Q4 brings a sense of urgency to leaders because they're preparing budgets, forecasts, and headcount allocations for Q1 of the new year.
There is added pressure of Q4 performance and many teams struggle with effective decision-making.
Imagine an executive team -- CEO, CTO, COO, CRO, CFO, and the CMO. They're making quick decisions and investors and the board are uneasy, because the team decided to launch 4 “new stores" sites at once in 4 different states.
It was unsuccessful.
Investors are uneasy, and the CEO is stressed because the chair of the board is calling him constantly to complain about the expenses for 4 different rents, operating expenses, poor revenues, and other significant challenges. The board
is getting ready for the quarter-end meeting and now the CEO is worried about how he's going to address the concerns of the board.
To begin with, the sites are in 4 different states with 4 unique markets -- NYC, Denver, Cupertino, and Toronto. After 120 days they've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in unrecoverable costs with low sales and now the CEO needs to chat with the Chair of the board to explain the failure.
The conversation is uncomfortable. The CEO, with the best of intentions, thought the plan was solid. Unfortunately, he didn't test it. Too many "cooks in the kitchen" and not enough market analysis.
In collaboration with the CEO, the board decided it is in the company’s best interest to hire a third-party company to provide objective, concise, and proven strategies to help its
leaders re-establish trust and focus for the business plan.
We completed a review and suggested solution
quickly. Part of our review involves a scientific analysis that helps identify (mis) communication behavior amongst the executive team.
From the analysis, we determined that there is a recalibration required because we don't have enough "risk mitigation" skills on the team. Team members continue to bump heads over both small and large decisions because they lack self-awareness with their behavioral styles and the styles of others around them.
All in all, the team has "too much" D style (driver and assertive/persuasive style). We needed to balance the team and help the CEO have a conversation with the board -- to assure the board they can remedy the communication and performance issues in a
way that avoids terminating key members -- saving the company a lot of money and time!
Where there are
people, there is going to be perceived conflict and difficult conversations -- they happen everywhere, personally and professionally. When there is conflict on a team, organizational performance can suffer in in a number of ways:
- The company's image can suffer, the reputation, their brand, the CEO, and the Board may lose the confidence of investors and shareholders.
- Difficult situations not handled directly can impact organizations negatively and then people are miserable going to work when there is a perceived conflict.
- Misery at work leads to low productivity and poor decision-making, all of which lead to lower revenues.
Not being able to find our way to the other side of a disagreement will absolutely lead to substantial business risks. In a previous episode of the Get Hired Up! Podcast, we interviewed Liza Provenzano -- Founder and Principal Consultant of SparkHR, a human resources and leadership development
firm. She says:
“Predominantly with leaders...the types of situations they're bringing up are performance
concerns and those are very challenging conversations to address. How do I have a discussion with someone about their work not being up to speed and still help that individual continue to be engaged, help them to find the way forward in a motivating way? The poor performance conversation is often one that preoccupies leaders the most.”
For more insight into this topic alongside 17 tips for navigating difficult conversations, click below to read the blog and get the expanded list (and instructions), and more ...
