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Leadership Lessons: How Much Is Enough

Guest post by: Sylvia Lafair

Article Overview: If people are given the opportunity to find their own set point and are neither forced nor excluded from bringing the best of who they are, "the whole person", to work, real progress can be made for healthy team connections to occur. The big question concerns what we need and want to know about each other to make relationships move along in a smooth and collaborative manner. And, it is vital to consider an important caution: work is not a rehab facility!

Leadership Lessons: How Much Is Enough

Helping to find the balance between too much involvement and no emotional connection is one of the jobs of the modern work culture. It is about inclusion and exclusion. It is about too tough, too weak, and "just right". If Goldilocks could find the balance point, hopefully with a little testing of food, and chairs (let's forget about the mattresses), and communication, we can come up with the right standards at work.

If people are given the opportunity to find their own set point and are neither forced nor excluded from bringing the best of who they are, "the whole person", to work, real progress can be made for healthy team connections to occur.

The big question concerns what we need and want to know about each other to make relationships move along in a smooth and collaborative manner. And, it is vital to consider an important caution: work is not a rehab facility!

An offsite several weeks ago with a newly established senior leadership team proves how critical it is to have "just the right amount of personal information" without crossing boundaries and making individuals feel uncomfortable.

Let me paint the picture: we were at a retreat center rather than a more traditional hotel. The room was set with a circle of chairs and music videos welcomed us into the room.

The team of seven senior leaders was having their second meeting together. This is a high level global team of scientists, each skilled and respected internationally for their expertise. They are a no nonsense group of three women and four men. Most knew each other peripherally; all have been with this biotech company from five to fifteen years.

The task was to take these hardy individuals and meld them into a team that would support other areas of the company internationally. First order of business for the two days was to help them get to know each other better, find the boundaries around what is and is not acceptable. They wanted to leave with an action plan and commitments on how to move forward.

The morning stayed in the play it safe range. No one was willing to even admit there may be some gorillas and elephants hanging around the edges of the room. By the afternoon we were able to establish four ground rules that would lead this group of seven into the realm of becoming a team with healthy boundaries that are sustainable and flexible.

1. Treat truth telling as a precise art form: Telling the truth is not spilling your guts! The question in back of your mind at all times is "How can this forward the situation at hand and make a positive difference?"

2. Make sure that work is NOT a rehab facility: You can offer to give others your suggestions, but then you need to back off. The capacity to observe and include emotion-laden content rather than ignore or discount it is at the crux of powerful and creative dialogue. Don't back away yet give room for others to react.

3. Listen for emotion and repetition: You have a responsibility to check your assumptions and what I call your BS detector. When someone says "it really doesn't matter" or "I'm not upset" and in your head or gut you hear the buzz of the detector go off, trust it and ask some open ended questions to get to the heart of the matter.

4. Be open to outcome, not attached to it: Being clear and decisive does not keep you from changing your perspective and following a new direction. This is time to not only gain facts, also to learn more about how another person thinks and feels and how you will work together.

These boundaries took the group to a level of collaboration they did not think possible in such a short time. One example was when two of the folks admitted that they are short on patience. When someone takes what they think it too long to get to a point they zone out.

It was then that Peter said, "How can you stand to talk with me? I am a slow processor and my mind is not like a pin ball machine." That is when Sue looked at him and apologized, saying "That really hit me hard. In the past few weeks when I have seen you in the cafeteria I have downloaded paragraphs and barely waited for you to reply. Now I know what not to do, it was stupid and insensitive."

Peter was ready to do a knee-jerk conditioned "It is really okay" except they had created strong and flexible boundaries, so instead he responded "Now that we know how our brains take in information we can adjust to each other, thanks that means a lot to me."

They left the off-site with a deeper knowledge of each other and a desire to be trailblazers for transparency and authenticity. Now, that is the basis of an unbeatable team.

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Article Tags: caution, collaborative manner, leadership lessons, rehab facility, relationships



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