There is always hope!

Three times in the last few weeks, we have met with leaders who are trying to navigate difficult situations or deal with extremely difficult people. In each of the conversations with these leaders, they talked to us about whether we felt there was hope for creating change and whether we would recommend they keep trying to impact positive change. Here are the scenarios we discussed:

Scenario One:

A leader who is new to the organization is trying to be collaborative and a strong cross-departmental team player. Other long-term department leaders have their own agenda and really operate quite openly with a “my way or the highway” agenda. Most often, these leaders take action without communicating to others in the organization and when they really want to play hardball, they turn up the volume in publicly blaming other departments in the organization. What is most challenging is the CEO does not take a stand and hold all team members accountable for both producing great results and working well across department lines with good communication, collaboration and teamwork.

Scenario Two:

A new leader takes over as CEO in an organization that has had several CEO’s in the last five years. Each of the previous CEO’s has not been successful in changing the culture to create an environment where every team member has a positive vision of the organization’s future and hope of building an organization that is continuously improving. With the two previous CEO’s, a lot of employees and managers were successful in maintaining a toxic environment and the CEO’s decided they did not want to work in that type of environment, were not up to fight any longer and found it easier to quit and leave.

Scenario Three:

The leader is promoted to be the manager of a department that has a long history of dysfunction in the organization. Every time the leader tries to hold a team member accountable to high quality work, excellent customer service or strong collaboration and teamwork, the low performing team members run to Human Resources and complain about what a poor leader the new manager really is. On the third employee complaint, Human Resources decided to do one-on-one interviews with each member of the manager’s team.

In each of these situations discussed above, the leader asked us if we believed there was any hope in improving the condition of their team or organization by continuing to fight what they perceived as a winless uphill battle. In each of these scenarios, we told the leaders that we do believe there is hope if they follow the following steps.

1. Create and Crystalize a Positive Vision of the Outcome: A lot of leaders underestimate the power of a positive vision. A vision is a clear mental picture, described in words, of the outcome you hope to achieve. Whether your vision is positive or negative, most likely you will be right. It is your vision that creates the motivation to take the daily actions to turn your vision into a reality.
2. Take Action and Do the Right Thing. Each day, take the actions that will improve the condition of your team or organization. Vision without action is merely a dream. Vision with daily action can change the world.
3. Lean into Conflict. Conflict seldom resolves itself on its own. If a cross-departmental team member leaves you out of the communication on a project you are involved with, go talk to them. Sending an email may be a method of communication that gets your point across, but in person dialogue is almost always better. If you have the guts to go talk to them about not including you in important information, there is a good chance they will not do it again because they know you are confident to come and talk about their lack of judgment in not including you as an important member of the team.
4. Hold People Accountable: Hold direct reports accountable to clear goals, desired outcomes and being strong team players. Several managers we work with have taken over a department that has had multiple leaders fail in changing the culture of the department. Some employees have the attitude that they were here before the new leader; they will be here after the new leader leaves and, therefore, they do not plan on changing their behaviors and improving the culture of the team. When you hold team members accountable you need to remember the J Curve; almost always, the employees’ reactions to being held accountable will get worse before the behaviors improve. There is a good chance morale will get worse, results will get worse and the employee will show increased negative reaction to you as the leader. Don’t stop holding team members accountable. Staying the course, almost always over time, things get better.
5. Ask the Right Questions:  To gain agreement that there is a problem with difficult people, you need to ask the right questions. The real reason employees don’t change their behaviors is because they don’t really believe there is a problem. For example, you have two employees who do not get along and work well as a cross-departmental team. The right question to ask each of them is, “When you and John do not work well as a team, do you see that as a problem?” If they say, “No,” your next question would be to let them know you are perplexed and would like them to elaborate so you can better understand why they don’t see the lack of teamwork as a problem. You could then ask, “If this lack of cooperation, communication and teamwork is not improved, is it possible it could negatively impact the teamwork of the direct reports in each of your departments?”  If that does not work, you could always ask, “If I need a leader in your department who works exceptionally well across different departments in the organization and you do not, do you see that as a problem?” Once you get agreement there is a problem, then, and only then are you in the right position to start action planning with the employee. Focus on what you can control.
6. Celebrate Success Daily: When you are in a difficult situation that sometimes feels like it is impossible to be successful, start recognizing and calling attention to daily wins. Recognize team members who contribute to the team’s new vision. However small, people tend to repeat behaviors that are recognized and rewarded.
7. Develop Options: If you truly have no hope, have lost your positive vision, do not see a path to a positive outcome, do you and your team a favor; develop multiple options and alternatives and find yourself a new job where you can improve the condition of your team and organization.

In each of the aforementioned situations we worked with the leaders to build the skills to have productive crucial conversations, effectively coach performance problems, and hold people accountable to high standards to create an environment where both leaders and employees are successful and love to come to work. Ultimately, we helped them create hope.