Many in the room seemed to be cautiously accepting the message. I looked at Jonathan, and he nodded. The India vs. United States job equation was more complicated than a simple numbers game. If I did move jobs overseas, the true cost to productivity of a lot of turmoil might outweigh the potential labor savings. In that moment, I decided that having my employees feel safe was just as important.
“I appreciate that you’re scared, but if we can all get behind this strategy, we can create something enduring at Encore. We’ve never eliminated a job in the United States and moved it to India, and we won’t do it as long as I’m CEO.”
I’m not sure they believed the last sentence, but I did. The tension had dropped in the room, and I sensed the group understood why this was important for their long-term success, not just for Encore’s. I just hoped we had enough time to make the strategy work.
SHAYNE
Creating emotional safety in a team atmosphere is one of a leader’s most important responsibilities. When individuals feel safe, their egosystems get deactivated; this gives team members additional brain space and fortitude to learn new skills or tackle daunting endeavors. When team members stop seeing others as a threat, they can listen, learn, and collaborate in more effective ways. A company’s or a group’s collective goals, instead of their ego survival, become their focal point.
In the time we had worked together, Brandon had implemented several key aspects of creating emotional safety.
1.Eliminate seemingly innocuous but detrimental daily behaviors. Brandon and Encore’s executive team started by addressing the corrosive effects of sarcasm. It had carried a subtext of judgment and put everyone on edge, ready to counter with his or her own rejoinder. No one really knew where he or she stood.
Most of us have a few socially acceptable habits that protect us at the expense of the quality of our relationships: being cold or reserved; checking email on our smartphone when someone is talking; being abrupt; planning what we will say next instead of listening; using extreme or dramatic language; overreacting to small things. Anything that indirectly communicates our judgments directly undermines emotional safety. Encore’s commitment to stop all sarcasm dramatically cleared up this background of confusion.
“When I first joined the company, Brandon was sarcastic,” recalled SVP of Operations Jim Syran. “Not in a mean way, but if he was uncomfortable or wanted to get a message across, it came with a bite. Everyone was trying to read into what he was saying and taking things differently. He completely stopped that. It was powerful, and it changed how we interacted. We became more collaborative and honest.”
2.Address issues openly, without judgment. Brandon’s conflict avoidance with Dave and Fritz illustrates one of the most common leadership dysfunctions within large organizations. This habit undermines emotional safety on multiple levels: When a leader leaves a performance issue unaddressed, others on the team see it and get frustrated; the team member in question likely knows he or she is struggling, and is inwardly uncomfortable and on guard; as the supervisor avoiding the conversation, our frustration and judgments with the issue build, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders who are abrasively blunt are dysfunctional in a different way. They typically express judgmental conclusions, not useful observations. Trust is lost, and employees try to hide their weaknesses. Abrasive or harsh communication is similarly triggered by fear and leads to equally strained and unsafe relationships.
Brandon combined breaking through his self-protective fears with separating his observations from his judgments. Over time, he enhanced his ability to hold up a mirror to his team while still having their backs.
3.Grow more comfortable with being vulnerable. Our direct reports will only be as vulnerable and transparent as we are: sometimes less so, but rarely more. As CEO, Brandon needed to find the courage both to acknowledge his shortcomings and struggles and to willingly share these difficulties with his team. He overcame the desired and dreaded images that make it so difficult for most leaders to model authenticity that starts at the top.
The more Brandon accepted his own vulnerability, the more his humility allowed him to …
4.Empathize with others, even when your egosystem is triggered. People in our organizations experience fear every day: of failing, losing control, not being good enough, being judged, losing their jobs. Ignoring or judging these fears, or telling people they shouldn’t have them, actually hampers their progress because they become focused on defending themselves instead of facing their difficulty. (This is equally true with our children.) When we empathize with others, we give them the space to face their fears and take ownership of their fate.
As with many aspects of working on our egosystem, the challenge lies more in the application than in the theory. In a very public way, Brandon encountered the first barrier to empathizing with a scared work-force: People usually don’t express their fears rationally and consciously.
In the town hall meeting Jonathan said, “Why aren’t you telling us when you’re closing the site and moving our jobs to India?” not “ Brandon, I fear our jobs will all be outsourced to India and I’ll end up unemployed.” Jonathan was angry; anger is a less vulnerable emotion than either fear or weakness, and it frequently covers those more primary and raw emotions. Blaming, shutting down, becoming passive-aggressive, and lashing out are common symptoms of unexpressed fear.
In recognizing and moving beyond his own pinches, Brandon was able to grasp with empathy what was going on for Jonathan and other people in the room. He made it legitimate to feel trepidation, which allowed the employees to not feel judged by the most powerful person in the company. Only then were they able to earnestly listen.
In the end, Brandon’s explanation of India’s importance was similar to what he might have said had he debated Jonathan. But the tone and context of his message were completely different, allowing the employees to hear it as inspiring guidance rather than a scolding.
And once wasn’t enough. Brandon’s exchange in that quarterly meeting was just one of many about India over the course of several years.
The egosystem shines a light on the invisible ways in which we (individuals, teams, entire organizations) are often not truly committed to our most important endeavors. Not because we don’t want them, but because our self-worth is threatened in some way. If this fear stays unconscious, unexpressed, and unaddressed, it will drive behavior more powerfully than any strategic plan on a PowerPoint. And no matter how brilliant a strategy, if the people aren’t committed, it will never take off.
Note that empathizing didn’t mean that Brandon didn’t challenge his workforce. In fact, it actually gave him the possibility of challenging them more. Feeling unsafe is the fear of being criticized, ridiculed, or devalued. Feeling challenged, on the other hand, occurs when we are pushed to tackle a complex situation, develop a new skill, or work toward a next level. Encore needed its American employees to see beyond their current worldview and buy into Brandon’s larger perspective. They were being uncomfortably challenged to perform in areas where they were not yet competent. To efficiently rise to that challenge, they needed to feel safe enough to risk failure.
As India’s performance improved, many people in the coming years would pressure Brandon to revoke his commitment to not replace U.S. jobs with Indian ones. Although it appeared to be a no-brainer when they crunched the numbers, he insisted it was too narrow a view. “I had discovered just how distracting it was for people to be afraid,” he explained. “If I shut down our Phoenix call center, people in our St. Cloud call center, or in Accounting or IT, wouldn’t have believed me when I said their jobs were still safe. They would have doubted my intentions or worried about what was going to happen. The cultural damage wasn’t worth it.”
“Safety” sounds like a soft word, but as soon as it breaks down in a company, engagement levels drop and backstabbing and fiefdoms flare up. People look out for themselves. In the coming years, Encore would uncover deep financial value in their lack of
drama. As Brandon put it, “The more we got people’s real concerns on the table, the less we got spun up in personality conflicts. We didn’t have any dissension, so we went very hard, very fast, for a long time.”
BRANDON
As 2007 wound down, I made the decision to make Manu Rikhye the general manager of the India operation. Only in his early thirties, he had an amazing ability to lead people and had held the site together during this period of turmoil and underperformance.
Personally, Dana and I were getting ready for the birth of our daughter, Leah. She was due in late February and I decided to paint her room and put chair molding around the perimeter. It seemed like something a dad should do. With everything going on at work, however, I finished it at the last minute thanks to a lot of caulk and a tolerant wife. Leah was the first girl to be born on my father’s side of the family in four generations.
This time of great personal celebration was a welcome distraction from the pressure I felt to produce returns at Encore. Our 2007 fourth quarter results showed year-over-year declines in collections, revenues, and profitability. By March 2008, the stock price dropped below $7, a 60 percent decrease since my promotion to CEO. Our investor relations approach was limited to talking about our past results and not speculating about the future. This didn’t sit well with the growing number of disappointed shareholders asking us to “give them some hope.” I could empathize; I was just barely clinging to mine.
CHAPTER 5
YOU’RE NOT REALLY LISTENING, ARE YOU?
The Toxic Habit of Being Right
BRANDON
“How was this morning’s meeting?” I asked Shayne as we sat down for lunch in early January 2008. He had spent the first half of the day with a dozen of Encore’s senior leaders. They were taking stock of interdepartmental collaboration, including the United States and India dynamic.
“Productive,” he responded. “Although, toward the end, they began talking about how the priorities aren’t clear. Some people aren’t sure what they should be doing, or how to makes choices about what’s most important.”
“You were talking about what!?” I felt my face getting hot.
“Lack of—” Shayne looked up and stopped when he realized I’d heard him too well the first time.
“I’ve been hearing about this for weeks,” I leaned forward. “It’s nonsense. Not six weeks ago, Paul and I had a meeting with all the executives. We went through the priorities in detail. It was two hours long; everybody was present. I couldn’t have been clearer.” I thought about the scene in A Few Good Men, when Jack Nicholson asks Tom Cruise if he is being clear. “Crystal,” Tom replies. That’s what I had been in the meeting: crystal clear. “Two years ago I’m accused of not being open enough. Now we outline the corporate strategy in transparent, gory detail, and people don’t know the priorities? That’s bullshit.”
“I’m not sure what to think of it,” Shayne said, “but it’s an issue that goes several layers down in the organization.”
“There are some things I’m not great at,” I told him, “but I am a good communicator. This is really about people not wanting to be accountable. We’re still facing tough challenges, and they don’t want to deal with them. It can’t be their fault, so it has to be mine for not being clear. They’re being morons.”
He laughed. “Look at you. Something is going on. I don’t understand the breakdown between you and the team, but I do recognize when you want to be right.”
“No, I am right.”
“Maybe. But you’re also being judgmental and are sure of your point of view. And you’ve committed to not letting yourself fall into that.”
“Working on myself is a good thing, but sometimes it’s too much. I’m running a company here. I can’t afford to have a bunch of complainers hiding behind semantics to avoid being held accountable.”
Shayne sat silent as I paused to clear my head. “So, what do we do?” I finally asked.
“We’re all scheduled to meet this afternoon. Let’s use that forum to talk this through.”
“Perfect,” I told him. “It will give you a chance to see what’s really going on.”
I couldn’t wait for the meeting. It wasn’t my new-normal style, but I needed to put my foot down. If the priorities weren’t clear, my feedback would be.
“I need you to put aside your frustration and really listen to them,” Shayne interrupted. “Be exploratory; have a learning intention.”
“Don’t worry, I know that’s code for ‘don’t be a jerk,’” I laughed. Shayne was resolute, however. He wanted me to commit to being open to their perspective. I wasn’t sold, but I agreed to go into the conversation assuming there was an actual issue and to be open to feedback.
We went back to the office and met the team in a large, windowless conference room. Shayne briefly summarized the morning session to make sure he had correctly interpreted the group’s comments. After a series of nods, he gave some guidelines and people began sharing their thoughts. To satisfy Shayne’s request to be open, I decided to hear everybody out instead of responding to each person. I took notes so I could refute their points at the end.
“For me, the issue is that we don’t have a way to make consistent trade-offs when priorities change,” said Jay, in charge of all our call centers.
“Going into the meeting a few weeks ago, our plates were full,” added another executive. “There were a ton of ongoing initiatives taking up all our time and resources. You and Paul came into the room with a list of ‘new’ priorities and then walked out assuming that we knew what to do with the information. Do we stop everything and start working on your new strategic priorities? We don’t have a process for doing that.”
“On top of it all,” said another, “we are about to go through the performance review process, which will determine people’s bonuses. We created goals for people back in February 2007. We are supposed to use them to determine their rating for the year. Do we let people off the hook if they didn’t meet their objectives because their priorities changed?”
“Oh, and what happens when one group stops working on an initiative and another doesn’t? Just yesterday, I had somebody in my office complaining that her project was stalled because her IT resources were focused on new priorities. She was pissed, and I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“You told us to support India, but our Technology teams are working on enabling an activity cost database, building the new legal platform, and upgrading the data center. Which one do we stop to free up the needed resources?”
The information kept flowing. I found myself writing less and listening more. We weren’t having the conversation I was expecting about corporate priorities. Everybody in the room clearly understood what I had presented. They were struggling to make trade-offs between departmental objectives, legacy initiatives, and broader corporate priorities.
“OK, I hear you and what you’re saying makes complete sense,” I said. “Why have we been arguing about a lack of clear priorities instead of having this conversation?”
“Several of us tried to raise this issue at the end of the November meeting,” replied Jim Syran, our SVP of Operations. “You told us to work together to make the appropriate trade-offs and then left the room. But who gets to decide the priorities? Can I do that or do we all have to agree? As you know, I’d be delighted to make the decisions, but my teammates probably wouldn’t appreciate it. We don’t know who can terminate a project and who can’t.”
Jim’s comment hit it on the head. I hadn’t appreciated the complexity left behind when we developed the list of new priorities. I thought it was going to be a natural adjustment and hadn’t considered the implications for each individual and group, much less their bonuses. The last thing I wanted to do was get into people’s pockets. By making all these changes right at bonus time, I had put everybody on guard.
At the conclusion of the meeting, we established a project prioritization committee and agreed that performance goals had to be dynam
ic. Our business was changing monthly, so we couldn’t stay wedded to initiatives that could be upwards of a year old. In just over two hours, we completely cleared the air and created concrete steps for moving forward.
I had come into the meeting so certain of my perspective. What would’ve happened if I hadn’t listened to them? It was a great learning moment for me, one I would come back to many times.
SHAYNE
For our ego, the sensation of being right is like electricity to a lightbulb. It fuels us with energy and vigor. We sit straighter, our voice sharpens, and our language hardens. We face an issue or a conflict, and we see the answer clearly. With this certainty comes a feeling of power and righteousness, as captivating as a drug rush. This is the way it is. Being right sweeps us so automatically into an aggressive mental stance that any collateral damage seems just a necessary evil.
In understanding how “being right” is a destructive dysfunction, it is important to separate having a point of view on a subject from the strong feeling that your point of view should prevail. Brandon’s memory of how clear he and Paul had been about the corporate priorities was lucid. He wasn’t completely wrong when he described his directors as complaining instead of taking responsibility. With the data he had, he was right. But in his agitated state of being right, he couldn’t notice facets of reality he was missing—or even ask questions that might reveal them. This is particularly problematic when we hold a position of authority, because we have the power to bend other people to our will. In Brandon’s case, if the directors had just shut up and gone along with him, the critical questions they raised about how they were to assimilate new priorities simply would not have been answered. And Encore’s operational performance would have suffered for it.
Ego Free Leadership Page 11
