Improving Effectiveness, Resilience, and Conflict Resolution
How these three aspects of organizational life are related and how you an increase your chances of finding a dynamic balance between them
In my many years of working as a consultant, I can say that most clients reach out when they want either more effectiveness (improving the ways people and teams work together) or resilience (improving the ways people and teams take care of themselves by setting clear boundaries, react to changes, transform and disrupt or innovate their ways of working). A lot of our clients have in their minds that to work in more effective ways they need to compromise on resilience. Organizations and leaders aim to and often struggle to find a dynamic and healthy balance between effectiveness and resilience.
To be more effective, the narrative and belief is often that “we need to work harder, longer, be more committed” — especially in moments of crises. The message that many leaders transmit to increase productivity is one of commitment, increasing effort, and grinding. Or some of them go to the other extreme and believe that in order to become more resilient, “we need to deprioritize effectiveness and focus mostly on our wellness, self-care and wellbeing”.
Most of us, including experienced leaders and established organizations, sometimes feel they find themselves at this crossroad and they believe they need to choose one or the other. But most of us know deep down that compromising either on effectiveness or resilience is not the best choice (it is a lose-lose decision) and they come to us asking if there are ways to improve both the way their teams coordinate actions and collaborate and the way they are prepared for disruptions, set boundaries, are open for deep transformations and take care of their wellbeing.
The shift in mindset
In order to find win-win strategies around increasing BOTH effectiveness AND resilience, the most important change we, leaders and organizations need to go through, is understanding that these two apparently opposed concepts can actually be two sides of the same coin. So, the first shift that we try to support our clients to do, is to understand that they can increase effectiveness and resilience at the same time in a feedback loop that, if done correctly, will create a synergistic relationship that will help them work better together, take better care of what is important and be better able to identify tensions and resolve conflicts.
Once leaders understanding that they don’t need to make compromises, it can be a big gamechanger for them as it can influence the way the manage their teams, make decisions and establish priorities. In our last MOTION Newsletter, Mike shares insights about organizations that decided to move to a four-day-/32-hour-week, which increased resilience whilst at the same time effectiveness remained the same and, in some cases, even went up. This is a good example of how leaders and organizations can take care of both effectiveness and resilience at the same time.
The “Action Coordination Cycle”
To understand how to increase effectiveness we need to look at how people collaborate, or better said, what people do, when we are collaborating. Collaboration, and for that matter effectiveness is directly related to the way people (staff/leaders/colleagues etc.) coordinate actions.
Effectiveness is directly related to how we coordinate actions with our colleagues and this coordination happens, most of the times through conversations. In my training as a coach many years ago, I learned that language is not only descriptive, but it is also generative. This means that we use language not only to describe reality, but also to create reality. When an organization or team is aiming to implement a 4 day work week, and he/she has checked that the mood of the people is supportive of this idea, and goes through all the steps we mentioned, in our last article, the reality of everyone working inside that organization and their families once a formal declaration is made about the implementation of this change.
There are different types of conversations but there is one that is the foundation of everything that a team (or group of people) have together, which is the conversation to coordinate actions. According to Rafael Echeverria in his book the Ontology of Language, “the objective of these conversations is to make something happen, to intervene in the current state things are.”
When we want to start a project, schedule a meeting, review the performance of a staff member, or set a strategic plan with our board or shareholders, we are using language in the same way. We are combining offers, requests to negotiate and make promises.
When coordinating actions, the cycle has several steps.
1. Everything begins with a request or an offer. Some of us are really bad and most of us can be better at expressing clear requests or offers.
2. This is followed by a negotiation. This is the step where most of us could use some support. Also, elements such as power dynamics can impact our disposition and the outcomes of the negotiation.
3. Establishing agreements or promises. If the negotiation is successful, we can establish a promise. Having a clear agreement on the promise is essential for the action coordination to be effective.
4. Doing what we agreed. Once we reach an agreement, if done correctly, people will know what to do, how to do it, by when to do it and with whom.
5. Claim or acknowledgment. Depending on how the action coordination goes, we can finish this cycle wither with a claim, when the promise is not fulfilled, or with an acknowledgment when it was.
Collaboration is based on these types of conversations. This means that the quality of collaboration depends on how skilled people are to make and receive offers and requests, negotiate, establish promises, follow up on the promises and make claims when the promises are not met. This is what is called the “Action Coordination Cycle”, and teams and leaders can develop their skills to become better at it.
Boundaries as a crucial foundation for resilience
Now, looking at the other side of the coin, resilience has to do with our ability to be flexible, adapt to changes, be open for qualitative transformations, while we take care of ourselves and setting clear boundaries. Some might challenge this definition and say that you cannot be open for change and at the same time set clear boundaries. But actually you can. In her book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Nedra Glover Tawwab, says that boundaries are “expectations and needs that help you feel safe and comfortable in your relationships. Expectations in relationships help you stay mentally, and emotionally healthy and healthy boundaries are important to maintain trust in a relationship”. This means that the better we get at setting boundaries (clearly, assertively expressing our expectations and needs) the more resilient and effective we will be.
The ability to set boundaries comes from an awareness of when a boundary needs to be set, reinstated, clarified, redefined. This means that, we feel whenever a boundary needs to be established and/or revisited. When I say we “feel” whenever there is the need to set a boundary, what do I mean exactly? What do we need to look for? We are looking for a feeling of “tension”, either in your emotions, your body and/or your mind. Whenever there are emotions such as anxiety, anger, frustration, and others, whenever our body starts manifesting stress, muscular tension, lack of sleep and other somatic markers and/or whenever we cannot let go of the thoughts triggered by a situation. All of those could be symptoms that a boundary needs to be set/reset/revised.
These feelings are what we call “tensions”. The concept of tension how I am using it here, is inspired in the Sociocracy model, and it can be defined as a feeling I have (in my mind, emotions and/or body) of something that is not right and that needs to be addressed and possibly corrected. In our work, we understand tensions as a this felt sense of a difference between “what is” and “what could be”. For example, if two people are planning a project and notice they have different perspectives about how to solve a certain issue, this is a tension. This tension can be noticed, and resolved if both (or all parties) find a solution together. It however becomes a conflict, when there is disagreement on the solution and an inability to move forwards with this.
An organization that has a culture that not only allows but encourages staff to openly discuss their tensions and have the support to deal with them by setting boundaries and revisiting the promises to coordinate actions, is an organization that will take care both of their effectiveness and resilience while becoming better at dealing with tensions and resolving conflicts. The more skilled a team is to coordinate actions and set boundaries, the better they will be at dealing with the tensions and resolving conflicts.
In the work we do at Purpose+Motion, we support organizations, teams and leaders to develop these capacities, by helping them find the connections between effectiveness and resilience and by inspiring them to be courageous to open and be available for conversations about tensions and conflicts.
If you are curious, want to learn more about this for yourself and/or your organization you can join us in this 3-part workshop series in July and August.
Through your participation you will:
- become more effective at coordinating actions, negotiations and articulating agreements
- learn how to take better care of yourself and your relationships in your work context.
- improve the skills you have to mediate and solve conflicts.
I look forward to seeing you there. Sign up here — or join me for a Q+A session on 10.07.24 at 12:30 CET to learn more.
