#31 Your Team Isn't Fully Committed To Their Decision. Now What?
Explore what helps colleagues buy in to key decisions and represent them well to those outside your team.
Hi, I write about the why-do-we-experience-life-as-we-do question.
I find it’s helpful to those who seek to understand why they, and those around them, live in the realities they do and behave accordingly.
You’re very welcome here.
Enjoy getting in touch with the sensations, thoughts and feelings that come your way continuously, and through which your sense making of what’s going on happens.
Oh, and remember to wonder what new perspectives may appear should old thinking habits dissipate or not be taken so seriously!
“We have a triple D-A problem” said Dave, (not his real name) who headed up a senior leadership team that led 200 people on a large infrastructure project.
“What’s that?” I replied having no clue what this acronym meant.
“We debate, decide, then debate again.
“My senior team have no idea what the principle of collective cabinet responsibility means. The rest of the organisation can’t assume we’re as one on any announcement about a decision we’ve made. They think ‘mmm.. we’ll see’ before we even open our mouths. It’s so frustrating.”
I wondered how to be of help to Dave We were in a lounge bar in a club, this was no formal coaching session. But I liked him and felt his frustration. This popped into my head, “Would it help if I asked you some questions to see if we can get to the root of this problem?”
Dave welcomed that idea and I began with “If you think of openness as your team feeling free to say what they need to say on any issue, rather than being forced to wear their hearts on their sleeve, which many dislike, how open would you say your colleagues are?”
“Somewhat”, replied Dave thoughtfully, while simultaneously looking skyward for inspiration on the best way to elaborate. “They never hold back when they’re peed off with each other, that’s for sure. We’ve had some right shouting matches actually. But I think that’s good. A robust, hard-won debate never hurt anybody.”
I made a mental note - debate is a win-lose form of engagement. It assumes a dispute pre-exists and the goal is for one side to knock down the arguments of the opponent. Though parliaments around the world use debate and voting to make decisions, it doesn’t lend itself to a more generative discussion in which one idea builds on another.
“Interesting. What about the quality of listening? How would you assess team members’ ability to hear each other?” I continued.
Dave was rubbing his chin now. He looked a little defensive. I’d experienced him as poor listener in the past - mainly because I saw myself in him! - but I couldn’t remember if I’d mentioned it or not. Was that why his half-closed eyes over a stare oozed that are-you-getting-at-me expression?
He responded with “We all think we’re good listeners don’t we? I don’t hear my lot saying ‘please say that again’ or ‘I didn’t fully understand, can you clarify?’ Generally I think they hear what they need to hear, respond swiftly and move on.”
To me, the music behind Dave’s words suggested the quality of listening in his team was poor. He’s right to say many think they’re good listeners, but this is delusional often; we listen to our own thinking about what someone else is saying not what they’re actually trying to express. His comments about there’s little need to clarify and people moving on quickly, having heard only that which they were looking for, suggested that delusion was alive and well. His team was listening to confirm, or reply, or negate given his answer to the previous question. What they weren’t doing was listening to understand each other.
“Got it” I said in the hope this would reassure Dave, that I, at least, understood. “What about the way they go about understanding a situation and make sense of the different perspectives and forces in play? How does your team do that?”
“Well, like I say we have a good old debate and see who wins” said Dave.
I delved a bit deeper, “Do you find you come up with solutions that are pretty similar?”
“Now you mention it they are a bit. I have a group of very talented people around me. They’ve been round the block a few times. They know what they’re doing.”
I note Dave hadn’t answered my question. Was he getting defensive, bored, tired of being interrogated? I wasn’t sure. But I persevered with “What kind of similar solutions Dave?”
“Well, you know, we tighten procedures up, create more rules to follow, introduce new contract clauses, set clearer objectives, manage performance more tightly and occasionally read the riot act. That sort of thing. The usual stuff you have to do to make sure people do what they’re supposed to.
“If the team can’t agree what the best decision is they turn to me and I tell them what to do. That’s what I’m paid for right?”
I wondered this aloud “And it’s this way of deciding what to do and these solutions that cause the DDDA problem and a somewhat less than enthusiastic response when they’re announced?”
Perplexed Dave replied with “Maybe. Not sure. What do you think?”
I felt I wanted to share what was going on for me inside, without sugar coating anything. But I wanted him to be fine with that first. “Dave, can I have your permission to be frank?”
His response encouraged me, “Sure. In fact I’d really appreciate that because I can’t see the wood for the trees on this one.”
“From what you’ve told me I’d like you to imagine I am in your colleagues’ shoes. I’m prepping for a meeting and know we have to make a call on, say, the process that forecasts time and cost on sections of the project’s build phase. It’s consistently producing erroneous predictions.
“As I prep I’m thinking to myself I wonder how open people will be in the meeting about how this process works in detail. Too often I feel colleagues only say what they think others want to hear. Whether that’s to win favour or avoid being the bearer of bad news I’m not sure. But I do know others outside the team feel the same sense of reticence and reluctance when submitting their forecasts. Frankly they’re a bit scared to come in with a number they think will be deemed unacceptable.
“Will I share that with my colleagues at the meeting today? Unlikely. I don’t feel safe enough to speak my truth about what’s really concerning me on the way we forecast. Were I to do so, I’m then into another long, and potentially pointless debate that doesn’t go anywhere, other than to the same-old, same-old solutions that you Dave, as chief adjudicator, insist on.
“I feel loathed to speak up. See no prospect of anything good coming of it if I do, and have a solution I’ve seen fail time and again imposed on me. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel committed to the decision.
“What makes it worse is I’m expected to be loyal, committed, dutiful. But deep down I don’t feel any of these; simply because the kind of openness we have in the team isn’t enough. Speaking up and being vulnerable is considered a weakness not a strength. Throw in poor listening quality, and no notion whatsoever of how to disagree healthily, and we simply can’t look at problems like erroneous forecasts through any lens other than the one we always do.
“There’s nothing new and uplifting that offers hope to people in the decisions we make and announce. That’s why the problems we encounter, of which poor forecasts is just one example, recur time and again. We’re a bit of laughing stock. We’re not taken seriously in all frankness.
“I’m not saying this to blame you or the rest of team Dave. We’re only ever doing that which make sense to us, in all innocence for the most part. You, for instance, have built a successful career on the back of the way you lead. But if we’re to tackle this issue, we have to do something transformative. We can’t continue as we are and remain credible as a team and a department.
“Just imagine a time when everyone feels committed to what we decide. We have a new forecasting process that’s as open and frank as it can be. We produce time and cost numbers within ranges, each with a probabilistic confidence level attached to it. Users match their risk appetite against the forecasts they’re seeing. The fear and blame that characterises how the process works now evaporate. Our numbers catalyse new possibilities among those that use them, not doubts.
“Would that be something we could all defend if it were attacked? Might we feel able to advocate for this better way of solving a long-standing problem? Could the principle of collective cabinet responsibility kick in big time and stop us arguing with each other in public about decisions we’ve already made?”
Dave’s jaw dropped. Any defensiveness he was carrying started to lift from his shoulders. What I’d said resonated. I’d hit the nail on the head.
I didn’t have Helpful Questions Change Lives then, so I couldn’t point Dave to these posts with respect to questions on openness, listening, healthy disagreement, and sense making of separate realities.
But it seems to me that if these qualities are evident in a team, there’s little need to impose decisions. The best options and the decision likely to do the most good for most people (or least harm to least people) falls out from the way team members go about understanding each other and making sense of whatever challenge is before them. Get to the heart of the matter here, and more often than not, the right decision reveals itself.
I don’t yet know what I’ll write about next time. That decision hasn’t revealed itself yet! I do hope you’ll join me though.
Until then,
Kindest,
Roger
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Other useful, free posts.
You can find all the posts in my first series here.
While it’s good to pick those whose titles speak to you most, I recommend these five in particular:
#3 Being Right Here Right Now - Hard To Do? - This covers the idea of being fully present and what distracts us from that.
#4 How We Experience Life Is Mysterious. Isn’t It? - This goes to the heart of the mystery surrounding why we get sensations, thoughts and feelings in the first place, and what the implications are of being at ease with this.
#5 What Influence Do You Have Over Your Experience In Each Moment? - Here I look at what is and is not within our control and where we can exert influence when changing our experience.
#6 If You Saw Wellbeing Like This, What Difference Would It Make? - If BEING WELL RIGHT NOW is the goal, this describes what that’s like and how our feelings can be a useful warning sign of wellbeing’s absence.
#8 Why Do You Respond To “Difficult” Others Like That? - Here I invite you to consider some of the deeper, often-hidden assumptions we hold about the nature of human nature, and their impact on your experience of difficult others.