We recently hired a new member to our team. Applicants are screened by our Director and team leader. They choose the candidates they feel best suited for the team's needs. They conduct phone interviews and based on those interviews they select candidates for face-to-face interviews. These candidates then interview with our entire team (which can be a daunting task based on my experience) of 8. We did 3 straight days of interviews conducting 3 interviews a day. Each of us asks 3 questions and then we do some scenario based verbal and written questions. After each interview we discuss the candidate's performances and evaluate them. Each team member has the opportunity to express their opinions, concerns, and/or recommendations. One the last day of interviews, on the last candidate, one of our team members refused to participate and would not offer and evaluation or feedback of the candidate. This took the entire team aback as none of us could understand why this senior team member refused to share her thoughts. This created unease and noticeable tension among us all. Our director asked if she would feel more comfortable sharing her thoughts privately which she agreed to. Never has there been an instance where one of us has felt that we could not openly share information . We actually encourage openness and advocate sharing our genuine feelings in our meetings. It is one of the reasons I love working for this team. It is one of the foundations of our team dynamic. After the team member met privately with our director and team leader we reconvened to decide on our new team member. Our team member expressed that she felt uncomfortable and took the opportunity (without going to any great detail) to express why she felt the way she did. She opened up about and finally felt comfortable discussing the candidate we interviewed. She basically said she got a gut feeling about the last candidate we interviewed that was not positive and she was afraid to communicate that with us. I really appreciated her honesty and thanked her for her openness. Then as a team, we all took turns encouraging her that she is always free to express herself to us without fear. As a team we respect her opinions and her voice is an integral part of our team decision process.
I think in this situation as a team, we were able to acknowledged our teammate's feelings. We listened to what she had to say and really heard her concerns. I know this was appreciated because after the meeting she pulled me aside to say thank you. When we spoke to her, our statements matched our feelings and thoughts and I think this put her at ease. We were authentic in our approach and in turn were able to communicate supportively with her. In this situation we were also able to validate this team member's importance to the group and the fact that we valued her individualism. As a whole, I think my organization would be better served by following these examples when dealing with difficult situations. As a team, we came together and strengthened the bond we already had. This is a lesson for any organization and one I will remember as I move forward in my leadership studies.
I am often reminded just how fortunate I am to work for an organization that values its employees thoughts and beliefs. In this week's discussion my classmate, Beau Seabourn described supportive communication in his organization. Beau said "Supportive communication is something that I feel my entire organization could better utilize to get greater results. I actually believe that our company has a break down in a lot of different communication levels, some of which are personal and some of which are actually structural. I think the bottom line of supportive communication is to enhance the interpersonal relationships in order to promote a better “bottom line” for a company. For my company, we have a corporate office which is made up of people who were at one time, in the field, and are now doing the administrative jobs. In the field, there are facility managers and then the workforce under them. The managers are free to basically run their facility as they need, with minor interference from our corporate office. There are actually some up sides to that including each manger can basically make the facility a great place to work or a really bad place to be. I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing both." I think that in Beau's instance, his organization would benefit from implementing a personal management program. This would give his organization the opportunity to use supportive communication to coach, counsel, and foster personal development and to build stronger personal relationships between the corporate office and facility managers. We learned that the one of the biggest barriers to effective communication in organizations are interpersonal. By breaking down these walls and working towards goals together, there is very little organizations cannot accomplish.
Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2011). Developing Management Skills (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall/Pearson.
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