“Aghhh! Why can’t they just listen?!”
When working with a rapidly growing organization, I found the leadership team in constant conflicts that interrupted their effectiveness. Numerous people would express frustration and follow it with their individual experience:
“She didn’t set up the meeting agenda correctly, so people’s voices were silenced.”
“He didn’t care enough to check with our opinions before moving forward.”
“They are always demanding that we make space for more emotions, but this work is not therapy!”
Frustration often obscures a deeper issue, but until you tend to the primary process - the complaint people have on top - you won’t be able to engage what’s at the core.
With this leadership team I started with empathetic listening: mirroring their body language, repeating back what I heard, and acknowledging the emotional state people brought to our conversations. Then I noticed individuals pace of speech slow down, so I asking two questions to get toward the deeper issues:
What excites you about working at this organization?
How might this other person - however frustrating - be working toward these same means?
As people answered my questions, they recognized their shared vision for working together. Soon they discovered a common thread - the fast pace of growth in the organization was disrupting ways people were used to communicating. With dozens of public hiring postings, the organization’s growth wasn’t going to stop. So we took a moment to grieve the closeness among staff that had shifted, and then built new expectations for communication.
This leadership team started to see that the people with whom they disagreed were working toward the same goal, and they were all feeling growing pains. However, recognizing growing pains energized them to remember their shared vision - growing the organization to serve the ever growing membership.
When a conflict gets in the way of you working with a colleague, try to remember that you have a shared vision. You’re working toward something together. People will come with different tactics, which will frustrate you just because they are different. However when you can slow down to notice how these frustrating tactics might be supportive, you open yourself up to deeper collaboration.
So for today, who’s someone you want to listen to a bit more deeply for opportunities to align?