One senior manager chose to leave his job after being unable to influence his General Manager on the allocation of corporate projects. Frustrated, he came to find out what he could or should have done differently, in order to influence more effectively in the future.
We role-played the interactions 3 times, from different perspectives, and provided the manager with an opportunity to see and hear the impact of his approach from the perspective of others. He said he could now see and hear, literally, how his behaviour had been ineffective, and left with a plan for future conflicts.
“Perceptual shifting” is a good, experiential way to learn.
An Operations Manager had his Warehouse Manager resign - twice - asking her to return on each occasion. Once good friends, the relationship was deteriorating from anger and frustration.
They requested a team-building day to resolve this. This would take all employees off the floor for half a day, to solve a problem that existed between only two people.
Following our advice, we instead conducted a conflict mediation between the managers, in order to obtain a full understanding of the tensions.
In the process, it became clear the Ops Mgr knew the solutions to what was causing the conflict, but lacked the courage and optimism to implement them.
Once encouraged, the Warehouse Mgr took an equal role in decision-making, cross-divisional teams were introduced to solve common problems, and a Warehouse overhaul with consultants was cancelled, saving $60,000.
And the friendship is not perfect, but much, much better.
