Astromanager LLC

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Tag: Conflict

  • Recognizing our anxieties

    I was mowing my lawn the other day, lost in my own thoughts as I usually am when mowing the lawn, when I saw someone I didn’t know walking by.  I saw him watching me and I found myself thinking he’s probably wondering why I am mowing in such an inefficient pattern.  I wonder if I could do this better. It looks like it is about to storm at any moment, so I am trying to cover as much ground as I can before it starts to pour. Yes, my pattern is inefficient with respect to completing the lawn, but it is efficient with respect to getting more area mowed in a short amount of time….

    And then I had to stop and laugh when I realized the huge projection I had just made of my own needs and insecurities onto this random passerby. This stranger gave me no indication that he really was thinking about my inefficient mowing strategy. That was entirely my own projection. There are many things I could have thought, but didn’t:

    He’s probably hoping he gets back home in time before the rain starts.

    He’s probably glad he got his lawn mowed yesterday when it was dry.

    He’s probably wondering if I am going to continue mowing even when the downpour starts.

    Isn’t that a neighbor? Hi.

    and so on. Yet I didn’t think any of those things, I thought about my inefficiency, clearly indicating my own focus and hangups.

    lawnmower

    If the passerby had stopped to talk while I was still projecting, I might have offered a defense of why my apparent inefficient mowing strategy really was actually the most efficient thing I could be doing at that time. I might have said this even though the odds are this thought wasn’t even close to being on his mind.

    These assumptions and projections fill our lives and flavor our communications with people all the time.  Listen for them in yourself and in those you work with.  Understanding these assumptions can help you correct them in yourself to be more open to what others really have to say. They also illustrate the nature of the lenses you have on the world. What is important to you? How do you see and judge yourself?

    By listening for these assumptions and projections in others, you can tailor your words to both address their needs and get your point across in an easier way. When you find someone being defensive when you approach them about something, they are probably projecting their own anxieties on you. If you listen to what they are, you can better address them while adjusting your approach to get your issue in the mix, as well.

    Efficiency, as the vignette above demonstrates, is important to Scot. He is naturally keenly aware of time and does not like to see it wasted. While this fixation has some generally good consequences, it can also hamper his ability to spend a bit more time to explore a different path, get people settled, or discuss how people feel about a given action. Luckily, there are both (and more) types in the world for us all to learn from. And occasionally, Scot even remembers taking the time to do these things can actually end up being more efficient in the end than not doing them.

  • Learning from an amygdala hijack

    Last week I was hijacked.

    By my amygdala.

    I should have known better. I do know better. But last week, I didn’t prevent it when I could have and boom – I was hijacked by my amygdala.  An amygdala hijack (google the web for lots more on the subject) basically occurs when your adrenaline increases and you find yourself reacting in a far more emotional way than the situation warrants.  It is usually a sign of feeling threatened resulting in your amygdala kicking in to help you protect yourself. The result, at least in our modern world where we are more often confronted by an aggressive colleague rather than a saber-tooth tiger, is often an overreaction that can  cause more trouble and more long-lasting damage than the initial situation itself.

    The key to avoiding the amygdala hijack is to see it coming and stop it before it stops you. Listen to your feelings and ask yourself why you are feeling the way you are. In most cases, you can make yourself realize that you feel threatened in some way that probably wasn’t intended and you can work more calmly and more systematically to address the issue rather than jumping immediately and aggressively into fight or flight mode.  If you know what your hot buttons are, you can usually identify them as the cause for your high emotions and can then cancel the amygdala’s red alert and act more rationally.

    Image of a person probably rightfully under an amygdala hijack courtesy of http://fightorflightsurvival.blogspot.com/2012/11/mind-control.html.

    Alas, in one particular instance last week, I did none of this. I felt threatened and I attacked back.  Luckily, the “threat maker” stopped and took control of the situation, allowing me to see the hijacking that was going on and stop it.  In the end, I thanked my colleague for taking the time to do so, but I wished I had stopped it myself.  So, what happened?

    I had earlier received an email I did not like from this colleague.  I felt she (or maybe it was a he? 😉 ) was threatening my team and telling me what I was allowed to do with them.  That was not of course, what she meant, as it turns out, but this is one my hot buttons, and I got angry over the email and told myself that she was not going to get away with that. No one was going to limit the progress of my team.  Who does she think she is?  It was at this point that I should have caught myself. My reaction was over and above what was appropriate for the email. And it was an email after all; they are so easily misinterpreted that you should never get mad over an email. I knew that, but I did not stop myself. I allowed the hijacking to begin.  Seeing my hostile reaction, I should have stopped myself right there and asked myself what else my colleague could have meant in her email. If I were giving her the benefit of the doubt, what was she trying to tell me?  With this framework in mind, I should have talked to her at the next opportunity to see what she really meant. If necessary, I could calmly indentify my fears and help her understand the performance and independence of my team are important to me, but that probably would not have been necessary; she was not threatening me or my team at all, but I didn’t see that. I was being hijacked.

    So, the next day when our paths crossed in the hall, I was still annoyed at this email so when she asked me what I thought about it, I got aggressive.  It briefly escalated from there as I told her that she couldn’t tell me how to run my team, etc., until she took a breath and started a sentence with something like “Scot, I’m feeling a little bit … now” and started to tell me how she was feeling about our interaction.  The adrenaline was still pumping in me (I could feel my heart beating), so I wasted no time in telling her how I was feeling, as well.  It wasn’t nice, but acknowledging why I was feeling angry started my hijack recovery process. It was the step I should have taken when I got that earlier email.  (And in hindsight, my colleague’s “I feel” statement seems like a very good way to respond to an amygdala hijack in someone else.)  I started to calm down and realize what just happened.  I began to realize why I was upset and how that was not really a result of anything my colleague had actually said or done.  I was able to calm down and listen and talk to my colleague in the way I normally do to solve problems for mutual benefit. After a few more moments, we got to the core of the issue and reached a good agreement.  Where only a few moments ago, I was ready to go to battle with this person, I now felt we had formed a successful partnership in understanding and meeting our mutual needs.

    What a great outcome that I would have missed out on completely had my colleague not helped me tame my amygdala. I am grateful to her for doing so and I made a note to myself to pay more attention to these situations in the future. Watch my emotions, watch where they are coming from, and when I feel that rush of adrenaline when there isn’t a wild animal leaping towards me, take a step back and address the issue calmly.

    As an enneagram 3, being in touch with his emotions is not one of Scot’s natural strengths. Being so, however, has great benefits both personally and professionally, so it is an area he constantly works to improve, with some success and the occasional setback.

  • Superficial pleasantries vs. honest relationship building

    In my last post, I discussed some thoughts from reading Conger, Lawler, and Finegold’s Corporate Boards book. Here is something else that caught my eye in that book that has near universal applicability -not just to corporate (or observatory) boards.

    In a section of the book on how boards can/should review themselves, the authors write about why most boards don’t end up reviewing themselves in any meaningful way:

    There was a concern it might cause disharmony in the group. It was that primitive notion of what creates more effective teams. ‘Effective’ teams in this case, are where you skirt issues of difficulty, or personal differences. It’s more like ‘We want to be able to have a drink together and like each other’ as opposed to ‘If we confront ourselves on real issues, we’ll deepen the relationship.’

    There’s not much more that needs to be said after the authors’ summary.  Too often people, managers, team leaders, team members, employees, fail to raise an issue for fear of being confrontational, of being thought of as not nice.  There’s a common (mis)perception that if we confront people, if we speak up when something is wrong, then we are not being nice; we are not being good colleagues; we are poisoning the congenial atmosphere. This attitude is, of course, silly, as the above passage points out.  By not confronting the real issue, by not making these tough decisions, we may establish a superficial pleasantness, but we don’t ever dig any deeper and build real understanding that leads everyone to peak performance and a more satisfying environment.

    Confronting people does not make you tough or mean. You can confront someone in a mean, objectifying way, or you can confront people in a helpful, supportive, personal way.  We’ve all heard of stories (usually told of great managers) who fired someone only to have them return some time later and be quite successful. Were these people fired in a mean-spirited, impersonal way? Probably not. They were probably fired with sincerity, reflecting on the fact that their employment in their current role was not only not working, but was of little benefit to either party.  They were fired with honesty.   They thus created the opportunity to learn from life’s problems.  Firing, reviewing, confronting someone with malice or dishonesty at heart does not provide a foundation from which anything greater can develop.

    Same behavior, different attitude. You can “be mean” and confront someone or you can “be nice” and confront someone.  Honest confrontation meant to improve the relationship, the teamwork, and the results is not only healthy, but necessary for high performance.   Skirting around the interpersonal issues gives you two people who can go drink together, but who won’t ever build a bond and a team that will lead to greatness.


    While Scot hopes he will never be fired with either good or bad intentions, he does look forward to opportunities to develop an honest, deeper understanding with his colleagues, although seizing these moments is still not always as easy as he would like.

  • Healthy Conflcit

    I recently picked up a copy of A Grand and Bold Thing by Ann Finkbeiner. It’s a book about the original Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). I actually haven’t read it yet, so I’ll probably say more about the book later, but I have had some fun flipping through the pages and reading/re-living various random passages and episodes. One thing I noticed by this quick perusal is that Finkbeiner seems to have chosen to focus her book on Jim Gunn (of course) and the Princeton / FermiLab tension that defined the project for a large part of its life. Upon reflecting on this choice, I realized there was no shortage of conflict within the SDSS and not limited to these two powerhouses. Yet, when I remember the years I spent with the SDSS, conflict is not one of the first things I think about.

    No, instead I think about people’s drive and dedication to the project. I think about a group of people faced with a limited amount of time and money doing whatever it took to get their shared project done. I think about a talented group of people making each other better. And yes, I think of conflict, but a conflict born out of this shared mission, a drive to succeed, and ultimately, enough trust in each other that discordant views could be aired and the right answer would get chosen, regardless of its origin. I even remember instances where conflict was created as a mehanism to help spur progress.

    So yes, there was conflict, Plenty of it.  Did people get bent out of shape, angry, annoyed? Did some people cross the line and make personal attacks? Did things sometimes get out of hand? Yes, yes, yes. And certainly some of this conflict could have, should have even, been avoided, but my point here is that for this project, conflict worked very well. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey was (and still is) an unmitigated success.

    That conflict was so alive and flourishing I take as a sign of a healthy organization where trust and security were high enough to allow open conflict.

    I certainly don’t generally condone creating conflict to try and improve productivity (although it can have its instances). What I do condone, though, is creating an atmosphere where conflict can and does naturally arise. Only when people are being honest with each other, have passion about what they are doing, and are generally united with a common ultimate goal in mind, does healthy conflict arise. Before you try creating conflict, try creating an atmosphere of trust and security. Seek out and listen to dissenting views. Fix the system, not the person, when mistakes are made. Establish a culture of openness and trust. Help people feel secure enough in their positions to know that mistakes are not personal failings and that false harmony is not the key to a productive workforce.  These things will create an atmosphere where honest conflict can arise, pushing, pushing, pushing at the boundaries of your project to do things better, faster, cheaper.  If you don’t have open conflict, you probably don’t have a very high performing organization.

    Another thing I think about when I think about the SDSS is the difference between projects and institutions. Projects have a limited set or resources and time to complete a task. They therefore have to be focused and directed or else their project will fail. Institutions don’t have these same constraints.With a more or less guaranteed stream of funds, they merely have to do better this year than last year. Things can wait for an institution where they can’t in a project. What’s even more interesting here, though, is that there is nothing preventing institutions from acting like projects, despite their more steady funding. I think adopting many of a project’s methods and mentalities will help propel an institution to continued excellence and to not be content with simple steady improvement.

    Scot remembers one of his first days with the SDSS. Standing around the breakfast table, he commented how exciting it was to be involved in the project at the such an early stage (official survey operations having not yet started). A visiting, real longterm Sloanie simply laughed and said that this was actually closer to the end of the project than it was the beginning. A very valuable perspective was thus quickly gained.

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