Today Annette Clancy, Johnnie Moore, and Matt Moore published a terrific podcast focused on confidentiality in organizations. It’s based on a post started by Annette a couple of days ago called In Confidence. While the podcast is aimed at the consulting experience, there’s some juicy insight here for managers and leaders, as well.

Among the topics discussed are:

The relationship between confidentiality and trust in organizations

Secrets as a source of power within organizations

An assumption that confidentiality creates more truthfulness

The podcast lives here and lasts about 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Are you someone who sees the status quo inside your business and has an overwhelming desire to shake things up? Do you get frustrated by the often glacial pace of change and feel the need to speed it up? Do you exhibit a relentless and courageous ability to point out elephants of all sizes lurking in the room? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you are an Agitator. Don’t worry, that’s a good thing. If anything, organizations should appreciate the true agitators they have in their midst. Not quite sure? Read on…

What is an agitator? When you hear the term agitator get thrown around, it’s usually done in a pejorative sort of way. It gets easily confused with words like rabble-rouser and inciter. But the true agitator has a noble mission. Consider the agitators who fought for independence and equality. Or think of agitation as an act of nature: it’s agitation that creates the rare beauty of a true pearl. Here are some key qualities that define an agitator:

Principled
It’s crucial that you agitate with principled purpose. Else you’ll just be a whiner that no one takes seriously or an ornery crank that no one wants around. Remember to keep the ‘why’ behind your agitation firmly in your mind.

Tenacious
Being an agitator is can sometimes be about as comfortable as being dragged by a horse down a gravel road. It takes a steely determination to see the end result, believe it’s worth pursuing, and remain focused on getting there.

Flexible
But with tenacity comes a somewhat paradoxical commitment to flexibility – it’s a bend, don’t break mentality. I like Bob Sutton’s mantra of “strong opinions held loosely.” Just remember that always being an unyielding jerk will not only cost you allies, but credibility and influence down the road.

So, what are the benefits of agitation? What goodness do agitators bring to an organization? Here are just a couple of the benefits:

Disruption
The status quo is death to today’s companies. The current level of change isn’t going anywhere…actually disruption is the new norm. Now, most organizations talk a good game about not adhering to the status quo, but often what they say does not match what they do. The agitator rocks the boat (and flips it over when necessary). But an agitator is also emotionally connected with her or his surroundings. They know how to adjust organizational forces to keep the proper level of pressure.

Perspective
Ever been in a meeting where the communication barely skimmed the surface? The real root issues that needed to be addressed were being ignored? Noticed that a small herd elephants were hanging out in the corner of the room? An agitator calls bullshit on all of this and surfaces the things that need to be dealt with for the good of the organization.

Having an agitator at the senior executive level is fine. But what happens if you’re a manager and have an agitator on your team? Don’t be like 9 out of 10 managers and banish the agitator to the basement. Here are some suggestions:

Bring Them Closer
Integrate these individuals into the organization rather than push them further out. Listen carefully. Agitators are engaged folks who want to make a difference.

Get Okay With Discomfort
One of the complaints I hear most from managers about agitators is that they’re perceived as negative and combative. I always respond, “And what does this say about you?” This complaint usually stems from a manager’s unease with conflict and intense personalities.

Build A Culture Of Agitators
Finally, don’t make agitation a strange behavior, but bake it into your organizational DNA. Make it a prized characteristic and reward it accordingly. Agitators shouldn’t piss you off, it’s the silence, passive acceptance, and blind followership that infiltrates common organizational discussion that should get you hot…and worried. Francois Gossieaux at Emergence Marketing offers a very powerful reminder of the price organizations pay by not honoring agitators. He writes:

Most of us have been in organizations where it is politically unacceptable to speak openly about what is going wrong – only to see projects fail because of weak sponsorship, unreasonable constraints, unmotivated team members, or plain old politics. It is sort of ironic that while not speaking up will eventually kill the organization in which you work and thus your current job prospect – it is job preservation that drives this behavior.

What most organizations do not realize is that this is not based on individual behavior, but rather on social behavior. Fixing this problem will not happen by focusing on changing individual behavior first, but instead by changing the social norms that drive the social behavior – and that is not a trivial task.

So, what is your organization doing to encourage this crucial role of the agitator? Anyone have experiences to add? Or if you’re an agitator, any frustrations to share?

A little while back at the Employee Engagement Network, David Zinger posed a question to the group about important engagement statistics. He writes:

In an interview about the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 for the Gallup Management Journal, Tom Rath discussed the strong link between a leader’s focus and employee engagement. Here were the 3 powerful conclusions from Gallup’s research on conversation, engagement, and strengths:

If your manager primarily ignores you your chances of being actively disengaged are 40%
If your manager focuses on your weaknesses your chances of being actively disengaged are 22%
If you manager focuses on your strengths your chances of being actively disengaged are only 1%

The point of the statistics is to show the importance of management focus on employees’s strengths rather than their weaknesses. Makes sense. But, I guess the surprise for me is that (only?) 40% are disengaged if their manager ignores them. There’s probably some nuances behind this stat, but it does make you wonder who that other 60% is doesn’t it?

(more…)

Jodee Bock offered some insight that’s worth sharing: “It’s always interesting to me how people, no matter what occupation or what length of time they’re been in the workforce, can always relate to Dilbert. Why is that? Haven’t we learned enough yet to get rid of that mentality?” I guess the real question may be…”When will organizations aim to NOT replicate the Dilbert experience?”

A few weeks ago, Kare Anderson interviewed me on the subject of Organizational Learning Circles. We talked about how to start a Circle, pitfalls to avoid, and successes that occurred through the Learning Circle.

Head on over to Kare’s blog, Moving From Me to We, to hear the podcast. And if you’ve been inspired to start your own Organizational Learning Circle, let me know…I’d love to hear your own experience with this powerful tool for bringing people together.

Here are a few phrases that I’ve heard thrown about lately:
Billy is an absolute ass…he’s always out for himself.
Stan never does his job right…I’m always having to pick up the slack for him.
I can’t stand Beth…every time I need something she’s too busy to help.

Note some of the common language used here – always, every, never. These are the kind of absolutes that get in the way of an open perspective and honest dialogue. They position our own thinking about people toward an extreme edge that most folks rarely occupy. Do we really believe that those around us are so one dimensional, so monochromatic? It certainly makes it easier to pin labels on them and make snap judgments.

Since people rarely exist at these extreme fringes, we need to stop trying to force them there. Whenever we think of a person in a very limited way – he’s just this way or she’s just that way – it’s time to think in a more extra-dimensional way. We can’t let laziness or a perceived lack of time get in the way of how we perceive other folks. If we commit to building a more well-rounded, and therefore more human, story about individuals around us we’ll immediately see that they have a rich personality that isn’t so easily pegged by one limiting label.

A friend of mine from the non-profit world is struggling with building influence and political capital in her organization. After talking with her and reading some of her email communications, it’s fairly obvious that one major issue holding her back is something called a power bleed. This is where you give away your power by over-apologizing.

Does this sound familiar to you? Perhaps you’ve worked with a power bleeder or maybe performed your version of the bleed in the past. It can be surprisingly easy to do, particularly for us Pleasers working in customer services. When we screw up (or sometimes when we have to take the hit for someone else’s muckup), we want to make sure that the person on the other end knows how apologetic we are. However, there is such a thing as overdoing it and when we go to that extreme, we do ourselves a disservice. We can actually damage the relationship.

Apologizing itself isn’t bad so don’t take this post as a reason for not showing the necessary humility when you make a gaffe like accidentally erasing an important document from your corporate server or failing to meet a project deadline for a client. God knows we need more people in business willing to offer up a sincere apology when things go wrong. Instead, what I’m suggesting is an effluence of mea culpas is not the key to success here. What is the key to stanching a power bleed? Action. To make things right, we need to take action. And by taking purposeful action, we not only harness power for ourselves but we grant power to others in the relationship.

Any good examples out there of where you’ve noticed a power bleed creeping into your conversations and relationships?

Here’s another post in my semi-official series titled, I screw up so you don’t have to…

There are times when I struggle to balance my idealism and realism. Over the past few years, I’ve edged more toward the side of realism, focusing on foreseeing any problems or complications with an idea. Hell, I’ve even made a cardinal sin by poking holes in ideas and talking about all the reasons why they won’t work.

I don’t think it used to be this way. It’s likely the soft erosion of optimism that occurs when realism just feels so much more comfortable. And safe. But it’s not too late to bring back tough-minded optimism. For instance, Bob Sutton provides just the encouraging kick in the pants that I need with his post called Realists vs. Idealists: Thoughts about Creativity and Innovation.

He writes:

…One of the most powerful and persistent findings in the behavioral sciences is the self-fulfilling prophecy: Simply believing that something will happen, and convincing others that it will be so, increases the odds that it will, indeed, come true. Realists often do a fantastic job of convincing others why good ideas will fail; while idealists push on and inspire others to join them against the odds. Now, I am not against realists. We need real evidence and we need to know the risks of what we are doing, but the irony is that the odds of failure may be objectively lower for idealists then realists (and pessimists); so the prophecies of each group may be fulfilled. Moreover, when the odds are against you or your idea, oddly enough, one of the few methods that have been shown to increase the odds of success is convince yourself and others that – if everyone just persists – the odds of success are high. This paradox has always intrigued me and I write about it a lot in Weird Ideas That Work. And does have a very practical, and evidence-based, implication: All other things being equal, you should bet on optimists rather pessimists.

Just what I needed to read.

But the bonus of the article is the cartoon that Bob procured from the New Yorker which shows the real score between realists and idealists. If it seems like the realists are winning every inning, just remember that they’re likely not winning the game. Go check out Bob’s post for the cartoon to see what I mean.

Thom Singer over at Some Assembly Required wrote a thoughtful post on how to revive a professional relationship that’s gone sour. He writes:

Sometimes it is easy when you have a large circle of friends and professional contacts to place the blame on the other person. Obviously the issue cannot be you, as there are many examples of folks who adore you….so the problem must rest with the other person. I disagree, as to have a positive relationship takes the effort of both people. Besides, taking responsibility to fix a bad connection is not the same as admitting guilt. Instead it shows you really care about your networking and are willing to give folks a second chance.

What I really like is the part where he says, “…taking responsibility to fix a bad connection is not the same as admitting guilt.” I think this is where we get hung up so many times. We hold on to the notion that in order to salvage a relationship, we always need to have an intense dialogue where we confess our past sins and then hope the other party does the same. In some cases, this course of action is unavoidable but I’d argue that its only for the most exceptional cases where feelings have been deeply hurt. For most of our relationships – particularly professional relationships – asking for a clean slate offers some strong advantages. Here’s how Thom cleans the slate:

I take a moment to let them know where I was disappointed in the past, but also own the fact that I cannot really know their situation, and that I do not need an explanation or apology, but instead I would just like to start over.

The greatest advantage of this path is that we’re way more likely to engage in this type of dialogue than we are if we choose to go into full confessional mode whenever a conflict arises in a relationship. Not only is the latter time consuming, it’s painful…and most of us want to avoid painful interpersonal encounters.

Update 11.10.07: Sanity prevails…the Vikings decide that a funeral for a dead grandmother is actually more important than a football game (link via ESPN)

Most employers actually care about their employees when a loved one dies…which is why the owner of the Minnesota Vikings should immediately pull his head from his posterior and see the stupidity of his ways. (link via SportingNews.com)