I just finished designing a workshop for a team in which there is sometimes more than the average amount of conflict. Their boss wants me to help them become more polite with one another. But I think that will not solve the problem. To the contrary, it may cover up what is really bothering them, which in my opinion is a lack of trust.
Patrick Lencioni wrote a book a few years ago called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Interesting title since on the surface it focuses on how to do things wrong. Lencioni graphically represents the five dysfunctions like this:
YouTube is filled with short videos featuring Lencioni talking about his concept. Here is one. And here is an interview with him. A summary of the significance of the five dysfunctions is available at Wikipedia.
What I find most interesting is that he puts trust as the foundation stone for teamwork and the absence of it as the source of so many other things which lead eventually to poor team performance.
That reminded me of some posters created by Siemens and used at some management programs I had the opportunity to facilitate. Allow me to share them with you. (Click to view one at a time.)
In the past couple of decades (yes, I am going back beyond the current economic downturn), I have noticed that globalization has forced companies to become leaner in the middle management, the people who manage and guide teams. But more significant than the reduction of leaders in middle management is that the reductions have dramatically increased the sense of competition between its own managers. I have seen more than one company where senior management created a virtual cage match in which managers fought each other for power and ultimately for their very job.
How do you create trustful relationships in the workplace under those circumstances? I believe that it can’t be done. Imagine a sports team where everyone was playing for his or her own stardom or survival and not for the success of the team.
As leaders we cannot pit our people against each other by ranking them any more than we would tell a second child that he is not as good as his older brother or sister. To paraphrase Benjamin Zander , co-author of Leadership: An Art of Possibility, think of your team as a symphony orchestra in which every instrument plays a role and nobody competes. Here is an excerpt from a presentation he gave at Davos a few years ago: https://youtu.be/nTav0D3YIN4
That's music to my ears.
- Herb Nestler