MatchFit®

High Performing Teams

Can we talk about it? Reframing difficult conversations, with Garin Allen

In the realm of professional interactions, difficult conversations are inevitable. In this article, Garin Allen, an HR Technical Consultant with extensive experience in the Civil Service HR Casework and Technical Consultancy  team, sheds light on the transformative power of reframing these challenging dialogues.

With a background as an HR Case Manager, Garin’s journey within the Civil Service spans seven years. Over this time, he has witnessed substantial changes, with increasing numbers of clients engaging with HR Technical Consultancy (HRTC) service. These changes, Garin offers, have been driven by a combination of factors, but one significant catalyst has been the Civil Service HR Casework and Technical Consultancy  team partnership with MatchFit – the HRTC.

“Things have changed massively since I started all that time ago”, he says. “More Clients have come on board looking to plug those gaps in their technical capabilities. When you see cases coming in time and again, by addressing capabilities and making managers more confident in their ability to deal with issues, you can reduce the number of cases.”

What has driven this change?

“I think the partnership with MatchFit has helped support the development of the HRTC” Garin says. “But in terms of why the change has happened, I think that as a public sector body, the casework around attendance and other issues is a significant cost. We need to be able to deliver services,  if people are off sick, we need to ensure we’re resolving the root cause.

The Civil Service is huge, so there has been a lot to change over the last couple of years. But working with the prisons particularly, as we do with our Enhanced Service, it has very much been a case of deeply understanding the underlying issues and asking ‘How can our prisons, our public sector departments, deliver great service for the public that we serve?’ We can’t do that until we get managers capable of managing people in a way that improves attendance, for instance.”

The issue highlighted by Garin is one that plagues many organisations – the lack of managerial skills. He passionately advocates for providing line managers with essential soft skills training, emphasising the importance of setting up leaders for success in managing their teams effectively.

“I’ve often found that people have been promoted into a managerial position without receiving important soft skills training”, he says. “Despite the fact that there are people reporting to you, and you have the ability to shape someone’s life and career, it can be a very neglected area of your management journey. It’s useful to learn by making mistakes, but it’s not appropriate to learn from those mistakes at the expense of others. Making those same mistakes time and again can result in a reduction of morale, and people leaving, which is a great waste of talent.”

“I’m quite passionate about this – how do you step up from being one of the team one day, to running the team the next?  We need to upskill people so that they’re set up for success from the start and can lead their team effectively, delivering a great service to our public.”

On paper, this is all very fixable – all it actually takes is for somebody to be steered in the right direction; asking the right questions of themselves and understanding how to use that information; how it all fits together. But clearly, in practise, it’s much more complex than this.

“If you consider that there are thousands of managers across the Ministry of Justice and across the Civil Service as a whole”, Garin reflects, “the reality is that if I select five managers to train, that’s a tiny pool. So we have to look at how we scale this up.  When we see civil action cases coming through, we need to be asking what can we do to remedy that? Could better line-management have prevented the absence? Could the absence have been managed better in terms of getting the person back to work? It’s a dual pronged approach.

When we look at the prisons, our priority is to reduce reoffending and protect the public. How do we do that if we don’t have the staff on the landings to support the prisoners? This is a situation that can spiral, as if there aren’t enough staff, that puts more pressure on the ones that are there, which increases absence due to sick leave.”

Addressing the challenge

The HRTC partnership has developed a number of modular interventions that can be selected according to the analysis and recommendations made at the start of the HRTC Service.

Garin explains: “We perform an Analysis every time we work with a different client, and then suggest the key areas that we can really support with. We look at what the survey is telling us in terms of the culture and what the one-to-ones are telling us when we’re talking to the twelve selected people across the organisation. We look at the HR case audit to understand the nature of HR cases. All this information combines to help us decide which five or six interventions we should pick, and why? The common topic though is communication – it’s what we all do every single day. As an HR Case Manager back in the day, I would ask ‘have you had that conversation with Person X around expectations?’ And so often the response was, ‘no, I assumed they would know.’

People are communicating all the time, and if we don’t get that right, then nothing else can easily follow. That’s why the ‘Reframing Conversations’ intervention is so popular.”

Why is this so useful?

Garin explains: “Conversations form part of our everyday. Every time we have a conversation with somebody, we’re getting something out of it. So this intervention looks at ‘how do I get the best out of those conversations? How can I approach a difficult conversation well, rather than putting it off?  What is my conversation style; what are the styles of my team members?’

We look at elements such as avoidant tendencies – I’ve certainly been there in the past! Then you have the bulldozers who will say anything, without thinking through the consequences. You have the peacekeepers, trying to find the balanced approach everywhere. And then you have those individuals who really have nailed the dialogues; the professional communicators that can get the best out of a conversation – by active listening, essentially.

The really important part of that intervention is where we focus on ‘Five conversations, one at a time’, based around the book by Cowley and Purse. We look at how we can build for the future, set expectations with our teams and build trusting relationships. For me, this is that ‘penny drop’ moment in the intervention, when people realise that ‘these conversations really are important, and here’s why’.”

Garin mentions that Reframing Conversations also dovetails nicely into another, called CLIMB 360 Feedback, which focuses on actively extending, soliciting and receiving effective feedback. When giving feedback, how do you frame it in their conversation style, so that it actually lands with that person? He says: “Others that work well around it as well are the coaching modules; looking at having coaching conversations with your direct reports. They work really nicely together because again, the coaching approach allows you to have a conversation that you build around trust, and then develop really targeted actions that address clearly defined  issues.”

The impact in practice

“One standout example of a successful intervention that comes to mind, where I could really tangibly see the improvement,” Garin recounts, “is one that will sit with me forever. I delivered ‘Reframing Conversations’ in a prison environment to a Custodial Manager. I would say she was probably quite shy, and she was very unsure of herself. She was actually very good at her job, but her confidence just wasn’t there. When I came back a few months later, and asked how things were going, she said that as a result of the intervention she had been able to challenge the Governor over a decision she disagreed with, which she would never have done before. The skills she learned as part of the intervention enabled her to get her point across, earn the respect of the Governor (who took her points on board) opened the door to future fruitful conversations.”

Why does the HRTC Partnership work so well?

“The MatchFit partnership with us works well for many reasons.” Garin explains. “Having an external consultancy approach helps us see how we can do things better. But even more important is that we work really collaboratively, it’s a partnership that is seamless – our clients see us as one entity.

MatchFit also has a very phenomenological approach, which makes the programmes and interventions truly relevant to people. Rather than just throwing theory at participants, it’s all linked back to their workplace with practical hints and tips for how they can use it.

Ultimately, conversations are the things we do every day. They’re the chance to get things right; they’re also the times when things can go drastically wrong. So getting these conversations right, having them frequently and building trust in the workplace, is so important. This is why these interventions go down so well with the people we work with, as they can see how they link back to the organisation and how they can use it. Rather than leaving the workshops with lots of information but wondering ‘how am I going to implement this?’, people have gained an understanding of how they work, how their team works, and how the organisation works. But most importantly, how they can implement the actions both immediately, and on an ongoing basis.

The bottom line is that if you get the conversations right, other things will fall into place as a result of it.

Garin’s Top Tips for Managing Conversations

  • It’s essential to build trust – without it, you’re not going to build for the future.
  • Develop active listening skills, without bias or judgement.
  • Find out about your team – what makes them tick?
  • What’s their life like outside of work?
  • How do they want to be communicated with; how do I want to be communicated with?

Recommended Reading

To further delve into the subject, Garin recommends the book ‘5 Conversations: How to transform trust, engagement and performance at work‘ by Nick Cowley and Nigel Purse

To learn more about the MatchFit CLIMB interventions, please visit the website https://matchfitwith.com/climb-interventions/

If you’d like to learn more about our MatchFit programmes, take a look at our information pages here, or why not get in touch? [email protected] or call +44 (0) 7858 775 249

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CLIMB Case Study: Building a high-performing global team

In this case study, we describe the challenges faced by a leading Financial Services provider, and how the MatchFit CLIMB model was used to deliver the objective of building a culture of trust and positive team relationships.

THE CHALLENGE

Managing a virtual global team of 40 people presents many challenges, even for an experienced leader. The Head of Marketing managed a team of very capable individuals working globally, but there were a number of ingrained behaviours across the team that needed to be addressed.

Lack of face-to-face interaction, together with working across cultures, time zones and with different nationalities created challenges that were difficult to manage. This resulted in mistrust among team members, a lack of team identity, poor collaboration and communication, and not having a sense of control over the collective agenda.

Aware that there were some complex personalities in their leadership team, the Head of Marketing recognised this as an opportunity to develop the team further. She sought a professional development solution that would enhance trust and drive increased collaboration and high performance at an individual and team level.

THE SOLUTION

MatchFit’s expertise in working with global and virtual teams meant we were able to create a bespoke programme (CLIMB – Building a High Performing Global Team) that would deliver against defined success criteria:

  • Engender a sense of trust among the team by exploring and resolving issues
  • Support the development of a team identity which embraces the dynamic of ‘I have your back’
  • Explore individual and team collaboration and identify measurable progression
  • Ensure control and governance over the collective agenda
  • Develop commitment, intensity and motivation towards the above objectives through a development pathway.

DELIVERY

Due to the virtual nature of the team, some of the sessions were conducted remotely and materials were available through a cloud platform. The marketing leadership team followed the three-phase MatchFit Development Pathway over a two-year period, which ensured careful analysis, design, delivery and measurement.

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YEAR 1

Working with senior leaders and the wider team 

  • Focused on the ‘Identify’ and ‘Innovate’ phases which included:
  • Base Camp team workshop
  • Online survey
  • Interviews with managers and team individuals, including reflective feedback
  • Development of bespoke training modules.

Base Camp team workshop

A face-to-face offsite workshop for 40 people focused on the challenges and good practice of working in global and virtual teams. It generated conversations around some of the challenges and focused on what the team could do to move forward in order to build trust, identity, collaboration and gain a sense of control.

Online Survey

Post Base Camp, we conducted an online survey across the whole team, asking a series of questions relating to:

  • Their objectives and the challenges they thought were blockers to success
  • What support they might need to unlock those challenges
  • What development they might need to take them to the next level of maturity in their career.

Interviews with managers and team individuals, including reflective feedback

A series of interviews at a senior leader and team level were carried out to dig even deeper. This helped identify individuals’ development areas and we were able to reflect back what their line manager thought they were, to see if they were aligned.

Development of training modules

Based on all the research and feedback gained, we designed 10 training modules that could be delivered virtually to address the key development areas that had been identified. Examples included: building trust, collaboration and your role, developing your leadership style, black box thinking etc.

YEAR 2

Working with the senior leadership team

Based on the ‘Initiate’ phase of the MatchFit Development Pathway, the key areas of focus below were agreed with the aim of strengthening relationships, collaboration and communication. In particular, unlocking tension between specific individuals within the team was also highlighted as an objective:

  • Leadership team dynamics
  • Individuals within it and their styles
  • Supporting the team through change.

This was delivered through:

  • Leadership team group sessions – setting personal commitments to change
  • One to one coaching including targeted development work with individuals to address behaviours that impact negatively on the team dynamic
  • Sensitive coaching and intervention work with individuals at a lower and more senior level to unlock tensions.

OUTCOME

“A lot of the time, this kind of support feels like a ‘nice to have’ when you have a certain amount of budget for CPD. But what I would say now, going into year three, it has to be there. It’s enormously helpful to me as a leader and the people on my team. I don’t think we would want to do without this support. The coaching support I received has helped me navigate some of the complex personalities in my team who all demand a different approach.” Head of Marketing

The impact of CLIMB – Building a High Performing Global Team has been a success story for the Marketing team. The Head of Marketing has seen a dramatic difference across all of the team and in some individuals in particular. In the 2018 company Employee Survey, the marketing team’s Leadership Survey results were the best in the whole business by quite some measure and better than the ‘Best in Class’ external benchmark.

The programme leader and coach, was viewed as an external sounding board and ‘critical friend’ who helped team members focus on their goals and put strategies in place to address their development needs. The Head of Marketing was able to gain an external and independent view of their team.

In relation to the objectives set out at the beginning of the programme, success can be demonstrated in all areas:

Engender a sense of trust among the team by exploring and resolving issues

  • A significant shift is now evident regarding the level of trust within the team. Individuals are instantly more open and honest with each other about ‘work stuff’, so issues can be resolved before they escalate.
  • The team are now more open about sharing accountability across some of the delivery areas and less protective of their ‘turf’
  • The Head of Marketing has gained more trust with their team by empowering staff to manage the agenda on projects.

Support the development of a team identity which embraces the dynamic of ‘I have your back’

  • Most team members have ‘dusted off their sharp edges’ and are now demonstrating collective trust and accountability across marketing projects relating to a number of vendors and internal stakeholders.

To explore individual and team collaboration and identify measurable progression in this area

  • Three team members working together on the customer experience agenda have demonstrated great collaboration, trust and accountability which is delivering benefits to their customers.
  • As a result of the personal one-to-one coaching and intervention work, one individual has made the biggest change in their approach and behaviour, unlocking tensions within the team which has been noticed by the Executive team.

Ensure control and governance over the collective agenda

  • The one-to-one coaching sessions were extremely helpful in enabling team members to have a private space to talk about what was stopping them from doing/achieving certain things, and this has been helpful in guiding the collective agenda.

“There are a lot of facilitators and coaches who run programmes, but Bradley builds trust and engagement. He is not superior towards people, he comes down to people’s levels and that openness is what leads to results. People are not scared of being vulnerable with him – he is independent and not part of a big organisation” Head of Marketing

Do you have a team challenge we can help with?

Please contact Bradley Honnor:

EMAIL: [email protected] TEL: +44 (0)20 3145 0580

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Is competition holding the team back?

Most of us will have witnessed this scenario at some point in our working lives: the goals are defined, team members are talented, capable, motivated, and ambitious. And yet – the team isn’t achieving its potential. All that ambition and energy is being delivered in different directions.

Whilst competition within a business can be healthy, it can also be the source—or symptom—of a deeper conflict within teams. Such conflict is something we come across quite regularly when delivering our programmes for clients, and there are a number of reasons why that can happen.

For a start, if people within a team are prioritising their own personal agenda over the team agenda, then that’s certainly something which can sabotage team performance. We see this a lot in senior management teams when egos get in the way, when a lot of time is spent in battle with colleagues rather than trying to work together and collaborate.

Sometimes, the competition is more passive-aggressive. An issue we come across is that people will say ‘yes’ when they mean ‘no’. In a meeting with the team, everyone nods their head and commits to their actions, but some will have no intention of supporting that action and will even report back to their own team that this strategy is not going to work.

There is a degree of competitiveness that is inherent in human nature which might be an underlying factor. It’s the responsibility of a leader, then, to address this culture of disruption. The problem, however, is that leaders have often achieved their position due to their competitiveness, and much of this disruption can actually occur within the senior teams.

An example we’ve seen recently involved a long-term strategy that was due to be rolled out across an organisation. Within the senior leadership team, two or three members objected to the concept, and sabotaged the process by pulling the plan apart in an unhelpful way. As a result, that strategy was abandoned, resulting in indecision about how they might move forward.  Those individuals have since left the team!

Business culture can clearly be quite individualistic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in the type of work we do, we look at those dynamics and help people to understand when this can be a disruptive element of team relationships. While a degree of competitiveness can be positive, it can also be a symptom of something deeper going wrong within an organisation. Sometimes, people are so dissatisfied with their role, they are just looking to be heard. They might feel their opinion wasn’t sought in the first place, and so haven’t engaged in the idea. This can be a symptom of people misunderstanding what they need to be competing on or knowing who they need to be competing with.

For instance, why would the marketing director compete with the sales director? Clearly the collaboration between those people would be more effective than competing for recognition. If they were both competing to be the best in their role, then the organisation benefits.

Even within departments, competition can happen. For instance, in sales, it is often about who gets the leads or makes the sale, and it’s actively encouraged. That’s good and healthy, but it can cause destructive rivalry as well. It’s something that needs addressing directly to recognise the origins – for example, a fear of someone else’s success, or of not getting the credit; anger at being overlooked for a role, or reason for a success.

It’s a complex dynamic, but we see it an awful lot, and it really affects the performance of teams. In contrast, when you look at high-performing sports teams, the need for individual glory usually takes a back seat to the success of the team.

So what steps can be taken to mirror this in a business context?

It starts with having direct conversations. That’s very often the most critical part of the work we do with organisations. We look at the dynamics in the team and if people don’t get on with each other, then we need to understand what that’s really about. Having those conversations is fundamental, but often business teams aren’t doing it. They’ll talk about projects and tasks, and even objectives and goals for the team, but they don’t sit back and look at ‘how are we actually getting on together?’.

We can go into an organisation, and someone will say ‘Oh yeah, the manager and the deputy manager have got real issues with each other’. The staff know it, it’s been like that for a long time, but there’s no real plan to overcome it. It’s really quite interesting, because if those managers aren’t aligned, it has massive implications in terms of how things get communicated and followed through, and how people view the leadership. It can have a very negative ripple effect.

In some organisations, and indeed sectors, there is the problem of blame culture. The focus is on who is at fault rather than seeing things going wrong as an opportunity to improve. In such an environment, it’s natural to try and avoid being the one to be blamed, so problems get hidden, mistakes are made and issues don’t get found out quickly enough.

In a recent documentary on Boeing, this was illustrated very dramatically. Boeing had a reputation for quality and safety first – if an engineer raised a problem, they wouldn’t release the plane until that problem was solved.

But as the commercial drivers became more about pleasing the shareholders, more mistakes were happening. People were still speaking out, but they were told by management ‘we don’t want to know about that, stop causing trouble’. As a result, two planes crashed within five months of each other, which had never happened in the history of aviation, since the introduction of safety protocols.

Rather than working for the good of the company, the leadership were working on behalf of the shareholders, and indeed were themselves major shareholders. That agenda took Boeing from the most respected airline manufacturer in the world to being massively overtaken by Airbus.

Sometimes organisations can’t have these difficult conversations without external help and support, because generally people don’t like conflict. It can be uncomfortable raising issues, and it’s often easier or more of a priority to just get the job done. But this overlooks the benefits of improving those dynamics.  Getting that team working more effectively together impacts the overall success of the business.

A leader really needs to be able to address these dynamics, but like anything, there’s a skill in facilitating that. It’s not necessarily just the responsibility of a leader either – two members of the same team may be having an issue that is making them negatively competitive, but they may not have the skills to have it out with each other.

There are frameworks that can be implemented to address issues as they come up, but there is a skill to doing it, and it does require candour and trust. For example: we worked with a client who had a leader that was very unpopular in their organisation. We had to ask their team and colleagues ‘why don’t you like them; why are you cutting them out?’ We delivered some difficult feedback – they were considered to be rude, demanding, and difficult. That’s challenging to address and difficult to hear.

Of course, people don’t get on from time to time, and we find some people easier to get on with than others, but it’s part of our professional responsibilities to deal with that, to operate authentically. When a leader becomes aware of these situations, they really should address them as a performance issue.

But fundamental to this all happening successfully, is for people to be comfortable enough to change. That requires trust. With the work that we do, over a period of time, working both one-to-one and in the group, our consultants earn the trust and foster the trust of and between those individuals and that team. So then, at that point when potentially contentious changes are suggested, or the need to address certain dynamics are raised, people are ready to hear that message.

The founder of Person-Centred Therapy, Carl Rogers (1957), talks about creating the core conditions for personality change, which are empathy, congruence, and unconditional positive regard.  When you create these three conditions, it facilitates the foundation for the open communication and trust that ultimately enables positive change. We would argue that these are just as relevant to business psychology as to psychotherapy.

References

Rogers CR. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Psychotherapy (Chic). 2007 Sep;44(3):240-8. doi: 10.1037/0033-3204.44.3.240. PMID: 22122245.

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