My motto (one of the many I have) is to respond, instead of react.  As such, when arguing a point, professionally or personally, it is important to understand the psychology and motivation of the other party.  What I’ve found over the years is that people enjoy being in a position of power over others.  Once people are instated into a position of power, many sources of strife or contention seem to disappear.  Of course, in order to truly be in power, others have to recognize and respect the power that an individual has obtained.

When arguing, one of the most disarming tactics is to ask a question.  By asking a question, and making it sound as if you are deferring to the judgment/wisdom/experience of the other party, there are two purposes served.  The first is that you are immediately putting the opposing party into a perceived position of power over your position.  By appealing to this innate need in everyone’s nature, it provides them the opportunity to lower their defenses and start talking, rather than trying to establish position over you.  In addition, the second valuable purpose for arguing through questioning is that by shaping your questions, you can lead the opposing party to your way of thinking through their answers to your questions.  Thus, the other party leaves the argument feeling empowered, and confident and most importantly, agreeing with your point of view.

Try it out.  Instead of reacting to a person the next time you are arguing, start quietly responding with probing questions. 

Here are some hints in conversing in an argument.

Use the word “we”.  This eliminates the “me versus you” tone in the argument and solidifies in the opposing parties’ mind that this is a problem that both are trying to solve. 

          “Do we really think that is the best plan, or is there a way for us to have our cake and eat it too?”

Take statements that are the exact opposite of your position and make them your own.  Don’t try to directly dispute a position that is harmful to your argument, but validate it without giving it place or credence. 

          “That is a good point and a valid distinction that must be addressed by this solution.  One way we can do that is to…”

In the above example, you have established that they made a point, and that it bears distinctive differences from your own position.  This serves to communicate that you understand the opposing parties’ points (even if you are in stark disagreement) and smoothly transitions the conversation into your arena.

Instead of presenting ideas of as your own, try to make it sound as though the other party came up with it.  Build consensus through questions.

          “So given those points, what do we all think if we tried this approach…”

Thus it sounds as though you are reiterating something that they came up with when in reality it is your own ideas.

Here is another bit of wisdom from one of my coworkers that might sound negative, but does have an element of truth. 

“Never do a crappy job well”.  The idea is that if you get good at a job that is less than desireable, guess who is going to continue to receive accolades and assignments for that task?

How to Fend of Political Attacks in the Work Place
I recently had a conversation with a co-worker on how to deal with petulant corporate politics and insecurity among members of a project team.  The organization we worked for had a project management office by title only.  What I mean by that is that they PMO were just a collection of former programmers and managers cobbled together from throughout the organization that claimed to understand project management.  Interestingly, the developer group which I was a lead on was very highly qualified and experienced software engineers with a solid background in developing rock-solid software products.  As such, the team was regarded as the best-of-breed that the industry has to offer.  As such, our team had a good understanding of how project management SHOULD work and how it DID work at this company.  Needless to say there were significant areas of improvement that needed to be addressed with regard the PMO’s capability.

        When these two teams were put together, the PMO members (old programmers) attempted to apply older programming techniques and logic to the developers programs and guide them according to (what are now considered to be archaic) older design philosophies.  Additionally, they had no middle management or project management skill.  There were “yes” people, in that any scope creep and feature requests thrown in at the last minute were given credence and addressed as part of the first phase.  My team immediately pushed back on this development.

        The dynamic is that the PMO had political alliances very high up in the IT management ranks.  The pushback was being communicated to these levels in petulant terms, fraught with insecurity and downright fabrications.  When my team was confronted, this co-worker began to fight the political battle of defense against this well-entrenched enemy.  My experience has been when you are trying to defend yourself against your superiors, you have already been proven guilty and they are interested in determining just how guilty you are.  My advice was just to ignore the behavior, (for example, copying everyone up to the CIO on verbose and inappropriate email messages) and to take measured responses, not reactions.

So far it seems to be working for him.

This is in response to a question on how to deal with company politics and perceived unfairness and unethical treatment in the workplace:

Personally, the way I handle all situations of perceived inequity at work is to approach it as a challenge.  I realized early on that while the work place is supposed to be a place of equal opportunity, fairness and merit-based reward, I have actually witnessed the opposite.  In a corporate environment (at least the ones I have been in), policies are still made and enforced by individuals.  There are various socio-political networks and affiliations running throughout any organization of size.  These undertones and affiliations often manifest themselves as duplicitous behavior, deception, neoptism and other unfair or unequal practices.  Part of dealing with a situation like the one described below is to recognize and accept that these unethical "games" occur and to a large extent, challenging them does little to right or correct the inequity (in my experience).  In fact, depending on the accused party and their socio-political value and connections inside the business, the organization might end up defending them just because of who they are. 

I adopt a slightly jaded, yet realistic approach in that knowing that this happens. I can expect the worst and hope for the best.  This should in no way diminish the indignation felt by offended parties in this situation.  However, the method I would use to deal with it is to understand it, make it known that you disagree with it (carefully) and begin to reasses your own situation with the organization and even begin to question your future with that compay.

Another post from my graduate class on Corporate Behavior Modification and new employees:

In the world of software development, we are ever faced with a population of aging executives that fall out of touch with the newest and current methodologies and technologies in software development.  While they responsiblities have shifted, and they should no longer have to worry about being a perpetual student when it comes to technology, they should yeild to the judgement of their employees.  The smart manager surrounds him/herself with capable and smart people and manages them as a team.  A inexperienced or poor manager, does the same, but doubts his/her employees which are subject matter experts, calls into question their judgments, micro-manages them and feels threatened by their talents. 

Thus, gaining credibility in the eyes of a person such as this is very difficult.  Instead of hiring someone for their experties and actually listening to them and their suggestions to change company behavior based on real world experiences, they force-fit the company culture onto the new “different” employee and ensure that they act the same way as does the rest of the company.  Behavior is hard to change.  Hiring someone else from the outside because you know your behavior a challenge and then forcing that individual to emulate the behavior you were trying to erradicate is unwise.

More graduate posts:

The “acceptable behaviors” principle is set by the leader who functions in the corporation, not only as a project manager, task director or direct report, but also as a model for how employees on their team should act and respond in certain situations.  By being an ethical leader and establishing and displaying commitment, honesty and integrity, they form an emotional bond with their team.  As stated in the lecture, one primary method of informally communicating and modeling ethical behavior from a leadership perspective is to show the team how to act and deal with unethical behavior in the company.  Whether the source is another team member, or external to the team, the leader’s method of handling and dealing with the situaiton should inspire confidence, as well as serve as an example of how the team members should deal as well.  This is another informal agent of company culture and the communication of acceptable organizational behavior.

The great part is that by coaching, you are building a sense of teamwork and inter-relation that facilitates working together to get a task or project complete.  Leaders must adapt to this style in today’s corporate environment in order to meet the demands of a growing technologically complex method of getting projects done, as well as meet the demands of their team and employee workforce.  The employee in the workforce today expects to be treated with an unparalleled level of perceived equality, even across reporting lines.  The days of calling your supervisor by their last name with “Mr. or Mrs.” has vanished.  Additionally, you’ll hear many leaders and their team members say they work “with” their supervisor instead of “for” them when introducing themselves.  Also, never has the workplace dynamic changed as quickly as it has in the IT department.  Here, there are leaders and managers that know less about their area of responsibility (subject matter-wise) than doe their employees.  This is as it should be.  IT specialists are hired to be the experts and have a body of knowledge that encompasses their duties.  Managers need to learn to manage their talent, instead of feel threatened by it.

Diplomacy and tact and listening skills are all hallmarks of a great leader.  I thoroughly agree with this point of view.  If a manager is sensitive to how others wish to be perceived then they are more productive, easier to manage and have confidence in their manager that he/she has their best interests at heart.  It should be the goal of any manager to ensure that he/she appears to be a force in the organization that is representing and "fighting" for the well being of their employees, while simultaneously leveraging their team to achieve organizational commitments and objectives.  In the currently "empowered employee" environment which many prospective employees expect, this method of management is met with the most success. 

When managing my team, I imbue them with a genuine sense that I want them to succeed.  In other words, instead of turning down their ideas, I genuinely impart that I wish their ideas to work.  Within reason, I promote the exploration of their ideas and guide them during that process, rather than force my own view or solution to their tasks on them.  This is primarily done through listening and adopting the attitude that you can learn from anyone at anytime. 

The "coaching" management style is one which ensures that common trust between the employee and manager is established and that empowerment is assumed.  Additionally, when managing resources in this fashion, managers can conduct succession planning because all members of the team will have the ability to act in an empowered fashion and share the manager's base philosophy.

Silos in an organization
Another post from my graduate class on ethics and communication

From an organizational or departmental/team effectiveness perspective, one of the organizations I have recently been involved with subscribes to the “silo” approach.  This approach that organizations usually find themselves in is a dangerous and near-sighted situation that can be detrimental to the company.  The silo organization is one in which subject matter experts are many and dissemination of their knowledge is nearly non-existent.  These employees and all their initiatives form silos or closed containers of organizational competence or capability.  In actuality, one sign of a silo organization is a company where there are organizational heroes.  The hero of the organization is one that is a subject matter expert that leverages their knowledge to work within their silo to produce positive results that are highly visible in there organization.  However, the hero is short lived and the organization often burns them out.  In other words, the workload of working in a silo usually forces the employee to look for other, less stressful opportunities.

How many times have you heard a silo employee say “It would take me too long to teach another person what I do, and as a result, my current deadlines would suffer?  I just have to work harder and longer to get things done…” 

When the hero is finally burned out, the organization is then faced with the panic that results from placing all one’s eggs in the same basket.  All of the responsibility and knowledge of that employee was contained in a single entity and now that the entity is leaving, a vacuum is formed in organizational capability.  Organizations need to ensure that their capability maturity model incorporates the eradication of silos and dissemination of knowledge and capabilities across staff resources.

Channels of Organizational Communication
This is a pretty good post that I wrote for my graduation ethics and communication class:

I think that part of professionalism is knowing which form of communication fits the situation.  There is a certain value to using email, even in a situation to cover yourself.  However, the form breaks down when there are over six or seven printed pages worth of text in an email message.  At that point, the communicator must ask themselves what the most appropriate method of communication is.  In that situation, a meeting with an agenda would be more appropriate, followed up by an email with bullet point minutes for the meeting or a list of action items. 

Meetings themselves however can be detrimental to a company and its employees.  I've been in several situations where I was torn away for a meeting with no other good reason than I was on the meeting invite list.

Meetings can degenerate into reporting sessions, where people are bringing their own reading material, ignoring the contributions of their peers to the meeting and only stopping to pay attention when someone asks a direct question of them, or they are reporting to their superior.

In talking with a fellow graduate student, he related a story about how is former manager made the absolution that “It’s not what you know, but who you know”.  He seemed skeptical about accepting that across the board.

I can echo that statement, but I shared his grain of cynicism with regard to absolutes of that nature.

If I were to adopt that saying it would go something like "It's who you know and what you know, in that order."  If I know someone that has the potential to network with others ("who you know") and help me, I'll make it my business to impress them with my knowledge, skills and experience ("what you know").  The lesson I learned is to use whatever means you can to make other people your advocate and make them want you to succeed.  I found that if my desire for success is contagious, I have more chances of obtaining my goals.

One of my challenges is to introduce creativity and diversity of thinking and communicate those concepts while not being perceived as “too different” from the executive management in my organization.  One way that I have found to accomplish this is to get results.  If I can obtain success and results from a team effort, management will naturally be curious as to the methods used to obtain success and hopefully be willing to replicate them.  From a team management perspective, I’ve found that introducing creativity to a team and fostering consensus-based communication allows you to determine what drives people.  If I can learn what drives people, I can easily determine what roles that person can play on my team.  They key to my team management style is to get the employee’s buy-in.  If the employee is whole-heartedly on board with what their task and challenge is while not loosing sight of the team’s goal, I will have a productive and happy resource to coach and mentor.

One of the points on which I diverge from a manager I’ve worked for in the past is with team management style and communication.  I employ a significant amount of diplomacy, respect and tolerance from my team members in order to drive the team to obtain a common consensus and obtain their buy-in for a project.  My management style is more of a coach than a commander.  My immediate manager is more of the commander and troop type.  In my experience, both work and are appropriate for certain situations.  My estimation of which style to use is basically incumbent on the team leader.  It becomes a combination of what they feel comfortable with, combined with what works for their team.

Here is one of my old friends attempting humor at my expense J

Pretty Good I think!!!!

Sounds like to assuage the idiosyncrasies of your upper management you will need to iteratively refactor your spoken vocabulary. To reiterate, the happenstance of your current employment requires some esoteric iterative refactoring of how you speak.

Thanks eAndy for the laugh!

For all my spoutings about corporate governance and advice to the upcoming professional in the corporate environment, here is a situation that I’ve never encountered before and how I dealt with it.  I was recently admonished during the course of a meeting by several high ranking company executives that I have a notorious habit of speaking with “too many big words”.  Mind you that this is not that I am speaking to technical, or in software development jargon, but everyday speech!  I was flabbergasted.   I was actually being admonished (in a pleasant and comical way) for being to eloquent in my vocabulary.  And mind you with wasn’t that I was being dinged for being to wordy, but the vocabulary choice was the feedback.  I’ve spent most of my entire life trying to increase my vocabulary to not sound so menial. In fact, I’m often complimented on my communication ability and skills to speak and write eloquently, concisely and efficiently.  I wasn’t even sure what to do next.  I did notice that when I used words in the following list that this audience’s eyes glazed over:

Words that I use that are too “big” for executives:

Empirical evidence

Happenstance

Mitigate

Idiosyncratic

Esoteric

Assuage

Refactor (alright, it’s a software term)

Reiterate

Iterative

I actually, in the spirit of the moment, gathered this informal list from the meeting participants!  So after the meeting, I decided that I instead of unlearning vocabulary diversity, I’d channel my communications through an individual that was inside the “circle of trust” as it were.  So, I had my project manager give my updates and only participated when he fumbled on the explanations.

Sheesh!