GreatWork Blog

Building better workplaces through compliance, culture, connection

If your team avoids conflict, it can feel peaceful at first. No tension. No tough conversations. No awkward meetings where someone “says the thing nobody wants to say.” But here’s the truth many leaders learn too late: A team that avoids conflict doesn’t avoid problems, they avoid conversations. And when people stop communicating directly, they start communicating indirectly. That’s where passive-aggressive behavior comes from. Passive-aggressive culture isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s what conflict becomes when it’s not handled in the open.

As we move through 2023, annual reviews may be on the horizon or the current season in your organization's performance management process, which means compensation conversations will need to be held. Money can be emotionally charged and deeply personal.

Every now and then, as a leader, it’s going to be necessary for you to have a corrective action conversation with someone on your team. The very nature of these conversations often makes them difficult. Sadly, for many, the temptation is to avoid them and hope the issues will go away on their own. However, you cannot avoid or sweep corrective action conversations under the rug and hope they will disappear. The truth is that nothing dies under the rug.

Ever try this exercise? Envision a work world where there are no meetings. None.

What might that be like? Freeing? Awesome? Isolating? Troublesome?

In a no-meeting world would team members just float about without direction, chasing random shiny things or would we be OK? Would problems get solved anyway or would we drift rudderless through the workweek?

Does your workplace have a catch-all word for a problem that turns out to have several layers? It only takes two to miscommunicate. Add departments, shifts, language and culture. Multiply by 10 or 20. Ah, “communication issues.”  It may be that these are universal and your own challenges may just be a question of degree.  Here are a few suggestions on how to identify, separate, and effectively address some of these important communication issues.

As a member of the team, supervisors must understand that without trust, teamwork is all but impossible. Conversations with team members may become suspect. This may result in individual team members avoiding necessary conversations for fear of being misinterpreted or misunderstood. Without conversations, we cannot build trust. Where there is no trust, there is no relationship, and where there is no relationship, it is hard to gain influence. Without influence, it is hard to lead because leadership is influence.

While social distancing these days refers mostly to the physical distance we maintain, workplaces have always been a place where the navigation through emotional and personal distancing is often challenging. We are encouraged to establish close and caring relationships with our coworkers and somehow keep a professional “fence” up in certain areas. For some employees, navigating through these “professional boundary” territories is tough and guidelines are often unclear.

For years we have been applying models in our leadership trainings of direct and honest communication with the intent of improving workplace collaboration. Here are a few examples of how we sometimes misapply the models and create negative ripples; more harm than good.

Sometimes pandemics come along and remind us that clarity around policies, new procedures or just what to expect in general is critical to our team’s functioning.

As counselors and therapists, we wanted everyone to have social connection. The research has been consistent and clear that social connection is correlated highly with happiness, contentment, engagement and positive mental health.

Nudges are a small feature in the environment that attracts our attention and influences our behavior. Nudges are everywhere.

Conflict. Just the word itself is enough to make many of us feel uncomfortable. It conjures images of yelling, hurt feelings and damaged relationships. However, not all conflict is bad.

I’ve been taught to ask extra questions to get to the core of workplace issues. Sometimes I forget.

With the 2016 presidential race heating up, employees may be more likely to engage in political conversations at work. Politics is a topic that people have very strong and divided feelings about and have great potential to offend and divide the workplace. While such talk is not illegal per se, many political topics involve protected class issues such as race, age, gender, and religion which do create legal implications.

I grew up in a house in San Francisco where golf seemed like the most important activity in the world. My father, a policeman, was on the swing shift and did not spend a lot of time with my brother and me, but when he did, we talked, practiced and played golf. For 30 years, my father played every Friday with the same foursome (his team). We practiced putting in the living room. When my brother reached high school, he joined the golf team and became “first man.” He even developed a booklet about putting with photos in it.

Have you ever had a valuable suggestion or need to talk and could tell your supervisor or co-worker just wasn’t open or tuned in –and then something bad happened because communication didn’t happen? Most of the people I train on proactive listening skills admit that they don’t listen really well. They are distracted, impatient or too quick to assume they know what is being said.