5: Workforce Management Rebuild and Building Relationship Foundations

Welcome: 00:00

Welcome to Leader's Lift Episode 5: Workforce Mgmt Rebuild and Relationship Building Foundations

Intro

This is the first of a series of episodes where I'll be talking about relationships and team building and how we as leaders can get more meaning out of relationships in all aspects of our lives. If you listened to the first few episodes you will see that this is a follow on to the series about knowing yourself. If you have yet to listen to those episodes you should go back and do that as doing so will help you understand some of the concepts I'll be covering today.

As always we will start off with story time and today I'll share a professional experience I had that is all about relationships and understanding ourselves and others. For today's little lift recommendation I'll share one of the core books I use with all of my teams. And then we will dive into some foundational elements of relationship building.

By the end of this episode you should have a better idea of how to enhance those relationships most important to you and a bit of insight into how to work on relationships that maybe aren't going the way they need to.

Pre-roll

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Story time: 01:39

A few years into a management assignment in a fast growing call center, I was tasked with helping turn the workforce management team around. For those not familiar with the term, the workforce management team was the responsible for all scheduling in the call center. So to the call center agents, this was the team that had control over their work life. If you needed a break, they made the decision. When you requested vacation, same thing. If you needed a schedule change, also fell to this team. In a lot of organizations, this team really struggles to build relationships with the agents as well as the rest of the management team. Our organization was no exception.

When I started to dive into the problems, I realized that there were two key issues. First, they were not functioning as a team and second, they did not have good relationships with the management team (or anyone really for that matter). Amongst the team and then also between the team and the rest of the org there was too much tension and more of a rivalry instead of collaboration. That had to change.

So what did we do? I started by covering the concepts in Patrick Lencioni's book The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team (link in the show notes). The way I covered the various topics allowed us to address some of the cooperation issues amongst the team, helped us get on the same page as to what it was we were really trying to accomplish and then what were the guidelines we were going to follow to get there. Everyone agreed that we wanted to function better as a team and improve our relationship with the rest of the org. We also wanted to find better, more efficient ways to help the center reach it's operational objectives.

It's amazing how much a 2-3 hour session with the team allowed us to get on the same page and start moving forward. That's probably the first lesson I would pass on here. If you start off on the right foot, you can immediately start making progress. Now, that doesn't mean we didn't have problems going forward but we walked out of that meeting with a different attitude and it was immediately obvious to the rest of the center.

Lesson number two is that getting the team on the same page as far as goals and objectives was a key to allowing them to start building productive relationships amongst themselves. Using the 5 Dysfunctions core elements allowed us to have common vocabulary, goals and tools and helped us to start collaborating with each other instead of just each person thinking they could take care of their own puzzle pieces and everything would be fine.

Lesson 3 - Before we went too far down the road, we got the rest of the management team on board with our goals and objectives. Again, this didn't take an act of congress but was simply a single meeting where the team took management through our goals and objectives and the high level plan for how we were going to get there.

Lesson 4 - all of the progress we made was based on building trust (subject of the next episode) amongst ourselves and with others. We did that by defining what trust was, allowing everyone to have a voice, committing to our agreements and then holding each other accountable. With the rest of the organization, we also encouraged them to hold us accountable when we weren't meeting our commitments or handling things the way we agreed to.

It would be nice to say that everything was resolved immediately, but that wasn't the case. This really just set the foundation on which we could build. The rest of the progress was made as we worked together day by day to meet our goals. Overtime, the entire center gained a better understanding of what the workforce management team did and how they contributed to organization success. There was a significant decrease in the fear that was initially present anytime you asked workforce management for something that might be considered out of the ordinary.

Agents were still upset when they got declined for vacation. Managers were frustrated when team meetings were shifted or cancelled at the last minute. But those types of things started happening much less frequently as the teams learned to work together to make things happen.

Little Lift: 05:28

So after the story above, I think I probably should recommend the book I referred to. So that's The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. I don't know how many times I've read or taught the principles in this book. If you counted the number of teams I've managed, it would be more than that. I use this for the foundation of any team I can. I've even talked my family through most of it, if in a less formal way. On work teams, anytime a new team member joins, we go through this (except the team teaches it vs. me). If you are on a team (professional or otherwise) or especially if you lead one, this is a must read.

Relationships is So Important: 06:04

I don't think there is anything more important in life than our relationships with ourselves and with others.

Relationships are part of everything we do. Home, family, work, church, community even the local grocery store can be about relationships. The better we get at building and managing our relationships the more we can get out of life. Managing relationships could mean backing off of some relationships and enhancing others. From a professional standpoint, the number one reason individuals stay at or leave a job is their relationship with their manager. If I think about my personal life, I can 100% tell you that when my relationship with my wife is solid, everything else is so much more manageable. When we are not on the same page, life is more difficult.

As important as relationships are, it ahs been my experience that the majority of people are not deliberate about their relationships. In most cases, we are deliberate in choosing who we marry. That might be one of the biggest exceptions. Beyond that, if the money is right, people may overlook working for a manager they just can't connect with. When it comes to friends, how many of our friendships "just happen"? Beyond choosing which relationships are part of our lives, how many people that you know put deliberate effort into their relationships? I'm talking about more than just making sure my wife and I have a weekly date night where we can go to dinner, Temple or just spend time together. And more than just checking in with our friends on occasion to make sure they are doing well. Do we try to improve communication lines? Do we know what others need from our relationship? Do we know what we need from the relationship? Those are just a few questions we should be asking ourselves in regards to our key relationships. It's unfortunate that our lives are so busy and full that we just submit to whatever may come rather than be much more deliberate in the one area that probably more than any other will determine how our lives turn out.

Not all relationships are created equal. I'm not saying that we need to work to build deep meaningful relationships with the cashier at the grocery story. But there something as simple as using their name and saying thank you will help build enough of a relationship that you can both have a positive experience. But think about those that you consider or would like to be your closest friends? How about your spouse or key colleagues? Is it worth putting some deliberate effort into those relationships?

Over the last several months I have found that my wife and I have spent more time just talking about the situations we are facing in our lives. In the past, I think we were both so busy that we just kind of tackled things as needed. We would talk but it was different. It was more of hey this is what is going on with the kids and what we need to do or I have this challenge at work and this is what I'm going to do about it. For the most part it worked out but I do think there were times that if we had stopped and done a better job of communication we might have done things differently. Now we actually spend a lot of time just talking about the situations we face and not jumping so quickly into immediate action. It is a different dynamic in our relationship.

Another thing I have tried to do to enhance our relationship is to be more present when we are out to dinner. Just the other day we were eating at a restaurant and I had two conversations going on my phone. I apologized for the distraction but I just wasn't as present as I could have been. Its one of the first times she has finished eating before me. This was a good reminder to me of how I have spent the last several years or more really trying to push aside work and other distractions when we were out. For a long time I just had her put my cell phone in her purse. That meant we could have a conversation without too many distractions.

This is a good example of what I mean by being deliberate. Even after years of practice and working on it I still have to deliberately put in the effort or I end up right back into an old habit. Think about how the simple act of trying to be more present when talking to or engaging with key relationships could positively impact those interactions.

Give this concept some thought. Think about the most important relationship in your life. Do you know why it's important? How solid do you feel the relationship is? How do you think the other party feels about it? Are both of your lives better or more challenging because of the relationship? Hopefully something in this episode will help you take the lead in enhancing a key relationship.

Mid-Roll

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der Impact Your Relationships: 10:42

Since this podcast is about leadership in all aspects of life, hopefully you are starting to think about how you as a leader can impact your relationships. In a professional environment, you would think that someone with a leadership title should be able to significantly influence relationships. Same with a parent or spouse. That is absolutely true. No matter what you do, you will influence those relationships. The question is will you impact them in the way you want or just let things happen?

Think about this: how much time do you spend preparing for a vacation? I have a good friend that likes to make lists of lists to prepare for a trip. When we used to travel for work it used to make me chuckle when she told me how many lists she had gone through to get ready. There are a lot of folks like that.

What amazes me is that many of those same individuals (I'm not talking about this friend of mine) will put in all that time to plan a trip but will rarely think about or plan ways to improve the most significant relationships in their lives.

So here are a few suggestions that you can apply to all of the relationships in your life. I'm going to make the assumption that these relationships are productive or life enhancing and not life draining. If you have relationships that are having that much of a negative impact on your life, that's a whole other ballgame.

First, you need to have a good understanding of who you are and at least a high level understanding of who they are. This is crucial for a successful relationship. What do I mean by this? For you, I think it's absolutely critical to know what your goals and motivations are and to have a good understanding of your personality style and all that entails. Then you need to apply some of those same principles to better understanding others.

If you haven't listed to the previous episodes on the what's, whys and hows of knowing yourself better, it might be a good idea to go back and start there. But assuming you have a foundation of what it means to know yourself better and how to do so, I'll move on.

Getting to know yourself better will impact how you view the key relationships in your life. You will start to understand the ups and downs better than you have in the past. You might realize why certain interactions went well and others did not. You might get a better understanding of why you struggle to communicate with certain individuals and with others it just seems natural. Those are just a couple of ideas but let's talk about a few examples.

Let's try a professional relationship type first and that's working with someone that has authority over you. This could be a boss/manager/leader etc. Here I'm going to make an assumption that you are not working for the kind of manager that just wants you to do what they say, no questions asked. If you find yourself in that scenario, you first deliberate action should be to try and find another opportunity. Putting that aside, if you are working for a good manager or even a leader here are a few things you can do.

After you have a good grasp on your own style, strengths and potential pitfalls, do your homework and get to understand them better. What is there personality style (you can at least make a guess based on what you know about yourself or if you have a good relationship ask them what their style is or if they would take an assessment (there are a lot of free ones they could take and just get the results)? What motivates them? What are their goals and objectives? On this one try don't only focus on their professional objectives. You don't need to deep dive into their personal life but you want to have an idea of how work affects their life outside of work.

A lot of people might be hesitant to even try this with a manager. If I was your manager, I would love to have this conversation with you. Here is how I would like to see the conversation go:

First, start off by letting them know that you have been trying to better understand yourself and why (to better focus on where I want to go in life, to improve key relationships, etc.). As you are going through this process you are identifying the key relationships that could have the biggest impact and want to leverage them to their fullest. That sets the stage and indicates to them that the relationship between the two of you can have a big impact.

Once the stage has been set you can start asking them some of the key questions mentioned above. Things like "I know I have a tendency to put a lot of detail into my emails. Is that useful for you? Is there a way that I could improve my written communication with you?" are good ways for you to show that you recognize that there are things you can do to improve your relationship Another great topic is for you to restate what you believe their key objectives are and ask for them to clarify or add to them. That leads right into you letting them know that you want to make sure you are doing your part to help with those objectives.

These are just a few examples. This won't be a one time conversation but once you have started down this path, I have found that most leaders will be open to continuing the conversation and evolving how you work together.

This is a good example of how you can be more deliberate in improving or enhancing a key professional relationship in your life. And if you are currently looking for a new opportunity or just starting one, this kind of an approach can help you get off to a great start.

How about building relationships with your peers? Depending on the type of organization you work for, this could be almost be as important as the relationship with your leader. The good news here is that you can use some of the same principles with your peers as you did with your manager. Learning what their goals and objectives are, what they might be struggling with and how you can help them are all good things. The one additional thing you might consider is getting to know them a bit more on a personal level. How much is really up to you and should depend on the situation. But if you are working side by side (even virtually) with someone for 40 hours a week, it might be good to have at least something you can talk about besides what you are working on.

I shared in another episode how I couldn't really know all 100+ call center agents that well but that knowing just a little bit helped me build some rapport with them.

It's also good for you to understand a little bit about their personality styles. Not to keep hammering on introvert vs. extrovert but it's such a simple example. If everyone is having a stressful day and lunch time comes around, an extrovert might think it's a great idea for everyone to go grab lunch together to unwind. But remember that a group lunch may just add additional stress to an introvert. Instead of insisting they go or excluding them, you can say something like "A bunch of us are going to go grab lunch. We just want to get out of here. I know that group lunches aren't always your thing but we wanted to make sure you know you are welcome. If you'd rather pass, could we bring you back something?" An approach like this lets them know they are welcome but that you also recognize that they may have different needs from the others.

They key here is that you are taking deliberate actions to meet the needs of others and this is one of the best way to enhance a relationship.

Let's try and tackle friendships. Relationships with friends are super interesting because for the most part you can choose your friends, but these are one type of relationship where you may be more hesitant to make significant changes. But let me suggest that this can also be one of the most impactful of all relationships (probably second only to the relationship with your spouse). I've seen this happen over and over again with teenagers and young adults. Settling in with a friend or group of friends can dramatically alter their path, for better or for worse.

So how do we ensure that our friend relationships enhance our lives. First we should be deliberate about who we allow to have that much influence in our lives. You should definitely seek those that have similar values and worthy goals in life. Then you need to consider the impact individuals have. You want to look for those that lift you up, are willing to allow you to be yourself and who support what you want to get out of life. Allowing those that are constantly tearing us down, taking more than they give or triggering stress and anxiety in our lives is very risky.

Assuming your friends are or at least generally enhance your life, you can still use the principles we have been discussing to start building on or enhancing important relationships. For example, if you know that you are an introvert that needs downtime to recharge but your friends are the kind that want to get together and "do something" every night and plan big activities on the weekend, you might find it difficult to recharge your batteries. As another example, if you have a strong desire to help lift others you may also find that one of your potential pitfalls is that you could look to help others and neglect your own needs. In that case, allowing yourself to be surrounded by friends that are constantly needing something from you is also a tough situation to be in. You have a few choices in these situations. You could just keep "dealing with it". You could push clear away. Or you can put some effort in to make things good for all involved by using some of what you have learned.

One thing that is crucial here is to get good at communicating with others any time you are going to make a change in your behavior. For example, if you just all of a sudden stop going out with your friends, its going to generate some questions. You would be better off letting everyone know what you are doing, why you are doing it and what the impact is going to be. You might work with your friend group and let them know that you are only going to hang out once during the week and on Saturdays but that you need Sundays and the other evenings to take care of other things. And explain why you need down time to recharge your batteries. This may be a healthy approach to your needs as an introvert and their needs as an extrovert. It could help you find a better balance that constantly finding yourself exhausted and resenting the "demands" placed on you.

Giving Benefit of the Doubt: 20:49

Even when you have a solid relationship and you feel like you know each other pretty well, there are still going to be issues and conflict. When things don't go quite the way you expected or when you find yourself getting upset about something that's when it's time to work on giving benefit of the doubt. This particular item requires a foundation of trust. That's something I'm going to cover in the next episode so I won't dive into it here. But if you have a foundation of trust then when someone upsets you, it becomes much easier to give benefit of the doubt.

To me, giving benefit of the doubt means that you can believe in the inherent goodness and potential of the other person. It's easier to ask yourself "why would a reasonable, rational human being (the other party) do what they did, say what they said, etc."

This might be easier to see with a couple of examples.

Let's say you and another member of your team are working on a key project task together. The deadline for them to complete their part comes but they still haven't completed their portion. Think about the two different extremes you could allow to go through your mind. If you struggle to give them benefit of the doubt (maybe they have burned you before or you just started working together) you might think they were lazy, unprofessional, didn't care or maybe they were doing it deliberately just to get you in trouble. On the giving benefit of doubt side instead you might think something was wrong or they were struggling or that they needed help. If you had put in effort to build trust maybe it wouldn't have even reached this point. They might have been more comfortable asking or you could have even taken the lead to reach out and see if they needed your help. Do you see the two sides of this?

How about a personal example - you and a friend are out for lunch and they say something that really upsets you. Two of the thoughts that could go through your head are that they are a complete jerk and said that just to make you mad. Or maybe you could pause and ask yourself what might have caused them to say that. If you allow the first to happen you'll probably spend the rest of the lunch barely engaging and walk away feeling frustrated or resentful. If you give them the benefit of the doubt and have worked on the relationship then you could actually pause the conversation and discuss what happened. Maybe you find out that they have had a really rough day and didn't mean to take it out on you. Then instead of a tension filled lunch, the two of you could figure out how best to support each other and you could even turn their day around.

So the question is, in your key relationships, are you able to assume positive intent. Do you believe your leaders and co-workers working with you or against you. When something doesn't go well in a key personal relationship, can you assume there is a reasonable reason for what happened or does it just lead into a black hole.

And that leads to another key point. Even our most important and solid relationships are not always going to go well. That's part of working with other human beings. We all have faults and weaknesses and no matter how much we know what not to do, it still happens. So you will have to work at assuming positive intent. And you will get burned on occasion. But for the most valuable relationships in your life, you'll just need to keep at it.

Just to wrap up this section on giving benefit of the doubt. I personally believe that giving the benefit of the doubt should be something we strive for. That being said, there are certain types of relationships that get to the point where benefit of the doubt or assuming positive intent are just not appropriate. Generally this means that trust has been violated to the extent that it may not be recoverable. Mostly this would apply to destructive or abusive relationships or any relationship that could put you or those around you in harms way. So I just want to be clear that I'm not advocating continually giving benefit of the doubt in those situations. If you find yourself in that kind of a relationship, please get the help that you need.

Humility

Since we all make mistakes and are going to do things that damage relationships (no matter how much we know or how hard we try it will happen), how do we restore trust and get back to mutual benefit of the doubt.

I have a belief that I have always tried to live and that is that when it comes to leadership, there is no room for pride. Sometimes this is easier to live up to and other times it can be extremely difficult.

Essentially what this means is that when you do something to damage a relationship, you apologize and work to make amends. It also means that when someone else damages a relationship, you may need to allow them to apologize and work to make amends. There are some situations in both personal and professional relationships where something happens and you need to completely step away from the relationship. That is up to each of us to decide when that is appropriate. Assuming that is not the case, then don't let your pride get in the way of repairing the relationship.

Learning to Agree to Disagree and Compromise

Another thing that I believe is greatly absent in the world is the ability to learn to agree to disagree and to work towards a mutually beneficial compromise. It's seems the world is becoming more and more polarized. The attitude that I'm right and if you don't agree with me you are a horrible person seems to run rampant. Just turn on the news or scroll through any social media feed and see if I'm not right.

While I don't have a silver bullet for how to solve this on a macro scale, I think each of us can have a significant impact in our smaller circles.

All of the things I talked about above can help us here. Knowing ourselves, building trust, assuming positive intent and humility all come into play here.

We also need to add to those skills like learning to establish common ground, trying to understand the other point of view and also looking for a win win situation. This isn't always possible but if everyone just goes out to win for themselves, then there is always going to be someone that loses. Instead if we work on the relationship, establish common ground and understand each others points of view, then we can work towards a solution that may not get either of us everything we thought we wanted or need but could all find at least something positive out of the situation.

We Should Take the Initiative

I want to leave you with one last thought. When it comes to improving relationships, who should take the lead? I'm going to argue that we should all take the initiative. If you are listening to this podcast, assume you are a leader and then ask yourself - am I willing to take the initiative to lift those in my life so that we all make progress to where we want to be. The other option is to sit around and wait for someone else to do it. So do you want to be deliberate or do you want to just let what happens happen? That choice is up to you.

Wrap Up: 28:34

Thanks for sticking around to the end of this episode. For the next few episodes we will continue to talk about building relationships in both our personal and professional lives. I'll be taking lessons I have learned and sharing them with you.

Next week we will do a deep dive into the importance of trust. I'm not necessarily talking about trusting that someone won't steal from you (even though that is foundational). I'll be talking about the kind of trust that you develop in a relationship that allows you to do things like give benefit of the doubt, assume positive intent and to take constructive feedback as it's intended. In my opinion there is nothing more important in any relationship that we care about than this type of trust. So if that has you intrigued, be sure to tune in next week.

In the meantime take a few to inventory your key relationships and then decide which you want to work on for the next little while. Ask yourself how the relationships can/does make your life better. Ask yourself what else you could put into the relationship to make it even better. Take a shot at identifying how the personality styles of al involved either enhance or potential detract from that relationship. And then be deliberate and see what happens.

Post Roll

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Thank you again for tuning in. Now go out there and keep lifting.