Episodes

  • 581 Techniques For Getting Agreement As The Leader In Japan

    581 Techniques For Getting Agreement As The Leader In Japan
    Oct 16 2024

    Pulling rank on people is clearly the fastest and easiest way to get people to fly straight and do what we want. It is also a very dangerous choice in Japan in an era when the demand for people is so strong and the supply so limited. Mobility today means people have choices. If you are not interested in what they have to say or their ideas, they will jump ship to somewhere they think they will be better appreciated. The problem is their ideas are rarely much chop. They don’t have the experience, sufficient information, enough understanding of the context or the weight of responsibility on their shoulders if it doesn’t work. In a busy boss life, the simplest thing is to tell them “that won’t work” and just keep moving forward because there is so much to do.

    Here are some human relations principles we can employ to do a better job in our communication with our people.

    1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. This sounds a bit counterintuitive. Does it mean I just fold and let them have their way? Not at all. However we know that people rarely yield once they get into an argument and graciously accept our viewpoint. Rather they have their ego wrapped up in what they are saying and they won’t let go, so they just keep arguing with us. Our best response is to not respond in kind and try a different track.

    2. Show respect for the other person’s opinion – never say you are wrong. This is a red flag to a bull. One of my trigger words is to be told “no” and another is “you are wrong”, which is basically the same answer. We have to learn to disagree in a way which maintains the relationship. Telling people they are wrong isn’t going to help with that aim. Whenever the urge seizes you to tell others they are wrong resist the temptation.

    3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Leaders have ego, position power, pride and status and admitting we are not perfect is not easy for us. If we admit it won’t we be eroding our power? That fear is fair enough, but what we will find is that by giving up the God mantle and admitting we are human makes it easier for our team to emphasise with what we are trying to do. The secret is all in the communication of how we admit we are wrong.

    4. Begin in a friendly way. This sounds easy except when we are busy, harassed, pressured and under the gun we forget this part. We bring our businesslike self to the conversation rather than stepping back and thinking about first impressions for this conversation.

    5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately. Manipulation was the first thing which sprang into my mind when I heard this Principle. That obviously is a losing proposition. What is meant here is that our communication skill is operating at a very high level. We package up the idea and do it in such a way that the other person finds themselves in agreement. This is a high level of communication skill and takes a lot of practice, but it works well when done correctly.

    6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. Leaders love to talk. They love to hog the limelight and dominate the conversation because they are such amazing individuals. Rather by giving the floor to others they in turn will feel appreciated and valued. We already know what we know, so this also invites the opportunity for us to learn things we actually don’t know and broaden our perspectives.

    7. Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers. Sounds like more manipulation, but it isn’t. We remember that Socrates was famous for getting people to go deeper in their thinking by asking a series of questions which drove the quality of their understanding. This is the same idea. We communicate in such a way that the other person self-discovers the same thinking that we came up with and now we are in perfect agreement.

    As the leader we can always do better and usually, it is our poor communication ability which leads us into trouble. By changing our approach and how we express ourselves we will have much more impact on getting others to follow us. Brute force is not going to work in Japan anymore, so we need better tools.

    Show more Show less
    11 mins
  • 580 No Legacy Leadership In Japan

    580 No Legacy Leadership In Japan
    Oct 9 2024
    Have you ever had the experience of leaving a job and seeing your successor screw it up? We spend so many hours at work and we are trying hard to lift the bar through our leadership. However, if we do well, we get promoted or we join another company seeking a bigger job. It is very disheartening to leave and see the place go backwards under your replacement. You wonder what all those weekends spent working and long hours were al about. We expect that we add to the cause and the firm progresses and moves forward, improving over time. We expect those who come after us to be doing the same thing. So it was very confronting to read some statistics recently about how short the term at the top is these days and thinking about what does that mean for the leader’s legacy? According to data analysis firm Equilar, the median term for a CEO in the 500 largest US companies, is now down to 4.7 years, having dropped twenty percent over the last ten years. Russell Reynolds says globally, for CFOs, the tenure is down to a five year low of 5.7 years. If you are sent from Headquarters to Japan to run the local operation you don’t have much time. If you realise this and decide to go gung-ho from Day One and drive change to get the results faster, then you will probably blow up the firm. On the other hand, if you wait to understand the market, customers, the staff and the culture, then years of study will be required. By the time you get it, it is time to pack for the next assignment or another job change. The analogy I like is leading in Japan is like swimming in warm lake. You land here from headquarters and you are immediately placed in a warm, nice lake, but the surface is covered in a heavy fog. You can hear voices and vaguely make out shapes. Over time, the fog lifts a little as you understand Japan better and you can make out the shoreline and some islands. After about three years the fog lifts and it is now time to leave for your next post. What did you get done, what legacy have you left? If we go too fast the Japanese team cannot keep up and we have new internal troubles. This might include staff writing to the Chairman anonymously informing headquarters that you are ruining the business in Japan and destroying the firm here. It might mean key staff conclude you are an idiot and they vote with their feet and join the opposition. In today’s society in Japan, job mobility has changed an enormous amount and shifting firms doesn’t have the same stigma it once had which used to ensure lifetime employment with the one company. It might mean you decide to become “efficient” with customer relationships and after overcoming stubborn staff resistance, you force you will on everyone only to see your buyers depart and not come back. On the other hand, headquarters are contacting you because they are not seeing the spike in revenue numbers they sent you out there for. The staff engagement survey results are a disaster. Your bosses are not happy with your performance as a leader. You try to explain the subtleties and nuances of the Japanese market and how business is done here, but it all falls on deaf ears. They are fully preoccupied with themselves and nobody cares about your problems. There are no simple answers unfortunately. Listening is a good idea at the initial six month stage, especially listening to customers. Finding allies within the staff of firm who can get behind your changes is going to be vital. You can pontificate and shoot out orders, to only find those below are sabotaging your efforts and are not doing anything to carry out your commands. This country has a lot of informal lobbying going on underground and the big meetings are there to rubber stamp what has already been negotiated prior with the relevant parties. That means we have to persuade, rather than order, to coalesce rather the remonstrate. Sadly, none of this is fast and your bosses want fast. We are fighting two fires on two fronts at the same time. We are pushing headquarters to get behind what we are trying to do and we are persuading the team to do the same thing, but at a faster pace than what they are used to. Staff are terrific at telling us what won’t work and why, if they are involved. They are less help in coming up with creative solutions to overcome problems. Often, we are the one to think differently and be prepared to try something new. Bite sized experimentation suits Japan, given the general fear of failure and risk aversion. Change takes time in Japan, lots of time and maybe it just isn’t possible in one rotation of your term here and you have to rely on your successor to pick up the gauntlet and keep pushing the strategy through the changes. If you don’t get headquarters to sign on for it and therefore get them to engage your successor to keep going, then there will be lots of effort exuded by you and none of your legacy to show for it in Japan. You ...
    Show more Show less
    12 mins
  • 222 Customer Service Is Your Brand

    222 Customer Service Is Your Brand
    Oct 3 2024

    You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed. Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients. Brands are there to decrease the buyer’s sense of risk. A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level. Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise. Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”. At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains. They have global footprints and they want clients to use them where ever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality. There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand.

    When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice. When I arrived at the Taipei WestIn Hotel check-in I was told there were no rooms ready. I asked when a room will become available. The young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn’t know.

    I ask her for the name of the General Manager. This is where it gets very interesting. Her response - stone motherless silence. Not one word in reply. Nothing! So I asked again. More total silence. I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response. More pure silence. This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone. Finally I get a whispered “Andrew Zou”.

    So what am I thinking now? Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained. There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar and wait.

    Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service. We all understand that. The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues. Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them. This would have to be a key area of training in that industry. The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership. If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well.

    The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia. The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels.

    From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company. Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise? How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide? Can people get to me easily if there is a problem? Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling? The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job. We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations. We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly. We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients. That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.
    Show more Show less
    9 mins
  • 579 Leaders Embracing Change In Japan

    579 Leaders Embracing Change In Japan
    Oct 2 2024
    Is change good or bad? When I was promoted or received a big bonus, I liked the change from my previous situation. When the big boss changed at the very top, the person who hired me got fired the negative ramifications ultimately cascaded down the line. Eventually I had to look for another job and I didn’t like that change much. Often organisations go through major internal changes and the middle level leaders are expected to rally the troops behind the change. How do you do that if you don’t agree with the change or don’t like the change yourself? If you buck the system and refuse to follow the changes, then you are automatically identifying yourself as someone who has to leave the organisation and the machine will crush you. Change is such a tricky area for everyone, but it is so common in business. Markets change, clients change, supply chains change, currency rates change – the list is long. You would think that with all of these “normal” changes in business, we would all be excellent in adjusting to change. However, that is not true, is it? The status quo is so attractive to most of us because it is known and safe. We have been doing the same thing for quite a while and we are good at it. We are doing skilled work in the current formation and suddenly we are being asked to change and are being pushed out of our Comfort Zone. Japan, in particular loves continuity and no change, because all the risk has been shaken out of the system and what we are left with is the lowest risk alternative. As leaders we have to make a decision. If we fundamentally disagree with the new approach then we should find another place to work, where we can be happy and in agreement with the direction. The chances of us doing our best work there dramatically improve, compared to if we stay and conduct an underground personal resistance to the changes. Ultimately, we will be outed by an ambitious rival or subordinate and probably fired. If we are not willing to move companies, then we have to be willing to go with the new direction. Here is the issue – a half-hearted compliance isn’t going to work well. Our team members will feel the lack of commitment and enthusiasm to the cause. They in turn, will not rally around us as the leader and charge into the fire together. How can we make this change work within our small cog in the machine? The big bosses set the direction back at headquarters, but they can never get their hands dirty with the daily minutiae at our section level. That application piece is within our control. We may be buffeted by the winds of macro change, but the micro where we deliver the change is within our grasp. We have almost total control over how we do it. What we are feeling about the changes is no doubt being felt by the team members as well. Turning up one Monday morning as some mealy mouthed, apparatchik mouthpiece of the machine isn’t going to go down well. Cynicism is already rampart in modern society and this will push some people over the edge, as we try to order them about what they need to do. All we can expect is resistance if we take this road. How can we approach this to get everyone behind us and the changes? Rather than being definitive about how to make the needed changes, we need to have the “change” discussion with the team. In Stage One we need people to be able to air their concerns and fears and be taken seriously. Stage Two is where we move on to how we as a team can implement the change in our world. Getting from Stage One to Stage Two is no easy feat, because many will remain unconvinced and unmoved. They will want to keep going with the old way of doing things. For the “never changers”, we need to have private one-on-one discussions and have them make a decision about stay or go. If it is “stay”, then they need to be part of the team decision-making process and contribute to practical solutions to make this work in a way we can all live with the changes. Just telling them to “suck it up and get back to work” is always a bad idea. It communicates you are not important. We are saying, “I have three stripes on my sleeve and so you have to do what I say, because I am pulling rank on you”. They may in fact stay, but they will join the underground guerrilla movement against the changes. We will wind up fighting each other internally when we need to form a united front against our competitors in the market. We need converts not resisters. So as the leader we need to get the discussion out in the open and get team ownership of the way forward. Maybe we all have to hold our noses against the stench of the changes, but we will hold them together and find a way through.
    Show more Show less
    11 mins
  • 578 “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会) Cherish The Moment Leaders

    578 “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会) Cherish The Moment Leaders
    Sep 25 2024
    This Japanese expression “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会), linked to Zen, focuses on transience and can be translated as “one time, one meeting” or “treasure an unrepeatable moment”. It is often closely associated with the Japanese tea ceremony, which is certainly never a hurried affair and the devil is definitely in the details of how the ceremony is conducted. Contrast that with our modern leader life in business. We are constantly in motion, always time poor and harassed for 24 hours a day by an avalanche of emails. We migrate from one meeting room to another, confronting an endless assortment of meeting details. We have many agendas in our minds when we meet people and our shrinking concentration spans make a lot of what we do a blur, bereft of reflection. This is a poor contextual background for dealing with people. Being so time challenged, we are constantly cutting corners and shaving off minutes to try and get it all done. Being “efficient” with people is a bad idea for leaders, but often once we are on a roll, that efficiency bug takes us over. The Ichi-Go, Ichi-E idea is that we treat each moment of interaction as special rather than just serial. If our team members felt that we were treating them individually as “special”, their engagement levels would be at very high levels, in what is increasingly becoming a tech driven, impersonal world. But often we are galloping too fast on horseback to smell the flowers, as we fly by. If we break each staff interaction down to a single defining unit, we will change the pace we interact with people from busy and tormented, to calm and caring. I remember a terrific example of Ichi-Go, Ichi-E by Ian Mackie, my old boss at Jones Lang Wootten In Brisbane. It was after 6.00pm one evening and I was sitting in his office having a discussion about a deal, when one of the secretaries was walking past on her way home and she popped her head in the door to say something to him. In those days Directors were like Gods compared to humble secretaries in that hierarchy. Yet Ian stopped what he was doing and he gave her his complete and entire attention for that one moment. He was showing his respect for her as a person, and it was a powerful experience for me to see how he handled that encounter. Often, as the boss, we don’t show enough respect because we are rushing, preoccupied with what we need to get done and our people can become cogs in the fly wheels of our business. Like Ian, we need to slow it down to a stop. Focus on the person to the exclusion of everything else, stop our brain for racing ahead and give that person our full attention. It sounds easy to say, but actually doing it is very difficult. We are usually caught up in the moment of what we want and what is important to us. We are perpetually rearranging things to suit what we need, when we need it. I am the first one to raise his hand as guilty of trying to do too much, in too short a time and just constantly cramming stuff into my day, such that my interactions are very “businesslike”. That is not a great idea when we are dealing with people. Ichi-Go, Ichi-E as a concept, reminds me to stop doing that and instead treat every staff interaction like a treasure. Once I switch my mindset to that “treasure” construct, then everything changes, especially around my time allocation. Just mentally slowing down while I am speaking to my team member, allows me to be more considerate, less selfish and self-centered. Instead of being “me focused”, I can switch to being “them focused”. I can ask about things that are important to them, rather than making sure that brief conversation is all about what is important to me at that moment. I have learnt to stand my keyboard up, so I can’t use it, when one of my team comes to me to talk and this helps me to focus my eye contact on them. I was reminded of how important this is when I visited a doctor here recently. The head of the clinic was sitting slumped in front of his screen and typing when I entered his office, he didn’t greet me, didn’t even look up at me and kept his face toward his computer keyboard and screen. Frankly, it was unbelievable, especially in this modern age. It made me feel unimportant and irrelevant. This is how we make our team members feel when we don’t stop what we are doing and don’t focus on that one moment with them. So, from now on, remember Ichi-Go, Ichi-E and practice treasuring every interaction with the team members and build their engagement and commitment one meeting at a time, one person at a time. Do this instead of rushing through life in an often meaningless and unfulfilling scramble. People do make the difference and how we treat them is what stands us apart as the leader and how successful we are in that role.
    Show more Show less
    11 mins
  • 577 Seven Points For Leaders When Giving Talks

    577 Seven Points For Leaders When Giving Talks
    Sep 18 2024
    Recently, my social media has been full of short videos of various politicians and supporters giving talks at the Democratic National Convention. It always begs the question for me about what are we doing as leaders in business? We have the same goals. We want our message to be heard and to be convincing. The difference is, I am sure, all of these speakers have been well coached and have been practicing hard for their moment in the spotlight, given a global audience of massive proportions. In business, we have our own team at our Town Hall or perhaps an audience at a business conference or maybe a small Chamber of Commerce gathering. Actually, it doesn’t matter about the venue, because skill is skill, image is image and credibility is credibility. I was reminded of this when one of my son’s friends complained about the organisation’s leader, when he has just joined the firm after graduating from varsity. Being at the very bottom of the pile, young people are there to stay quiet and listen to their elders and betters. The issue though is, they are not stupid. In this case, the top person was a poor speaker and so the new entrants first thought is, “have I made a mistake?”. They worry that this company isn’t as good as they imagined it was. If the top dog, the “face” of the organisation is a dud, then maybe the whole artifice is a problem too. As business leaders, it would be rare that there is a lot of effort put into the talk preparation beforehand. Smart, successful, assured people are confident about winging it. The problem is we can become excessively confident over time and neglect the basics. Here are seven points to reflect on when giving your next business talk to ensure you do a much better and more credible job. 1. Rehearse. This step is always the victim of tight schedules, but the downside of neglecting it serious because our personal and professional brands suffer. Even if it is a minimalist approach on the prep front, at least do a run through before you launch forth in front of your listeners. Remember they are judging you and your firm, on what they see you do. 2. Eyes. Make eye contact with your audience. I don’t mean the usual fake eye contact, where the speaker dramatically scans the crowd but in fact doesn’t look at any one person. I mean hard core, full on, six seconds of riveting eye contact, with as many people as possible, but delivered one by one, maintained over the entire course of the talk. Our listeners need to feel we are speaking directly to them and that we want their 100% attention. Six seconds is enough to engage them without pulverising the audience into submission and coming across as being too intrusive. 3. Face. We make the mistake of thinking that our slides are the most powerful visual tool in our armoury. Not true. Our face shines through much more brilliantly and powerfully. Our facial expressions are absolute commanders of nuance, meaning and impression. Many business speakers remind me of Noh masks, which are frozen in carved wood with only a single countenance. Don’t be like that. We need to use our face to amplify the emotions – belief, sincerity, empathy, care, humanity - behind our message. 4. Voice. I noticed that many speakers at the Convention were loud, loud, loud all the way through in their speech. They were trying to speak powerfully, to inspire, to motivate. That is all very well but modulation is a critical piece for really being heard. It allows us to amplify certain words and phrases, such that they stand above the other words placed around them. Dropping to a whisper, after bellowing away in your talk, is the ultra power play in messaging. That contrast pinpoints everyone’s attention to what we say next during the whisper and that is what we want to have happen for the key points in our talk. 5. Gestures. They are another amplifier. Fifteen seconds is the maximum length for holding any gesture, before it becomes stale, dull and lifeless. Eye power combined with voice power, combined with a powerful gesture is an unbeatable combo when speaking. I see so many CEOs speaking with a vice like grip on the podium and thereby denying themselves the opportunity to use gestures to strengthen their key points. It is a big mistake. When I have a podium, I purposely stand back from it, so that my hands are not tempted to touch it. Be careful with podiums, because there seems to be a magnetic facility drawing our hands to grab it and hold on to it, so it won’t escape. 6. Pause. We saw many good examples at the Convention of the better speakers employing pauses. These allow us to differentiate between what we have just said and what we are about to say. We create a small break, before we say the next thing. That small gap allows the words to be heard ...
    Show more Show less
    14 mins
  • 576 Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part Two

    576 Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part Two
    Sep 11 2024

    Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part Two

    We have looked at some of the steps in Part One, so let’s continue with the last six elements.

    7. Deal with facts, not emotions

    In sports, as I have noted earlier, we say “play the ball, not the man” and in business we need to look at problems, not personalities. This sounds fair enough, but it is not easy to do. We may find we are attacking the person, their ideas and opinions rather than looking at solving the problem. Maybe we don’t like them, their manner, their attitude, their values, their style of speech, their rivalry. That situation is unlikely to change in a hurry. They won’t become our best buddy any time soon or ever.

    Nevertheless, we have to work with them and overcome this conflict. We need to switch over to “outcome focus” and logic. This will take the personalities component out of the equation and help us get to an agreed solution faster. We bite our tongue, swallow our bile, gird our loins and get on with it, regardless of how irritating they are. In these situations, I keep telling myself, “Greg - big picture, big picture”.

    8. Be honest

    Politicking, game playing, one upping are all well known in business, but stay away from these pursuits. Focus on the reason everyone is working hard in the company. Remind yourself what we are we trying to achieve relative to our competitors. We need to come back to the basics of the vision, mission, and values.

    Dale Carnegie’s human relations Principle Number Seventeen is useful here: “Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view”. Strip out the emotion and be objective about their viewpoint. We also need to see our own perspective equally in an honest way. Why do we hold our view? What is really driving our position?

    9. Present alternatives and provide evidence

    Compromise is the assembly of other means of solving an issue. Things that make sense and are workable are very hard to argue against. Concessions in non-core areas should be made to build trust and the cooperation muscle. Look at options in terms of the other side’s interests. When promoting your own ideas, make sure these are backed up with strong evidence, so that they are easy to agree with and hard to argue against.

    Opinion is terrific, but it is just an opinion. Data can contradict opinion in a way which is more acceptable than simply arguing the toss. Storytelling is the most effective way to introduce data. Wrap the numbers up in a story and you will be heard.

    10. Be an expert communicator

    Communication skills are essential to finding resolution to points of difference and can be done in a way that the relationship is maintained. Really listen to the other side. We often think we are listening, but actually inside our brain, we are formulating what we will say next and so are not really taking in the other side’s points. If you find yourself jumping in, finishing their sentences, or cutting them off when they are speaking, stop doing that. Hear them out.

    Hold your points instead of being in a rush. We are rarely short of time for the discussion. Often our counterparty in the conflict feels they are not being listened to, treated fairly or taken seriously. We can do all of those things by just remaining silent and letting them talk. After they stop, feeding back that we have understood them is a good habit to develop.

    By letting them talk, we may find out some additional information or angle we didn’t have, which can change our perspective on the situation and lead to a resolution. Just bullying the other person with our opinion doesn’t lead to this type of win-win outcome.

    11. End on a good note

    Win-win means feeling like we all did well. Shake on it, agree the next action steps and milestones. Nominate who is responsible for what and how progress and success will be measured. Also decide how further disputes which may arise during the execution phase will be handled.

    12. Enjoy the process

    Companies benefit from having a range of views and diverse experiences when it comes to solving problems. The process of resolving disputes educates us on how to see things differently and to entertain other ways of doing things. We can often build stronger relationships having gone through this type of dispute resolution because we have come to know and understand each other much better than we would have otherwise.

    Resolving conflicts is not easy, but most people pour their energy into winning the conflict rather than trying to find the win-win. The latter is the better option every time if you want to win in the market. Fighting amongst ourselves makes no sense, and we can do better than that. These 12 steps will get us pointed in the right direction.
    Show more Show less
    12 mins
  • 575 Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part One

    575 Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part One
    Sep 4 2024
    “Remember that other people may be totally wrong, but they don’t think so”. This quote from Dale Carnegie sums up the problem. All those other people we have trouble with had better fly straight. All they need is a better understanding of why they are wrong and we are right. By force of will, strenuous, sustained argument and politicking, we will win the day. Or will we? Actually, getting a clear win in internal conflict situations is rarely the result. Battles may be won, but wars are lost. Energy that should be directed at the competitors is instead turned loose on our own team members, to no good outcome. We need to be able to deal with internal conflicts in a way that resolves the issues in a positive way. Not so easy! Conflict is with us everywhere, every day. That is the nature of the human condition. We have different desires and thinking. Some conflicts can be very low level and minor and we continue to cruise through the day. In other cases, however, it becomes a lot more problematic. In any organisation, when the machine is fighting against itself, progress becomes suspended. Instead of concentrating on beating the other guy, we have suddenly become locked into an internal battle against ourselves. In large firms, these can be driven by powerful personalities thrusting themselves forward to get to the top. They bring their divisions with them into the fight and a lot of energy and time is wasted dropping large rocks on our own feet! We need to see the bigger picture here and look for how we can marshal our strength, access the diversity in our ranks and maximise the creative possibilities rather than concentrating on the battling ourselves. People tend to gravitate toward extremes. They either fold and don’t stand up for what they feel is right or they try to bulldoze everyone else and make them bend to their will. If we want progress, we need a better way forward, achieved through compromise and collaboration. In Part One we are going to cover six fo the twelve Win-Win steps we can take to turn things around. 1. Have a positive attitude Our attitude is a big factor. If we shift our thinking to how this conflict situation can be converted into a learning and growth opportunity, we will have more success. Easy to say, but not so easy to do! We have to step back from the fray and think about the bigger picture. Our rivals are not dead, the market ignores our internecine feuds, and clients don’t care. How can we afford to be focused inwards when there is so much happening on the outside of the organisation? We have to become positive we can put the conflict into context and deal with it on that basis. 2. Meet on mutual ground Find a neutral location to remove all the residue of the past from the front of your mind. Meeting rooms are rarely the best choice for a meeting when we are in conflict with someone. There is a formality about the situation, which can hinder gaining the flexibility we need to resolve this disagreement. Go outside to a coffee shop or meet over lunch and try to “change the air”. Find a mutually agreeable time when you won’t have interruptions. Turn the phones off and give each other the time to be understood. Don’t try to deal with complex conflicts over the phone, online or by email warfare – always, where possible, do it face to face. 3. Clearly define and agree on the issue We might be arguing at cross purposes, so let’s clarify precisely what the real issue is and concentrate on that. If it has many facets and is complex, let’s break it up into component parts. Attach priorities and start with the most pressing core issues. Misunderstandings based on language usage happen all the time. We need to agree on the thing at stake in a way which both sides understand. You meet people who are hard to understand. Their way of expressing their thoughts is unclear to us and we struggle to get their point. We need to get clarity on what we both mean and what we are worried about. 4. Do your homework Think about the issue from the other side’s perspective, as well as from your own. Normally, we don’t do this because we are fully focused on ourselves, what we want and why we want it. Some points are must haves and some are nice to haves – let’s be very clear about which is which. Also, at the very start, define your BATNA or Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement – basically your walk away position. There may be no way to resolve the conflict and we have to push it up the hierarchy for resolution. This is usually not appreciated by the big bosses. They expect us to thrash it out amongst ourselves and let them concentrate on their own work. 5. Take an honest inventory of yourself You know yourself. You know your own “hot buttons” that need to be reined in. Are your feelings leading the charge or is your brain determining how this should progress? Being told “no” is usually a powerful trigger for the adrenaline...
    Show more Show less
    12 mins