Oldies but goodies. . .

My car-pool buddy asked me what I might suggest she do on behalf of one of our growing departments at work. She explained the situation she was facing...

She’d been asked by the department head to participate in a retreat day he was planning in order to build teamwork among department members. He had packed the day's agenda rather full with day-to-day business of the deparmtnet and invited her to speak for 45 minutes, and make a presentation that would pull the group together, get them focused and motivated to work together. In other words, cure world hunger in an hour. Lovely assignment.

My buddy didn’t want to say no, but she also didn’t want to attempt the impossible which was, after all, what this department head was asking – absolutely the impossible! Hence, her question to me, “What would you do with 45 minutes?”

This particular department has been growing by leaps and bounds. It has probably tripled in size over the last 5 years. The age range in the department runs from 26 to 62 and, as you could bet, the 62 year-old is the department head! What’s more, the newcomers to the department have their own ideas, their own styles of creativity which, apparently, run perpendicular to “the way we’ve always done things” according to the department head.

The behaviors in the department, according to the manager, were leading to major upsets among the staff. People all wanting their own way had begun to act out like children, sabotaging department achievement in order to satisfy individual agendas. This is no way to run a department!

My friend summed up the problems noting there were several dichotomies: There’s 1) the new employees vs. seasoned employees dichotomy, 2) the younger-worker vs. nearing-retirement dichotomy and 3) the fresh-ideas vs. the way-we’ve-always-done-it dichotomy – a formidable triumvirate of troubles, and the manager wants the problems addressed (and resolved) in 45 minutes!

One might suspect there is also the imaginary-world vs. real-world dichotomy going on inside the department manager’s head based on his ludicrous request he'd made of my friend!

So, my friend is stuck. Say “No” because she recognizes the task is an impossible one, or say “Yes” because she realizes the problems will persist unless someone tries to intervene. But what is the reasonable organizational development intervention she can provide within a 45 minute window jammed up in a full day of a department “retreat”?

I could totally appreciate her dilemma.
My advice came from deep inside my memory bank and involved a technique I’d used dozens of time – often with children. Since this department’s difficulties reminded me of those that emerge among children, I figured I’d offer the exercise to her and let her decide if it might work. Here’s what I advised her to try:

Ahead of the event (a week or so in advance) ask that each member of the department respond to TWO questions about every other department member. Those questions are:

• What is one contribution that this person makes in the department that you genuinely appreciate?
• What is one request you might make of this person that would improve your relationship with him/her in the department?

Gather those responses and generate a sheet for each member of the department that has on it ALL the accumulated responses. Use these sheets on the day of the retreat to illustrate the kind of feedback that is possible when co-workers behave honestly and openly toward each other.

Contrast that, to the typical “childish” behaviors we exhibit when we are being passive aggressive, sullen and sulking from not getting our own way, or pouting and whining about other people in the department – all behaviors evident in this department, all disruptive to any sort of departmental success!

On the day of the event I suggested she teach about the JoHari Window, a two-by-two grid that was developed in the 1950’s (an oldie, but goodie) to explain that OPENNESS in any relationship is a choice. The JoHari Window offers two tools, Self-disclosure and Invited-feedback, to enable anyone of us to enlarge or shrink our own openness and thus change the dynamic of the relationship. It is a choice. How you use these two tools determines not only how you will interact with others but how they are likely to respond to you as well.

The pre-retreat feedback sheet is not “Invited-feedback” in the JoHari sense of the term, since the comments on that sheet will have been solicited by the facilitator, not the individual. However, since we humans are not very good at inviting feedback, having someone else get the ball rolling on our behalf can be a very helpful strategy.

Also, whether the people involved are children or adults, we all (ego-centric creatures that we are) like to see in writing a bunch of compliments about ourselves. With this exercise, in a department of 25 people, that’s 24 nice things that co-workers have said about you – a pretty good deal for almost anyone!

The “requests” side of the sheet may be a little harder to take, but, realistically, the reader has to ask, “Don’t I already know this about myself? Do I really need my co-workers to tell me that if I was more polite, more considerate, less intrusive, interrupted others less, etc., etc. that I’d be a much easier person with whom to work?”

My friend thought about it. She said, thinking back over her own years of work in the field, that she probably already had a file on the JoHari Window (most of us in organizational development have used it at one time or another). Combining it with the “Strengths Sheet” as we call it seemed like a good way to demonstrate the value of inviting feedback regularly.

I don’t know if she’ll take my advice and use these tools, but I was happy to offer them given her request for help.

After I got home, I thought of a number of ways a facilitator could address the problems my buddy was facing. Each strategy I considered was, I realized, something I had learned decades ago.

• One could teach a model like Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs and elicit needs each member of the department experiences, demonstrating what contributions we all need in order to reach toward “self actualization”.
• One might take the approach of doing a “Survival” game and noticing whose opinions were most trusted in the group, whose assessments of survival strategies were most effective, who surprised you with his or her resourcefulness.
• Or, one might explore the communications within the group, looking at how members spoke to each other using a Transactional Analysis approach.

Then, I realized that ALL of these strategies were ancient history! Hence, I have to admit that much of my wisdom (if you can call it that) comes from a period of history most folks can’t remember – the mid-20th century writers and proponents of what was called the Human Potential Movement. I was fortunate that my professors in the 1970’s relied heavily on these writers and taught me most of what I know about human development, interaction and personal growth. I still use (as you can tell) many of the tools they taught me in my early graduate-school studies. And, surprisingly, they still work! Oldies, but goodies. . .

It will be interesting to see what my friend, my car-pool buddy, decides to do with the 45 minutes in which she’s been asked to work a miracle. I’m glad she asked for my assistance because it made me muse on where my own techniques and tools come from and how long I’ve relied on models I learned in my youth!