From “Us and Them” to “We”: Leading Toward Healthy Group Dynamics
By David Dyck
C) What Can You Do?
i) Know Yourself, Know Your Team:
On boarding an airplane the flight attendants advise passengers to don their own oxygen masks before helping others. In the same way we must first be self-aware as to our own thinking, behaviours, and language in the workplace, asking the following:
- Have I, myself, slipped into mental and verbal patterns of blame and negative generalization about “the other side?”
- Am I nursing feelings of personal antagonism for anyone in particular?
- Am I talking about others rather than with them?
- Does my language reflect an “us against them”/siege/war-like mentality?
Assuming awareness of the above, personal work is often required before attempting to coach others. This may take the following forms:
- Consciously use “same team” or “we” language at all times;
- Begin talking with rather than about all members of the team;
- Seek out those previously regarded as the “enemy” so as to learn how one’s own actions, attitudes, and missteps may have affected them.
- Consider offering an apology as well as concrete behaviours you are prepared to stop, start, or continue doing based on the feedback you have received.
- In other words, “own your own stuff first,” especially if you are a leader (Patrick Lencioni says it more gracefully: “Leaders go first”)
- Be prepared to share how you have been affected by others’ behaviors and to ask for what you want
With respect to assisting other members of the workplace, ask:
- Which relationships have become particularly strained?
- What might each of these parties need and what might each be able to offer towards the goal of re-establishing a sense of “same team?”
- Who am I best positioned to assist in this regard?
In order to assess the state of team/group relations, the use of a confidential survey may also be useful.
ii) Offer Individual Debriefing & Coaching:
Providing one-to-one coaching is a natural role to engage, especially for the workplace leader. It is often helpful to begin by identifying who has the most potential to affect positive change and then focus coaching efforts with those individuals. As a coach the following guiding questions may be helpful to explore with them:
- What decisions and actions of the other(s) were most troubling to you?
- Why was this troubling? Or What was that behavior saying to you?
- What would you need to recover?
- What about the impact of your/our own decisions and actions on others?
- What can be done to recover from these?
- What concrete offers can you make to work towards that?
Beyond the above, the coach may also encourage the parties to begin talking with rather than about one another. The most enflamed relationships often need assistance to do this through facilitated dialogue/mediation.
iii) Facilitate Interpersonal &/or Group Dialogue, But Get Help when You Need it:
If you believe that unassisted conversation may create more tension, consider carefully who might be best positioned to bring the parties together to facilitate a discussion. Assuming that individual coaching has already taken place, the facilitator now revisits and leads members of both the “sides” in discussing the questions as listed above.
If you are a leader it may be necessary to either collaborate with another leader or a union representative to co-facilitate such a meeting. It may also be wise to seek the assistance of a conflict resolution specialist. Even when workplace leaders are willing to host such a meeting, caution should be exercised. If there is any doubt as to the skill-level or ability of the prospective facilitator(s) to stay centred/balanced – since a botched facilitation can definitely make the situation worse – it is wise to enlist the specialized services of outside professionals.