In my last post I offered a survey on trust levels to help groups determine how they are fairing as a team and what steps might help improve internal relationships. Of the levels described in the survey, from +2, “Ideal,” to -2 “Disintegrating,” it is the -2 level that represents the most sensitive challenge. What I’ve written in the survey about how to intervene as a leader is only a beginning, so here is some additional information, especially directed toward those with formal authority in organizations and who need to start correcting the situation.

What we know is that at -2 relationships become stress-filled, adversarial, and highly emotional. People walk out of meetings in disgust, and almost no one is trusted to help resolve the situation. These groups come in many varieties but they often include a classic split between the members and the leader(s) as factions acting out a cynical “us” versus “them” competition for power and self-protection. -2 groups often seem to exemplify the classic cold war — a war of skirmishes and back-door maneuvers supported by deep blame and criticism of the other side — usually with plenty of accusations of betrayal, low integrity, undermining or manipulation flowing in both directions. “Management” and “Employees” become stereotypes with each side painting its own motives as positive, its own methods as reasonable and necessary, and its own position as essentially both entitled and that of the offended party. If unions are involved, “chess moves” on both sides are common, such as grievances, challenges, delays and positioning, technicalities, and ULP (Unfair Labor Practice) complaints. Such conflicts invite lawyers and consultants, mediators and negotiators, and (in the background) plenty of alcohol or therapy. If nothing genuinely constructive is done for a -2 group, it will likely become dysfunctional in ways that eventually cause people to leave, meaning one or more people are terminated or simply decide to exit the organization on their own. It is all about who wins and loses. The conflict costs a fortune financially and emotionally. In high gear, nobody is much thinking about the work or the customers or the organization at all.

And as if this were not enough, the real problem with -2 groups is that their price often is also a historical one. -2, allowed to persist, becomes a not-so-well-hidden part of the culture of an organization. When people have problems in the future, they will share the stories of what happened with the group as a signal for what may happen in the present. Past mistrust breeds current mistrust, sometimes for many years. Within the group, turn-over can become a common, ongoing dilemma, including supervisor turn-over, with no one taking responsibility for the embedded problems. Sometimes the supervisor feels he or she has been thrown into a no-win situation as the workgroup becomes historically hardened while managers up the system simply withdraw and look the other way.

What can be done? Can -2 conflicts between employees and management be turned around? Well, in my experience, and I’ve been both personally invited into and witnessed a number of such situations from the outside, it’s not easy, but it surely can happen. And the first step is to try to understand the dynamics of the conflict. So here’s a basic premise to begin with:

The problem began with people being offended, insulted, and hurt. What’s offensive may be obvious, such as a set of negative performance reviews that everyone talks about openly, or things less on the surface, including words someone said a long time ago that suggest that either employees or their leaders have negative motivations — such as being “insubordinate” or “loving power.” The words lead to self-fulfilling negative beliefs and assumptions about the motives of others that become increasingly offensive. In turn, the assumptions leak into real interactions. So-and-so is “poisoning everyone else.” Or the boss is “playing a game of divide and conquer.”

This negativity surely goes both ways. I’ve worked with employees who feel they have been put down by a supervisor or manager for no good reason and supervisors who feel they have been treated by employees in exactly the same way. This is often why both sides can easily agree that the situation calls for more respectful relationships, even as people on both sides carry a personal grudge. Sometimes there is a kind of formal distancing that happens, especially when there are rules — personnel rules or labor contract rules — that govern how power conflicts are to be handled. “Let the grievance procedure handle it.” But the distancing is usually also a facade because the truth is everyone in a conflict is looking for the other side’s infractions — evidence, of course, that my mistrust is justified, that my own special perspective is valid, and that my subtle retaliation is simply a self-protective act. Distancing is armor.

Offense, insult, hurt. The first of these words is an action, a behavior, something that is said or done to me. I am offended. The second, the insult, is my visceral indignation, my initial feeling response to the offense as it sinks in. But, ah, the hurt is the lasting thing, the internalizing of the insult, the long-term worst of it. People hold onto their hurts and are scarred by them. At -2, people are offended and offending, insulted and insulting, hurt and hurting at a high rate. They are often not very distractable from their pain. They must win the war first before they can look at the damage. Each side will say: I didn’t mean to — I was just trying to tell the truth, or defend myself, or do the right thing. Such is the nature of human conflicts that are essentially a form of emotional violence. We don’t mean to but we do.

So if you understand that -2 is founded in co-driven hurt, whether or not the issues seem straightforward and if you don’t get hooked by words like “insubordination” or “power-tripping” (that are simply munitions for the fight) then I believe you have a chance to do something very positive as a leader. Maybe even turn the thing around. Maybe even leading to what’s called for, which is healing. So here’s premise number two:

What’s in the way is pride: the unwillingness of the sides to acknowledge their own failures, problems, and inadequacies. This is where people back up into their rights and demand to be understood. There’s a kind of intransigence in all of us, a desire to never have to apologize — for anything, for any reason, especially when we are insecure about our rightness or wrongness. Somehow our grudges must be justified, lest we have to face our own shadow: that we are part of the violence. This is the part we really have some fear about. And, this, ironically, can be such a source of strength. How so, you may ask? This, indeed, is where learning is. The party willing to go to this hole, test their own behavior, and see the honest self-examination as a potential source of wisdom, compassion, forgiveness and spiritual strength, as symbolically a well for the village rather than a pit to climb out of, has the power to begin to effect a collaborative solution. This can be difficult in cultures that pride themselves on being a certain way, where any chink in the armor is cause for humiliation. And that’s the deal — our fear of the shame, the humiliation, the losing face. That, indeed, is all that holds us back — and if that can be conquered, then so much else can be opened and resolved. And so, here’s the third premise of this work:

Put your faith in the fact that people on both sides do not naturally want this kind of situation to endure and are willing to do a lot to find a way out. I don’t believe they (whoever they are) necessarily want more power than “our” side — which ever one that is, but they do want their appropriate power and they do want their place and their needs to be recognized: employees, union, management. A good friend of mine, a Personnel Director for a municipality faced a -2 situation some years ago in her work with an entire department. The only way things changed was for her to “break the rules” of the conflict by personally contacting the union rep and talking to him in very genuine terms about the tensions and the problems – there was a long list of them. Her willingness to put her own credibility on the line and to put the quality of the relationship with the union ahead of being technically or even legally right seemed to make the difference. And I believe this was because her approach somehow tapped something deep in the person of the union rep – that he, too, felt trapped by the conflict and by the very rules of engagement that had been dictated to them both by the contract. My friend took an interpersonal risk to meet another human being and he took an interpersonal risk in return. These risks superceded the cultural ground rules set by years of protocol wrangling and labor/management contests. Today the relationship is much different, and much, much better.

In virtually every case over time where I’ve seen these tough conflicts brew an impasse and then a breakthrough there’s been a catalytic relationship — like my friend’s. Someone, exerting personal leadership, who has put aside his or her individual sense of offense in the situation and walked farther across the bridge than someone else might. The meeting isn’t in the middle – it’s on the side of those who feel more powerless in the situation. It is vulnerable and open and invites, not dictates or tells. It is not conditional, based on rights and entitlements, as in “I’ll meet you in the middle but only if… ” because if that is the case then no meeting ever really happens, does it, even though perhaps we may sit for hours together with a mediator.

What’s been happening in Burma lately has been highly instructive. There the sides are the National League for Democracy led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi and a repressive military regime. Please know that I am not making any comparisons here about management and employees! It is not the same thing! But I find it interesting that when the UN Envoy encouraged the sides in Burma to talk, the military regime said that it would talk but only if all protests by monks and the people stopped. The UN Envoy wisely encouraged the military regime to drop the condition. What is the effect of this suggestion? It is simply to say, “we can talk,” and if we have to negotiate how we talk, then we’ve lost our ability to do so. If it has to be in the straight-jacket of formal rules, our rules and our roles, then all we’ve done is demand people come to our side in order to start the process of reconciliation.

Here are some suggested action steps:

1. Don’t waste your time with mediation or arbitration, grievance procedures or other formal solutions unless you absolutely have to or are legally constrained. Obviously if someone files an EEOC complaint (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), you have to follow the process. But for the most part, formal process will just chew up a lot of resources, emotional energy, and money, create fear and anger, and not get you where you (and they) want to go. You have an opportunity to show that real communication is possible – why not work from that vantage point as you express your own desire to resolve the situation?

2. Find someone who can cross from management to employees to serve as a genuine emissary. People on the management side most often are those who need to make the first move. It could be the supervisor but it may need to be the boss of the supervisor, or the boss of the boss, or someone else on the management side willing to be in the fire. Ideally, the person themselves has power to make changes, and is not a “translator” or “intermediary.” The point is that formal leaders do have power and need to show that it can be used for constructive ends; that it can be used to resolve human conflict and how that can be done through extending oneself personally, vulnerably, and strongly as a leader.

3. Enlist the support of the union by recognizing its legitimate place in the resolution rather than trying to deny or limit its access. Concerns that unions overstep their bounds just make this process more complicated. In fact, that belief is often part of the -2 world. I would suggest that every effort to limit the union’s involvement, rather than recognizing its legitimate engagement and representation of employees is likely to backfire and result in a permanently resentful relationship. The union probably doesn’t want to manage the conflict anymore than anyone else does, so shunning the union creates a secondary level of adversarial relationship that simply adds to the hurt. Why waste what could be a really great resource?

4. Talk. The one most obvious missing piece in most conflicts appears to be a deep and honest exchange of each side’s “full truth” in an effort reach an agreement. This is often why mediation and formal grievance processes fail. They take out immediate, meaningful contact and dialogue between people. They are an adjudication, not communication, not human touch. This step of talking is about the reality of walking across the human bridge — of hearing without offense in order to genuinely diagnose the problems. There is no interpersonal or organizational safety in doing so, because safety is created only by repeatedly attempting this vulnerable move, repeatedly making an effort that may fail for awhile before it succeeds. Talk is generated when genuine people don’t forget the rock-bottom need of human beings to connect with one another to resolve their differences. Waiting for the other side to cross first kills the energy. The impetus for this work comes from a spiritual source, not a legal, culturally entitled, or power-based one. Unless some one person (or two or three) develops the capability to cross the bridge farther than middle, there’s actually not much chance of a positive resolution. There might be a resentful compromise that will keep things going, but not much more than that.

5. Don’t worry about the misperceptions, misreads, perceived insubordination, and offensive statements. Instead, work the problems. Find out what specific issues need to be addressed on each side, purely and sincerely, and then address each one. Apologies are often helpful. No matter whether you believe the other side is identifying unfair concerns, each one must be addressed “all the way through” without resorting to policy or other rules. This doesn’t mean “giving in” or “rolling over.” It means diving into the conflict in a completely open way, with everything on the table and without indignation or cynicism, to explore the differences. Both sides need to rely on their own judgment, collaborative skill, willingness to face difficult data, “undiscussables,” hard topics – more than it worries about the other side’s capabilities to do so. Please note, you can’t do this step without the previous four.

6. In all of the above bring your sincerest intention to find a solution, even one that results in the discomfort of deep personal learning, the expression of vulnerability, or requires that your own capacities for “egolessness” come forward. As I mentioned, conflicts of this kind are fundamentally driven in personal offense – the offense of people who don’t feel respected, and, indeed, the offense of those who are so invested in their own approach, their own ego-driven “rightness” that everything that works against it feels like personal attack. Only those who are deeply committed and who are open at the heart, and yet can also stand outside the need to personally win or lose will be able to find the way.

My hope for all of us would be to find highly connective and emotionally non-violent solutions whenever we come in contact with one another at -2. It is incredibly tough work, is of immense value, and therefore is to be deeply honored.

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