Merge behaviors

Your two teams began to merge in their behaviors toward a more collegial approach. One team had to be dissolved because they could not make the transition.
Be well,
Dwika-ExecuTrain




"How can two teams work together when they are so different?"
by: Steven Cerri

Here's the situation.

Imagine you are a Director in a technical company. The company designs, develops, manufactures, distributes, and supports software for a vertical market. You are managing two teams. One is co-located with you and you have worked with them for a long time. You understand them and they understand you. We'll call this team, Home-Team. The Home-Team has worked together for some time and know how to work successfully to get things done.

You have also, just recently, been tasked to manage a team that is located half-way around the world. We'll call this team, Away-Team. Away-Team has worked together for a long time as well, and they too know how to work well to get things done. You, however, have not worked with the Away-Team before.

Your job now is to get Home-Team and Away-Team to work together as a Combined-Team. Combined-Team is being tasked to contribute the respective expertise of the two teams so that the whole team is successful. Home-Team has an expertise that it must contribute for success and Away-Team has an expertise that it must also contribute for success.

In most cases this seems like a "no-brainer". Both teams have been successful in their respective pasts. Both teams work well with their respective team members. How difficult can it be for these two teams to work together?

That's the set-up. Now I'll tell you what happens.

The reality is different than your expectations. After the first several meetings with just you and the Away-Team you begin to notice something. You begin to notice that Away-Team seems very aggressive and argumentative. They argue with you about everything. They disagree with you about everything. It seems that you can't say anything without someone from the Away-Team saying the opposite or telling you that you "can't". The really interesting thing is that the Away-Team members argue amongst themselves as well. They treat each other as they treat you.

You don't think too much of it at first even though you notice this behavior in the Away-Team. You decide that it's just a difference in style and you don't think it deserves much more attention than just a notice. It will work itself out you think.

So you continue on and decide that it's time for the two teams to have their first joint meeting. You set up a phone conference with everyone from Home-Team and Away-Team. During the meeting it is clear to you that the Home-Team is more collegial and the Away-Team is much more combative, critical, and aggressive.

In fact, as the meeting continues one of the members of the Away-Team makes a comment that can be interpreted as a strong and direct criticism of one of the members of Home-Team. You decide not to say anything. Neither does anyone else. Everyone seems to just bury the tension that was generated by the comment. The meeting ends and some of the other members of Home-Team ask you what you thought about the statement at the end of the meeting. You respond first by asking them what they thought.

They tell you that they think that the Home-Team member who was apparently criticized will probably feel unfairly stepped on. You go to the Home-Team member in question and you ask her what she thought about the meeting. She singles-out the statement you were concerned about and makes the comment that the statement seemed to be overly critical of her.

You talk to a few other people from the Home-Team and you feel that you've gathered enough information to come to the following conclusions:

1. The Home-Team believes that one of their members was criticized unfairly.

2. From your past experience, you are now convinced that this behavior is standard for the Away-Team team.

3. Whatever the Away-Team thinks, the Home-Team does not appreciate this kind of behavior and doesn't know how to participate effectively when this approach is used.

Your general conclusions are the following. The two teams have distinctly different styles of communication, interaction, and team participation. Home-Team utilizes a much more collegial communication process. Away-Team utilizes a much more combative team participation process. One approach is not right and the other wrong. One approach is not even better than the other. They are merely different.

The two teams are not going to get along in the long run using these distinctly different approaches, however. The two teams have such different communication styles that the collegial process used by Home-Team is seen by Away-Team as being "wimpy and weak." Whereas, the combative style of the Away-Team is viewed by the Home-Team as being "unnecessarily combative and unproductive".

You decide you have to do something. You decide that you have to bring both teams into alignment regarding their communication processes. But how? What do you do?

Obviously you have several choices. You could:

1. Just address the person on Away-Team who made the critical comment and attempt to rectify his mode of communication.

2. You could do nothing and wait for another event in order to address this situation.

3. You could do nothing and hope that the situation will rectify itself.

4. You could call a phone meeting of both teams and address the issue.

5. You could write an email to everyone.

6. You could wait until the next regularly scheduled meeting and address it then.

7. You could tell the direct report who felt criticized to get "thicker skin" and forget about it.

There are probably plenty of other choices I have not listed here that you might add to my list. But this is probably enough.

Here is my suggested approach.

First, as the leader of both teams you must decide how you want the Combined-Team to behave. This is the critical first step. You must decide how you want the members of each team to behave toward the other team. Since this is your team, you are the one to decide what it means to be a team. You are the one to decide what behaviors will be rewarded and what behaviors will not. That is your job.

Here is what I did.

In this case, I decided that I wanted to err on the side of Home-Team. I wanted a more collegial team process than a more combative one. I wanted this, not because it is better, but because it is very difficult to separate our own preferences from our management and leadership styles. I personally, like the more collegial processes and I shy away from the more combative processes. Therefore, it is reasonable that I would want the Combined-Team to be more like the Home-Team than the Away-Team. It's my preference. I wanted the Away-Team to move more toward the behaviors of the Home-Team. The Away-Team was going to have to change.

Next I had to decide how best to convey to the two teams the information and the acceptable behaviors that I wanted.

These were my intentions!

1. What did I want to accomplish?
(I wanted the Combined-Team to function more like the Home-Team. This meant that the Away-Team would have to change their style.)

2. What did I want to say.
(I wanted to explain to both teams the concept of collegial and combative behavior and what I wanted as a combined team. I also wanted to define acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, unequivocally.)

3. How would I best convey this information to the two teams? (Should I use phone, email, or try to communicate this in-person?)

4. What was I going to do?
(I was going to reward collegial behavior and not reward combative, aggressive, and negative behavior.)

5. What reactions could I expect?
(I could expect the Away-Team to resist. It is in their behavioral nature to resist. It was going to take some time and some "punishment" from me to get them to move toward the behaviors I wanted. Because of their very nature of being a combative team, they would not go willingly to the behaviors I wanted.)

6. How would I respond to those reactions?
(This process would require a great deal of patience on my part. I would have to stay consistent, persistent, calm, and resolute. They would have to see that no matter how much they resisted, I was not going to change my mind and I was also not going to get upset. My goal was that ultimately they would see that collegial behavior was as good or better than combative behavior.

These were my actions!

I decided I wanted to communicate to everyone, at the same time. I had three choices regarding communication protocol.

1. I could have a face-to-face meeting. (This was too expensive because I couldn't fly everyone to one location, so this approach was out.)

2. I could have a video conference. (We didn't have the equipment for this approach either, so this approach was out.)

3. I could use a telephone meeting. (This is a reasonable approach except that if I can't see the facial expressions and body language I'd probably elect the fourth approach listed next. I decided against this approach.)

4. I could use email to convey the message to everyone at once. (I ultimately selected this approach.)

I picked option number 4, email. Now, I have very little respect for email when it comes to conveying important, non-quantifiable information. So you can legitimately ask why I selected email in this case?

The reason I picked email is because I wanted this communication to "feel" like a one-on-one communication process. I wanted everyone on both teams to "hear" and "get" the same message. I didn't want any discussion in this first communication. This was to be, generally, a one-way communication. Me to all the team members. If I couldn't have a face-to-face meeting with everyone at once, then email was the next best thing... only in this case!

So my email was a long message. It laid out my philosophy of team building. I explained the two processes used by the respective teams. I explained what I wanted. I explained what behaviors would be expected and rewarded and not rewarded. I ended by stating that everyone would have the opportunity to discuss this with me one-on-one and in the group. I also indicated that we would be discussing this topic and the associated processes in the future.

I followed this up with a consistent and constant reference to this approach at nearly every meeting we had. I believe this is something most managers fail to do. They fail to utilize their general meetings as an opportunity to reinforce their philosophy of how they want the team to relate. During any meeting you have as a manager with your team, you have the opportunity to reinforce with examples, appreciation for an employee's behavior, or general statements of what you think is important, those behaviors you want to see exhibited by your team. Remember also that you must exhibit those same behaviors that you want in your team.

Slowly and surely, the two teams began to merge in their behaviors toward a more collegial approach. But not all teams have worked out well. In one case, one team had to be dissolved because they could not make the transition. Welcome to the world of management.

Good luck and be well,

Steven