Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman

Author:Daniel Goleman [Goleman, Daniel & Boyatzis, Richard & McKee, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781591391845
Published: 2004-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

BUILDING

EMOTIONALLY

INTELLIGENT

ORGANIZATIONS

CHAPTER NINE

THE EMOTIONAL REALITY

OF TEAMS

T HE TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM of a manufacturing firm had accepted an important charge: to find ways to address the fact that the firm was perennially locked in what they called “flat growth.” Translation: They were losing their edge. The trouble was, the team simply could not seem to make big decisions, no matter how important. In fact, the more urgent the decision, the more the team members would put off making it, careful to avoid topics on which they knew they disagreed. Worse yet, they sometimes acted as if they did agree on key issues, only to leave the meeting and, as one person put it, “quietly sabotage the decision.” Meanwhile, the manufacturing firm fell more and more behind on implementing crucial strategy.

What was going on with this team? Through a leadership audit of the team members, the truth came out: Virtually every one of them was uncomfortable with interpersonal disagreements, scoring low on the conflict management EI competence. Suddenly the reason for the team’s inability to make decisions was obvious. It had never come to the collective realization that open discussion and disagreements about ideas—as opposed to attacks on people who hold disparate views—sharpen decision making. Instead, the team had adopted the habit of avoiding all disputes.

For this group, recognizing that their shared gap had resulted in inefficient team habits was like a light going on. In fact, what they had discovered was an important, but invisible, force acting on the team: The ground rules regarding conflict and their collective feelings about it added up to an emotional reality that paralyzed them. With that insight, they could see what they as a team—and as individuals—needed to change; further, they recognized that beyond a behavioral adjustment, a real solution would require a shift in mindset about conflict.

We’ve seen repeatedly that when teams (and entire organizations) face their collective emotional reality, they begin a healthy reexamination of the shared habits that create and hold that reality in place. In fact, for leaders to extend emotional intelligence throughout their teams and organizations, that’s precisely where they need to start: by taking a hard look at reality, rather than focusing first on an ideal vision. Thus the sequence of reflection and self-discovery is reversed from what it was at the individual level, described in chapter 7.

Why the reversal? It’s a matter of motivation. As individuals, we feel most motivated to change when we tap into our dreams and ideal visions of our lives. That vision of our personal future gives us the energy and commitment to change our behavior. The ideal vision for a group, however, is often a much more distant concept, so it simply doesn’t provide enough motivation to instigate change. A good example is the lofty language found in company mission statements, which often feels light-years away from employees’ day-to-day experiences at work.

Groups begin to change only when they first have fully grasped the reality of how they function, particularly when individuals in the group recognize that they’re working in situations that are dissonant or uncomfortable.

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