The Boss Blames Others

Case Study Project Description

A mid size professional service company had a senior manager who was not trusted by co-workers or her direct reports. While she had been there for many years, her performance was difficult to assess and appeared to be on the decline. The owner requested that we discover what was at the root of the mistrust and collect information from all parties.

Project Problem

Employees and peers suggested her tendency was to obfuscate requests for status reports on her work. She regularly missed deadlines and assigned fault to others. It emerged that she had withheld critical information from people to appear “in the know”. In discussions, she tended to embellish stories about other people or ascribe motivation to others that was not present.

Solution

The owner initially retained us to work with this individual.  We worked with her to quickly move beyond seeing herself as “the problem”. Her progress was swift, and the other management team members saw the changes and wanted to know what she was learning that they didn’t know. The process was expanded to include the rest of the management team.

We used our challenging form of one-on-one coaching to discover what was behind the adversarial approach. Her style over the years had been to assume control was needed and that if certain jobs weren’t done, the company fortunes would decline. She had the owners interests at heart, she said. As the years went by and new people came into the company as it grew, in her mind her role and therefore her sphere of authority appeared to be diminishing. In the beginning, when the company was small she had to wear many hats and received a lot of acknowledgement and gratefulness from the boss.

Now, with so many more people to take on the roles, her power and control had to be shared. This perceptual decline in value to her boss led her to be resentful of others. In an attempt to regain this control, she devised ways of working that to others appeared unproductive and mean-spirited.

We helped her to understand the dilemma she had set up for herself in not acknowledging her own contributions for herself. She soon began to see that the naturally evolving state of the company was the reason she had less power and control, rather than any one being against her.

Results

As she let go of these perceptions, she was able to become productive and conciliatory again to the staff. It took time for others to change their approach to her as lack of trust is not eliminated over night. In time, as she continues to apply her Smart Team tools, the office will see her as an important part of the company’s growth.

We Can’t Fire Him, We Need Him

Case Study Project Description

With 17 years in a vital lead role of multi-million enterprise, the executive team could not afford to let the man go. Yet he was alienating all their department heads with is punishing style and ‘gotcha’ attitude toward their work. He needed to be part of the strategic team, not the guy finding every fault.

Project Problem

What’s the best way to deal with difficult employees? Fire them? Hope they quit? Companies today spend thousands of dollars letting people go and thousands more finding and training new employees. Or they spend everyone’s patience waiting for the person to get the hint or just leave.
There is no guarantee that the new people will be any better ‘fit’ than the old people.
We know that using our Smart Team tools can turn a difficult situation around. Turnarounds can save your company thousands of dollars, but people hesitate to invest in the process. How much does ignoring the problem or firing and rehiring cost?

The Executive Team was concerned that the leader of the audit department was becoming increasingly confrontational. He had a much different view of the audit function than what the team wanted. In his role, he was more adversarial than helpful, delivered withering assessments after the fact and viewed his role as that of watchdog. The CEO wondered if there was a way to get him to understand what they really needed from him and the audit function. The executive team thought the only solution was to fire him: an expensive exercise especially when finding and training a new senior auditor would take months and thousands of dollars.

Solution

The Executive Team thought that they just wanted the abrasive interactions to stop. But what they really wanted was an auditor who could help each of the product areas with strategy, prevention and advice. They wanted him to get involved at the beginning of their projects to prevent problems, not at the end with his criticism and blame. While there was some receptivity to understanding what it was that was contributing to the problems, they needed him to deliver his news in a collaborative fashion so that their teams could learn from him, rather than resist his advice.

Was it possible to change the way the auditor communicated, contributed and operated within the organization? Or was this just asking too much of a senior official already set in his ways?

In our view, if the individual is willing to change, then a turnaround is possible, given time. In this case, the auditor knew his job was on the line. He thought that the Executives were the ones with the problem. They were uncooperative and blocked him from doing his job effectively. They just wanted him to sugar coat everything and let it all slide. He thought their attitude was just part and parcel of the attitude towards auditors and resigned himself to the idea he would not be well liked, no matter what he did.

We anticipated this would be a four to six month exercise. Our first step was to meet with the auditor. Once he let down his resistance he was able to agree to engage at least to see what the process was about. Next we met the CEO and HR Vice President to collect their observations and to hear other sides of the story. Then, in order to further uncover and evaluate the root causes of the issues, a survey was sent to the senior executive team to get their feedback on the audit function and manner in which the leader and his team worked. This survey also doubled as a baseline measurement that would allow us to determine how he was progressing in his change effort over time.

Using our tools in a one-on-one coaching process, the auditor was challenged to see his blind spots. Simultaneously, we helped him to deconstruct how and why he might be getting these reactions from his colleagues. He began to see how his thought processes and roles that he assigned himself and others actually contributed to continual conflict and adversarial relationships. As he learned how to use the Smart Team tools he was able to not only see how what he said and how he thought about others caused the conflict, but he started to try out new approaches and perspectives to deal with his challenges.

To clean up unfinished business with colleagues, he was taught our Get Curious process and went to see each executive to find out what they really wanted. He created a new atmosphere within the Audit Unit that allowed the Executives to map out strategies with him for how the audit function could participate with their divisions in helpful and strategic ways.

Result

It was this individual’s willingness to take responsibility for his part in this chronic conflict and his decision to make changes that was the key to his success. Many of the executive team also realized and committed to learning to work with him in a more collaborative way. The final benchmark survey found that 90% of the executive team saw very positive changes in him and were getting what they needed from the audit function. We worked with him to build a plan for how he would sustain these changes over time. Throughout the entire process we met with the CEO and the VP HR to get their feedback and keep them apprised of progress.

It’s Not My Problem, He’s the Problem!

Case Study Project Description

The leadership team of a company recently acquired by a large multi-national was having fewer and fewer meetings. Members put off meetings, but managed to achieve results by meeting offline with each other. Cynicism was rampant. The corporate slogan was the butt of jokes. Yet they were the top producing division of the company. However, despite constant requests to expand in their territory the head office consistently refused them the capital or the time of day to talk about the expansion.

This fact sat like a lead balloon on productivity and creativity.

Of 12 people on the team, there were four separate small camps each with their own culture and competitive way of working. The camps often made derogatory remarks about the other groups and especially about one individual.

Project Problem

The head office was now demanding a cohesive expansion strategy that required they all get together to create and plan it. The regional manager attempted a first meeting, but when it erupted in insults and conflict, he asked the HR manager for a better solution. The company called upon us to see if we could unravel the problem. What we discovered through one-on-one coaching sessions was that each person blamed someone else on the team for not meeting their own unspoken expectations and standards. Since they couldn’t talk about what they wanted from each other, the resentments kept piling up.

Solution

Organizational change begins at the individual level and ripples out from there. We used our challenging form of one-on-one coaching and a series of assessments to help each member of the team uncover what was so difficult about meeting together. Many claimed that there was a bully in their midst. Others cited the wholesale changes made by their new owner without their feedback or input.

The ‘bully’ knew he was seen as such. His style of communicating was Cassandra-like, always suggesting doom and gloom around every corner rather than delivering why he thought there were problems. When he wasn’t heard, he resorted to insulting others using toxic humor in the vain hope that this approach might get his message across. He learned that he was not communicating his real concerns and that people were actually afraid of him. The day we helped him to discover how to speak to the team in a way that he could be heard was the turning point for this team to begin working together effectively.

For this turning point to occur, others had to put down their swords and take responsibility for their part in the blame game. We helped each person to focus on what they really wanted to achieve in their role, rather than on what they didn’t like that they kept recreating with the blame game. They then learned how to talk about these issues during meetings and how to use a collaborative process to share their ideas to create strategies and implementation plans.

Result

It took 10 months for their first group meeting to occur while we worked with each person individually. Fearful to trust themselves, they finally decided to attempt a meeting. We booked the team a two day retreat and managed expectations while we worked on a new vision for the entire team. After this meeting they embraced developing a new vision, breaking through old patterns and learned how to get what they needed from the head office by mentoring their direct reports up the ladder. Rather than being the black sheep in the conglomerate, after two years of re-designing how they worked together, the team finally go the funding and the go ahead for their expansion plan. At the end of the expansion they became the top performing brand and were seen as mavericks in the industry.

Difficult People and Situations Case Studies

Frustrated with how some people are getting the job done? Don’t like how your people aren’t taking responsibility? Tired of the infighting, cliques or attitudes within and between departments?

As owners, your attitude sets the tone. Most of us don’t realize what attitude we are projecting on to others that results in a sea of conflict. The bad news is, that these situations exist for a reason. The good news is, you can do something about it. By changing how you view people, how you lead people and how you set performance goals, you would be surprised quickly the company culture, and therefore productivity and profitability starts to improve.

Got conflict? That’s the symptom. Read the case studies to understand the root cause and the effect that trying to weed out the conflict can have if you don’t address the real problems.

Conflict often means you are missing systems and processes needed to affect communications hand offs between departments: when people are in conflict, they stop talking. The customer’s message (what they hoped they were buying from you) gets lost in the communication chain through the company. Unsatisfied customers don’t tend to buy again.

Want a Turnaround Specialist on call with your team?

Call 604-377-4307. Having us on retainer means you solve the problem in a fraction of the time instead of ignoring all the warning signs. Then your good people start leaving before your challenging people do.

Difficult People & Situations Case Studies

• It’s Not My Problem, He’s the Problem!
• We Can’t Fire Him, We Need Him
• The Boss Blames Others