Introduction and Episode Question

[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:12] Paul: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, whose idea was this? 

The Importance of Ownership in Change

[00:00:19] Karen: So this is one of those questions that Paul and I, in our consulting careers, have both learned to ask, largely by having not asked it and regretted that.

[00:00:30] Karen: And so the context here is you're bringing in someone to do some relational work, the kinds of stuff that we talk about on the show every week. And maybe you're bringing in a consultant or maybe you have some other plan for dealing with relational work. But the question that we're asking is, whose idea was this?

[00:00:50] Karen: And the reason we want to know, really what we want to know is somebody wants something to change. Are the people who would have to change, who would have to do the work to make that change, are they the ones who want it? Are they the ones thinking this is a good idea? Are they the ones asking for help?

[00:01:09] Karen: Because if they're not, then you're in the situation where somebody says they should change and we're going to help them change by hiring you, if they're talking to one of us as a consultant. And they never, it never comes to us that directly, but if that's the scenario, it's a much bigger uphill battle than maybe I want to get in, you know, like I might think twice about taking that job.

Challenges in Executive Coaching

[00:01:37] Paul: Yes, this is something that, you know, for example, on a lot of the executive coaching work that I do, sometimes that's motivated by the fact that the person who I'm going to be working with, their boss sees, you might call them developmental opportunities, right? This person needs to get better at these things in order to succeed in the role they're in now, or in order to be able to move into the next role they need to move into.

[00:02:00] Paul: Right. And so sometimes executive coaches are brought in because a boss says like, I need you to work with this person on this thing. They need to level up in this way. And that's not necessarily a problem. The problem is when those two people don't agree on that because I can't show up on behalf of the boss to fix the person, right.

[00:02:21] Paul: To get them to change in this particular way, if they're unmotivated to do it. Right. But as you say, if it isn't the people who need to do the changing, who are interested in doing the hard work. I can't do that work for them. You know, as much as I might want to, I can't, they're the ones who have to do it.

[00:02:39] Paul: A phrase that I use often and sort of helping myself not get super invested in situations where I'm setting myself up for failure, right? It's this idea that I can't want it more than they do, right? If I've, as a coach or as a consultant, as a facilitator, find myself going, Oh, it would be really great if they did the, they really, you know, I really want this for them.

[00:03:02] Paul: Right. And they don't want it. Right. Or they don't want it as strongly as I do. Then I'm colluding, now there's even, an even bigger problem. Now, just someone else wants it for them I've also become someone else who wants it for them. 

Relational Problems and Hard Work

[00:03:15] Karen: And I'm gonna give it a different context, but the same story which is when you're sitting with a problem in the relational space, and this can be a community that keeps tripping over not being able to get decisions through, it can be an employment situation where a boss and a report just keep crossing wires with each other and things don't get done that are supposed to get done.

[00:03:37] Karen: I mean, there are many variants of this. But when you have a problem with the relationship or with the space between or with communication or with conflict, anything in that realm, it's not going to be an easy fix. I mean, it might be, but then you aren't listening to this podcast to find out how to deal with it.

[00:03:56] Karen: That's not the stuff that we're going to deal with. By the time you're talking about hiring a consultant, or you're talking about having a special meeting, or you're talking about, you know, let's have a community retreat. Or whatever is the sort of bring in the big guns kind of approach. We're trying to do, we're putting a bunch of extra effort into something because we've got this problem.

[00:04:18] Karen: The solution to that ain't gonna be easy. If it was easy, you wouldn't have gotten this far cause you would have done it five steps ago. So if you're at this point that we're talking about. It's going to take hard work and it's going to take the kind of hard work that we talk about on the show all the time.

[00:04:36] Karen: It's going to take vulnerability. It's going to take curiosity. It's going to take listening hard to somebody else that's saying stuff that you really wish wasn't true or that they weren't saying or that they didn't think or that feels offensive to you. There's tons of really hard work. And I can't tell you exactly which piece of the hard work is going to be the thing that has to happen, but I can tell you there will be.

[00:04:59] Karen: And if you don't want the change badly enough to do the hard work, I can't help because all I can do is point you to the hard work. Like I can make the work a little easier. Probably I can make it more normal. I can help the person you're doing with the work, meet you halfway. If they want to learn how to do that, if they want to, I can put some structure around it, I can make it a little bit safer.

[00:05:22] Karen: There's a lot of things I can do to help, but none of them are going to take it out of the hard work category. And so when we say whose idea was this, the people who are doing the hard work have to be the ones who say, we really want this change. They don't necessarily have to be the ones who say we get this change by hiring that consultant.

[00:05:44] Karen: It could be, we really want this change. We're ready to work at it. How can you help us? Sure. We can work from that. Yeah. But if they're sitting in the stew of dysfunction and somebody outside, like maybe their boss, or maybe it's a member of the group, but just one member of the group comes at everybody else and says, Oh, this dysfunction is terrible.

[00:06:06] Karen: Let's bring somebody in to fix you all. That didn't work. 

[00:06:09] Paul: No. I think a useful question to ask. 

Assessing Willingness to Change

[00:06:13] Paul: If you're the person in that situation, right, you're the boss, you're the community print member who's looking around that this kind of going on this thing, I mean, this is a question that if you're approaching me as a coach or a consultant, I'm going to ask you, but it's like, do you think they're up for it?

[00:06:29] Paul: That's the question that I'm asking, right? I'm not going, look, it didn't need to be necessarily their idea, but they need to be up for it, right? They need to have a sense of, yeah, okay, we see that this is a problem. We think there is a possibility of a solution. We recognize that there's going to be work involved and we, at least a little bit, you know, they don't know the full picture yet, so they may change their mind later, but it's like, and we think we're willing to do that. 

[00:06:57] Paul: I'm going to get curious, if I'm doing an intake call with somebody, I'm going to be asking what's telling you that makes you think that they're up for it. What are the signs that you're seeing that they're willing to actually do the work around this? And so if you're in that situation, if you are that person, that's a really useful thing to assess because you might go, as we've talked about on the show before, wow, it would be great if they were up for this and they're not.

[00:07:29] Paul: So maybe I need to go down a different route. Maybe I need to do something else. 

[00:07:35] Karen: Yeah, and I want to point out that there's a big difference between we see that there's a problem and we're up for the work to fix it. And I think this is a mistake that managers or, decision makers can make in this.

[00:07:49] Karen: Well, I'm responding to a problem that they all told me about. And that can be true. And they're still not up for the work because if what's coming is, we're not getting along and that other person's behaving badly and I want you to fix it. Maybe that means I want your help because we're stuck and we need some coaching and like we're trying here, but we can't get there.

[00:08:15] Karen: But maybe it means I don't want to change my approach and I don't want to change how I do things. And I know I'm right. And I want you to come in and fix the other people. And if there's even a little bit of that in the mix, it's a whole lot harder. Because at the end of the day, these things don't get solved without people changing something about what they believe, something about what they think, something about how they operate.

[00:08:41] Karen: If at the end of the work, nothing about you has changed. I'm betting that nothing about your situation will have changed either. 

[00:08:48] Paul: A weird flip side to that thing, you know, that you said, which is that oftentimes people are waiting for others to change. That's the low energy thing of being able to go, well, if they figure that things out then, and they change, then I won't have to, and it'll all be great.

[00:09:02] Paul: The problem will go away. And I think that's a great way of thinking about it. Like people identify that there's a problem, right? But they don't recognize that either they don't recognize that they need to do something different or they don't want to, like they're not up for it because of any number of other things, of all these other things that are going on.

Managerial Challenges and Solutions

[00:09:17] Paul: And I've been in this situation actually before where I've had a manager, a director, you know, someone in an organization reach out and basically say like, can you work with this group to help them get their act together? Could it kind of do the thing? And I'll do some kind of assessment work. And one of the things that I'm assessing is what do I think the problem is, but I'm also assessing the willingness to change thing.

[00:09:34] Paul: Like, are these people ready for it? And I may come back and just kind of go, I think your best choice is for you to do something different, right? This is unlikely to land with them, but if you want to get a different result, I think you could do that by you changing, right?

[00:09:51] Paul: By you digging into some of this work, because of course, 90 percent of the time that they've called me is because they want the other people to do it. Or maybe it's a case of like, I think they would be willing to do this work if you were in it, because it's actually way more about the relationship between the leader and the group than it is about the group members with each other.

[00:10:12] Paul: And then now that, director has to go through that discomfort of like, Oh, am I up for this work? And if not, now they're kind of go, Oh, maybe I will accept the situation, as it is. But it's like seeing their own part in it is sometimes an interesting question. So that's like, it's some of the work that I do where I'm just kind of going like, who do I think is up for it and up for what?

[00:10:35] Paul: And would that make a difference to the situation? And do I think there are levers here? Now obviously like none of this is a guarantee, like this is the thing about relational work is that it's never, you and I come in, we do these four things and it always causes this result, right? It's all about, sort of, are the conditions ready for the work that we might do in order to have a result?

[00:10:57] Paul: And we can't guarantee it. We're going to come in, we're going to do our best, we're going to use all of our skills. But we've got to pay attention to whether or not the groundwork has been laid, whether or not the conditions are right for us to do that type of work. And a lot of that is, are people willing to do the hard work of changing?

[00:11:16] Karen: And one of the worst situations to be in, but also better if you can see it, is that point where we're not really happy with how things are. It's not optimal. We don't love it. But we don't hate it either. And so, yeah, we'd like it to be better. And maybe, maybe our boss would really, really like it to be better, maybe.

[00:11:37] Karen: But on the ground, where the group is, the pain point isn't high enough to be worth the work. And I just want to say, if that's where you are, it's not crazy. The work is hard work, and it will distract from other things that you're doing, and it will take, you know, you'll go home tireder, and all that kind of stuff, and so I take it very seriously that people might not be ready for the work, and one reason that can be is because the pain point isn't high enough, and so maybe that just means this isn't our time to do the work, because the work is harder than living with the situation, so we're going to live with the situation, Or maybe it's because the person feeling the pain isn't the one that would have to do the changing to solve it.

[00:12:21] Karen: And then you might need to figure out a way to transfer the pain. You might need a way for the people who are causing the problem to experience the problem and kind of live in it. An analogy comes to mind when my son was potty training and his Montessori teachers really encouraged me to let him deal with the poopy pants. Because if mom just comes in and cleans it up and whatever, then why would he inconvenience himself to actually go use the toilet, right?

[00:12:49] Karen: And so the idea being sometimes you got to let them live in their shit or deal with their shit. And when we protect and we enable and we help out and we support and it feels like we're just keeping everybody above water. Yeah, might be time to let them sink because they got to feel it. Like they've got to know that it's worth the work.

[00:13:12] Paul: And that's also recognizing that that's a spot where we have to change. Right. I see this with, you know, again, I, well, I really need my team to step up and, they're not covering these things and things are falling through the cracks. And I go, so when they fall through the cracks, like what happens?

[00:13:27] Paul: Well, I cover for them. So I deal with all of this stuff. And I was like, and you're feeling burnt out and exhausted and overworked. Okay. But then like, as soon as I mentioned the whole, well, maybe you need to let things fall through the cracks like that's even worse like, oh, no, I couldn't possibly to do that and I'm like, okay, this is where the lever for changes, but this is the question of like, are you up for confronting your own stuff around perfectionism and saving people and like the pieces there, right?

[00:13:58] Paul: That even just, like, letting people experience the pain can itself be a, like, are you up for that? Like, whose idea was it to let this thing happen? Sort of thing. 

[00:14:09] Karen: And I think one of the things that can be helpful in that situation is to get really clear within yourself of what are the things I am willing to do.

[00:14:17] Karen: On an ongoing basis, like, or that supports I'm willing to offer. So, okay, guys, I think you're not functioning very well and things are falling through the cracks. I'm having to pick them up. Continuing to pick them up is not one of the things I'm willing to do. Funding for you to hire a coach and giving you a couple of names that you can choose from if you want to do that, that's a thing.

[00:14:35] Karen: So what are the things I am willing to do? What are the things I'm not willing to do as part of that work? And it's a big difference to say, okay, gang, if you want it, there's resources available for you. You let me know is very different than saying, you guys are a mess. This guy's coming in, you're going to get fixed, which is the thing that doesn't tend to work very well.

[00:14:57] Paul: I do think there is a piece there though, around being able to say, and this shows up a lot in the manager work that I do of, this is a problem that needs to be solved and I can't solve it totally on my own. I need you to be involved. And I expect that we can figure it out together and I'm expecting you to spend effort and time on it, right?

[00:15:20] Paul: You can actually set that. And then people get to figure out whether or not, again, they're up for it. And if they're not, and you're an organization like they may not continue to be there, right. Kind of thing. So I do think, you wanting them to change will not magically make it happen.

[00:15:35] Paul: There is a degree to which if you're the sponsor of this type of work, showing up in particular ways, increases the odds that they're going to get motivated to do it. You know, that they kind of go again, now they're starting to feel the pain, right? If you've been feeling it before of underperformance of these things are not happening, you're making them more aware of it.

[00:15:53] Paul: You're also creating the environment where you're offering them the support, but you're also setting the expectation. I think that's a thing where you can start to create a better chance that they're actually willing to do the work. But again, it's, eventually it's up to them. You can't just say you're going to do this thing and you're going to like it and expect that everything's just going to flow magically.

Concluding Thoughts

[00:16:15] Karen: So we started with the question of whose idea was this? And we're applying that to whose idea was it to bring in a coach, bring in a consultant, have a workshop or a retreat, set aside a bunch of time to work through things. I mean, there are lots of ways, but whose idea was it to seriously address these relationship issues that are getting in our way?

[00:16:34] Karen: And it matters because the people who are going to have to do the work have to be up for the work. And there are a lot of ways to kind of assess that, and there are ways to increase the odds that they will be, like letting them feel the pain themselves and not protecting them from it, and making your expectations absolutely clear so that they know if they're in trouble.

[00:16:56] Karen: That kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, they have to do the changing and in order for that to happen, they have to be willing or able or, you know, have the capacity and have the interest. And they have to want the change enough that it's worth it to them to do the really hard work that's going to be required.

[00:17:21] Karen: And so figuring that out before you put a lot of energy and time and possibly money into trying to get somebody else to change, we think is super important and better before the investment than after and looking back. So looking ahead as if I'm looking for change and I'm looking for somebody else to change, do they want it too?

[00:17:45] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:17:48] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.