Never Compromise, but…
Why you need to understand the danger of compromise and the wealth of consensus
I like quotations that educate. The following quote applies to the real-life events I’m about to reveal.
“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it’ll always get you the right ones.” — John Lennon
The need for soft skills
Alex was a good manager. He led the design team for our flagship product. His education was impeccable, his experience was expansive, but his people skills were negligible. He was a manager because he had earned the opportunity and had committed to improving his soft skills.
On more than one occasion, I called Alex into my office to discuss troubling feedback I kept receiving from other teams. He effectively managed his team, but when he interfaced with other groups, bad things happened.
I told Alex that he had sharp edges. When working with his peers, he didn’t build strong bonds. Instead, he was off-putting. He was like a lid from an opened can. People bled when they tried to connect with him. And, when it came to workflow problems, his team was a choke point. He always demanded instead of partnering.
Doing more than counseling
After two or three of these conversations, I realized that Alex didn’t understand the danger of compromise or the wealth of consensus. I talked him through the processes, but then I took it a step further. I scheduled a meeting with the account services team, which was currently at loggerheads with Alex and his team.
I wanted to demonstrate the dangers and worth of these two approaches. I was taking a chance because I purposely didn’t give the account services team a heads-up on what I was going to do. I did invite the account services director to keep her in the loop.
I have had so many successes from building a consensus that I had no doubts that this meeting would be a success. After the meeting request had gone out, there was an increase in chatter. People on each team expected a stressful confrontation.
Finding the stars
I learned some things as the meeting was about to start. I noticed there were people from account services that had not been on the meeting roster. This freedom was a good thing. What I learned was who, within account services, were the stars, the people that had the answers.
Finding who is the genuine team leader
To broker a feasible consensus, I needed to know the actual structure and dynamics of each team.
As leaders, we should always be looking for the genuine leaders of a team. We find those leaders by observing to whom people take their problems. There may be an official team leader, but if the doers are going to someone else when they have a question, the team’s leader is not the designated leader.
Transforming talent into skill
My definition of skill is talent, combined with complementary education. When leading an organization, we should search for new ways to transform employees’ talents into skills. And we should facilitate the application of those skills in ways that contribute to the good of the organization. People with good leadership skills should be the team leaders.
Pre-COVID, when I did consulting work, I would work from a cube instead of an office. This approach was difficult to accomplish when I was in China, the Philippines, or similar cultures, but it was very successful in America.
Getting the right people in the right roles
Within two or three days, I would often identify the people who carried the teams, those trying to hide, and those who had the raw talent to become leaders. It didn’t take very long to have enough empirical data to recommend a reorganization of the org chart, rewrite invalid job descriptions, create new ones, and so forth.
Getting both sides of the story
So, we kicked off the meeting. I asked Mia, the account services manager, to tell us her pain points. Almost immediately, side discussions broke out. We stopped those and let Mia detail her issues. I noticed that she was struggling to communicate her story because she was so frustrated with Alex.
Then I asked Alex to tell his story. Even after our “chats,” his words did not match his demeanor. His body language and phrasing said, “I’m going to do what I want; live with it.” At this point, I was getting a little nervous. So, before a mutiny broke out, I spoke up. With an eye on Alex, I said, “Let’s see if we can reach a compromise.” Let me stop here and define, in my terminology, compromise, and consensus.
A compromise is giving up something you think is right to receive something you feel is inferior for the sake of a marginalized solution. A consensus is building an agreement or social contract that contains something for all parties sufficient for them to work for its success.
Attempting a compromise
So, as I mentioned, I reined in the meeting and then challenged Mia, the account services manager, and Alex to work out a compromise while the staff listened. What resulted was a tug-of-war. Still, I gave them fifteen minutes to reach a compromise.
They came up with a very brittle agreement — if you do this, then we’ll do that; otherwise, we will assume you don’t care, and we’ll do what we please.
What Alex and Mia hammered out wouldn’t last a single day because it was shallow. It dealt with specific details related to their current problem. It didn’t even consider the broader needs.
The danger of methodology by personality
My experience with problem resolution is that personalities often define the actual methods performed by an organization. The way people work, individually and collectively, habitually grows organically, often ignoring the official methodology. Fiefdoms grow like weeds in a garden.
A company’s efficiency suffers from an organic methodology because it carries many people constrained from applying their full skillset while a few martyrs bear most of the load. They are the grumpy ones. The martyrs are the ones that are on the 7:00 am meeting and the 7:00 pm meeting and the ones you see popping up online at all hours of the day and night.
Achieving a consensus
It was clear to Alex and Mia that what they had built was a disposable solution. It was tenuous, and they’d soon be back at each other’s throats.
Now, I asked Alex and Mia to relax, breathe, and let their staff participate. Turning to the account services team, I directed a question to one of the “not on the roster” people. I asked, “Honestly, in your day-to-day work, what do you need from the design team?” It wasn’t a lot.
I followed up with several people from account services, asking them, “What do you need daily, weekly, and so forth? What phase of vNext do you need the most time with the design team? Who do you usually work with on the design team?” I asked typical questions.
I next shifted my focus to the design team. I asked the same basic questions. Then, beginning at the staff level, we began brokering a consensus; it was easy. The staff did all the work. Now I asked Mia what she required from Alex. I asked Alex what he required from Mia.
It didn’t take very long to develop a consensus on how these two teams could work together. We also brokered a process for conflict resolution. At the end of the meeting, people began letting their shields down. The general sense from both teams was that their work would be more efficient and much more pleasant with the consensus they had created.
Closing thoughts
The danger from compromise is that all parties often feel a sense of injustice. They each traded something good or right for something mediocre or wrong. These feelings can easily fester and grow a negative attitude throughout the whole organization.
A consensus is an excellent mechanism for problem resolution because each party has tied its reputation to the consensus’s success. It’s a win-win-win. The staff wins because they aren’t pitted against other members of the company. Management wins because work passes through the organization more efficiently and requires less of their time muscling through problems. And the whole organization wins because there is a strong sense of teamwork.
Employees need to know that their team’s success means nothing unless the entire organization is successful. There’s only one boat, and all employees are on it. If that one boat sinks, then everybody loses.
People change. Goals, motivations, and work environment desires are always in flux. As leaders, it’s our job to harness these changes to keep giving our staff a reason to show up for work. Building a consensus “lever” into our organization’s culture will provide long-term value. As an organization, we should be more effective than our competition or customers expect us to be.
