Edwin Ebreo's essays sharing his experience as an HR Consultant in the Philippines. This blog focuses on people management, training, team building, recruitment, organization development,
employment and labor practices in the Philippines.
How many variations of the title have you heard? I've heard plenty; "that's not how we do things here;" that's not allowed; you can't do that; it has always been done this way; I really like your idea but... And the almost instantaneous NO!
A friend just moved to a big real estate company as head of Training. Having worked for a smaller, more nimble company where managers like him were clear about what kind of decisions they are empowered to make, he felt constricted by some of the rules in his new company that it is making it difficult for him to make changes in practices even within the unit he leads because everything has to go through his boss... Well, two bosses actually who often give conflicting directions. He also often find himself needing to confront resistance to change.
Being passionate about personal development himself, he told his immediate boss about his attending Toastmasters Club meetings every 2nd and 4th Thursdays of the month. This, he said is for him to continually sharpen his communication skills. Attending the meetings however will require him to leave work an hour early at the given schedules. Guess what the boss said when he asked permission, "Uhm, we don't do that here." My friend didn't give up there. He reemphasized the value of him pursuing and paying for the training that he will need to be better at his job. He said that he is even willing to offset the time or have the time off deducted from his salary just so he would be allowed to pursue the kind of development he believes he need for his job." The boss said he appreciates the effort but... "uhm, we don't do that here." He said, "go to HR, we have a lot of training programs here. Take the ones that are sanctioned by the company." my friend, now getting a bit impatient said "if we keep saying we don't do that here, when are things going to change around here? We are going to grow dumb if we all keep saying we don't do that here. The boss, now cornered said, go to HR, see what they will say about it.
Not everyone is as assertive as my friend. Some employees who will attempt to improve things at work and given that kind of roadblock will probably react with "uhm, okay" and will stop there. To have a dynamic culture where ideas for change are considered, put to test and acted upon, we need employees who are assertive enough to sell an idea and even go to the extent of arguing with the boss to impress a point. We also need bosses who have the humility to accept that practices, specially the ones they gave birth to need to be reviewed and eventually changed. They also need to realize that they do not have the monopoly on ideas and that their staff can provide perspectives that they are unable to see.
In a mature team, bosses and subordinates discuss issues passionately and bring needed changes. It doesn't matter where the ideas come from. When the boss learn to be assertive rather than aggressive, this is what happens. When staff learn to be assertive, this is what happens. Assertiveness kills the tyranny of the "uhm, we don't do it here." It's an important skill that I believe most of us Filipinos need to learn. It's also a skill that a lot of us are unwilling to accept we lack. For some, assertiveness is something... uhm, we don't practice here.
Want to change the quality of communication in your team? Please call us and we'll show you how we can help.
Two recent events drove me to write this article. The first one is the inquiry I received from a reader who is seeking my opinion if what his employers did to him was fair. The company's president disapproved his leave application at the last minute after several days of waiting and after following the company's procedure for filing . He decided to skip work despite the disapproval because he can't back out of the commitment he made which led his boss to charge him for AWOL. It's not the lack of consideration of the big boss or the employee's decision to go "AWOL" that irks me but the fact that the President had to to decide on his leave application when the employee is several layers below the company's hierarchy. The second event is a discussion I had with some friends from a large company. They were complaining about how slow people from operations are in processing the sales agents' request and their lack of flexibility to deal with special but reasonable client requests.
While the two stories are different they share a common problem; lack of empowerment. The company President despite so many things on his plate, still go through employees' requests to take leaves of absence and makes decisions on them. If this is not micro managing, I don't know what is. There are so many reasons why I think this is wrong. First, it takes precious time away from the President to take on strategic concerns. It puts a lot of bureaucratic red tape on the processing of mundane matters as leaves administration. It slows down the decision making process and dis-empowers middle managers in managing their work affairs and relationship with their staff. The employee grievance brought to my attention shouldn't have arisen if the decision making was faster and closer to the ground.
In the case of the large company, I think the narrowness of job responsibilities did them in. Some large companies break down job categories to such small pieces that people have to depend on procedures and structures to act on issues in front of them so that they do not go outside the box they are put in. If an issue request does not fit any of the boxes , the issue or request is rejected to the detriment of the business. While large organizations rarely feel the impact of boxed thinking due to their shear size, they lose opportunities to make their customers happy. This is probably a good thing because those who are rendered unhappy by slow action take their business to smaller and more nimble companies.
This is the message of this post, when people are empowered to make decisions, it speeds up a lot of things, prevents unnecessary problems and prevents boxed thinking. But what is empowerment and how do we know it exists in an organization? It exists when people are clear about their goals, when their decision making authority is broad enough to address special situations and when they are equipped with the necessary competencies to make appropriate decisions and perform necessary actions. Three things are necessary in order to make this happen; a results-focused job descriptions; delegation of decision making powers as close to the ground as possible; and competency building for the peace of mind of those who are delegating authority.
Some HR Initiatives fail because of HRD's inability to lead the change and build consensus among stake holders. Case in point, people in charge of training would conduct a Training Needs Analysis survey and then prescribe training programs to address the identified needs. Stakeholders take a look at the list of courses and agree that these are indeed the needed training. After the training is held, both managers and participants are unable to follow through because one, the managers only have a superficial appreciation of the needed change while the participants are unsure of how to go about making the change without their managers leading the way. HR may have the same dilemma in the implementation of performance management systems, recruitment strategies, employment policies and the likes. When HRD tries to operate in a vacuum and dishes out program after program without thoroughly involving the stake holders from the very beginning and without letting them lead the change within their respective units. I believe that for change in the organization to take place, key players should be in the thick of the action from the inception, to planning, to implementation, to evaluation, to continuous improvement.
John Kotter, through his book "Leading Change" shared an instructive view of how to lead the change. I encourage HR to pay attention to it. In order to effectively carry out change in the company's HR practices, they must establish the urgent need for it. The organization's leaders must accept this as both true and worth doing. When they see the wisdom of the change and accept the role they play in it, they become part of the change coalition. They will take part in envisioning the change and communicating it in the whole organization and specifically to their direct reports. HR should be able to guide the coalition through the process by identifying potential risks and barriers and determine ways to negotiate through them using enabling tools like training,technology and open communication. Sometimes the change can be a long drawn process and people can be impatient. It helps that they are apprised of the progress, the milestones and the small victories. When people see how well the change process is going, they become bolder and identify more ways to improve things. When gains are consolidated it helps produce more change. The final leg of the change process is not really the last leg because after the change is institutionalized and made part of the culture, HR should remember to go back to it have it evaluated in the future and make some necessary changes to cope with the change organizational, technological and business environment.
HR's power, no matter what the organizational charter says about it is limited only to its ability to influence the people especially the leaders to embrace and take ownership of change. HR must not juggernaut its way to changing the organizations because some walls are just too big and too strong for them to not seek the involvement of everyone in the organization.
While HR is the key player in this post, IT, Accounting, Marketing and the rest of the organizational managers should also learn to lead and manage change more effectively. Change leadership and management is more important now than it ever was.
Facilitating a Basic Team Building Workshop
Last April 22, 2010 I had the opportunity to share with fellow Philippine Society for Training and Development members some of my experiences and learnings as I facilitate team building workshops. I decided to share the key points of that 2-hour presentation in the intent of reaching out to more people who are interested in doing what I do. I divided my presentation in three major components; Preparation,Implementation and Follow through. and that's how I intend to share them with you today. Here goes:
Preparation:
(This one came at the end of my presentation but I decided to put it here ahead of the rest to make this article more cohesive). The most important preparation you will make as a Team building Facilitator is understanding, appreciating and developing a passion for team building. Your success depends not only on your ability to facilitate some so called team building activities but in your ability to help the participants contextualize the lessons into some useful actions. I suggest heavy reading on the subject matter, observation of organizations and teams and trying to build teams yourself. I find it difficult to imagine succeeding as a team building facilitator without learning the lessons from both success and failure of building teams and fostering teamwork in your own territory.
I presented three components in the actual preparation on the way to a team building initiative; leadership involvement; needs analysis; and design.
Leadership Involvement
I recommended that you involve the leaders of the team/organization as early as possible and as deeply as possible. Remember that they are the ones building the team, not you. You are a facilitator, a process guide or a team building coach if you will. The leaders need to understand what kind of leadership work it entails to build a high performing team. I always say that the Leaders have the most to learn in any team building initiative. As a facilitator, you need to level expectations with them, even decide whether you can actually help them or not. There were a number of times that I begged off from a request to facilitate a team building workshop because there's a disconnect between what I believe and what the leader believes. I do not say the person is wrong, maybe I am the one who is wrong. I always find it better to beg off than pretend I can help when I can't. Anyway, what is necessary so that the leader will be able to build the team with your help? First, the leader needs to understand the concept of teamwork. She needs to accept the tasks that leaders need to undertake in order to achieve teamwork. I also find it helpful to let the leader in on the whole intervention so that when I have to run a team building workshop, the leaders are not coming off at the same level as the other learners. I make sure that I already have allies in them when I run the workshop. The leaders also need to know and accept the responsibility of following through. I tell them that the real team building happens when they follow through. The workshop is just a learning session, some sort of a launch pad.
Needs Analysis
As a team building facilitator, you will come in to teams at different development levels. You need to know where each team is so you can design a suitable intervention. You'll need to know what their current strengths are and their areas for improvement.If you like to use Patrick Lencioni's team building framework like I do, you need to know which of the five team fundamentals need to be strengthened; trust;conflict management;commitment; accountability or focus on result. The use of climate surveys and other needs analysis tools can be useful.
Design
I did not cover the entire team building design process because that would have taken more than the amount of time I was given. Instead, I highlighted the most important mindset in designing a team building workshop and that is having a clear set of objectives first and then choosing the interventions/activities that will address those objectives. Some facilitators for example tend to think that a ropes course will address all team building needs, I disagree. They say that if your only tool is a hammer, everything will look like a nail. As a facilitator, you need to see to it that you don't fall into that cure-all mindset. I also shared five things to consider in choosing your team building activities as:
1. Will they meet your objectives? (See reason above)
2. Do you have enough time? (Let's be realistic, we can't always have unlimited time)
3. Are the activities new to the participants? (Some companies hold team building events regularly. If they've done it before, the impact and appreciation tend to decrease)
4. Have you tested them? (For impact and safety in case of highly Physical and outdoor activities)
5. Are they fun? (They say people learn best in moments of enjoyment. This is a good last criteria, not a top one.)
Implementation: Some tips in Facilitating
Start your team building event on a right note by coming up with a really engaging ice breaker activity that will set the tone of the workshop. Follow it up with emphasizing the need to be as engaged in the whole duration of the event. Level expectations so the participants will know what they can expect from the workshop. I also use the leveling of expectation activity as a way to gauge the level of commitment of the participants. While we laugh at funny not so serious statements written by some participants, I also call their attention to it. This is so they know that there is a need for some change of mindset if the event is to be successful.
Facilitating experiential learning activities
There are four major steps in running a structured learning experience (Please see photo). If you use a learning game, the game itself is the experience. The three other steps are part of what we call processing. You need to prepare suitable questions to process the activity. Here are some examples:
What happened? (Reflecting)
What helped? (Reflecting)
What hindered? (Reflecting)
What can we learn here? (Generalizing)
What can we change in the way we work because of the learning? (Applying)
Learning games or SLE's are not the only activities available to you as a team building facilitator Here are some other tools you can use:
Activities Purpose
Self and group assessments To assess individuals or the team
Disclosure activities To familiarize
Norming To agree on a set of behaviors
Visioning and action planning To agree on a goal or course of action
I recommend three major team building event outputs, they are key learning points, norms and and re-entry plans. Have these ensures that learning is contextualized and follow through is planned.
Follow Through
It is hard to have a successful team building initiative without a follow through plan. Having it ensures that leaders have tools they can use to push the team building agenda after the learning event. Here are my suggestions:
Make a post workshop report (Include all workshop outputs)
Discuss the report with the rest of the team as soon as possible
Make plans to implement commitments
Monitor progress, give feedback and make improvements
I speak from experience when I tell you that having all these still do not guarantee teamwork. They are important first steps towards it but fostering a culture of high team performance requires more. I invite you to read what I think an organization need in order to push the teamwork agenda here.
