Employing Differences

Employing Differences, Episode 123: How do we deal with them?

September 20, 2022 Karen Gimnig & Paul Tevis
Employing Differences
Employing Differences, Episode 123: How do we deal with them?
Show Notes Transcript

"How can we build resilience in the group so that when this behavior happens, it doesn't have the same level of destructive impact on the group? And how can each of us contribute to that resilience?"

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Paul:

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen:

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen:

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "How do we deal with them?"

Paul:

I think at some point or another, all of us have been in some group, some team, some community, where there is a person whose behavior is driving us a little batty. Who we really wish they would stop doing whatever it is they're doing. Sometimes it's not one person, sometimes it's a pair of people. There's a dynamic that develops and everybody else around is going, "I wish they would cut it out." And we've talked a little bit before, back in episode 52, about how do I get someone to cut something out. And we we talked a lot in that episode about noticing what it is in that that irritates us and getting right with ourselves before being able to give people feedback. But what we want to talk about today is when you're thinking about, "We have this problematic situation where something that somebody or somebodies are doing is having an impact on the group," what do we want to do about that? Because we can't necessarily rely on those individuals changing their behavior.

Karen:

This is probably the most common reason I get hired. We have a person or a couple of people, we may or may not be willing to name them, but we're getting this behavior that we hate. How do we make them change their behavior? And again, what we said in episode 52 is there's a lot of things you can do to make progress on this. But at the end of the day, the likelihood that somebody who has been in a certain behavior pattern for some number of decades, and this is their primary way of showing up and they do this thing repeatedly... I'm going to guess that they're not going to magically just stop doing that thing. I'm even going to guess that this isn't the first group where somebody has asked them to or as been unhappy with that behavior. In fact, I'm gonna guess that this is a thing they've been beaten up over before and probably have some defenses built up here. And so while there's lots that we can do to try to grow that together, and I don't want to forget that in this episode, I do want to focus somewhere else, which is, what's the impact that the behavior is having on the group or on me? What's the impact that it's having? Why is that a problem? And what am I doing that contributes to that impact? Or what is the group doing that contributes to that impact? I'll give an example of one of my client groups. There's a member of the group that wildly and with harsh language pretty often– in business meetings – puts people down or complains about things or disrupts. They want the process to be different in some way. And everybody else just feels shut down by this behavior. They don't want to get into the conflict of it. They don't expect that they'll be heard. And they don't feel like they have any choice but to weather this painful tirade once again. And so I get curious. If we can't make the person stop having the tirade – which, you know, we tried a good bit of that, and it got better and less frequent, but it didn't go away– what do we do to make the tirade have less impact? And in this particular case, there was a perception that typically the tirade would get focused on one individual. And so if someone who isn't that individual jumps in, in defense. We can have a strategy of, "Okay, when this thing happens, what are we all doing to be complicit in it? And how do we decide to do something different? Strategize that. Who in the room has the power to change it? And, more usefully, perhaps, what power do I have to change the impact of that behavior when it happens?

Paul:

One of the things that's fun about recording these episodes is that we haven't necessarily talked a whole lot about what we would do in these situations before we turn on the mic. And then we discover that we do extremely similar things. Which I think gives some validation to what we're suggesting here. But you're pointing at two things that I very often do in these types of situations. One is I look for what are the enabling behaviors in the group. And that can actually be part of a behavioral shift. This is something very early on in my coach training that somebody said to me. "When I'm working with a group, and somebody identifies one person as being the problem, I look around at everybody else in the group and go, 'So what are you doing that's enabling this problematic behavior?'" And it's true. But that also gets to the second piece that you're talking about, which is this idea of resilience. How can we actually build resilience in the group so that when this behavior happens, it doesn't have the same level of destructive impact on the group? And how can each of us contribute to that resilience? That's not necessarily the same as contributing to the behavior change. So in the example you're talking about, if this is going towards one person, then we recognize that everybody else is bystanding at that point. How can they actually become helpful bystanders and help to defuse some of that? Help to take the impact of that situation out? Because the problem is not the behavior. The problem is the impact of the behavior. And so those are the two places that we can go when we're trying to make a change. And I think we often really focus on changing a person's behavior, but what we're really talking about today is how do we decrease the impact of that behavior. I'm working with a community group right now where there's two people as part of the group that have deep conflict with one another. There are deep-seated issues there that may never get resolved. There's an incident between them, they're carrying that, it is what it is. The problem is not that these two people have an issue with each other. The problem is the impact that that has on the rest of the group. They're polarizing that community. They're expecting everyone to be either with them or against them. And so what's happening is that the group is factionalizing and fracturing into these two camps. And the two things that happen there is one, it makes it really hard to have a community when you have two very distinct "Hatfield and McCoy"-esque camps. But the other thing is, it means people are feeling the pull. "I don't want to get pulled into one place or the other." And so that creates an additional degree of tension. And so the conversations that I've been having with a couple of involved community leaders has been,"Let's assume that these two people are never going to reconcile. What would you do that would actually be useful in that situation?" Because you can't rely on them coming to agreement about this. Anything that does rely on them changing their dynamic between them is a very fragile and risky plan. So what can you do that doesn't require them to ever reconcile that would decrease the impact of that conflict on the community? That's a very different frame. As soon as I brought that to the group, they started going, "We'd never thought about that before." Because we're so used to thinking that the only way that this situation could be resolved is for the people involve to reconcile.

Karen:

Yeah. I want to give reassurance to groups that I'm not disagreeing that that would be the easiest thing. If that person would just change their behavior, or those people would just reconcile, that would for sure be the easiest thing. It's just that it doesn't matter if it's the easiest thing if it isn't going to happen. That'd be easier for you and easier for me.

Paul:

There's a likeliness thing there too. It's more likely that those of us who are not involved deeply in this situation can shift our behaviors because we're not tied up in it. Whatever's going on isn't deeply triggering whatever is in us. We have more freedom of movement. We have fewer constraints on us. And so it's actually much more likely that we could do something than they are going to be able to do something. They're stuck in this thing. And to go back to the thing that you said at the beginning, this is probably not the first time this person has has been beat up about this particular behavior. This is deeply patterned. And so it's unlikely that you're going to be able to shift it. So for me, it's just playing the odds. What do we think is likely to actually be able to be done that would decrease the impact that this behavior is having on the group or on the team or on the organization?

Karen:

Yeah. And I want to put a caveat in here because I do think that the next place I've seen groups jump to is, "Okay, we'll have a rule that interrupting is not okay." If interrupting is the behavior, we'll have a rule about that. And so it's like, we're all going to team up against this person. And I want to be really clear that that's not what I'm recommending here. I don't think that actually helps. So there's another element of okay, so how do we reduce the impact of that behavior within our values? What can we do that's within our values, which for most groups include inclusion, and teamwork and kindness, and so on? We aren't interested in alienating that member of our community, or that part of our team as part of this. So we need to be in a space – not necessarily that they're going to like because nobody likes getting less power, and that's often what we're talking about in these situations – but that is within our values of kindness, of care, of respect. And so to give a very simple example, if I can get clear about what is the behavior and the impact of that behavior that I would like to disrupt, if someone's interrupting, the impact that I'd like to disrupt is that the person who was first speaking, we're not hearing what they had to say. That's the thing I'm after is to change that impact. And so there's this instinct to say, "We have a rule of no interrupting." And so when somebody interrupts that, I'm going to say, "You're interrupting. Tou're not supposed to do that." Which, of course, is public shaming, and they're going to defend against it. We're not really within our values then, I think. Not within mine, certainly. But if instead, I say, "Would you hold on a minute? I really wanted to hear the rest of what this person was saying." We're now inviting that shared value, in a way that's not a put-down, not a shutdown, and it's reversing the impact of the interruption, in the way that we wanted. And maybe over time it'll shift the behavior, too. No promises. But to be looking for those strategies that are kind toward the behavior that we don't like while disrupting its impact. I know that's tricky, because some of the impact is actually what that person wants. That they're doing it because there's some impact that they want, often more influence. They're often trying to have more influence than they would otherwise have. And if we're decreasing that influence, which is often the goal of resisting the impact, it's not going to feel good to them. But it's going to feel better if it's done kindly than if it's a blatant put-down in front of a group, which is one of the nastiest things we do to each other and humanity.

Paul:

And it's about looking at what the impact of our proposed remedy is on that space between. Most of the time, what we're really dealing with here is about the effect that it has on collaboration. About the effect that it has on the teamness of the team, on the community-ness of the community. And we're saying that this behavior has some impact that's not aligned with our values about what we want that to be. And so we need to make sure that our remedy is in line with that. That it's restorative. That it gets us back to where it is that we want. That can be tricky. Because again, it's not about addressing the behavior, it's about addressing the impact. And so how do we make sure of that. Your example is great. The impact was we didn't get to hear from this person. Well, what can we do so we do get to hear from them? And how do we make sure that that's restored, and that we actually continue to work through that. Because it's very easy to focus on the person who's behaving badly. But that's not where the focus belongs in this situation. The focus belongs on the group, on the community, on the collective, and on that space between. So if we focus there, and go, "How do we want this to be?" What might we do that doesn't involve this person ever changing? Or these people ever reconciling or fixing their dynamic or whatever it is? If we focus on this instead of that, that I think gets us to where we want to be. That's hard, because there's drama and drama is super entertaining and grabs our attention. I get into these situations all the time, where this person – just to go back to your interrupting example – they keep interrupting. And I might keep redirecting and say, "I'd like to hear the rest of what Karen was saying" and they keep interrupting. And that can be draining on me. I keep saying,"Why won't they just cut it out?" Go back to episode 52 if you're starting to get there. But recognizing that my focus needs to be not on that person. We get drawn to it like a moth to the flame. And when we notice that we're doing that, that probably means we're not attending to the impact as much as we really need to be. And so that can be a useful clue for us of the way that we deal with these behaviors is by focusing more on the rest of the group and not on the people who are acting out.

Karen:

This is maybe one of the hardest things we've thrown out for you to do. And we throw out hard things every episode. So I'll just name this is like way at the end of the hard end of the scale. And it's one of the places where there's a real value in strategizing and trying to figure it out. I think it's reasonable for people who are bothered by a behavior to get together and try to figure it out. And hey feel like, "Well, are we gossiping? Are we manipulating? Are we ganging up on?" and I just want to say, be careful that you're not. The fact that you're together trying to work through a problem... If you're doing this well, the person whose behavior you're hoping to reduce the impact of will be very well served. You're actually doing things that will protect their relationships in the group and help them not have the negative impact that is almost certainly having a negative impact on their relationships. But you want to be in that mindset. So if you find yourself in a group having a conversation about a situation like this, I just want to hold really consciously – be asking yourself, "Are we gossiping? Are we ganging up? Are we putting down?" Or are we trying to be supportive of the group and looking for values-aligned methods for reducing the impact that don't put down or shame the person whose behavior it is that we're working with? And I think those conversations can happen and can be productive. But if you asked me, "Can they slip over into ganging up?" Well, yes, they can. So it's just a thing to be really careful about.

Paul:

Yeah. So to track where we've been today, we've talked about when we noticed that there's problematic behavior that's having an impact on a group, what can we do about it? We've talked previously about how we might give that person feedback or what we might want to do to try and change that behavior. But today we've really focused on how do we change the impact that that behavior has on the group? How do we change the impact that it has on that space between and on the collaboration? And so part of what we talked about is just starting to notice it. What is the impact that that behavior is having? And then what are things that we could do to reduce that impact even if the behavior never changes? Because that's the likely path. We actually need to plan for that. And so what are things that we can do? Making sure that those things that we do are aligned with our values. That we're not marginalizing the individuals who are doing these things. They're part of the group, too. And so how can we make sure that we are restoring whatever harm is being done, that we're lessening the impact that it's having by focusing on the group rather than the individual or the behavior that's having that impact. Putting our focus there, and when we're trying to strategize around it, making sure that we're doing it in a way that is not bullying or gossiping or shaming, or ganging up on. It's very easy for for us to fall into that pattern. But really taking into account that this person is also part of the group. They get to matter too, and we still need to attend to the needs of the group, the needs of the community, the needs the team, so that we can continue to function well together and work together over time.

Karen:

That's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul:

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.