What
Happens AFTER the Week in the Woods
OK,
you have done the team
building, you have brought
in the consultants and
forked over the resources
to have all of your team
have a better relationship.
At first, it seemed as
if the results were there,
but now the benefits
seem to be, well, wearing
off. What next? How do
you make sure your time
and money will reap the
long-term benefits the
consultants promised? This is the question
many managers have after a team building
exercise has been done in their organization.
Even if everyone in the entire organization
has been through the same team building
efforts, after a time any inclinations
to be defensive, get upset, frustrated,
self centered or territorial will come
out. That is when the grumbling starts
it begins to look like it didn’t
work." Did it work? Yes, but
it is only a first step. The major shortcoming
of most team building efforts is not
the effort itself, but that they do not
always provide sufficient tools to deal
with the breakdowns in relating that
will naturally arise after the sessions.
The relationships that were developed
in the team building sessions are fragile
and they must be nurtured and cared for
in order to grow and get very strong. In this article, I
will give you an exercise designed to
provide you with a day-by-day way of
dealing with relationship breakdowns
and designing your responses for a more
powerful future. There are two important
points that must be understood first. 1) There is one access
and one access only to any relationship.
YOU. No one has any access to changing
anyone but themselves. 2) It takes two to
tango. One person cannot argue or fight.
If you can remember these two things,
you are well on your way to mastering
relationships. If you can only change
yourself, and you are committed to altering
or solidifying a relationship, then where
do you start? With yourself! In most team building
sessions there are opportunities to commit
to new behaviors. What behavior have
you committed to? Have you promised to
be more trusting, more communicative,
less rigid in your opinions? Have you
promised to speak up more rather than
to keep your complaints and issues to
yourself? Have you decided you want to
be more of a take charge kind of person? That’s great! But knowing what commitments
you have made in the workshop setting
is very different than keeping your commitments
on a daily basis when you are up against
the kind of things that bring back automatic
pre-team building responses. I have designed
the following exercise to give you access
to designing day-to-day responses to
work situations that can give you trouble.
Follow the steps outlined below and you
will have some responses in your pocket
when a situation arises. A. & B. Identify
the new behavior and the old. Please
note this is behavior, not a sign that
you are the consort of the devil. It
isn’t your fatal Shakespearean
flaw or the reason you should be clapped
in irons, it is a behavior that is a
reaction to certain circumstances. (I
know this sounds dramatic, but it always
surprises me that people think they should
be drawn and quartered if they have a
bad habit.) C. Identify the times
when you can predictably expect to behave
in the old way. Be honest here and be
generous. If you see blame in your statement,
try to word it another way. "I do
that because they never like my ideas" might
become "I react that way when I
haven’t communicated the value
in my ideas." This puts the ball
back in your court. You don’t have
to take on the impossible task of changing
them, you only have to work on changing
you. D. Identify how you
know that behavior has surfaced. What
happens that tells you this is one of
the times you are against your commitment.
Are you being loud and banging the phone?
Do people get sullen? Do people get defensive?
Do they take over? Usually the behavior
is automatic so it is important to know
the signals. E. Identify your automatic
responses to these signals. If people
get sullen, do you get loud? Do you give
up on the conversation and walk away?
Do you bully them? This is where the "tangoing" begins.
If you can stop the cycle here, you are
in good shape. F. Identify new ways
of responding to those reactions. These
might sound like: "I apologize,
I didn’t mean to make you ________?" "Did
I sound like I was trying to abdicate
responsibility, I’m sorry. I do
that sometimes." "What I meant
was..." and go from there. The chart below shows
a sample of what might result as you
do this exercise. You are never going
to get rid of your human nature. If you
have been a doormat for 50 years, then
it will probably take a while before
you are habitually a take-charge person. The key here is to
stop the cycle. In this conversational
cycle you have access to Step A or Step
F. Acting in Step A will have the problem
not exist, and acting in Step F will
avoid it being a problem. It is also
important to know that you can stop the
conversation and go to Step F at any
time in the conversation. No explanation
is necessary, just say "Can we go
back to the beginning of this conversation?" It is hard to change.
For you and your co-workers. Have some
compassion for yourself and others and
give yourselves a break. You are all
new at whatever team relationship you
have generated in the team building sessions.
Mastery takes time, practice, patience
and courtesy. Team building works.
And if you combine it with the proper
maintenance tools and a great deal of
respect for people, your company can
be a very pleasant place to work.
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