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Leadership and Conflict

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Conflict and Leadership - 1I have been thinking a lot lately about conflict and conflict resolution. I think we can all agree that some level of conflict is unavoidable. However, how we face it and resolve that conflict says a great deal about our own leadership styles and abilities.

Consider the following statement by Warren Bennis, one of the foremost writers on leadership and organizational and management theory.

“Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity.”

Leaders, this is one of your primary responsibilities. You cannot delegate this. Nor can you pretend that conflicts do not occur within your organization. I have spent much of my adult life working in the corporate world during the week and serving in a non-profit and volunteer organization on weeknights and weekends. And conflict is common to all organizations. Yes, even within churches and religious organizations. But you, as leaders, have the responsibility to sense conflict at its earliest stages and resolve it before it affects the entire organization.

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Sunshine and Sleepless Nights

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Sunshine and Sleepless Nights - 1I remember when our children were very young. One woke up laughing, the other, not so much. For those of you who know my family, I will leave you to guess which child responded with laughter and which responded with tears.

And I remember trying to teach them to sleep through the night. (Of course I also remember setting up a borrowed video camera and recording our first born while he slept. Pretty exciting video, isn’t it?  But we were brand new parents.) But the process of training them to sleep through the night and go back to sleep when their little bodies awoke in the middle of the night was hard. There was a huge part of me that wanted to just pick them up and bring them into our bed and snuggle.  It seemed that between my wife and I, only one of us would have the strength to deal with the crying.  One of us would begin to cave in and the other would be strong.  Then the roles would reverse.  And on it went for days and days until we finally made it through the night.

Why wouldn’t I want to scoop them up and feed them every time they cried? Or why wouldn’t I bring them into our bed to sleep? Because, they were growing bigger, and they no longer needed to eat every two to three hours, and it would ultimately hurt them and be bad for them if we allowed them to never establish a healthy sleep pattern. They needed sleep, I needed sleep. Heaven only knows their mother needed sleep!

So, what is the leadership principle for Fatherhood Friday?

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Music and Happiness

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MM - 20130620First of all, it is your responsibility to be happy at work. Let’s be clear, your boss does not care that you are happy if you are productive. Your office mates like you more when you are happy, but nowhere in their job descriptions does it require them to make you happy.

Alas, this is easier said than done. The odds are against happiness at work.

On the other hand, rudeness at work is easy, rampant, and on the rise. In 2011, half of the workers surveyed by Thunderbird School of Global Management said they were treated rudely at least once a week — up from a quarter in 1998. Yikes. And there is a tangible cost of this bad behavior.

Through a poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries, a recent study shows just how people’s reactions play out. Among workers who’ve been on the receiving end of incivility:

  • 48% intentionally decreased their work effort
  • 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work
  • 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work
  • 80% lost work time worrying about the incident
  • 63% lost work time avoiding the offender
  • 66% said that their performance declined
  • 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined
  • 12% said that they left their job because of the uncivil treatment
  • 25% admitted to taking their frustration out on customers

Here are some examples of what can happen as a result of incivility:

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Elected Leaders vs. Influential Leaders

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Elected vs Influential - 1Here is challenge that you may have to face at some point in your leadership career. You will encounter two types of leaders. Elected leaders and Influential leaders.

Have you ever considered these two types? If not, consider them now.

Elected leaders are the ones that we may be familiar with the most. It is reasonably clear how they became leaders. Someone recognized leadership ability within them. The organization then went on and nominated or appointed them to a position of responsibility and leadership. That is fairly clear cut. Ability was recognized and a position was attained. This is generally a good model and it produces good results.

Elected vs Influential - 2Now consider the second type – the Influential leader. This person generally does not have real leadership skills. Yet they have a position of leadership in spite of it. They generally attain the position through shear force of personality.  That may be just a euphemism for being a bully. But that is not always the case. Sometimes it is because they possess a specialized skill.  Sometimes they attain it through longevity within the organization. Sometime they attain the role of leader through fame, notoriety, family or financial position. These are the leaders that are difficult to work with or work for.

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Team Commitment

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Vince Lombardi 2“Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”

Vince Lombardi

Whenever I hear the word commitment, I am reminded of something a sales manager told me once, he said to me, “Billy I need you committed, I need you to be a pig” I asked “Why a pig?” He said “Consider a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken is only a participant, the pig is committed”

No I know I don’t have to explain the symbolism here, but I ask you this, Is this how committed to our teams we are?

I recall something I heard at a Promise Keepers event once, Joe White told the audience, Christ calls us to be able to Preach, Pray or Die at a moment’s notice. Now not that I am ready to go just yet, but it occurs to me that maybe this is how we should look at our teams.

I know at least one of my teams, I preach to regularly, pray for often and would die for a member at a moment’s notice. How about you?

Commitment is a strong word to me. As I look back on my life, I have really only been truly committed to a few things in my life. I wonder if that is the crux of finding happiness, your commitment to whatever makes you happy….but I digress.

I appreciate the comments about the Unity post, especially one from Rene that talks about “trust”. I agree wholeheartedly, but I challenge you to consider commitment.

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That Kind of Father

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Last week I asked the audience to submit a story about their father or being a father.  It could be serious or it could be funny.  In the end, I chose the following.  It is short and slightly poignant.

I am told of a dad who had to travel on business a lot when his two children were very young. It seems he would leave early in the work week and return late in the week. Some times his travels took him just far enough to make it too far to come home at night, but close enough to make it home sometimes in the middle of the week. One week he had to travel by plane even though it was just a two day trip.

Welcome Home DaddyNow he loved his children and his children loved him. How do we know that? Well consider this little situation as an example.

Although he had only been away from home for less than 48 hours, when his youngest saw the door to the jetway open, his youngest son broke loose from his mother’s grip and ran up the ramp and into his father’s arms. This startled the stewardess greatly and she asked the embarrassed mother just how long the little tike’s father had been away from home. She was expecting the mother to say that it had been many weeks since her sons had seen their Daddy. Imagine her surprise when the mother told her it had just been two days!

Now I don’t know about you. But I want to be the kind of Dad that is on the receiving end of that kind of greeting from my children. How about you?  Are your children excited when you come home at the end of the day?

Happy Father’s Day from the Entire LeadershipVoices Team

 

Photo credit: Michael D. Dunn / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

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Another Thought Before Father’s Day

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FF - 20130615I sit at my desk early this morning contemplating Father’s Day. As far as I am concerned being a father is the most important job I will ever have. I smile because I know that my best father’s day present will be going to see the latest Disney movie with my family tonight. I ask you men, should we be selfish about Fathers Day? Maybe have an expectation to sit around and be waited on…..I say no, my family is my greatest accomplishment, so I say the best Father’s Day present I could get is to take them out and show them off. Be a Father this weekend, and enjoy your day.

 

Photo credit: Manue@PrettyKiku / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

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Choices and Perspective

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FF - 20130614 - 1You walk in the door from a very long day of work.  It is hot and you are tired.

Child: “Hey Daddy! Wanna play hide and go sneak?”

Father (Thinking to himself): “Um . . .  No, not really.  I have been at work all day and all I really want to do is sit down, watch the news and catch a few innings of the baseball game.”

Father (In reality): “Of course!  I was hoping to get to do that tonight!” (At what age do you think kids start to understand sarcasm?)

Maybe you are a better father than me.  Maybe you never had the the kinds of thoughts that popped in my head from time to time when my children were young.  But, I was always pretty sure that I know where my child was going to hide — under the bed — again.  Just like the last time we played.  And the time before that.

But here is where I get to make a choice.  Will I choose to make this about me? Or about my child?  And from whose perspective will I view this request.

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No Surprises Management

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MM - 20130613 - 1Trial lawyers know well the “goosey – gander rule”. What would happen if we apply the “goosey – gander rule” to the concept of no surprises management from the employee perspective?

Simply, the “goosey – gander rule” is based on a sense of what is good for one party in a relationship, is good for the other party. In court, the idea is that if a ruling is made one way for a party, when a similar issue arises for the other party, the court’s ruling should be the same. Examples include interpretation of the rules of evidence or the amount of leeway an attorney is given to examine an uncooperative witness. The “surprise” the second attorney feels with an inconsistent ruling is avoided by the application of the “goosey – gander rule”. In court, surprises like this relate to appeals, and avoiding appeals on such matters is a good thing.

Does the “goosey – gander rule” apply at work? We all know that bosses hate surprises and that we work very hard to avoid them (no surprises management (NSM) is a term long associated with the idea that the best way to succeed is not to surprise your boss). What are bosses doing to keep workers informed so that the workers are not surprised? Shouldn’t the “goosey – gander rule” apply at work?

MM - 20130613 - 2James Heskett, from Harvard, suggests that NSM should be applied downward. He has some data that suggests that significant improvements in performance can be associated with leadership that produces no surprises for those lower in the organization. He suggests that NSM applied downward can improve trust of management, increase attention to deliverables and to work tasks by workers, lower turnover and increase profits. To me, NSM is a form of alignment on goals and objectives of an organization and upon the tasks needed to achieve the same.

As leaders, James poses the challenge of understanding what NSM means to your team. What do you think? Is a worker entitled the “goosey – gander rule” applied at work? Is management by surprise a useful tool?

 

Photo credit: Chrissy Downunder / Foter.com / CC BY-NC
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Photo credit: Jeremy Brooks / Foter.com / CC BY-NC