I’ve been reflecting on sessions recently and realising that most workplace misunderstandings don’t begin with a disagreement. I think they begin much earlier than that, in the split second where we decide what somebody else’s behaviour means. Where we silently ‘guess’ their intent.
It’s something we all do, often without realising it. A colleague asks lots of questions and we assume they don’t trust us. Someone challenges our idea and we decide they’re trying to trip us up. A manager asks us to revisit a piece of work, and we conclude that we’re in trouble or nothing we do is ever good enough.
Within milliseconds we’ve created a story. But we rarely stop to ask ourselves if it’s actually true.
I hear this kind of thing a lot when I’m coaching leaders and teams. Someone will describe a colleague as controlling, difficult or indecisive. But as we start exploring what’s really happening, it often becomes clear that both people are working towards exactly the same outcome. They’re just approaching it in different ways.
I’ll use a fairly obvious example here, two teammates preparing an important proposal for a client. One wants to send it today because in their eyes ‘it’s a good piece of work’, the client is waiting and they want to keep momentum. The other wants another day because they can already see things that could be better and need headspace to make it right.
Neither person is trying to be awkward. Both care about doing a good job. One is protecting speed and momentum, the other is protecting quality and excellence. You can probably see how this story begins.
“Why are they holding everything up, it’s good to go and we could be here polishing this all day while the client waits, what a pointless exercise?”
“Why are they happy sending something that isn’t quite ready? Don’t they have any pride in their work, if we rush this, we could fumble the whole process and lose the deal because we didn’t do it properly”
Stepping back, this conversation isn’t really about the proposal anymore. It’s about each person’s natural way of approaching the work and the meaning they’ve attached to their teammate’s opposing approach.
When I’m chatting through a scenario like this with a client, I tend to pop in the question “What else could be true here?” I really like this question because it interrupts the story and challenges the client to consider other perspectives. Taking the heat out. The conversation usually changes and we achieve chinks of light from the frustration that turn into curiosity e.g. maybe they’re not being difficult, maybe they believe they’re protecting our reputation or maybe they have a strong need to keep promises and deliver early.
One of the tools I use to help teams have these conversations is The GC Index®, I’ve been using it for about 5 years now and I’ve seen it transform communication in a team. It gives a shared language to describe how each person naturally likes to create impact and we get to a place where behaviours that once felt frustrating suddenly make sense. If you’re curious, have a little mooch online or contact me, I’ll happily explain how it works because let’s face it, behaviours in others can be frustrating if we can’t make sense of them. This provides the clarity. The person driving for the deadline isn’t impatient. The person asking questions isn’t intending to make life hard. The person with lots of ideas doesn’t want to derail the conversation. I’ve seen teams move from visible irritation to genuine appreciation because they can understand what sits behind behaviour.
If using The GC Index® isn’t in the budget yet, there’s a simple exercise you can try the next time you find yourself replaying a difficult conversation (or you find yourself mediating between team members).
First think back to what happened and first look at it through your own eyes. What were you trying to achieve and what mattered most to you?
Next imagine stepping into the other person’s shoes. What were they trying to protect? What pressures were influencing them? What outcome mattered most to them?
Lastly, imagine you’re watching the conversation from across the room, like a fly on the wall. No taking sides, just observe and notice what’s happening. What assumptions is each person making? What story has each person created about the other? (it’s good to notice body language, phrases and any other social queues here).
This exercise is all about perspectives. Remember the question ‘is that true?’…this does the same, chiselling a gap in the ‘story’ so it isn’t quite so watertight and different preferred impacts can be realised. Not because anyone was right or wrong, but because both people were trying to solve the same problem… just differently.
My final thoughts here…healthy teams aren’t the ones who never disagree, they’re the ones that’ve learnt how to communicate well and are prepared to challenge the story to work better together. It’s the way forward!