When errors such as these surface, blaming seems to be a natural reflex in many organizations. Even those individuals who wish to learn from mistakes fall into naming culprits. Once we figure out who’s at fault, we then try to find out what is wrong with the supposed offenders. Only when we discover what is wrong with them do we feel we have grasped the problem. Clearly they are the problem, and changing or getting rid of them (or simply being angry at them) is the solution.

There’s a problem with this common scenario, however: Where there is blame, there is no learning. Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. When people work in an atmosphere of blame, they naturally cover up their errors and hide their real concerns. And when energy goes into finger pointing, scapegoating, and denying responsibility, productivity suffers because the organization lacks information about the real state of affairs. It’s impossible to make good decisions with poor information.

In fact, blame costs money. When the vice president of marketing and the vice president of R&D are blaming each other for quality problems in product development, they can’t focus on working together to bring the best products to market. Their finger pointing results in lost sales potential.

Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving. So how do we avoid the tendency to blame and create organizational environments where we turn less frequently to blame? Clarifying accountability is one option. This process of assigning responsibilities for a situation in advance can help create a culture of real learning.

Accountability comes from clear contracting, ongoing conversations, and an organizational commitment to support accountability rather than blame. The contracting focuses on tasks to be accomplished, roles to be taken, processes to be used, standards sought, and expected results. Periodic conversations over time review both explicit and tacit contracts in order to verify shared understanding. This communication becomes most useful when people are willing and able to discuss their common difficulties within a larger setting that values accountability.

The Differences Between Accountability and Blame

The dictionary helps clarify the differences between accountability and blame. To be accountable is “to be counted on or reckoned on.” To blame is “to find fault with, to censure, revile, reproach.” Accountability emphasizes keeping agreements and performing jobs in a respectful atmosphere; blaming is an emotional process that discredits the blamed.

A focus on accountability recognizes that everyone may make mistakes or fall short of commitments. Becoming aware of our own errors or shortfalls and viewing them as opportunities for learning and growth enable us to be more successful in the future. Accountability therefore creates conditions for ongoing, constructive conversations in which our awareness of current reality is sharpened and in which we work to seek root causes, understand the system better, and identify new actions and agreements. The qualities of accountability are respect, trust, inquiry, moderation, curiosity, and mutuality.

Blaming, on the other hand, is more than just a process of allocating fault. It is often a process of shaming others and searching for something wrong with them. Blaming provides an early and artificial solution to a complex problem. It provides a simplistic view of a complex reality: I know what the problem is, and you’re it. Blame thus makes inquiry difficult and reduces the chances of getting to the real root of a problem. Blame also generates fear and destroys trust. When we blame, we often believe that other people have bad intentions or lack ability. We tend to excuse our own actions, however, because we know firsthand the challenges we face. The qualities of blame are judgment, anger, fear, punishment, and self-righteousness.

The Organizational Consequences of Blame

Blame Slows Information Flow and Reduces Innovation. People sometimes use blame as a strategy to get others to take ownership of problems. But this approach often backfires because people begin to equate acknowledging mistakes and surfacing bad news with punishment. When this happens, two reinforcing sets of behaviors may emerge: one by managers who are ostensibly seeking information and then punishing those who bring bad news, and the other by groups of employees who hide information and try either to protect each other or to blame each other. People who feel compelled to protect themselves can’t admit mistakes-and therefore can’t learn from them. Under these conditions, individuals spend time denying problems rather than solving them, and

The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame

Blame causes fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information. The lack of information hinders problem solving, creating more errors (R1). Fear also stifles risk taking and discourages innovation (R2).

As shown in “The Reinforcing Cycles of Blame,” blaming leads to fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information by stopping productive conversation. The lack of timely and accurate information about an organization’s current reality hinders problem solving, leading to more errors and more blame (R1).

Blaming and the fear it generates also discourage innovation and creative solutions. Frightened people don’t take risks, which are essential for innovation. Lack of innovation, in turn, leads to an inability to solve problems effectively and an increase in errors (R2).

Blame “Shifts the Burden.” In a “Shifting the Burden” situation, a problem has multiple solutions. People often grab onto the most obvious, short-term fix rather than search for the fundamental source of the problem. The lack of a permanent, long-term solution reinforces the need for additional quick fixes. Blame is a fix that actually diverts the blamers’ attention away from long-term interpersonal or structural solutions to problems (see B1 in “The Addiction to Blame” on p. 3).  Although blame provides some immediate relief and a sense of having solved a problem (“It’s their fault”), it also erodes communication (R3) and shifts the focus even further from accountability (B2), the more fundamental solution.

Blaming can also be addictive, because it makes us feel powerful and keeps us from having to examine our own role in a situation. For example, Jim, a brewery manager, got word that things were slowing down on line 10, a new canning line. He left his office and headed to the plant floor. “Grady, you’ve got to get this line going. Get with it,” he told his line foreman. Grady replied, “Jim, you know those guys on the last shift always screw things up.”

This is a familiar conversation to both men. Each walks away thinking something is wrong with the other. Jim thinks, “That Grady, I give him responsibility and he just can’t get it together.” Grady thinks, “Why is he always on my case? Can’t he see this is a tough issue? He’s so simplistic and short-sighted.”

In this scenario, Jim can walk away feeling relieved because he knows what the problem is-Grady is a lousy supervisor and may need to be replaced. Grady, on the other hand, can blame Jim for being a shortsighted, run-the-plant-by-the-numbers manager. Both get some initial relief from blaming each other, but neither solves the ongoing problem.

Moving from Blame to Accountability

How, then, do we move from blame to accountability? Even within carefully designed systems, people may fail at their work. And even with a knowledge of system dynamics, we still often look for an individual’s failure as a way to explain a problem. One leverage point is to understand the organizational dynamics of blame as described above. There is also leverage in changing how we think about and conduct ourselves at work.

There are three levels of specific behavioral change in moving from blame to accountability-the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the group or organizational level. First, individuals must be willing to change their own thinking and feelings about blame. Second, people need to become skillful at making contracts with one another and holding each other accountable for results. Third, groups need to promote responsible and constructive conversations by developing norms for direct conflict resolution between individuals. These behavioral changes-and the use of systems thinking to focus on the structures involved and not the personalities-can help create a constructive organizational culture.

Individual Level

Below is a list of ways to start breaking the mental models we hold about blame. When you find yourself beginning to blame someone else for a chronic problem, refer to this list and to the sidebar “Distinctions Between Blame and Accountability” (see p. 4).

1. Remember that others are acting rationally from their own perspective. Given what they know, the pressures they are under, and the organizational structures that are influencing them, they are doing the best they can. Give others the benefit of the doubt.

2. Realize that you probably have a role in the situation.Your behavior may be influencing this person’s behavior and may be producing some unintended effects. Keep in mind that you will tend to justify your own actions and point of view and discount the other person’s perspective.

3. Remind yourself that judgment and criticism make it very difficult to see clearly. Judgments are mental models that limit the ability to take in new data. They tend to increase the likelihood of anger and make it difficult to learn. The following questions may help stretch your thinking and ease angry feelings. Ask yourself:

• What information am I missing that would help me understand this person’s behavior?
• How might this behavior make sense?
• What pressures is he or she under?
• What systems or structures might be influencing this behavior?

4. Use a systems thinking perspective to explore the pressures on the players involved. Notice that there are some larger forces at work that are probably having an impact on both of you. For example, when organizational goals, strategies, and values aren’t clear, groups will sometimes work toward different objectives. A group that values customer service over cost will conflict with a group that is trying to lower expenditures. Identify some key variables and their interrelationships, and ask, Is this situation an example of a vicious cycle, “Shifting the Burden,” or “Accidental Adversaries”?

5. Be willing to be held accountable. This means that, when an issue comes up, you are willing to consider whether you have lived up to your end of an agreement or expectation. Ask yourself:

• Did I have a role in this situation?
• Did I take some actions that seemed right at the time, but that had unintended consequences?

6.Work constructively with your anger. Sustained anger may point to personal issues that have been triggered by the current situation. Broken agreements, mistakes, and blame all have difficult associations for most people. However, in a learning environment, constructive resolution of conflict can also lead to significant personal growth. The guiding questions here are:

• What am I learning about myself in this situation?
• What does this remind me of?
• What new behaviors or thoughts does this situation call for that may be a stretch for me?

Interpersonal Level

Initial Contracting. At the beginning of any working relationship, it’s vital to come to some basic agreements defining the nature and scope of the work, specific and yet-to-be-defined tasks, deadlines and related outcomes, processes or methods to be used, interim checkpoints and expectations at those checkpoints, standards, and roles.

It’s also helpful to discuss what to do in the event of a misunderstanding, a lapse in communication, or a failure to keep an agreement. Imagine possible breakdowns and design a process for handling them. If breakdowns do occur, be prepared to remind others of the plan you had prepared.

When lapses do take place, they need to be brought to the collective attention as soon as possible. Misunderstandings and broken agreements often promote anger, frustration, and blame. Allowing unaddressed misunderstandings to fester can hamper productive conversations. By contrast, raising issues early can minimize escalation of problems.

Accountability Conversations. Once any project or working relationship is under way, it’s useful to check in periodically on the state of the partnership through accountability conversations. You may or may not have clear recollections of the initial contract regarding the task, roles, standards, processes, and expected results. Either way, it’s productive to establish or reestablish these agreements and explore what is working or not working as you take action together to create envisioned results.

Accountability conversations aren’t always easy. However, the skills they require can be applied and developed over time. Some of the basic tools of learning organizations come into play here-the ladder of inference, for example, can be used to create a conversation of inquiry rather than inquisition. The accountability conversation is also the perfect setting for practicing left-hand column skills to surface assumptions blocking honest and productive discourse. In addition, admitting the tendency to

Distinctions between blame and accountability

Here are steps for initiating an accountability conversation:

1. Find out whether the person you are working with is interested in seeing problems as learning opportunities. If so, when a problem occurs, include other people who are also interested in the situation. Other people’s perspectives can be helpful because often two people in conflict are actually mirroring the conflict of a larger system within the organization.

2. Create a setting that is conducive to learning.

• Allow plenty of time to address the issues.
• Reaffirm with each other that the goal is to learn, not blame.
• Establish confidentiality.
• Be truly open-minded.
• Listen hard to the other person’s perspective

3. Have a conversation in which the two (or more) of you

• Clarify your intention for the meeting.
• Identify the data and any assumptions or conclusions you have drawn based on that data.
• Identify the pressures each of you is experiencing in the situation.
• Identify any stated or unstated expectations. If implicit agreements were not jointly understood, this is a good time to clarify and reestablish shared agreements.
• Analyze the problem from a systems perspective. Clarify how your mutual beliefs and actions might be related and are perhaps reinforcing each other.
• Identify some new ways to address the problem.

Group Level

How people talk about one another in an organization affects the levels of accountability and trust. Often, because people are reluctant to discuss accountability issues directly, they go to a third party to relieve their discomfort and get support for their point of view. The complaint does not get resolved this way, however, although the person with the complaint gains some relief. Bringing a complaint to a third party to clarify a situation can be a much more productive alternative.

To see how this works, let’s take a situation where Tony is angry with Lee because Lee wasn’t fully supportive in a meeting. Tony complains to Robin that Lee is unreliable. Robin sympathizes with Tony and agrees that Lee is unreliable. Tony and Robin now feel closer because they share this point of view. Lee does not yet know that Tony has a complaint. Later, though, Robin, busy with other projects, puts off one of Tony’s requests. Now Tony complains about Robin to Lee, and Robin doesn’t get the necessary feedback. Over time, all of these relationships will erode.

What is the alternative to this kind of dysfunctional blaming and resentment? The solution is a deep commitment on the part of all these people to work through their reluctance to give and receive difficult feedback. In addition, they need to learn how to hold one another accountable in an ongoing way. Now, when Tony is angry with Lee and goes to Robin, the purpose is to get coaching on how to raise the issue with Lee, not to get Robin’s agreement on what is wrong with Lee. In addition, Robin’s role is to make sure that Tony follows through on raising the concern directly with Lee.

To resolve conflict directly:

1.Bring your complaints about someone else to a third person to get coaching on how to raise your concerns.
Valuable questions from the coach include:

• Tell me about the situation.
• What results do you want?
• What’s another way of explaining the other person’s actions?
• How might the other person describe the situation?
• What was your role in creating the situation?
• What requests or complaints do you need to bring to the other person?
• How will you state them in order to get the results you want?
• What do you think your learning is in this situation?

2. Raise your concerns directly with the other person. Reaffirm your commitment to maintaining a good working relationship and find a way to express your fundamental respect for the person. The ladder of inference can be a helpful tool for focusing on the problem. Start by identifying the data that is the source of your concern. Then spell out the assumptions you made as you observed the data and any feelings you have about the situation. Finally, articulate your requests for change. During the conversation, remind the other person that reviewing the concern is part of learning to work together better

3. Let the coach know what happened.

4. Outside of this framework, refrain from making negative comments about people

5. For listeners who frequently hear complaints about a third party and want to create a learning setting, it can be helpful to say something like: “I’d like to help, but only if you want to create a constructive situation. We can explore these questions; otherwise, I prefer not to listen to your complaints.”

Organizational Accountability: The IS Story

Systems thinking provides useful tools for surfacing and breaking reinforcing cycles of blame within an organization. In the story below, a group was able to use causal loop diagrams to help them move beyond blame and craft a constructive, long-term solution.

The Information Systems group of a manufacturing plant was meeting to discuss their lack of progress on a large project to overhaul the department. Initially, the IS group decided that top management’s actions caused the group’s ineffectiveness. The plant management team (PMT) kept adding projects to the group’s already full plate. Members of the PMT responded to “squeaky wheels” by giving otherwise low-priority projects the force of their support. Also, the PMT didn’t reinforce plant wide policies the IS group had developed. Most important, the team didn’t give group members the support they needed to stick to the IS overhaul they had committed to, and wouldn’t give them the budget to hire the additional staff they sorely needed.

But when the group mapped out their current situation in a causal loop diagram, they gained a new perspective on the problem. They found that the situation resembled a “Success to the Successful” story, in which two or more projects or groups compete for limited resources.

The diagram “Success to the Squeaky Wheel” shows how, in this case, the IS group’s attention to urgent requests diverted resources away from prioritized items. Because rewards for completing urgent requests were heightened, the urgent tasks continued to receive greater attention (R2).  At the same time, the rewards for and focus on prioritized tasks decreased (R1). Finally, as people realized that urgent requests received greater attention than prioritized items, the number of “squeaky wheels”-or people promoting their own agenda items to management-proliferated. This development was followed by an increase in management’s efforts to get action on those agenda items, which further promoted urgent items over prioritized ones (R3).

After examining the causal loop diagrams, the group realized that they had played a role in the stalled progress on the overhaul project. Although IS team members encouraged each other to blame the PMT, no one in the group had given the PMT feedback concerning the impact of their requests and lack of support.

Armed with a systems view, the group identified several actions they could take to shift these unproductive dynamics. They decided to tell the PMT that they recognized that the IS overhaul was a top priority for the plant as a whole. They would point out that they couldn’t make progress on the overhaul if they continued to respond to “squeaky wheels. “The group would also let the PMT know that when they received additional requests, they would ask:

• How much of a priority is this request for you?
• Are you aware that there is a tradeoff in priorities?

The group concluded that they would issue a memo to the PMT describing their priorities and soliciting the PMT’s support of those priorities. They would also request that the PMT clearly communicate the priorities to the rest of the plant. In the memo, they would indicate the tradeoffs they were making and identify how their choices would help the company as a whole. The group felt that, with the PMT’s support, they would have the authority to focus on the prioritized project instead of responding to urgent requests.

Conclusion

Developing accountability skills is challenging; it takes courage and the willingness to learn new ways of thinking and acting. So why is moving from blame to accountability worthwhile? Because blame is like sugar – it produces a brief boost and then a let-down. It doesn’t serve the system’s long-term needs and can actually prevent it from functioning effectively. On the other hand, developing accountability skills and habits on every level of your organization can be an important element in maintaining your organization’s long-term health.

Marilyn Paul, PhD, is an independent organizational consultant affiliated with Innovation Associates, an Arthur D. Little company. She has sixteen years of experience facilitating organizational change. One focus of her work is peer mentoring and capacity development.

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For a group to adopt new behaviors that can translate into their desired business objectives, they must first establish a learning and growth culture. Many change interventions assume that such an environment is inherent. They neglect to notice whether the cultural ingredients necessary to enable learning and growing are present. All of these conditions rarely exist; this shortcoming limits an organization’s ability to achieve the desired behavior changes.

THE PRACTICE OF EMPOWERMENT

The Empowerment Model focuses on both the individual and the collective enterprise. As individuals grow and achieve outcomes important to them, they also benefit the whole. At the same time, the group serves as a resource to enable the individual to achieve these outcomes.

Empowering the Space

Using the analogy of nature, for new seeds (behaviors) to take root, grow, and thrive, they need fertile soil (a learning and growth culture). I call creating this fertile soil “empowering the space.” An empowered space enables individuals to feel safe and trusting enough to risk true growth. It has five characteristics: affirmation, choice, trust, courage, and aspiration. What follows are the practices that enable a space to be empowered. These practices become more refined as they move from a cultural-change level to one-on-one relationships.

Cultural Practices for Empowering the Space

• Self-Responsibility: At the organizational level, individuals take responsibility to have their job, team, function, and organization the way they wish them to be. This is the counterpoint to being a victim within the organization.
• Authentic Communication: Individual communication is open, honest, transparent, and vulnerable. Individuals are talking about the real issues going on in the organization.
• Trust: Individuals feel safe enough to try out new behaviors and take risks without fear of reprimand or putdown by superiors or colleagues if they make mistakes. A genuine sense of goodwill pervades the organization.
• Learning and Growing: Within the framework of the organization, individuals are encouraged to work on the real behaviors they need to change. Individuals are encouraged to challenge themselves and support each other to both learn and grow.
• Interpersonal Process Skills: Individuals within the organization have established protocols and developed skills that they regularly deploy to resolve interpersonal issues and build high functioning relationships.
• Caring: The organizational leadership demonstrates concern for individuals in tangible ways. Individuals feel valued and are inspired to give their best effort on behalf of the organization.

The role of the empowerment practitioner is to create an environment where these practices are first embodied in the group experience.

Once the group has personally experienced that growth is possible – in themselves and in their organization the practitioner then helps them establish the practices to take root over the long term.

The change process originates at the individual level and is reinforced by group members, who recognize that it furthers their own collective development. The process involves three “shifts” and requires a support system to sustain it. These shifts are outlined in the three-part “Empowerment Model” below.

Empowerment Model

Shift from a Pathological to a Vision-Based Approach to Growth

The first part of the empowerment model looks at where we direct our attention when we attempt to create change. The model’s premise is that where we place our mental attention determines what we create. If we focus on our problems or pathologies, we gain insight into them. If we focus on solutions, or what we want, we gain insight into those. It is a more efficient use of our time and enables more dynamic growth to focus on solutions or a vision of what we want. Otherwise, we can get trapped in the paralysis of analysis.

Shifting our focus from what doesn’t work to what can work also motivates us to take action. We are inspired by our vision rather than enervated by our problems. It’s the difference between planting a garden by concentrating on removing rocks, roots, and weeds rather than by envisioning the flowers and vegetables in full bloom. One seems laborious, the other engaging. You still need to remove the rocks, but you have a vision of a bountiful garden to sustain you. This part of the model can be summarized as a shift from a pathological to a vision-based approach to growth.

Shift from Static to Organic Growth

The second part of the empowerment model describes an approach to personal growth derived from observing the natural world. Something that is alive, such as a tree, is always growing. The precise place where this growth is just coming into existence is the tree’s growing edge. That is where the tree is most active and vital. Similarly, the places where you feel your greatest aliveness and vitality are your growing edges.

The alternative view of growth is static: There is a place to get to, and I’m either there or not. Until I get there, I’m frustrated or discontent. When I get there, my growth around that issue is over. Such a perspective is a fixed approach to the process of growth. This part of the model can be summarized as a shift from static to organic growth (the growing edge).

Shift to Integration of Self-Awareness and Behavior Change

The third part of the empowerment model looks at the mechanism for enabling us to actually adopt the desired behavior change. Many growth processes assume that if we are aware of something we should do, we will do it. These processes concentrate on increasing our self-awareness. While awareness increases our self-knowledge, by itself, it rarely leads to a change in behavior. If you need proof, think of all the things you know you should do, but don’t.

On the other hand, we can set a goal for something we want, harness our wills to achieve it, and then discover, to our chagrin after we reach our goal, that it wasn’t really what we wanted after all. We did not have enough self-awareness and were acting out someone else’s vision for our lives, not our own. We can summarize this third part of the model as the integration of self-awareness with the ability to achieve behavior change or a desired outcome.

Getting from Here to There

Four steps, each with a corresponding question, make the Empowerment Model’s growth strategy operational:

1. Self-Awareness: Where do I want to go?
2. Vision Crafting: Where do I want to go?
3. Transformation: What do I need to change to get there?
4. Growing Edge: What’s my next step?

The process of changing behavior is a result of the individual moving through these four steps. It culminates in an individual intention statement and image that represent the next place of growth around the desired behavior or outcome. These intention statements evolve and deepen through daily attention, participation in a facilitated peer support group, and coaching. Within the context of an empowered space, this process enables new behaviors to be adopted and sustained over time (see “Transformative Change Intervention Process”).

A group at American Express, led by Bob Franco, Vice President of the Global Talent Division, faced a key challenge: how to move individuals to higher levels of performance, especially when building partnerships within complex organizational systems. Using the Empowerment Model, he and his group went through an intense, personalized learning experience. As a result of a series of guided exercises around each of the four steps listed above, Bob and his team were able to adopt the key behavior of self-responsibility: They moved from being victims within a dysfunctional organization to being accountable for how they wished it to be and making things happen. In Bob’s words:, “This process moved us away from the crippling power of ‘problems’ to a new power – one inside us, one focused on what we want to create.”

Here is how this behavior change process transpired. First, the group participated in a self-awareness exercise. Bob discovered that he was going through the motions and had lost a lot of passion for his consulting and leadership. The roadblocks his team encountered and a highly politicized environment had sapped his enthusiasm.

As Bob went through the visioning exercise, he began to imagine his team developing a skill set that could more effectively serve their internal clients. He also saw that, through building their consulting and transformative change leadership skills, they could develop a value proposition that enabled them more independence and autonomy. Bob began to realize that, rather than being trapped in a dysfunctional system, he could operate on a higher level by increasing the capability of his current group. This vision was liberating and inspirational. Bob actually saw possible ways to gain control of the situation.

However, he saw that achieving his vision would require a lot of work. Were he and his team up to it? Would his clients be willing to participate in a transformative process? Would the rest of his division be threatened and try to sabotage this new initiative? Did he have the energy to go through it all?

Bob discovered that his growing edge was believing in his teammates and being willing to engage in this transformation process. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he was willing to give it his best effort. Meanwhile, each of his team members was going through transformations as well. As they revealed their growing edges, it became clear that, unlike in the past when Bob needed to lift everyone by the force of his vision and will, they were developing the capacity to do so on their own. Not only did he not need to lead in his usual way of making it all happen, he was being inspired by the collective sense of empowerment.

To put it in Bob’s words:, “This process helped us separate the circumstance around us that is charged with a disempowering ‘pathology’ to focus our own personal accountability toward what we can accomplish and what we are ultimately capable of attaining. The results were a clearly defined value proposition and an ability to be successful despite any organizational barriers. We moved away from the crippling power of ‘problems’ to a new power – one inside us, one focused on what we want to create. This team now has daily practices focusing on their vision.”

Bob’s intention statement was:, “I help my team build our consulting skills and leverage our collective talent to create business results. I lead and am led by an empowering team who knows what it wants and gets it!” Bob and his team then participated in a support system of coaching and peer support teams to help sustain the behavior changes (see “Flow and Timing of Activities”).

Measuring Results

This is a robust and proven methodology for changing behavior in organizations. Discerning results is quite straight-forward because the client and practitioner determine the behaviors that need to change and desired growth outcomes. They then create metrics to measure if they have changed. They follow through by analyzing the behaviors against the business results to which the behaviors are tied.

Measuring results is a key component of the empowerment process. Visions are always translated into measurable outcomes, albeit sometimes they are changes in attitude. To effectively achieve empowerment outcomes, one needs to translate awareness into behavior change that can be measured. Part of this process is also about learning from feedback. People need to see the manifestation of their efforts to determine how they did/are doing and then make adjustments accordingly. Another way to describe this is iterative learning or the growing edge.

The empowerment process also has the added benefit of being able to catalyze deep cultural change. Because it is about the achievement of specific behaviors tied to key business outcomes, it avoids one of the major problems of many cultural change initiatives and trainings: hoping that skills or competencies taught translate into business outcomes. Once leaders view initial results, they can then scale up the effort to eventually include every-one in the organization.

David Gershon (dgershon@empowermentinstitute.net) is the founder and CEO of Empowerment Institute. He is the author of nine books, including Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It (High Point Press, 1989), which has become a classic on the subject. David co-directs the Empowerment Institute Certification Program, which specializes in transformative change leadership. He has lectured on his behavior change and empowerment methodology at Harvard, MIT, and Duke and served as an advisor to the Clinton White House. for further information, go to www.empowermentinstitute.net.

The post Changing Behavior in Organizations: The Practice of Empowerment appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Sometimes the mechanics of managing change overshadow relationships and compromise people’s dignity, respect, and trust. The manager in this vignette was insensitive to the needs of his employees. He was going to rush into informing them that they were losing their jobs and then send them immediately into a workshop about résumé writing.

Organizational change doesn’t have to happen this way. The betrayal people often experience is a result not of change itself but of how it is managed. Employees want to be a part of the process, not apart from the process. They want to hear the truth and have an opportunity to ask questions and become informed. How leaders manage change affects whether trust will be built or broken and desired outcomes achieved. Fortunately, most leaders are conscientious, trying to do the right thing in the face of all odds. How do they preserve or rebuild trust within their organizations, given the changing business landscape?

Change as Loss

People may experience change as a loss the loss of relationships with those laid off or the dissolution of the “family” company environment that once existed. They may resent that they are doing more work for the same pay with fewer benefits. Often the organization is no longer the same place employees “signed on for.”

In a world where everything is changing rapidly, many people who previously looked to their workplace as a source of stability now regard it as out of control. It frightens them.

Sometimes the mechanics of managing change overshadow relationships and compromise people’s dignity, respect, and trust.

On the other hand, the people initiating the changes often gain from them. If I am the one gaining, it can be hard for me to see how the other person loses. Many leaders are uncomfortable watching people experience the pain of change and are uncomfortable experiencing their own pain. They often consider this to be touchy feely stuff, not the stuff of “real business.” During times of change, leaders tend to retreat to the “hard side” of business for many reasons: It is where they are most comfortable, where their role is more tangibly defined, where they are skilled, and where they are the safest. But in their retreat to the safe side, they fail to honor themselves, their relationships, and the real needs of the people they serve. Their search for safety results in a betrayal of themselves, their role, and those they serve.

Such betrayal damages individuals, relationships, and performance. It robs people of their ability to believe in themselves and diminishes their capacity to contribute wholeheartedly to the organization. When people feel betrayed, they pull back. Morale declines, as does productivity.

Effective leaders acknowledge their employees’ feelings of fear and loss and work to restore their confidence. Otherwise, the betrayal continues, and people’s trust in their leaders and their organization further plummets. Survivors go into a state of resignation: They take fewer risks, blame others, go through the motions, and are not as productive as they once were. If employees have been burned before, they are less willing to give their all and come through when needed. If leaders do not deal with feelings of betrayal, they will unwittingly destroy two of the very qualities they need to be competitive: their employees’ trust and their performance.

Healing from Betrayal

Healing from betrayal — whether intentional or not begins when we observe and acknowledge that betrayal has occurred and that we understand its impact on others. As a leader, you can take certain actions that can have a positive impact on people, as outlined below. These seven steps will help you and others remain aware of the behaviors essential to healing and provide a common language and perspective that engages people in rebuilding trust (see “Seven Steps for Healing” from The Reina Trust & Betrayal Model®).

Step 1: Observe and Acknowledge What Has Happened

“Mr. Smith needs to effectively address the ‘pay package’ issue at the organizational level. If benefits or merit pay are going to be negatively affected, he needs to manage the message through an effective and timely information program. I think he underestimates the level of awareness and impact this change will have on employees.”

• Acknowledge the Negative Impact of Change. Aware leaders realize that employees are whole human beings with feelings. They know that people who do not feel supported in dealing with their feelings and concerns are less able to heal from their experience of betrayal. As a first step, these leaders acknowledge the potential downside of the change process.
• Start with Awareness. One of the greatest mistakes leaders make in challenging times is to assume that, once a major change has taken place, trust will return on its own. This view is both unrealistic and irresponsible. Similar to healing at the individual level, the next step to healing at the organizational level is awareness that trust has been eroded.
• Assess the Health of Your Organization. Leaders can learn a lot by observing and assessing the climate within the organization. Notice what your people are experiencing and acknowledge it. Pay attention to what is building and breaking trust. Find out what is important to people. Listen to what they are saying at the water cooler, in the break rooms, and on the shop floor. When witnessing anger, don’t just notice it; listen to it. Quite often, anger represents deeper feelings of hurt and disappointment. Remember, people in pain need to be listened to. They need someone they can trust to turn to for support and understanding. They need help to understand their own experience.
• Acknowledge Feelings. Effective leaders consciously acknowledge their employees’ feelings of frustration, disappointment, and betrayal. It is only after acknowledging the feelings of betrayal that leaders are able to respond to them. Leaders must work very hard not to get defensive or try to justify or rationalize what happened. They must remember that people are entitled to their feelings. It is the role of a leader to listen, observe, and acknowledge.

SEVEN STEPS FOR HEALING

These seven steps will help you and others remain aware of the behaviors essential to healing and provide a common language and perspective that engages people in rebuilding trust.

Step 2: Allow Feelings to Surface

“I don’t always feel heard — that I can address my concerns directly with certain managers and be taken seriously. It is important to me that I am able to do so. There are occasions when my supervisor has to address issues with a particular manager on my behalf, because I wasn’t deemed ‘important’ enough by him to talk to. This attitude discourages me and other employees from addressing serious concerns in the future.”

• Give People Permission to Express Their Concerns, Issues, and Feelings in a Constructive Manner. Create safe forums, staffed by skilled facilitators, that support the expression of fear, anger, and frustration. Giving your employees a constructive way to discuss their feelings and experiences helps them let go of the negativity they are holding, freeing up that energy for rebuilding relationships and returning their focus to performance
• Help People Verbalize. Help employees give voice to their pain — pain they are afraid or unable to share. When you give your attention to understanding your employees, you let them know that you respect their pain. This is difficult work for leaders, but it is important and necessary for facilitating healing and navigating change. Your employees don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care — about them and their well-being. People in pain need to have their feelings heard. They need to know that you are able to relate to what they are saying and feeling. When you do not acknowledge your employees’ emotions, they feel unheard, resentful, and distrusting toward you. Another layer of betrayal occurs.

Step 3: Give Employees Support

“Our leader took the time to hear our story. She really listened and asked us questions. It helped to tell her how we felt. She heard how frightened we were about what was happening around us. It feels good to know that she understands our needs. When she shared her views, I was able to see things in a much different way. I am beginning to have hope for the future.”

• Recognize Your Employees’ Transitional Needs. People have needs that must be met before they can adapt to change. They have informational needs regarding the new direction the organization is taking and the strategies it proposes to get there. They have relationship needs associated with belonging and their role in the new organization. And they need their skills and abilities to be valued. When leaders expect people to embrace change without having these fundamental needs addressed, people feel betrayed.
• Back Your Employees. Your leader-ship position allows you to be your employees’ advocate. Represent their interests, defend them from unwarranted criticism, and lobby for resources critical to their jobs. By backing your people, you are building contractual trust and meeting the implicit expectations people have of leaders. Furthermore, you demonstrate that you can be trusted to fulfill future commitments and that people can count on you to do what you say you will do.

Step 4: Reframe the Experience

“Our president, Mr. Allen, took the time to visit every field office in our region to explain the business reasons for GNP Industries’ downsizing the eastern division. This helped us put the change into perspective. It lessened the communication gap between the headquarters and the field branches. His actions let us employees know that he cared. We believed he was going to do everything he could to lessen the impact the changes were having on our jobs, our families, and our lives. We understood the direction the company was taking and knew our leader would continue to tell us the truth.”

• Put the Experience into a Larger Context. Helping your employees work through their emotions makes it possible for them to begin to heal.This movement gives you an opportunity to rebuild trust and helps employees reframe their experience by discussing the bigger picture: the business reasons for change. Honestly acknowledge the changes the organization went through and why. In doing so, you must continue to acknowledge what people have experienced. Only then will employees be in a position to accept the new direction in which the organization is headed and to see their role in it.
• Engage in Inquiry. The questions that people ask will guide their journey. Responding to their questions honestly will provide employees with understanding, awareness, truth, and renewed hope for a trusting relationship with you and the organization.Something quite powerful occurs when we tell the impeccable truth — with no exceptions, no justifications, no rationalizations.
• Help Employees Realize There Are Choices. Experiencing betrayal leaves employees feeling very vulnerable and at the mercy of the forces of change.They may need help seeing that they have choices regarding how they react to their circumstances. The more people are aware that they can choose their actions, the more they are able to take responsibility for those actions. Employees may need help in examining their assumptions, breaking out of their self-limiting beliefs, and exploring options and possibilities.
• Embrace Mistakes. Some of the behaviors discussed that aid in healing may be new for you, and you may not trust your competence in exercising them. It may take some practice to develop these skills and become comfortable using them. During this time, you may make some mistakes. That does not automatically make you a failure. Embrace these mistakes as opportunities for learning, thereby turning them to your own benefit.

After all, they provide valuable feed-back regarding what works and what does not.

Just as leaders must be sensitive to employees’ needs, employees need to be sensitive to leaders’ needs. This may mean having some patience and understanding that the leader is grappling with change as well. Therefore, if a leader makes a mistake, it is not necessarily evidence that the leader can’t be trusted. It is evidence that the leader is stretching, growing, and learning. When someone is practicing new ways of relating, people need to be supportive and understanding of his or her learning.

To gain support and understanding, you might find it helpful to share with people that you are learning new skills. Sharing this aspect of yourself demonstrates your trust in them and further extends the invitation to rebuild your relationship with them.

It is possible that you as the leader feel betrayed as well. It is as important that your feelings of betrayal be acknowledged and that you get support to help people see that.

Step 5: Take Responsibility

“Leaders need to take responsibility for how change was implemented. The restructurings took people by surprise and left departments with minimal coverage to do the work. Questions were not answered and needs not addressed. It’s difficult to imagine the distress this has caused. Employees were in great distress and felt quite isolated.”

• Take Responsibility for Your Role in the Process. It is not helpful to try to spin the truth or cover mistakes. It does not serve you or the relationship. Something quite powerful occurs when we tell the impeccable truth with no exceptions, no justifications, no rationalizations. Telling the truth is the fundamental basis for trust in workplace relationships. It demonstrates one’s trustworthiness. We take responsibility when we acknowledge our mistakes. Three simple words, I am sorry, reflect taking responsibility and go a long way to rebuilding trust.
• Help Others Take Responsibility for Their Part. When people are in pain, they tend to blame leaders and behave in ways that contribute to betrayal. We support others in taking responsibility when we help them see their role in creating the climate of betrayal. Employees may not have control over change, but they do have control over how they choose to respond. Even though people may feel betrayed, those feelings do not make betraying in return acceptable.
• Make Amends and Return with Dividends. It is the leader’s role to break the chain of betrayal and reverse the spiral of distrust. Because actions speak louder than words, it is important that you take the first step in mending fences with your employees. Remember that rebuilding trust does not simply mean giving back what was taken away. It means returning something in better shape than it was originally in. You must not only replace but also make things better. If this is not possible, be honest about the realities of the situation and what you can do to make amends.
• Manage Expectations. To safeguard you and your employees against future betrayals, keenly manage expectations. Employees want to know what is expected of them and what they can expect in return. Emphasize the need to negotiate with them when their expectations cannot be fulfilled. Doing so strengthens contractual trust between you and your employees.
• Keep Your Promises. Managing promises is important in relationships. Trust is the result of promises kept. Don’t make promises that you know you can’t keep; doing so just sets up you and everyone with whom you have a relationship for a downfall. When you realize that you cannot keep promises, renegotiate them; don’t break them.

Be careful of what you promise and what you appear to promise. When you are attempting to rebuild trust, it is essential that you not try to justify past actions and that you address the perceptions of those who feel betrayed. According to Frank Navran in Truth and Trust: The First Two Victims of Downsizing, “It is enough for an employee to have believed that a promise was broken for trust to be violated.”

Step 6: Forgive

“Many employees feel that they have been intentionally misinformed and lied to. They do not trust management. It will take time for forgiveness to happen. We need to bring in support to help us understand the surrounding circumstances and allow us to say what needs to be said, to ‘get this off our chests.’ This will help us shift from blaming management to focusing on problem-solving the issues, so we can begin to forgive.”

• Recognize That Forgiveness Is Freedom. Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves. It is about freeing ourselves and others from the anger, bitterness, and resentment that can deplete our individual and collective energy and spirit and interfere with relationships and performance. When we help people forgive others, we help them free themselves. With forgiveness, they heal for their future by changing their attitude about the past. We help them see new possibilities.For most people, forgiveness takes time, and it happens a little at a time. Over time, employees may be willing to forgive, but you cannot expect them to forget. You can help them heal from the pain they felt, but you cannot erase the events of the past. Occasionally, employees may still be a bit angry after they forgive. It is natural that they may experience lingering feelings of anger for the perceived wrongs they experienced.

  Occasionally, you as a leader may need to forgive yourself. You did the best you could, and for whatever reason, it still wasn’t enough. Beating yourself up mentally and emotionally is worthless and self-defeating.

  Acknowledge for yourself what needs to be said or done to put your mind and this issue to rest. Then just do it! Be compassionate and cut yourself some slack during the healing process!

• Shift from Blaming to Focusing on Needs. Because forgiveness is a personal matter, it is difficult for people to forgive a system. However, leaders can work to cultivate a more personal and trusting climate where healing and forgiveness can take place. They can begin to do this by helping people shift from blaming the organization or its leaders to focusing on their personal needs as they relate to the business.It is important to address persistent resentment and blame in an organization, as they are toxic to the individuals involved and to the whole system. They undermine trust, morale, productivity, creativity, and innovation. People continue to blame when they perceive that those who are responsible have failed to take responsibility. At the same time, they feel that they do not have to take action and are therefore not responsible.

  It is essential for leaders to help people shift from a blaming mode to a problem solving focus. What do employees need to resolve the issues, concerns, fears, and pain they are feeling? What conversations need to take place? What still needs to be said? What needs to happen for healing to occur? What will make a difference right now?

Step 7: Let Go and Move On

“Our leader brought in outside skilled facilitators to provide the needed support through the transition. During the small group discussions, they were neutral and made sure we were all heard. They held a tough line, helping us see our leader’s point of view. The facilitators really drove home the responsibility we all shared. We had painful but powerful discussions. What a relief it was when we were able to forgive ourselves, because we were no angels. But things really shifted when we also forgave our leader. Wow — we have moved on and are all on board with our organization’s new direction.”

• Accept What’s So. Leaders can help people accept what has happened. Acceptance is not condoning what was done but experiencing the reality of what happened without denying, disowning, or resenting it. It is facing the truth without blame. It is helping employees separate themselves from their preoccupation with the past and helping them invest their emotional energies in the present and in creating a different future.
• Realize That You Won’t Always Accomplish Your Goal. Although you may not always accomplish your goal, it is important that you make a good faith effort and that your intentions are honorable. It is quite acceptable for leaders to disagree with their employees or not support a particular cause. Effective leaders do so with honesty and integrity.
• Take the Time and Make the Commitment. Building trust takes time and commitment. When trust is lost, it is regained only by a sincere dedication to the key behaviors and practices that earned it in the first place. The road back is not easy. However, by listening, telling the truth, keeping your promises, and backing your employees, you will play an instrumental role in assisting your employees and organization to heal from betrayal, rebuild trust, and renew relationships.
• Give Support! Providing support is a sign of your dedication to the healing and rebuilding process. The number one mistake leaders make is expecting people to immediately move from step 1 (observing and acknowledging what has happened) to step 7 (letting go and moving on) without doing the necessary work of the other steps. We aren’t built to work this way. People in pain cannot simply move on. They need to fully go through the healing process. When people are willing and able to do the work, it will lead to renewal!Your commitment to practicing these seven steps, and engaging your people in the same, will lead to transformation. Imagine the possibilities!

The post Rebuilding Trust Within Organizations appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Since his appointment in November 2001, Spence has been thinking deeply about the paradoxical nature of the child welfare system. Chosen for his long and impressive record of advocating for children and families, providing fiscal stewardship, and understanding complex systems, he says that one of the first things he initiated for himself was “an analysis of the coherence among the organization’s values, structure, process, praxis, and content.” In the course of his analysis, Spence came upon studies that showed that the gap in child welfare agencies between espoused theory and theory in practice is as great as any recorded in organizations that have been studied.

He attributes this gap in part to the enormous stress the child welfare system is under at any given time— particularly the stress that frontline workers face by constantly having to make life and death decisions with little real support from their own organizational culture or the culture at large. People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

Aligned Values

People don’t automatically consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions, when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public immediately blames DSS.

One of the first steps Spence and his staff took to close the gap was to draft six clear, aligned statements that help people understand and agree on what constitutes good work. They have called these statements “practice values” for the agency’s work: it is child-driven, family-centered, strength-based, community-focused, committed to diversity and cultural competence, and committed to continuous learning. “These values are not radical in the child welfare world,” says Harry. “What would be radical is actually figuring out how to achieve them, which is what we’re trying to do.”

After they drafted the value statements, he and his staff set about building consensus around and commitment to achieving them at every level of the organization. First, they met with senior managers in Boston to revise and hone them; then they took the discussion to all senior managers throughout the state. Next they conducted their first statewide DSS leadership conference to include parent and family representatives, many of whom had been found to place their children at risk through abuse and neglect, in the conversation. Now DSS is planning to hold discussions at the local level. The reason for developing the value statements in a collaborative way — that is, in dialogue with DSS leaders and client representatives — is to link the value statements powerfully to daily practice.

Another step has been to recognize and make explicit the three levels of child welfare practice: clinical (the frontline social workers working with particular families), managerial (the management system that oversees, guides, supports, evaluates, and organizes the work of those social workers), and system of care (the organization’s partnership with other public services such as mental health systems, school systems, and private providers, including foster families and adoptive parents). Spence asserts, “To create coherence among these three, we need to drive the same agenda at each level and constantly maintain awareness of how they work together and reinforce one another. Otherwise, signals and incentives to everyone in the system become confused.”

Quality Improvement

Simultaneously, Harry has been working to implement quality improvement systems. He observes, “The big challenge here is that child welfare involves immense discretion all the time. I learned early in my life that no matter how many bureaucratic categories you create, the next case you take up will immediately confound those categories. The varieties of human misery are simply too complex to be captured in 10, 100, or 1,000 boxes.”

Acknowledging that regulation does play a foundational role in setting minimum standards, the commissioner believes that to truly succeed, the real work has to go beyond regulation. He fosters excellence by advocating for a mutual accountability system, which he defines as the responsibility each of us has to help others above and below us in the organization to do their very best work. He’s also careful not to impose solutions that worked elsewhere. “While certain things we learn about organizations and their management are transferable,” he explains, “this learning is only of value to the new organization you enter if it’s linked to a deep and profound regard for the craft of that organization. Otherwise, the systems you put in place can be powerfully destructive.”

One system in the queue for improvement is the current individual accountability model for social workers, which Spence believes runs counter to DSS practice values. After observing the disparity between the level of support that social workers need to do their jobs and the actual support they get, he initiated research into moving toward a team-based accountability system. In the process, he discovered that every state in the country works on the solo practitioner model, in which single social workers are responsible for an enormous number of children. These caseloads range from 11 cases per day in New York to 18 cases in Massachusetts to roughly 35 cases in Florida. Interestingly, the teams that do appear in child welfare are “expert” teams, composed of child psychiatrists, pediatricians, lawyers, and other specialists. The results of this research prompted DSS to apply for a substantial grant from a foundation (which they recently received) to develop and test a team-based model for social workers.

“To realize continuous improvement, we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes.”

—Lewis H. (Harry) Spence

What the commissioner considers the linchpin of the child welfare accountability problem, however, is public pressure. He notes that, in general, child welfare appears on our radar screen when we read about the death of a child in DSS custody. The public then puts pressure on the agency to fire the “guilty” social worker so we can assure ourselves that we’re not culpable for that death. “Within child welfare, that is an experience of deep betrayal,” Spence says. “What yesterday was perfectly acceptable work today becomes grounds for firing because suddenly the boss, to remove himself from the public spotlight, needs to find someone to take responsibility for the death of the child. He usually turns a perfectly innocent party into a sacrificial lamb.”

Rather than ruthlessly penalize individuals, Spence wants the community to hold DSS accountable for instituting strong learning systems, similar to what the healthcare system has been developing in the last few years around fatalities in hospitals. “To realize continuous improvement,” he says, “we have to be able to identify, safely acknowledge, and learn from error as quickly as possible, and then build systems to insulate against the damaging consequences of inevitable mistakes while reducing the frequency of those mistakes. We cannot accomplish this by constantly punishing ordinary human error. Certainly, there need to be consequences for negligence or dereliction of duty, but if I were held to an error-free standard, I wouldn’t survive a single day of work here, nor would anyone else.”

In the face of these long-standing challenges, Harry knows he cannot expect his staff to immediately trust the new systems he’s striving to put in place. Instead, he asks them to maintain a healthy skepticism while he tries to give voice to their hope of making a real difference in child welfare. He says, “We all struggle with questions such as, ‘Do I act on the thing that first brought me here—a genuine desire to help parents and families?’ or ‘Do I drive my practice on what I know about the punitive accountability system — the risk of being publicly flayed alive?’ All I’ve tried to do is operationalize the part that says, ‘I came here to deeply care for children and families.’”

Kali Saposnick is publications editor at Pegasus Communications. Harry Spence will be a keynote speaker and session presenter at this year’s 2003 Pegasus Conference in October, where he will share the learnings that he acquired at DSS as well as in his previous positions as deputy chancellor for operations for the New York City Public Schools; governor-appointed receiver for the bankrupt city of Chelsea, Massachusetts; and court-appointed receiver of the Boston Housing Authority.

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Unchecked and unmanaged, conflict can be negative and corrosive. But when the competition of ideas is suppressed, conformity stifles creativity. The challenge is to reduce the corrosion while stimulating the creativity.

Conflict has many sources:

• Disputes about inequities, broken promises, preferential treatment
• Competition for diminishing resources
• Fault lines of age, gender, race, craft, status, authority
• Expectations, especially when they are unclear or unmet

Fear sustains conflict, often the fear of failure. Employees who lack the competence or confidence to take on a challenging assignment will resist in order to avoid potential failure. Newly appointed managers with high potential but limited management experience will often precipitate conflict as a way of diverting attention from their own deficiencies.

Resolving conflict is seldom easy, but the failure to confront it is often more damaging than the conflict itself. The problem will persist, and the reluctant leader will be seen as timid or inept. This also holds true when we send the problem up the ladder of authority. Not only do we clog the ladder, we miss opportunities to learn how to manage effectively.

Every workplace should have a “conflict-management plan,” a prescribed and widely understood method for dealing with conflict. Most don’t; they depend on the experience and intuition of individual leaders. In the absence of a plan, here are some ideas that will help managers resolve conflict:

Stop Blaming. Pinpointing responsibility for past actions can lead to learning, but doing so can easily cross the boundary to blame, where accepting responsibility becomes difficult. Marilyn Paul, writing in The Systems ThinkerV8N1 (February 1997), reminds us, “Blaming leads to fear, which increases cover-ups and reduces the flow of information by stopping productive conversation.”

Manage Your Emotions and Ego. In Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities (John Wiley & Sons, 1999), Paul Stoltz suggests that the emotional “noise” of conflict interferes with its resolution:

“Filter out the internal static caused by anger and worry. These emotions cloud your judgment. Detach, in the Buddhist way. Acknowledge the emotion; it was appropriate for a few moments, so don’t fight it. But you need to put it away ‘on the shelf. You can still see it, but you control it rather than having it control you. Focus on the things that can really help you.”

When you’re steamed, conflict resolution tends to be more conflict than resolution. Turn the “noise” down as you try to hear what’s really going on.

And don’t let your ego get in the way. Bosses hate to admit when they’re not skilled at something; they think they look weak and ineffective. In coping with conflict, however, admitting a difficulty may be the smartest strategy, a sign of perceptive self-evaluation and, ironically, authentic confidence.

Deal with the Impact, not the Intentions.You may think you know why someone did something you didn’t like, but you may be wrong, so don’t attribute motives. Instead, deal with the impact and consequences of the actions.

Focus on Interests, not Staked Out Positions. People in conflict will come to you declaring their positions (, “I was only exercising my authority as team leader”) or (, “She doesn’t know what she’s doing”). Acknowledge those positions, but understand that they are not the path toward resolution.

Instead, get people to talk about underlying interests—their needs, desires, concerns, and fears. The positions people take in a conflict are driven by these interests. If an employee is not confident about his skills in a certain realm, his abiding interest in not making a fool of himself will lead to a public position to avoid taking on assignments in that area.

Repeat, Rephrase, Reflect. When someone would rather continue the conflict than resolve it, you need to be patient. One way to hold on is to repeat what they are saying, rephrase it in your own words to show you have heard and understood, and then invite the other person to join you as you reflect on the facts and circumstances of the case.

Here are five tactics for that conversation:

1. Explain the consequences and benefits of his actions.
2. Explain how his actions conflict with your values.
3. Explain how the long-term disadvantages outweigh short-term convenience.
4. Explain how his actions are hurting others.
5. Explain how he is eroding his professional reputation.

Skilled leaders can follow these guidelines to prevent conflict from damaging the relationships in the workplace.

Edward D. Miller is the managing director of The Newsroom Leadership Group, a coaching and consulting consortium that produces the popular APME Leadership Development Workshops. This article is adapted from “Managing Conflict,” part of Edward’s “Reflections on Leadership” series on newsroom management. Learn more at www.newsroomleadership.com /Reflections/s-redesign.html.

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