How to Build Influence Relationships with Clients, Peers and Partners

If we examine what is going on in vague work relationships, we can reverse engineer a framework for building any solid relationship based on certainty and confidence.

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ick your influence situation.  Has this happened to you?

• You have an initiative that requires the buy-in and involvement of another department.  The other group is pre-occupied and stressed out.  Nevertheless, you can’t proceed without them. 
• You need to resolve a knotty problem caused by the performance of people on a different team who are working with you on a project.  You have no leverage in dealing with them.
• You discover a colleague in your own work team is performing a task you normally do.  When questioned, she responds that an internal client asked her to do the task.  “It was easy, so I did it.”
• After talking with some stakeholders, your team makes a number of decisions on a project.  Later, a person who is a tangential stakeholder at best complains, “I should have been invited.”  There is pressure to open up the decision for further deliberation.
• You are blind-sided by an internal client who calls you to ask about projects that other members of your team are doing for her.  You have no idea how to answer her detailed questions.

These situations can only be managed through the practice of effective influence.  The work we do for or with others who have different agendas, goals and even business values literally hinges on our ability to be good at getting people to “get along”.   

In our recent work, we have clarified a simple way to build relationships and use influence with others.  The remedy is to become client-focused—regardless who the “other” is‑‑ and purposely engineer an experience that meets their expectations, resulting in clarity for all, confidence in what is happening and why. The result of a relationship based on meeting another’s expectations is effectiveness and value.  When expectations are clear all around, trust isn’t far behind.

The Key: Focus On Clarifying “Moments of Truth”

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he key to influence is to focus on the critical moments in the client (or peer, partner) experience that must be done exceptionally well; the other person’s perception of your skill and effectiveness comes from how well you handle these important points in the relationship.

For example, how new work is initiated is a critical moment.  Starting off with clarity and a shared mental model of goals and process is undoubtedly a good start.  Understanding how the other wants to communicate—content, media, frequency—is another.  How well conflict is handled is also a moment of truth.  These and others have to be soundly managed by you, the influencer, who does the steering and shaping of these moments.  If these are not well executed, you have created a sense of uncertainty and doubt in the mind of the other from which it is difficult to recover.

In a way, these “moments of truth” are not unlike the experience you have when checking into a hotel or getting your car serviced; you have certain expectations for that exact experience that, if not fulfilled, create a disappointment that undermines your view of the brand you are dealing with.  The idea is to take each moment of truth, anticipate what can go wrong—what will distract, create confusion, and breed disappointment and uncertainty—, understand what the client cares about in those moments, and then engineer a useful and valuable experience in its place. 

Here are the “moments of truth” we’ve identified in a typical influence environments with internal clients, peers and partners.  In fact, high-performing salespeople have discovered that making key moments in the sales process valuable for customers is central to relationship building and sales success.  Focusing on making “moments of truth” bullet-proof is undoubtedly the core skill in influencing others.  It also becomes your brand, just as FedEx or Marriott have branded protocols for clients.

Think of each of these situations; determine what a client’s, peer’s or partner’s perspective and expectations might be when they find themselves in that moment.  With that in mind, decide how you--as a team or as an individual‑‑, can purposefully make the experience effective and meet their expectations.   The result is your “Brand”.

§         Start Something New.  Contracting at new beginnings—whether it is a new project, relationship or problem to solve—focuses on clearly explaining and/or mutually designing how the process ahead will unfold.  If there is a formal, multi-phase process of development, the goal is to explain how it will work, how it can flex, who will be involved, what the roles are and what the others involved can expect.  While a formal process may have a designated a “kick off meeting”, that meeting has to be conducted so that the client emerges with a sense of certainty about what will happen and why.  Start Something New is an opportunity to plan the future with the client, peer or partner so that it works for them.  When expectations are clearly set and a path to follow is in place, the future is more certain.

§         Deal With the Unexpected.  Recovering from the inevitable problem is clearly a moment of truth.  Can you decide beforehand how you will handle slip-ups?  Telling or working out guidelines for handling when things go wrong before they go wrong creates another layer of confidence in the relationship.  A discussion that anticipates and plans for bad times, describing what steps will be taken, what options might be available, etc. yields a ready-to-go plan and a sense all around of being ahead of –rather than being overwhelmed by‑‑problems when they emerge.  Alternatively, can you‑‑in your own mind‑‑frame up how you will break unpleasant news to the other person so that it is clear, direct, results in a forward step, and concludes with a positive feeling about how this was done?

§         Manage Conflict.  There are situations where a client, peer or partner will have points of view that are different from yours.  You can position conflict positively, or you can just let it happen.  If you agree to view differences as a positive opportunity to improve work process and outcomes, then you can problem-solve.  If you and your client, peer, or partner view difference as a contest, then you have an argument.  Explicitly steering your client to a positive view of conflict is in everyone’s best interest, and it is another core influence skill.  The experience of resolving differences can become a creative, inclusive and memorable “moment of truth”.  Your goal in a conflict is to learn from the lack of agreement and find a common path.

§         Keep Informed.  It may appear to be a small detail, but how and what you regularly communicate makes a difference to the client, peer or partner experience. This gets complicated when there are a number of functions involved, and each has a different need for information.  To be effective, you have to know who needs to be informed, what media to use to communicate and who needs to keep you informed.  Regularly recapping the big picture works; use charts and at-a-glance exhibits.  We’ve heard from our clients that email isn’t effective anymore—the challenge is to get back to talking with people; it is clearly the best answer.  The question is how to get more face-time.  Think lunch, hallway and elevator discussions, cubicle drop-ins, beers after work.

§         Huddle on Decisions.  One of the most challenging “moments of truth” is decision-making in an influence environment with specialists, generalists, clients, partners, levels of management, etc.  The question of who has approval, who recommends, who is involved, can be defined upfront for the majority of the decisions that need to be made.  But that’s not where decision-making breaks down; it’s the decision that doesn’t fit the pattern, especially where there are overlapping responsibilities, multiple roles that have a stake in the outcome, and people who feel they should be heard.  The challenge here is to take the time to literally figure it out, and the rule of thumb is inclusiveness. That means discussing options in a group or with another—not via email‑‑ until a consensus emerges.  Being able to facilitate an all-stakeholders “figure it out” decision session or an impromptu hallway meeting with a partner is a vital influence skill. 

The Payoff: Your Personal and Your Work Unit’s Brand

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f these “moments of truth” are executed effectively and consistently, your clients, peers and partners will experience a relationship that works.  If you are conscientious about informing your client-base—“advertising”‑‑ how you work, you are creating a brand promise.  Your clients, peers and partners will know what to expect when working with you.

On the other hand, we’ve seen when these relationships don’t work.  If internal clients, peers or partners are disappointed at the beginning of a relationship because of a cloudy start, it is very difficult to recover.  Trust is the first casualty when a “moment of truth” doesn’t live up to what the client, peer or partner cares about.  Regardless of what happens afterwards to rectify or mitigate, the other person will be on guard, watching and cautious not only now but in the future and not only with you, but with everyone from your organization.

Immediate action step:  Think about—or ask—how your clients, peers and partners view you and your organization at these critical moments.  Put yourself into their experience and see how it feels to working with you.  Using that as a start, build an influence process from there.

10 Suggestions on How to Reach Consensus

One of the major benefits of a consensus decision is that it brings team members who start off with differing points of view to a common understanding of all the issues.

Another Meeting Invite, and you dread hitting “Accept”.  You know what lies ahead is another push-and-pull session with your team nemesis whom you consider to be a wind-bag, endless and circular discussions, unraveling what you thought were conclusions, rude emailing while trying to talk to someone and an alternating sense of boredom, frustration and finally quiet resignation. 

Okay, so things in your real team life may not be that bad.  But, seriously, who likes rambling, rudderless meetings? 

There is a way to keep your eye on the prize: have really good and thoughtful discussion and solid decisions as an outcome.  If your team can come away from a decision feeling it is “right”, based on the circumstances, you’ve all done well.  What we are talking about is consensus, a basic team skill.  Let’s explore.

Compromise or Consensus?

There are basically two ways to make a challenging team decision, compromise and consensus.  A compromise is a way of getting a decision that people can live with.  Generally, the result is only satisfactory.  Some words which describe a compromise are “half-hearted,” “reluctant,” “settlement,”  “concession,” “arrangement”.  Despite that, compromises are important and expedient answers to some problems.  The problem with a compromise is the outcome doesn’t meet everyone’s expectations, or it may literally compromise someone’s values, ideas or beliefs.  In fact, there are always some losers and winners in a compromise decision.  When that happens, the losers may feel half-hearted and reluctant about putting that decision into action; the winner becomes disenchanted with the effort the others are making.  In some ways, a compromise can plant the seeds of later conflict.

Reaching Consensus

On the other hand, certain decisions demand a group commitment to work.  That kind of agreement calls for a consensus.  Basically, the process of consensus involves getting people with different points of view to start seeing things in a similar way, or at least to begin narrowing their different perspectives.

In a consensus, if the points of view of each member are considered, discussed, compared and discussed again, everyone begins to sees all aspects of the problem.  Members begin to learn about others’ perceptions and a decision or approach emerges as differences are understood and narrowed.  This outcome goes beyond something people can “go along with”.  Instead, it is a decision team members believe in as the truly best way to go, given the circumstances.  Because the issue has been examined, re-examined, tested through discussion, critiqued and analyzed, all members of the team can “see” the problem and the solutions from many different points of view.

As you can see, one of the major benefits of a consensus decision is that it brings team members who start off with differing points of view to a common understanding of all the issues. In a way, it’s a learning experience. Through discussion of how members see the problem, everyone begins to share perceptions.  Differences don’t appear as great as they once did and everyone agrees, given the facts, about the alternative that makes sense.

Consensus Guidelines and Tips

Here are some ways to narrow differences in points of view among team members and work towards commitment.

1. Each team member should state how he or she feels about the situation and why.
* Go around the table; give everyone a chance to have their say.
* Stop team members who are dominating discussion and poll everyone else.
* Ask members who are silent what they think.

2. Team members should as for facts, definitions or explanations and try to uncover what different thoughts or words really mean to others.
* Team members have to explain their views.
* Focus on words, like, “What’s a significant delay?”
* Ask for clarification when faced with questionable statements

3. Clarify discrepancies of opinion with facts.
* State facts and ask other team members to compare opinions with the facts.
* Summarize competing points of view and ask members to support with facts.
* If there are no available facts, ask members to gather data before continuing.

4. Be open-minded. Modify your own views when faced with compelling facts and opinions.
* Listen to the facts underlying differing points of view.
* Test the facts being presented against your viewpoint.
* Weigh the impact on you and the team of continuing to resist ideas in the face of convincing facts.
* “Try on” the other point of view and see how it feels. Is it really that different from yours? Are the consequences acceptable?

5. Identify similarities and differences among the points of view in the team.
* Make a list of similarities and differences on a flipchart or whiteboard.
* Ask different members to state what is similar about their ideas.
* Crystallize the differences among team members in a simple statement, such as, “It seems some people view cross-selling as a threat, others see it as an opportunity.”

6. Reinforce open-mindedness—the willingness to listen to other views—as well as the need for cooperation.
* Remind each other about the team’s rules concerning open discussion. (Your team ground rules should reflect that; if you don’t have team ground rules, you have some homework to do.)

* Ensure people time to talk and that they have said what is on their minds.
* Review the team’s production goals if necessary and stress the need 
to work together to reach those goals.

7.  Remain non-defensive and unemotional when challenged and avoid angry encounters.
* Stay silent and calm when being criticized. Wait until the other team member has finished before commenting.
* Take notes reflecting the other team member’s points.
* Summarize the other team member’s opinion in your own words before you talk.
* If the meeting is getting emotional, ask for a short recess; try to relax.
* If you can, be empathic with other’s views. Say, “I can understand why 
you would say that.”

8. List the positive and negative aspects or consequences of each point of view.
* Assume the team has adopted a particular approach. Ask members to discuss the advantages and disadvantages. Repeat with the next approach.
* Explore the risks associated with each idea. Test how realistic different people’s assessments of the risks are. “Will we really be causing serious confusion among ourselves by making independent calls on prime accounts?”

9. Ensure that all team members have had an opportunity to participate.
* Make it a point to ask each member at the meeting what they think.
* Remind members they have a responsibility to speak their minds.

10. Try to define the element of risk associated with every decision and develop an approach that minimizes that risk for everyone.
* Ask people what concerns them about a specific course of action.  “What do you think will happen if we do this?”
* If concerns are based on a misperception or misunderstanding, explain the true facts.
* Balance the advantages and risks of each approach.
* Ask the team what level of risk it is willing to accept.

Why it’s Worth the Time to Gain Consensus

Here are some concepts worth remembering about reaching decisions in teams.

* Consensus is one of the most powerful team skills. Members who understand how to reach consensus find that decisions are fully supported and implemented. What’s more, members believe in the group’s decision because the team has examined each facet of the problem and, through discussion, has finally seen the best way to proceed, given the circumstances.

* Remember, compromise implies half-heated agreement. There is doubt, lingering disagreement and the potential for second-guessing the decision, especially if the results are less than expected.

* The consensus process works when team members take the time to share perceptions about a decision and what it means to them.  Everyone must be given a chance to describe how they see the issues.  Only after these initial viewpoints are clear can the team proceed to identify areas of agreement and disagreement.

* Finally, the real key to consensus is for team members to remain flexible about their point of view. The exchanging of ideas is an opportunity for team members to learn from each other. An effective team member tries hard to remain open-minded, non-defensive and flexible, rather than determined to have his or her way.

Roots Of Interpersonal Conflict: Poor Process Turns Good People Into Enemies

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he scene still sticks in my mind.  I was working with a company that had field and headquarters groups locked in what seemed like intractable conflict.  I was individually interviewing members of each group in a small, windowless conference room.  When it was their turn, I asked each one what the nature of the conflict was and what they thought was causing it.  I took careful notes.

After relating some predictable complaints about never having enough time or information, one interviewee, a young home office staffer, had the courage to say what was really on her mind.

“Look, the problem is that Marian [one of the field people] isn’t very nice,” said the honest soul.  “She’s a lot older than us, she doesn’t understand the database we use, doesn’t learn no matter how many time s we tell her, and she thinks we are all too young and inexperienced.  Basically, she looks down on us.”

“Really?”  I said.  “If there was someone else in the field besides Marian, you wouldn’t have the problems you mentioned?  It’s all about her?”

“Mostly, yes,” was the reply.

Was It All About Marian?

Eventually, I got a chance to have a heart-to-heart talk with Marian.  She was a veteran salesperson, who worked fairly independently, had an earlier career as a high school teacher, and was a very determined woman.

“I’m dealing with people who don’t understand the pressures I’m under, what my priorities are and what I need to do my job. They are typical inward-looking home office wonders.  This time around, they’re pretty green and concerned with making no mistakes from their end.  They point fingers at me all the time for asking them to fix problems I think they should fix.  Of course, they say it isn’t their job.  They have created a database that is impossible to work with.  They’re ridiculous.”

Perfect, I thought after I had heard from almost everyone.  Two groups who didn’t like each other.  In fact, they blamed each other for all sorts of problems.  What a delicious opportunity to give both sides a lesson in human reactions to organizational flaws.

I knew from experience that the trigger to interpersonal conflict like this is often the word “blame”.  “I blame him for making us miss our deadline.”  “He’s to blame because he just doesn’t care.”  “Who can work with people like that?   Blame them, not me.”  When I hear blame, I know the path to the solution with a high degree of certainty.

Follow The Blame

When individuals start blaming others, it is a sure sign that, most likely, there is something wrong, not with the people, but with the performance system they are working in.  Why? You have to begin by believing that most people, given the right tools and resources, direction and clarity, will do--and really want to do--a good job.  Remember the kind of best intentions they had on their first day of work? Almost everyone starts there.

In fact, think back on an interpersonal conflict you might have experienced with a an employee or one you observed as a co-worker.  Notice that most people—with a small number of obvious exceptions—don’t come to work with built-in conflicts with others, ready to be unleashed on their co-workers or bosses.  No, instead, the system creates disappointment for the worker that leads to the performance shortfall that results in blame.  So, the trajectory that results in people being blamed or in co-workers developing unproductive behaviors and attitudes usually starts when a well-intentioned worker finds the system he or she is working is has a built in frustration or flaw and that flaw is not immediately fixable.

For example, imagine an eager new employee who is being asked to perform a particular task, say, testing chemicals in a production process.  Things go fine as long as the testing process is exactly like the one the manager demonstrated.  However, when the manager goes to a two-day conference and the production process changes, the testing procedure soon presents challenges that go beyond the new employee’s inchoate level of skill.  When the manager returns to find many batches incorrectly rejected, the new employee gets—worst case—chewed out for making so many mistakes.  “I thought you knew how to do this.”  “I wasn’t sure about how to do the procedure with the new chemical.”  “You should have looked it up.”  “Where?”  “In the manual. What’s the matter with you?” “What manual?”

Planting Emotional Seeds

And so it goes. Now, the new employee goes home with a notch or two less enthusiasm for the job.  “My boss should have told me.”  The manager thinks she will have to keep a close watch on the new employee because, well, he has slipped up. Both sides have the seeds planted for a blame-filled future.  Add a few more incidents where the new employee doesn’t perform and blames the manager, and the manager becomes frustrated with the once-engaged employee, and you have a perfect storm of interpersonal conflict.  No longer eager, the hurt employee could—depending on that person—snipe behind the manager’s back, look for excuses, cut corners.  You know what happens next.  The animosity grows and pretty soon people really are starting to hurt each other.  All of this unfolding because the boss didn’t tell the new person where the manual was!

Performance System Failure

What fails when performance doesn’t meet expectations is the performance system that surrounds the employee.  Blame that for not working, not the people.  The good news is that the performance system can be fixed, sometimes very easily, without much cost or effort.

I always start the fixing phase by getting the antagonists in the same room.  The ground rules are that we are looking for what has failed, and our premise is that it isn’t the people.  Then, I ask them to name the kinds of processes that link them together, and I list these on a flip chart.  In the case of the home office-field situation, there was a sales process, a reporting process, and some information exchange processes.  We start with a single process and go through it step by step.  What happens first, then what, what do you do next.  At each step along the way, I probe to see what might have failed. It is usually one of the following:

• The tools (forms, systems, manuals) are not working effectively, are out of date or unavailable/inaccessible.

·       People aren’t sure of the process—it hasn’t been mutually defined.  Or, the process leaves out important steps.  People are working with an inadequate procedure.

·       There is a skill deficiency—a person hasn’t been taught properly or isn’t current. They haven’t been trained or educated to proficiency in the skill.  Or, they haven’t done the skill in a long time.

·       The resources in the environment are insufficient—unrealistic time or budget, inadequate facilities, poor lighting, uncomfortable and insensitive human factors (no privacy, ambiance)

·       There are often no consequences for near-miss, off-standard performance. People learn to perform to a sub-standard, rather than the high standard required. The person doesn’t receive clear feedback that would improve, correct and raise performance. People aren’t involved in discussions about how to achieve higher results.

·       Expectations for performance—standards and quality—have not been communicated to the performer by anyone, particularly the manager, and they don’t get regular feedback on their performance—corrective as well as rewards. The performer doesn’t know what good looks like.

A flaw in any one of these components of the performance system can cause both the outcomes and the work process to fail.  In my experience, the sources of problems that come up most frequently as the cause of interpersonal conflicts are—way down at the root cause level--inadequately defined processes and poor tools provided.

Blame Poor Process and Tools

This becomes crystal clear when you ask both parties involved in a conflict if they are getting what they need to do their work at each step in the process.  For example, one party is not getting information they need because the form being used by the other person providing the information asks for too much data, most of which isn’t available in a timely manner.  So, the person filling out the form waits until the information is complete, then sends the form.  The person who needs the information is angry because it is late, blaming the provider.

If instead of this reaction, both parties could take an objective look at what is happening, they would see the problem was the work form.  The answer is simple: re-design the form, make it two-parts with urgent information coming first and the late-breaking information second.  When the source of the conflict becomes apparent, and both parties are involved in fixing it, the conflict is over.

What can you take away from this short discourse on interpersonal conflict?

·       Conflict between people is very often rooted in a flawed performance system which links their work together.

·       Blame is a sure sign the system is broken.  Usually, most of the time, people aren’t the cause.  However, it seems to be human nature to blame people first. Beware.

·       Blame escalates into performance problems of all kinds. The result is disgruntled workers and, eventually, customer-service issues.  Interpersonal conflict may go well beyond the initial cause and lead to person to person enmity.  Objectively finding the true root cause may be difficult if it’s gone that far.

·       The solutions to interpersonal conflict come through the process of closely reviewing procedures.  Can each party articulate what has to be done?  Does the process make sense? Do they have the tools and skills to do it well?  Do they know what is expected? Does sub-performance pass as adequate?

Bottom line: It is a leader’s job to know this. People who work together to resolve their issues with each other in this way wind up changing their perceptions of and attitudes about each other.

Delegation--The Second Skill: Not My Monkey

As regular visitors to singularitymanagerzine.blogspot.com have come to know, there is research that suggests that feedback is the single most important skill for a manager to master and practice.  The benefits are many:  clarity, performance improvement, a sense of openness, fairness, motivation.  From our work with many managers over the past year, we have come to value the second most important manager skill.  It has to do with getting rid of monkeys.

We received a call from a far-flung reader with a monkey problem. He had three direct reports who were managers themselves.  Each had some heavy new responsibilities that had been spread around to remaining managers after a series of lay-offs.  Turns out, they were not shy about getting him involved with their work. “Can you please review this before I send it out?” was a typical request. “I’ve got a problem. Here’s what happens” was another. Pretty soon, their work became his work, and his time was not his own.

What is happening here is a classic back and forth game of who has responsibility.  The subordinate puts the “monkey”—the responsibility-- on the manager when he/she asks for a review or when the boss is asked to solve a problem.  When a manger picks up the monkey from a direct report, he or she is literally working for the subordinate.  The manager’s time is being taken up by a subordinate’s work.  Something is wrong with this picture

That Awful Buzzword

 William Oncke, Jr., and Donald Wass wrote a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review that should be tacked on every manager’s cubicle wall. “Who’s Got The Monkey?” (HBR, November-December 1974) is a tale of delegation gone wrong.  

The idea of delegation is to give responsibility to direct reports without having that responsibility come back to the manager.  That’s the essence of empowerment, that awful buzz word.  Taking on that responsibility may take some learning on the part of the subordinate, even some risk taking and hand holding.  But that’s where the responsibility has to stay.  Of course, the manager is still there for advice and help with the proviso that the monkey stays on the direct report’s back.  Such is the nature of effective delegation.

Distortions in Delegation

 Obviously, when people are new to work responsibilities, they are going to need some level of direction and guidance.  You’d think that would be a given, but there seems to be a range of approaches to how that is done in the real world of work. 

For example, we know some managers who embrace a “sink or swim” approach; definitely no monkeys here.  Part of their rationale is that new people need to struggle with the organizational way of doing things, and, in the process, create a network as well as some independence.  The problem with that is time to proficiency can be long, errors can get baked into a new person’s approach, the delegatee can become frustrated and may become a performance problem later on.  Besides, the final results of sink or swim will probably conflict with the boss’ expectations. 

Another delegation model is related to sink or swim:  “Bring me a rock, I will tell you when you’ve got the right one”.  That means the manager asks the new person to “try it” without specifying what success looks like.  What comes back is an approximation of what was wanted, the task winds up being done several times.  The boss’ rationale may be because he/she doesn’t know him/herself what is wanted or hasn’t been mindful enough to articulate the kind of outcome needed.  Or, he/she is just too busy, or it isn’t a priority, or he/she assumes that everyone should know how to do this, etc.

Of course, when the opposite approach to these hands-off methods is used, the delegatee unconsciously shifts the task to the boss because of insecurity, lack of confidence, or fear, and the boss winds up doing most it.  This is the monkey transfer problem.  When it’s all over, the boss thinks “I should have done this myself to begin with”.  So, the boss loses confidence in delegation as a management tool, and the new person has learned to become dependent--a "leaning learner".  Eventually, the boss goes home later and later, wondering why he/she is doing someone else’s job.

Be Monkey-Free, But Still Effective As A Delegator

Our work with managers has revealed four basic considerations in delegating well. Try these to keep the monkeys off your back.

Pick the right task to delegate.  If the task has vague objectives, uncertain

process, the need to work with an adversarial group, and a relatively high risk of failure, pass on delegation. Or at least, be prepared to become highly involved.

Provide the delegatee with just the right amount of direction.  An inexperienced person needs more guidance than a veteran. In addition to knowing the objective, tell the neophyte what to do and how to do it.  If you did that to a person who is experienced in a particular task, it would come across as micro managing.  Very Dilbert.

Plan your involvement. This is where you create some guidelines about what your role will be vis-à-vis the delegated task.  Progress reviews, access for advice and support, help in opening doors, etc., should all be spelled out.

Monkey rules.  Establish the ground rule that the person being delegated to has responsibility for execution, that you, the manager, are available as defined, and that monkeys are non-transferable.

The Importance of Being Real: The Abilene Paradox

It is a scorching, dusty July day in Coleman, Texas. Four people are waiting out the heat, sipping lemonade in the shade of a farmhouse porch. At one point, someone suggests they drive to Abilene, 53 miles away, to have a bite in a cafeteria there.

The others think it’s a crazy idea, but they say nothing and go along. They drive all the way to Abilene in a non-air-conditioned car through a dust storm, have a mediocre meal and drive back to Coleman hours later, tired, hot and unhappy.

When they return home, they reveal that they didn’t want to go in the first place but did because they thought the others were eager for the drive.

Of course, this gap in communication was someone else’s fault.

Here we have the Abilene Paradox, a phenomenon of group dynamics first identified by Jerry Harvey of George Washington University in 1974. The paradox is that people go along with a bad decision, knowing full well that it was a bad decision in the first place. The result is the complete opposite of what was intended at the outset: half-baked support, uninspired ideas, and wasted time and money on results that fall short of expectations.

On The Road To Abilene

We’ve all experienced the Abilene Paradox, especially in decision-making meetings. We struggle to make a decision, come to an agreement only to find, in our heart of hearts, that we did so only because of what we assumed about the desires and opinions of others.

If you’ve said to yourself in those situations, “Who cares; it’ll be okay whatever we decide,” or “Guess I’ll go with the flow,” you are on your way to Abilene. We assume the others really do want to go to Abilene, even though we don’t, but we agree to go anyway. And, if each individual has the same misguided assumptions, then the action is something that no one wants. We agree as a group, but as individuals, we have regrets. One can say this is an absurd situation.

Why do people actually support things that go against what they desire? What happened to the outspoken individual with ideas to contribute and concepts to roll around in? A rare bird in groups.

According to Harvey, in group settings, expressing your real beliefs creates some degree of anxiety. Should you maintain your own integrity and self-worth by speaking your mind, or do you compromise your values and go with what you think is the consensus?

The anxiety comes from the magical belief that something disastrous will happen to you if you do reveal your real thoughts. “Oh, I’ll get fired if I do that. I’ll get labeled a maverick. I’ll look like a fool. I’ll be unlikable.” Since you believe those things will happen if you speak your true mind, you wind up not being honest about what you really think. These magical consequences provide an excuse for being quiet.

And what do those magical and negative consequences represent? Alienation, separation, ostracism; these are powerful, underlying fears, so powerful that we will act against our own interest to avoid the risk of not being “part” of something.  Of course, doing so winds you up in Abilene.

When Compromise Becomes Unhealthy, You Are Heading Down the Road

But isn’t compromise part of work life?  Don’t we go against our own interests when we agree to go along?  In her new book, The Compromise Trap, Elizabeth Doty draws a line between healthy compromise that is necessary for accomplishing goals and unhealthy compromises that betray beliefs and values.  When unhealthy compromises pile up, the conflict inside your head can cause stress and many trips to Abilene (as well as the very alienation, separation or ostracism you feared in the first place!). 

Her approach is to recognize when you are pressured to play by rules that undermine your beliefs and/or common sense, and play a different game by being true to yourself, no matter how difficult the circumstances. The key to playing this different game is to question your assumptions.  Is this decision really in the group’s interest? Are others committed to this or just feeling pressed to go along? What are the costs to me if I go along, including the costs to my self-respect and others’ ability to trust me? And finally, will I really get fired, ostracized, or marginalized if I focus on helping the group reach its goals?

In her book, Elizabeth shows numerous examples of professionals who questioned their assumptions and discovered the consequences of speaking up were not as bad as they first appeared, at least not in comparison to dust and heat of Abilene.

So, how do you know your team is on the road to Abilene? Here are some indicators:

Soft and ambiguous language. Is vagueness and opacity on the agenda versus clear and descriptive words? Vagueness leads to low comprehension that leads to uncertainty about how to react.  Collateralized Debt Obligations, anyone?

Missed opportunities. Do people come out of meetings saying something like, “What I really wanted to say was…?” We individually and privately have a completely different opinion than the one we expressed in the team.

No fun. Are meetings are formal, serious, procedural and somewhat intimidating? Is there any room at all for spontaneity of expression?

Authority plays. Beware the authority figure who subtlety deflects ideas, inserts his/her own preferences, and uses forceful language to press home points with no repartee from the group.

Looking for a scapegoat. We were all in on the crummy decision; we are all to blame. Under those circumstances, it’s not a good sign to be placing blame. That’s a sign you’ve been to and maybe are still in Abilene.

Low involvement. Are there people in the meeting who do not contribute? Why?

Low questioning and probing. What’s the ratio of question asking to contributing ideas?

Awareness of process. Do people realize they are producing agreements that no one really wants?

The point is that you need to step in with your true point of view, whatever it is. To get people to listen, be diplomatic, choose your words carefully and back up your thoughts with logic and data. People won’t listen to ideas being forced on them.

We Visit Abilene Too Often

Unfortunately, the Abilene Paradox plays itself out in real life situations where ersatz decision-making has severe consequences. One well-publicized example was the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Here is what a CIA officer wrote about the final stages of the decision-making process.

“It is hard to believe in retrospect that the president and his advisers felt the plans for a large-scale, complicated military operation that had been ongoing for more than a year could be reworked in four days and still offer a high likelihood of success. It is equally amazing that we in the agency agreed so readily.”

For more information about the Abilene Paradox, see The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations On Management by Jerry Harvey.  For more on unhealthy compromises, see The Compromise Trap by Elizabeth Doty.