When you’re so right that you’re wrong: a human tale of engagement
Ever been to this meeting? You are looking forward to a review of work that you and your team, composed of people from multiple disciplines and organizations, have in progress. You join the remote meeting or plop into a chair in the conference room ready to start. The agenda has been shared, content prepared and reviewed. The meeting starts according to plan.
And then…. a colleague hijacks the agenda and challenges a fundamental conclusion. She could be right. Hard to tell without more facts. She is inflexible in her contention. Another colleague rejects the point of view – he is the architect of the current work in progress. He starts asking clarifying questions with an aggressive tone – really heading toward arguing. The discussion veers away from facts and pings to opinions about the topic. Two other people in the room watch the match, not terribly interested in anything except when the drama will end.
Before you know it – or maybe every minute has been excruciating – half the meeting time is wasted. AI can’t help you now.
You’re the most senior person in the room. How do you react?
Are you frustrated that the meeting is following a different path?
Are you intrigued by an alternate point of view?
Are you irritated by the tone and manner for how this is going?
How do you get any real work done in this precious hour?
I’ve been to this meeting many times, and I feel all of those things and more every time. I do not like it when the plan veers to the side, and I like it even less when I have to spend time sorting out egos. But when operating in teams of people, these are required skills.
This scenario is an object lesson in getting to aligned outcomes, especially in organizations under pressure for results. Whether it is a large or small organization, the cross-generational nature of teams means more than ever. You need the wisdom and capacity to keep people aligned to the mission, to the outcome, to the next step.
My team and I collaborate constantly with both IT and business teams, most often marketing, customer experience, and customer service groups. Perhaps not surprisingly, the same human issues come up in both kinds of teamwork.
We depend on three essential techniques to keep people aligned and moving forward whether the topic is how to implement agent assist technologies in a call center or how to coach business agility.
We depend on the following:
Your Listening Ears: It Never Pays to be Didactic
This type of meeting happens a lot when a team member is new to the group or feels they haven’t been heard. It also happens when one person in the room believes they are right to the exclusion of all else. The irony in most situations is that it is very difficult to be the only “right” person in the room and walk away with a win. It is rare that there is only one right way. It is a lot more effective to think about what the end game needs to be, and collaborate with people to move in that direction, especially in organizations that aspire to be people-centric.
The path out may be as simple as accommodating a stakeholder or as complex as recognizing something that was not considered. No matter the origin, it is key to listen and sort through quickly what is going on. A favorite client of mine, Betsy, has a habit of listening carefully to the dialogue, jumping in quickly and asking the challenger, “I am interested in your point of view, can you say some more about...”
By framing interest and then a specific line of inquiry, she achieves a reset quickly, while maintaining a path back to the central topic. This approach to adaptability is useful and is a hallmark of agile ways of working. It can be hard to listen when it feels like a meeting is going off track – but getting to the heart of the matter quickly allows a reset for both the subject and team’s engagement.
Beware Ego Traps: Know the Players and How to Support Them
Ego is a big player in every team environment.
Most if not all people want to do good work, contribute to a positive outcome, and feel valued along the way. Knowing your stakeholders, sponsors, experts, and community is a fundamental piece of getting agreement on change. People are willing to align their point of view if it plays into their sense of self-worth.
For some people, this comes from within – sometimes that is where the “have to be right” comes from. Other times it is from insecurity and wanting to be sure they look good in front of others. Either way, don’t argue. It won’t get you anywhere.
Understanding where someone is coming from in terms of the content and the context of where they are in the organization will help you adjust the message and/or the output. If we go back to the top and understand that everyone wants to be right, and everyone has some ego on the line, then what really gets people excited is when they are right and they achieve the successes they are looking for.
AI and frameworks won’t get you here either – this comes down to how well you interact with and support the players on the field. And their egos.
Understanding Patterns of Success: The Context You’re In Trumps Frameworks Every Time
Every client organization is an ecosystem of people, roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Beyond driving ego traps, it also drives patterns of success. One of the things our team does whenever we launch work with a new client is understand not just failure and challenges but what is considered a success… and why.
That understanding of culture and context is a critical piece of supporting teams on their journeys to outcomes. We will select options from different framework – the most popular lately have been Scrum and Kanban – and tailor them to the unique circumstances at the client organization.
Now, let’s return to our meeting off the rails and the team member that has to be right. We pivot to getting real work done by increasing engagement – even if it slows us down a bit. It can be frustrating, but by tuning in to the people that own the output, we can drive to real results faster, more predictably, and with the right engagement.
A hot topic in our world lately is whether or not Agile frameworks achieve results. I always give the same answer: frameworks are a guide. They can work, but a lot depends on the culture and context. That’s why we focus on practices like listening, and adaptability.
The most effective approach is to understand where you are and where you need to go, then fit the practices you need to achieve your goals. For many of the environments my team and I work with, the practices vary. They have to be based on each environment. A precursor for being adaptable and collaborating is engagement – how to get engagement from the team in the meeting, even when it goes off the rails. While it is never a great experience, it is a real one, a human one – and figuring out how to get people engaged and aligned is how you get the real work done.
As you consider your own experiences with your organization, what engagement challenges are you struggling with? Whether your team’s situation is basic, hard, or ridiculously complex, solutions are out there.
If any of this resonates with you or your organization, take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges.
Blue Orbit Consulting guides you through methods that will transform your IT team and contact center’s operations into a world-class experience.
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I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.