The Constellation Learning Newsletter
September 2007

It must be my age - the summer slips by so much more quickly than it used to. Here it is again, the fall, and that’s my “new year” no matter what the calendar says. I suppose it’s a paradigm deeply embedded from childhood. New number 2 pencils! New shoes and uniforms (yes, I wore a uniform to school) and crisp books; the promise of a new beginning, a fresh start.

You know, we can choose fresh starts anytime we want. All it takes is a dust pan and brush...

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~ Monthly Message ~

“Communication is the real work of leadership.”

-- Nitin Nohria --
Senior Associate Dean and Director of
Faculty Development at the Harvard Business School.

August found me on-site at a branch operation of a multi-billion dollar global engineering conglomerate. They build bridges, dams and other very large structures. They plan, oversee, and manage the delivery of highly complex systems.

Relationships, however - being far more complicated than say, building the Hoover dam—are a bit of a challenge sometimes, hence my involvement in a conflict resolution process as the communication specialist. I was asked to investigate the situation, talk to the parties involved, and bring it to resolution one way or the other. It had become a destructive, over-blown case of “he said/she said” between the manager and one of his engineers. The conflict had brewed for months and HR had no idea what to do next.

Clearly the situation had festered far too long, infecting the other team members. It was only a symptom, however, and the underlying issue soon became painfully apparent: a lack of leadership (specifically timely, accurate communication) had produced a team in limbo. Like a lame duck, the current manager (the “he said”) had no constituency. One cannot lead without followers. And people innately want to be led. They want clear direction, support, and acknowledgement - and all those things require effective communication.

Engineering might just have the longest lineage of linear thinking as a profession - somebody oversaw the building of the pyramids and the Great Wall of China! And here they were seeking soft skill development. Heavens! I’ve worked with financial institutions and their related industries for years, sales teams, executives, facilitators and team leaders of all shapes and sizes, but when the HR department at a global giant says “we need to develop our people skills,” you know the tide has turned.

The trickle down effects from twenty-five years of investing in technological training and specific narrow fields of study as professional guarantees to a secure future have revealed one inherent weakness: people don’t work in a vacuum. Unless you’re Howard Hughes, you’ve got to interact, communicate (if only by blackberry), and actually understand other people’s points of view in order to do your job effectively. And that’s where all the specific skill training in the world won’t help. It requires people training, something we address in the Leadership Dynamics class.

This is especially true even when you don’t speak because that’s when your body shouts your real opinions. The subtle non-verbals - the tilt of your head, the lift of an eyebrow, the wave of your hand - send micro-messages you may not have intended consciously, but to which the listener ascribes more importance; 60% of all communication is visual.

Consequently, although the proper words may have been said (“I’m sorry” or “Let’s put this behind us”) the body and face still shouts, “I’m not really sorry - I wasn’t wrong, I’m just the bigger person, you jerk!” All of us are able to recognize a hollow apology. That’s not resolving an issue, that’s sweeping it under the carpet.

I met with the two discordant individuals and helped them to see each other’s point of view. (Too deeply steeped in our own myopic point of view it is often necessary to have an objective third party present. When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s impossible to fix it.) Here’s the thing: neither person had said anything they thought was “wrong.” It was the other guy who had miscommunicated, misinterpreted, misunderstood.

I’m happy to report that in the end both parties realized there was no point in re-hashing the past and agreed to a “fresh start,” this time with a methodology in place for addressing future disagreements.

Everyone wants a fresh start sometimes, but it’s impossible to move forward effectively without acknowledging the existing piles previously swept under the rug.

It’s not a one time thing. It’s an every time thing.

Application Tips:

• “Carry a dust pan and brush”
  
  Issues from the past with another person won’t become conflicts in the future if cleaned up in the present. Just like sweeping your floors, it’s a far less daunting task if you sweep up the dirt each day rather than waiting a period of time as it continues to accumulate.

  Disagreements are a sign of healthy teams; they trust each other enough to voice differences. Nowadays, too many are afraid to voice their opinions and often lack a lexicon with which to articulate what they feel and why.
  
  I strongly recommend reading Micromessaging by Stephen Young (see my review below). Increasing your own understanding of what you really communicate with your tone of voice, your body and your words, will enable you to recognize and address potential misunderstandings as they arise (which they will), instead of hoping they’ll go away (which they won’t).
  

• “Empty it!”
  
  In the “conflict” field there are basically two types of people: Those that sweep things under the carpet, think they’ve dealt with whatever it is, and then are blind-sided when one day they “trip” over the build-up they inadvertently created under the carpet; and those who are assiduous about sweeping everything up, as best they can, whenever they see dirt. They don’t want any piles under the carpet. The problem is they fail to dump the dustpan. They “hoard” the dirt in the pan until it over-flows with resentment preventing further clean ups.

  If you don’t dump your dust pan, eventually it will become an ineffective tool, preventing any possibility for a fresh start.

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