I have almost finished reading The Leadership Challenge, by Kouzes and Posner. This week we read about Enabling Others to Act and Encouraging the Heart.
As I process through these chapters, there are a number of points that the authors make that directly apply to a situation that I was talking with a friend about last week. We are going to call my friend Jim, so that if someone googles his name this story won't come up and hurt his office.
Jim is the manager of a staff of 5. He is a clinician and supervises two other clinicians at his same level (essentially, though Jim is the preeminent clinician in his field and is the most senior of his staff). He also supervises three technical support roles. Jim works in the military - he is a civilian, and his staff are civilians, but they serve soldiers. The problem with this is that due to the heirarchical nature of the military, Jim didn't have any "real" power over his staff - in the sense of firing and other disciplinary actions. Unfortunately for Jim, his office was having some "real" problems - and he needed to solve them in a positive way.
Jim, his wife, and I were talking about this earlier this summer. The problems in his clinic were:
* communication difficulties between the clinicians and the techs
* poor quality work as a result of the poor communication
* finger pointing and a lack of ownership of projects and product
* possessive nature of different areas of the office
* lack of a "team" atmosphere due to new members and new office situation that reduced casual interactions between team members
* one specific tech/clincian relationship which was in great tension and disarray
I told Jim about some teambuilding and communication that our cohort had done earlier this year. In one class our professor took us through an excercise where we each had a chance to speak about the things in our group that were a problem, and then we each had a chance to speak about the things that were good. And then we set some expectations for behavior to address some of the issues. I also mentioned some other ways that team building could be done - i.e. manufacturing interaction time in the form of staff lunches and regular meetings to get everyone on the same page, staff "fun" activities as well.
Jim's response was admirable. One of the things I learned about leadership from him in this conversation we had was that a good leader is a learner as much as a teacher. Jim was really interested in solving these problems, because his office was suffering and so was his sanity, but more importantly he realized that to solve the problems he was going to have to humble himself and ask for suggestions from others. I think sometimes leaders think that they need to have all the solutions when if we humbled ourselves and asked around we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
As the conversation progressed, Jim caught the vision for what we were all talking about and decided to implement some changes in his office immediately. Some things can't be changed - for example, he can't change the location of the clinic and the tech's offices. The design was too expensive and "state of the art" to make any changes to proximity of individuals. Additionally, his preference was not to fire anyone if possible - for a number of reasons (stability and workload of remaining staff, belief that the individuals in the office are capable of doing great work, etc).
Prior to this discussion, Jim had arranged the Techs and Clinicians into pairs or teams - each one working with another on a regular basis. Jim's wife suggested that rather than always having the same two work together, the techs took on rotating tasks, for a month each. That way they were always working on their skills on a variety of areas, they were not getting bored with one type of skill or task, and they encountered all the clinicians (and all the clinicians encountered all the techs). That way if there was a problem with one individual it would be more noticeable because it would affect either all three clinicians or all three techs - and would not look like just one clinician complaining about one tech's behavior (or vice versa). This initial suggestion was pretty revolutionary in the field, and so we talked about innovation and the idea of creating something that was bigger than just this particular clinic.
I really like process improvement. I love thinking the best way in the world something can be done (I'm a developer and arranger) and then implementing it (I'm also an activator) and seeing if it will work. I love the idea that the solution may be unique and may help other people improve their processes as well. I think we were all pretty jazzed about thinking outside the box regarding how the office was set up to run. This led us to discuss Jim himself stepping out of a clinician role into more of a coach/consultant role (and replacing himself with a less senior clinician who could be trained up and sent out) - then Jim could consult and work with difficult cases and step in when people were over their heads, but could also be better equipped to handle the administration of the office.
To continue... Jim went to work the next day and called a team meeting for the following day. He told them to clear their afternoon for that day and he ordered in lunch for the staff. At the meeting he discussed the fact that he was aware there were complaints on either side of the office. He took responsibility for this situation, because his expectations had not been presented clearly. And then he asked them to talk about what they did not like about working in the office, what problems they had, and asked them all to listen to the others. He wrote these complaints and issues up on a big note pad at the front of the room. And added any issues that he had heard before but which didn't come up in the conversation. He later told me that they went around the table 6 times completely before the group was spent of complaints. Then he had them go around and talk about what they liked about working there.
After this, he presented his expectations for the office. He had prepared a number of them in advance, and in large part they addressed the issues that were brought up with some new processes for paperwork and documentation which held different members of the teams accountable for giving the correct information to their teammates. To this the team contributed other expectations, giving them some buy in into the process and the solutions.
When I was reading The Leadership Challenge this week, K and P discussed fostering accountablity in the organizationn and modeling the behaviors to you hope to see. I think setting expectations for Jim's office was a great way to begin to foster accountability. By incorporating solutions to current goads as expectations for behavior, there is a now a way to give appropriate positive and negative feedback as needed.
This process has helped Jim's staff to work together. And it had another benefit. It has also helped to identify individuals who are either unable (due to lack of skills) or unwilling to conform to the group's expectations and behaviors. This has created another issue that would be discussed in later journals - any maybe they will be, but not today.
However, there was a follow up conversation as Jim reported the results to me. He, his wife and I discussed the value of recognizing contributions to the team. Kim, his wife, mentioned how valuable it could be to identify the positive contributions individuals are making and try to insert a reward system. She even mentioned that if they had to they could find a way out of their own money (if he didn't have any funds at the clinic) to make some meaningful rewards.
K and P discussed that two in the "Encourage the Heart" section. They talked about the importance of recognizing contributions to the team. The first its important to start with clear standards (check) and then give positive feedback. One suggestion I really liked was an example of a "brag board" where the supervisor posts notes of acclaim or praise about specific individuals on a bulletin board that everyone can see - I thought that might be a great place to post pictures of service men with their prostheses and their techs and clinicians, and/or letters that were written by servicemen or their families, so that the reward of working with people is always at the forefront of the minds of the staff.
The last few things to mention were things I heard at church and read in Parker Palmer's book (Let Your Life Speak):
* Parker says, "A leader is someone with the power to project either shadow or light onto some part of the world and onto the lives of the people who dwell there.... A good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good." (p.78)
* and... "I now know myself to be a person of weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it, but to embrace all of it." (p.70)
The last note I have for today is: Sometimes to be a leader you have to sacrifice and give even when you are at your most tired, or when you think you have nothing left to give.
That is what I learned last week at Line Camp. :)
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