never going back to the ways things used to be.

What goals are you setting for yourself and your organization that are commensurate for the challenges that lie ahead in the 21^st century?  They must be big hairy and audacious if they are going to lead to outstanding performance.

Networking

 

The old mindset was your success depends upon how many people you know.  Today the most important thing is how many people are you helping. 

The focus has shifted to some degree because of the culture created through the use of social media.  The motivating factor behind most people is how can I help others be successful by giving them information that will be helpful. 

It is just as important to be willing to ask other people for help as well.  A true network works then because of the dynamics created because of mutual need.  This in essence is the difference between someone being merely a contact in your database compared with a person in your life. 

Make no mistake; serious business is taking place here.  However, that is a natural result of working with people you like and respect and not using other people to get what I want. 

Never Eat Alone is a great book written by Keith Ferrazzi.  He hates what he calls networking jerks.  If you don’t want to come across as one here are few things he says you must never do: 

Don’t schmooze

Don’t rely on the currency of gossip

Don’t come to the party empty-handed

Don’t treat those under you poorly

Be transparent

Don’t be too efficient 

What we can do is to have a desire to genuinely add value to other people and by doing so knowing we will have made a difference.

 

The Importance of Knowing Life Purpose

In a day when our calendars are beyond full and yet our lives seem to be empty something has gone wrong.  We in many cases have assumed because we are busy the things we are doing must be important.

We clearly have shifted the focus from being as a person to doing and what we are able to accomplish.  Technology has helped us in many cases simply to do the wrong things faster.

The great paradoxes of our time have been summed up well by the Dalai Lama:

“We have more conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees, but less sense…more knowledge but less judgment.

More experts, but more problems.

More medicines, but less healthiness.

We have been all the way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.

We build more computers to hold more information that produce more copies than ever before, but have less communication.

We have become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods but weak digestion.

It is a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room.”

For many of us we have been living the script for our lives that were given to us by someone else; parents, peers, friends or the culture we live in.  The time has come for us to have the courage to say no and the passion to write our own.

 

Team Operating Principles

The first thing I look for in putting together any team is the right chemistry for the particular task at hand.  If the team is responsible for completing a construction project I need expertise and great project managers.  When the assignment is to create a new vision statement I want very creative people that are willing to think outside the box.

One of the best books on team building is The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan.  He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Team Resources Inc. an international consulting firm specializing in organizational and team development.

Regardless of the team dynamics and the task assignments there should be some guiding principles that give direction to all teams.  The following list from MacMillan is the best one I have found and creates an environment of mutual respect that drives participation and performance:

1.       We are open and honest with one another.

2.      We treat each other with dignity and respect.

3.      We listen to and respect each other’s ideas and opinions.

4.      We hold confidences.

5.      We honor our commitments.

6.      We support and invest in each other’s development.

7.      We routinely critique our processes.

8.      We have fun.

If the team leader can model and get everyone to buy into these principles then the potential for a great outcome has dramatically increased.  When teams often break down it has very little to do with the task at hand but with the way members communicate and relate to each other.

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