A self-managed work environment demands free and open communication.  When individuals need help from others, communication is request-not-command, since people in such a workplace only manage themselves, not others.  For a request to be effective, it stands to reason that the request should be delivered in a respectful manner designed to elicit a positive response.

More broadly: what modern company, self-managed or not, doesn’t claim to foster teamwork, open communication, and professional relationships? It’s easy to imagine the recruiting challenges for any organization advocating rigid hierarchy, arbitrary command authority, and threats from superiors.

At Morning Star, free and open communication is implicitly and explicitly required by the Colleague Principles—the “constitution” of the enterprise. The preamble talks about maintaining an atmosphere of trust and harmony. It’s pretty difficult to grasp how such a desired state would be served by sloppy, rude or presumptuous discourse.

An Individual Goals and Teamwork section implicitly demands respectful communications. The paragraph explicitly requires each colleague to commit to the pursuit of teamwork. Since the very definition of teamwork is “cooperative or coordinated action on the part of a group in pursuit of a common cause”, it’s hard to see how such a pursuit would be advanced through rudeness.

A Personal Responsibility and Initiative section drives the point even deeper, declaring that colleagues “…commit…to personally take the initiative to coordinate their responsibilities and activities with others…”. I’m not even sure that a decent level of human coordination is achievable in a low-trust environment riven by self-centered, contemptuous, or apathetic communication styles.

A Tolerance section pointedly demands respect for individual differences in personal values, tastes, moods and methods. The section titled Gaining Agreement invokes a specific procedure that demands confidentiality, coordination and communication, all of which depend on trust and respect. Caring and Sharing asks colleagues to share information that they think may be helpful to others even when not requested—an extremely high standard, and one requiring sensitivity to others. The finale, Do What Is Right, explicitly requires colleagues to speak truthfully. What good would it do to “speak the truth” in a careless manner that doesn’t resonate with the intended listener? In such cases, the speaker might as well talk to the nearest wall.

While it’s great that the Principles implicitly and explicitly call for respectful communication, they don’t explain how that communication should occur. Psychologists Stephanie Donaldson Pressman and Robert M. Pressman* offer some insight into the mechanics of respect that could easily apply to many conceivable work situations requiring effective communication—especially those involving requests that are complex, continuous, or involve multiple stakeholders.

They describe a formula called “I Feel…I Want” that has the potential to help individuals express themselves effectively. Expressing emotion is important, they say, because a) everyone has emotions, and b) everyone has a right to experience their own emotions (while we sometimes like to think we are creatures of logic, brain science tells us that it’s virtually impossible to make a decision without emotion**). And it’s important for most people to have their feelings heard. The problem occurs when people use ineffective methods to express feelings (name-calling, always/never references, kitchen-sinking, reciting ancient history, etc.) that result in bad outcomes (escalation, counterattack, permanent animosity). The psychologists note that very few people listen well when they are being attacked—they are inwardly preparing a counterattack.

Expressing feelings is crucial. Human beings generally do listen to expressions of emotion. Since these expressions describe the speaker only, they have an excellent chance of being heard. There is no defense to prepare, since there is no attack to defend against. The psychologists call this RAC (Respectful Adult Communication). They distinguish RAC from another commonly used term, assertiveness. While assertiveness may be perfectly functional and often appropriate, it has a negative connotation for many people. It also carries risks. If I simply assert something to a colleague—“I want you to provide the pricing information by 4 o’clock”, for example—what right do I have to expect my assertion to be respected? Do I know my colleague’s competing priorities? Her ability to deliver on my request? The current trust level between us? The kinds of language that resonate with my colleague’s personality type? Simple assertion runs the risk of misfiring, since I can’t possibly know everything that’s going on with that individual at that point in time. The power of “I” statements is profound–one paragon of self-management, W.L. Gore & Associates, intentionally develops associates’ skill in using “I” statements (part of the curriculum of Leadership Effectiveness Training, or L.E.T.).

Respectful Adult Communication can be a powerful key to opening doors. The “I Feel…I Want” formula allows an person to freely express his or her inner state of mind, which in turn leads an intended listener to actually listen. After achieving true two-way communication through honest self-revelation, it is possible to deliver even a complex request (the “I Want” part!) in a way that is most likely to succeed.

—————————————————————————————-

*  Stephanie Donaldson Pressman and Robert M. Pressman, The Narcissistic Family, Diagnosis and Treatment, Jossey-Bass, 1994, see Chapter 5.
**  The Economist, December 19, 2006, “Captain Kirk’s Revenge”.

Image credit: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/photo_10790181_people-with-thought-bubbles-isolated-over-white-background-vector.html’>yupiramos / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

- See more at: http://self-managementinstitute.org/blog/entry/rac_em_up/#sthash.D7JpiCaf.dpuf

With “The Culture Game: Tools for the Agile Manager”, Daniel Mezick has given organizations a high-performance set of not-so-secret success formulas. His writing is crisp, cogent and to the point. Best example: his riposte to people that check e-mail in meetings is “Give me a break”. Best of all, the advice is fully actionable. Right away. Anyone can pick up a copy of Culture Game and, within a couple of hours, brainstorm multiple ways to apply Agile thinking and Tribal Learning Practices to their organization. This book is designed to give leaders (and those aspiring to be leaders) the kinds of powerful business execution techniques that elude most organizations. If you don’t recognize the terms Agile or Tribal Leadership, they are easily googled for a quick intro.

Mezick’s first sentence in Chapter 22 is: “Eliminate the distinction between work and play”–what a concept! When you really think about it, despite the massive amounts of literature dedicated to achieving work/life balance, there is really only life (unless people at work are actually zombies!). Why not use games to make life at work as enjoyable as possible?

The author has a cohort of like-minded thought leaders and fellow experimenters (including Robert Richman, former head of Zappos Insights, and Michael Margolis, master storyteller), and he draws them out skillfully in interviews. Throughout, he builds out Agile principles in a logical sequence upon a solid foundation of history and context, and does so in an authentic and entertaining way. He gives full credit where credit is due, not only to Agile and Tribal Leadership, but to every resource that defines and/or reinforces his principles (including complexity theory, brain science, psychology, Toyota, systems theory, and many others). As a reader, I appreciated the references and learned where to go for more in-depth information.

Daniel Mezick has comprehensively defined the game of organizational culture. It’s safe to say that he, like his book, is a real winner.

Lord Acton, in an 1887 letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, famously stated that: “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  It turns out that Acton’s observation was truer than he could possibly have known at the time.

Dr. Ian Robertson has discovered that there is a biological basis to the addiction of power.  It turns out that in both men and women, the exercise of power increases both the levels of testosterone and 3-androstanediol (a testosterone by-product).*  This chemical surge, in turn, increases dopamine levels—a short-term reward for the brain.  Unfortunately, the addiction to power can simulate the physical addiction to cocaine—producing short-term euphoria but also leading to arrogance, impatience, egocentricity and lack of empathy.  Most sentient adults have observed such sub-optimal behavior in organizational leaders of all kinds—with negative effects everywhere.

Dr. Robertson, a professor of psychology at the University of Dublin, is publishing a book, The Winner Effect: How Power Affects Your Brain, on June 7, 2012 (Bloomsbury).   His analysis of baboon hierarchies provided key insights into the effects of dominant behavior in groups, and the effect on group dynamics.  Baboons low in the hierarchy have low levels of dopamine.  Once “promoted”, however, dopamine levels rise—making them more aggressive.

Continue reading →

The Canadian Snowbirds Demonstration Team has been thrilling audiences at high-performance air shows across North America since 1978.  A branch of the Canadian Air Force, one would think such a group would be rigidly hierarchical—but it’s not.  It’s really quite self-managed.

One of the joys of working with the Morning Star Self-Management Institute is scouring the world for examples of self-management in action.  Frequently, we find self-management in unlikely places.

One question that arises: how important is coordination (a.k.a. teamwork) in a self-managed environment?  The answer: it’s everything!  A core traditional management function, coordination (or the lack thereof) among team members can make or break an organization.  Self-management is unlike Peter Drucker’s famous metaphor of organization as conducted symphony.  To continue with the music metaphors, it’s much more like a cluster of jazz bands roaming around Bourbon Street.  The trick is not to direct them, but just to make sure that each band is relatively harmonious and doesn’t clash with all the other bands.

In an organization with multiple geographic locations, one can speculate about the myriad levels of coordination that have to occur: between locations, between functions, between businesses, and between domains like sales, strategy and human resources.  Pretty complex, right?  Now imagine an organization of self-managed professionals in an unlikely organization, creating scores of high-risk public performances for six months out of every year—where coordination is (and, tragically, has been) literally a matter of life or death.

Continue reading →