Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
How Do I Fix A Competitive Or Hostile Team Culture?
This episode touches on the themes of Strengthen Culture.
In this episode, we explore why we have teams, departments, or locations that are often at war with each other. Some of our workplaces have Slios, others have Stronghold, and neither works well with others.
Our prescription for this episode is to understand how impactful and poisonous Job Dissatisfaction and Institutional Betrayal are. When these exist, they erode trust and pit people against each other.
Past Episode Referenced:
S1 E15: Is Job Dissatisfaction Really That Dangerous?
S3 E7: Are We Sheltering Toxic Leaders?
S4 E2: Leadership Tips - Friend-Friendly, Respond-React, Emotional Load
S2 E3: Why Do Companies Default To Using Policies As Weapons?
S2 E18: What Does HR Stand For In Your Company?
To talk more about Job Dissatisfaction, reach out to us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched in the fall of 2024!
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James, and let's get started with a question.
[JAMES]:Well, actually, just before we jump into the question, and I've got a public service announcement. I, just want to remind everyone very quickly that the video version of our podcast episode is released on the Tuesday following the episode drop. So I really, really want to encourage you to join me in ridiculing Coby for his New Midlife Crisis Sad dad 90s cover band rock Look. It is a sight to behold.
[COBY]:All right, thanks. I was wondering where you were going with this. But, yes, for those of you who are just listening and not taking James up on the opportunity to check out the YouTube video that we have of this episode, I have new glasses that have orange lenses, to help me with light sensitivity. But, yes, our team decided that I look like a, sad dad rock cover band lead singer for a R.E.M. cover, band. And, I, you know, probably wear that. And thank you for starting us off by ridiculing me. Fair.
[JAMES]:Well, like any good friend, I have to make sure that I am highlighting how much fun it is to make fun of you.[COBY]: Okay. So, yes, so take James up on his offer if you want to see what the heck we're talking about. But for those of you who are just listening, this makes for terrible podcasts. We're talking something. Something very visual. Yeah.
[COBY]:So that being said, let's start off with a question. So our question for today is, how do I fix a competitive or hostile team culture?
[JAMES]:Wow, that question really tracks with the opening of this.
[COBY]:It does, yes. I'm wanting to know this for myself now.
[JAMES]:well, I mean, big shocker here. you're going to have to dig into whatever is causing the competitiveness and the hostility. Obviously, competitiveness and hostility in teams or between teams is not a sign of a healthy workplace culture. And where I kind of want to take our conversation today is to not necessarily focus on the individuals within a team, who may be overly competitive or hostile, but rather, how do you fix the larger problem when you have entire teams or divisions or departments who are competing or they're showing, hostility towards others. And so before we can really fix anything, we. We have to be able to define the problem so quickly. I want to talk about a little bit of a distinction here, because there's A couple very interconnected terms. So we often will hear about things like, we'll talk about things in terms of setting up silos. But I want to distinguish between what is a silo and what is actually what we refer to as a stronghold. So silos are teams or departments that operate in isolation. Largely it's due to the structure or the fact that they are specialized. So your marketing department may be very specialized and may not have a lot of, operational impact or communication with your HR department. Specialization can create silos. they tend to be focused on their own goals and processes, often unaware or misaligned with others, which leads to poor communication and a fragmented strategy. Again, largely when we're talking about silos, we're talking about operational structures that have created it. Strongholds, on the other hand, are teams that defend their turf. They resist outside input. They compete with other departments for influence, for perks or for control. And strongholds really breed, conflict and they block collaboration.
[COBY]:Yeah. And I think it's something that is a really important thing that if your, if you're trying to figure out, again, how do you fix the competitive or hostile team cultures within your organization, within the different teams, understanding that difference between a silo and stronghold is something that's going to be really important because like you said, silos tend to be more operationalized. It's just kind of the way that we do things that you. There's communication breakdowns, there s poor coordination. Strategies are, are often unknown or misaligned and same with outcomes, but it's often more about how it's set up, often un-strategically due to like, you know, natural growth or whatever like that. Where strongholds tend to be a bit more, you know, strongholds are kind of something that, that teams do to themselves. Like, you know, it's more of a cultural thing where more of a competitiveness or that hostility tends to be the symptoms of. You've created strongholds in your organizations. And like we're saying strongholds happens when teams are hostile or in conflict with other departments. They, they invoke kind of like a fortified area that's perfect teams to be entrenched in their own way of doing things and to resist kind of outside influences. And that's why we like the stronghold language because again, it's teams are pitted against each other or they're jealous. Other teams have perks or working conditions that are better than what they have. They have different. They are sometimes' jealous. So they want the same kind of influence or same kind of, validation that the other teams get or there's kind of natural benefits from how they work or what they do or kind of how they interact with. To the bottom line that makes. That puts them in a better position than other teams. And that creates. Is often kind of what can fuel a lot of the competitiveness or hostility that exists between teams.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And it's important to understand that you can have both within your organization at the same time. You can have an operational structure that has created silos and you can have individual teams who are hoarding resources or who are kind of kingdom building or who are resistant to collaboration, or change or anything like that. So strongholds are a bit more insidious. They are, in my mind they're a bit of a bigger problem because they take the existing problem of silos and they amp it up to actually create hostility which amplifies all of the other issues that come along with not being able to communicate or collaborate effectively.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. And strongholds are really going to be what we're going to talk about in this episode. I think that we may do a future episode talking about silos further down. But strongholds are really where we want to focus today. because again, like you say, there's a bit. There's m A. They are a block to kind of anything else. And they're one of their performance robbing thing. They are a breeding ground for attrition. They are, you know, they're really problematic. Again, hostile is a great word to talk about, to use describe them and you know, and ah, largely I think how I want to kind of frame this episode is let's talk about. We'll talk about the three main causes for competness and hostile team cultures that exists within silos. And then we'll talk about kind of how do we fix them.
[JAMES]:I, think there's something in between there too though, because we have to be able. You're right. We need to be able to define it to you know, where does it come from, identify where this is happening. But we also need to identify, how do we identify when it's happening, not just where does this come from, how do I identify it and then how do we resolve it? I think is right.
[COBY]:no, that's a good point. We are going to want to say kind of what it looks like.
[JAMES]:You're right.
[COBY]:Let's start off with where it kind of comes from.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So one of the big things, and this is something that we Often do when we go into organizations then and we identify strongholds is we end up talking to the leadership team, whether that's the senior leadership team or the middle management leadership team about how dangerous job dissatisfaction is and how that tends to be a breeding ground for 90% of the problems that exist of the like m people related problems that exist within an organization. And largely it's about the idea of if I'm dissatisfied with the factors of my job then that kind of sets me in a position to be jealous, to be hostile, to be irritated, to be easily you know and honestly have one foot out the door. And that creates conditions that I'm not going to be enjoyable to work with. I'm not going to be providing my best work. I'm going toa see everyone else as kind of outat to get me. And And maybe I need to swing first in order to kind keep myself together. And that's often a breeding ground for most ofly these issues. And job of satisfaction is so, so impactful and so dangerous and tends to be like I said, the root cause of many of the things like this. But specifically around competitive and hostile teams.[JAMES]: Yeah it's. Job dissatisfaction cannot be underestimated in its impact on just basically every interaction that we have with people within our organizations. a big cause that I see of this as well. And what causes a contributor to job dissatisfaction in the context of this is institutional betrayal as well. So those in my mind those are kind of the two interconnected elements that really drive the the whole. A lot of the conversation around strongholds because when you feel like you've been betrayed. So we've seen this firsthand in division companies that have you know, multiple sites or multiple divisions where they have recently had turnovers and we've actually heard the language of the cuts had to come from somewhere. So they were pitting departments against each other to defend where basically to point fingers and to say well no you need to cut from them because we're too important. And it create like that institutional betrayal of feeling let down, a freely betrayed by the organization. The competitiveness of pitting people against each other just created this incredibly. I don't want to keep using the same word over and over again but I mean hostile environment, right. This situation where people and it filtered down to the staff. The staff knew that managers that leaders from other divisions were advocating for them to be fired. Rather than their own staff. Like I mean this is a bit of a. I'm Hoping and uncommon situation. We. I hope this is not the main reason. if you're doing this, stop doing this. But it's a. There are a lot of factors that can go into why people are upset. And it's not just the structure that we put people in. It's the way that leaders engage. It's the way that leaders foster competition rather than collaboration. It's the way that leaders mistakenly try to create these environments that might push people towards excellence. Ah is m. Probably the thought that they have. But really all it does is undercut the message and create this sense of betrayal in your employees. Yeah. The third cause we'll talk about is often what we see is about leaders. Specifically leaders. But stuff in general, but specifically we see with leaders is clinging to power or clinging to relevance. And this is something where it's a matter of sometimes the competitiveness is manufactured to make a leader seem like their role is more vital. That they are the peacemaker. Like own ones that can be the go between teams because the teams are so hostile against each other. Or it's the idea of they've carved out a little kingdom of power that they hold on to and they defend that because that's kind of how they. That's where their professional identity often kind of stems from. So it's one of those things where that hostility is needed in order to protect that power or to maintain relevance. but yeah, so I think I do want to start by digging into a little bit more into job dissatisfaction and we'll talk a little bit about what it looks like. we do that. So I also want to say we did an episode in season one, it was episode 15 where we talked about how dangerous job satisfaction is. So if this part is really resonating with you listening, it suggest that that episode will be a terrific follow up up to this episode. but one of the ways that we talk about dis satisfaction as far as where it comes from, as we say it often comes from misalignment of the factors of the workplace to employee expectations. And the factors that we talk about are we say there are seven factors. Wellness compensation, job security policies, safety, working conditions and consistency. And when these areas are not meeting employee expectations of being competitive, sufficient and equitable, that's how job dissatisfaction starts. Or that's where job satisfaction lives. And when we're talking about competitive and hostile teams, one of the most vital of the three expectations. So again the seven Factors and three expectations. Refer to those as the seven by three rule. We talked about that in great depth in the episode I mentioned earlier. But one of the main areas that is so important we're talking about competitive or hostile teams is equity. Is that there's a sense of equity around wellness, around compensation, around working conditions, around consistency within each team. Because one of the things that we often talk about when we're talking about at a granular level about job satisfaction is that when like everyday employees see a person from another department having benefits or perks or luxuries or freedoms or whatever it is that is more or better than what they have based on their operational requirements. And the story that we've told a number of times, I've used it organizations is a story of you very early on in your career where you had a job where you're working in the community, you're working with businesses, and you were constantly on the road and you had multiple offices and you had the opportunity to work from home. And the receptionist who you walk by every day grew to hate you or grew to resent what you had.
[JAMES]:Did not appreciate the James style.
[COBY]:No, no, at all. Well, and some of that was just good taste on her part.
[JAMES]:Well, and some of that was young James was certainly no more professional or wise than current James.
[COBY]:Well, and it's sad to say the current James is the best version of James is a scary thought. But. But the main thing was that she came to resent the freedom that you had that she wishes she hadn't her job because her job tied her to a desk, tied her to a certain schedule, tied her to specific stuff. And what she yearned for, more flexibility, more freedom and more autonomy that you had as a new employee that she wishes she had. And it caused a major conflict and hostility between you and her.
[JAMES]:You didn't help because of I am me.
[COBY]:Yes. And the attitude of young James. But largely the cause of it, those, you know, it was the fact that she was very dissatisfied with the factors, the working conditions of her job and was something that she really wishes that she had.
[JAMES]:This was a person who had been doing their job very, very well for many years at that point and they would have liked to like, fortunately we've got a good relationship now. I mean that we got managed to get those things sort out. But she really wanted to be doing more. She wanted to be like. So I mean the role that I had had me in the community, it also had me serving on, you know, with different community groups and you know being kind of this liaison position and building relationships with businesses and community partners and nonprofits and government and you know, all over the place and which was a phenomenal role. but that, that freedom, that flexibility, that ability to engage in the community were all things that this person saw as something that they would like to do but something that they weren't allowed to do or weren't supported to do. And yet this random person who just started gets all of these perks, all of these great benefits, and they were never supported or It seemed like nobody cared about what they were looking for.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. Because her job had remained static where accommodations and adjustments were made for your job. And we do see that often with term longer serving staff as they are often the ones that end up being the most susceptible to job satisfaction because often their job, their expectations, their conditions, their environment remain static and new people kind of come in and often they're coming in a higher salaries because it's really expensive to hire people. they're able to negotiate more flexibility, more opportunities to work from home or whatever it is. And it's kind of like the classic complaint that people have about new customers get better deals than existing customers. So my cable company gives discounts and breaks to if I sign up with a new company. But as a long serving as a long standing customer I have to just pay the same thing all the time. And I don't get the sales, I don't get the benefits, I don't get the perks. And it anyone that really frustrates people. But I mean that's one of the things that longer serving employees have is have they see newer people being treated better where their loyalty or their commitment or their tenure is not respected. And that becomes a breeding ground for dissatisfaction. And s. One of things I want to mention not to dip into the psychology of a bit because I was going to have to is often that feeling that the feeling of dissatisfaction why that's so impactful for competitiveness and hostility is we end up projecting. This is the psychology part. We're projecting that frustration that, that tough you know like trying to kind of come to terms with it onto the person and we villainize the person because it's easier than dealing with how we process the feelings ourselves about our, the company, our boss and this and this and this we just project onto the new person who has done nothing to use like you know, you like know often the new employees are not there rubbing it in the faces of the old.
[JAMES]:They didn't negotiate with the intent of you know, taking something from somebody else. Or they didn't go into the job with that mentality. But that's regardless. That's what it often feels like to the person who's experiencing. It feels like a personal slight. It feels like a betrayal.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so yes. So when it comes to those things around like you know again like wellness benefits and compensation and job security policies, working conditions, safety and inconsistency, those seven factors, when we don't feel that they're sufficient specifically that they're not good enough, they're not meeting the standard that, that are required for us to be able to do our jobs effectively or there this inequity in kind of between new staff and longer terming staff or departments then, then we project that frustration onto the other departments, onto the other staff. Which is where this hostility can often come from is a projection of feeling unappreciated, feeling unrecognized and we villainize the person rather than the situation because the person's easier to vilify.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And this, this exact conversation happens at the individual level. But taking it a step further, right. Taking it when, when we see this trend happening between teams, right. It's when we see a team that is getting something that we don't when we, they have a per or there's inconsistencies whether it, you know, along any of those factors it creates an us versus them mentality. We are the aggrieved. We need to protect what we have because they have more than us. They're going to take it from us or we need to make sure that we don't backslide. It creates unfortunately it can create a very strong tight knit team in amongst the group that feels offended or persecuted. but it doesn't act like from a team dynamic piece. Yeah it, an adversary will absolutely gel people together very quickly.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Not healthy though.
[COBY]:No. And we, we'll get more into that when we talk about cleaning the power because I mean the social identity theory of that, there's strong psychology behind that. But one of the things that I think is also important to mention we're talking about equity being a vital part in trying to avoid competitiveness or hostile team cultures is the fact that operationally there are jobs that can't have the same conditions, benefits, perks as other jobs. but it's important to consider again equality is something that you can't have across organizations, you just can't do it. So in a lot of companies she'try and say what we do for one, we have to do for the other. Well that's an equality one.
[JAMES]:They often use that excuse not to do things because we can't do this exact same thing for everybody. We can't do it for anybody.
[COBY]:Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that like. So all we're saying is, and we have experience doing this is that if you're trying to initiate something new or something that will benefit again those things around dissatisfaction, you have to consider what will be an equitable solution for other ones. A great example was we developed a proposed concept to an organization to look at unlimited paid time off.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:They were curious, hey, could we do this? And so we kind of helped draft a bit of a concept for them to say yes. You have a number of staff that work autonomously that do a lot of customer engagement and customer service and some that more that is very virtual. You could you and the way that you are structuring with your loot time in this, you kind of got a good, you know, with a better performance management system that makes outcomes and kind of limitations a lot more clear. You could actually be in a situation next year to try it if you want to. But one of the things that they had. But one of the challenges was like most of their organization or maybe actually say about half the organization could operate because of the operational requirements of the jobs of being very virtual and not being time based and this and this and this. But they had another a big section of the organization that was more. That was in person and shift based.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And tired a more direct one on one or small like interaction with clients. Customers.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Like there it was not something that could be flexed in the same way. It was they, the nature of the work just required them to be at a particular location for a defined period of time.
[COBY]:Yeah. They had to be on the floor for set shifts and that stuff like that. So. So in looking at it, it's okay. So what we have to look at is what is kind of an equal is or sorry, what Sorry. Not equal. My word. What was an equitable balance from what the benefits of a limited PTO would be for half the organization? What would be an equitable solution that would be as impactful to the other group? So we looked at, you know, there's some options here. We could look at things like you know, like they were that other department wasn't paid for their lunches. We could look at kind of bumping everyone's salary by having paid lunch breaks. And we can look at adding more vacation and wellness days, to their allotment.
[JAMES]:Cause the PTO, the unlimited. The reason why the organization wanted to look at something was because they want, they recognized the emotional load that the work was taking on people. Like there's a lot just the nature of the work was very heavy, workload and nature of the work. And so they wanted to do something in the wellness to show people that they like to give people the chance to rest and recharge, which is an admirable goal to be working towards. So with that intent for, and that kind of intent of the unlimited pto, we had to figure out how do we accomplish that same intent, how do we provide that same intent to people who can't benefit from the unlimited PTO? So it doesn't have to mirror exactly. Operational requirements rarely allow you to do this type of sweeping. Everybody gets the exact same benefit. But if you like, if you take it back to what are we trying to accomplish with this initiative? Well, increased wellness, you know, allow people to recharge and, and the recognition of the type of work that they're engaged in that we just take that same intent and we look at creating an equitable solution for the other group.
[COBY]:Yeah. And again, and usually that comes from consultation with both groups to make sure that there's an agreement that these are two equitable options to kind of allow for everyone to kind of rece the receive the intended outcome. And again, it's one of those things where all these things are doable. It just takes intention and it takes strategy and it takes often consultation and engagement in order to make sure that you're actually being strategic with your intent. And it's one of those things where by that approach you're able to kind of again to kind of like diminish the impact of joba satisfaction because you are looking at trying to make things competitive with other organizations sufficient to meet their intended, goals and their intended purpose andeitably applied across your organization. And that allows you to have a better approach to make sure that you're actually not fostering job of satisfaction, which is where a lot of the hostility, competitiveness will come from.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And I think one of the big things that I really, if you are listening to this element of the conversation and thinking, you know, you have something you want to create some sort of equitable solution. This really comes down to how you manage change in your organization. And I can't stress how important it is for you to engage with people early to generate the buy in, communicate the intent. So if you are looking, let's keep going with the unlimited pto, right? There was a clear intent of what the organization was trying to accomplish. And so they wanted to do this one piece and we, they knew it would work well with this defined group, but they didn't have a clear idea of what it would actually look like with this other group. So communicating the intent, getting buy in from staff, giving them an opportunity to actually speak into what would from your perspective, an equitable solution look like. I mean, obviously you need to put the caveats in there that we can't take everything that you suggest to us and just implement it right. Again, it needs to be equitable. But change management is where I see most of these things fail on. Because organizations have great intent to provide, to do something new and cool and innovative or to provide something to their staff. But they don't focus on generating by in early. They don't manage the change effectively and it just undermines everything that comes after.
[COBY]:Absolutely. All right, so let's move on a little bit and talk about the institutional betrayal side of what that is and what that kind of looks like. So again, you touched on. It's the idea of when kind of the institutions. The institutional betrayal is when we feel let down or again betrayed by the institution or the organization that we are dependent on. and sometimes that can be we're dependent on a person. And the institutional betrayals comes from like, you know, like leadership management letting us down or the way that the rules the organization, kind of, kind of dictates or passes down ends up, you know, kind of hurting us. And it feels even worse because we are so dependent on them. but so when, you know, again, layoffs are a great sign of that. again, weaponizing policies are another common example of institutional betrayal. Like you, when you are, know when one employee, you know, in a retail sector steals, you know, clothes from the store, then the sweeping change to retaliate against all employees. Organization puts in rules where everyone's backpacks and purses have to be checked before they lease shift those types of policies.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I like. Okay, bit of a tangent, but right on. I remember going in, this was not a year or two ago, going into a retail store, as a customer, standing at the checkout, with my products that I was purchasing in hand and the manager was forced to step away from a paying customer. Search an employee bag in front of me. Because that's what the policy said. The policy they had to search the employees bag before the employee left the store. And I almost lost my God given mind. because this type of weaponization of policy just creates such a distrust in employees. Nobody likes doing this Anyways. you're right. The betrayal that comes from those things is substantial. And what's important to understand with institutional betrayal is even in a new organization people can carry that with them. That feeling of betrayal can compound. And as you go through your career as you are let down time and time again, as you see the inconsistencies, as you see favoritism or nepotism or you know, mass layoffs or whatever, these is contributing to it. These things can build and that what people carry with them now is an expectation. They're looking for the inconsistencies. They're looking for elements to justify why they are so ticked off.
[COBY]:Yeah. And so yeah, so we did an episode, I want to say probably our second season. I'll put I'list all the episodes that we referenced in the show notes but on weaponizing policy.
[JAMES]:Don't have them all memorized.
[COBY]:I don't. some of them, some of them I knew we were going to talk about. I made notes of. But yeah came but this one I know I didn't have written down. but yeah, but we go into. We have with the three different weaponized policies. Weapons of retaliation, weapons of oppression. And
[JAMES]:Yeah I'm pretty sure we did that episode right after I had the, that experience I came back. Just live it.
[COBY]:Yeah. Sory. I'm totally spacing on the third one. But yeah. But we talked about those and then I was on a podcast called Dear Corporate Love Stories a little while ago and I talked about them there too within the corporate sector because again corporate retail has a bad habit of being one of the worst offenders for weaponizing policies. but one of the other institutional betrayal that we see a lot of is when people get burned by hr. Because often. So again we talked about another episode. We talked about the we call the four faces of hr. Like what HR stands for an organization. And one of the faces of HR is it's the hovering and restricting department. And when your HR is about hovering over you and restricting your access, they are there for the company and they are there to protect the company from you. As an employee. And that is one of the most gross misuses of what HR should be. And every HR person that works in these companies usually hates their job, and it's full of job dis. Satisfaction. but I mean, it's one of the things where people get burned because they thought that HR was supposed to be what HR is supposed to be, and they talked about a problem and. And HR went around and burned them for it. And that's a major cause of institutional betrayal. That's a major cause of job satisfaction when that consistency doesn't happen. And one thing that you think is for you is actually not for you. It protects the company from you. So it's one of those things where. That's another common example of where that comes from. And one ex. We can list a bunch of different betrayal pieces. But I think where I want to get to though, is that what institutional Maral does is it creates feelings of hopelessness and cynicism and a sense of every person being in it for themselves. And those three things are usually the coping mechanisms going in. Going back to the psychology of all this, they're coping mechanisms to kind of survive in this cutthroat culture where everyone's out to get you, the company's out to get you, staff are to get you h. Charge up to get you. And so you need to, again, hostility needs to be your. Your way. Go into conversation swinging first because someone's going to be swinging at you. So hit them first. And that is what you're breeding. When this kind of institutional betrayal is normalized within organizations.
[JAMES]:Yeah, that's a really good point because they. The stronghold mentality is very much about hit first, hit hard. Protect your, the way that you protect yourself is by going on the offensive. If there are limited resources. Well, I'm gonna make sure that I get it from my team. There is, I mean, there's. There's obviously a lot of different types of leaders that can be engaged in these types of, discussions, but rarely do. I think that the, this comes from, like, a leader being, like, setting things up intentionally to build their own stronghold, their own little kingdom with it. Like, we tend to see that very, very, very infrequently.
[COBY]:Yes. Where you jumping to the next one is clinging to power.
[JAMES]:Yeah, it's about clinging to power. But that clinging to power can also come from a desire to protect your team. And that's where I see this happen more often than not is people, leaders who care deeply about their team, who want to make sure that their team gets the support that they need, that their team gets the resources that they need. And because the organization has created this scarcity mentality of, you know, there will be haves and have not. Well, a compassionate leader who wants to do the best for their team may end up, fighting and clinging to control so that they can be that advocate for their team. So there's this. I, I think it's really important to understand that although strongholds in general are not good, they are negative and they create a lot of bad things in our workplaces. They're not caused by bad people.[COBY]: Right? No, and that's a fair point. And again, because I, I think I was going to lean a little heavily more on it being a leadership competency problem where it's clinging to power comes from. That's a really important. It can be that. Like there's legitimate there. There is.
[COBY]:Well, and we talked about in kind of, near the end of last season we had a couple of episodes where I brought up self preservation and unconfident leadership as being a major barrier to again, ah, a lot of organizational issues because a lost of self preservation. And I've seen this in many organization that I've gone into's so consistent that when a leader is unconfident in their role, either they haven't upskilled themselves enough to evolve with the growing needs of the organization, or they were promoted and then not trained, which is really common or whatever it is they other, self preservation can sometimes again unintentionally often manufacture competitiveness from their team to other teams or to different teams that report to them because they can create relevance for themselves by being the peacemaker, by being the liaison, the negotiator, the only person that can make these warring factions actually work together. And that's something that is a very, you know, toxic style of leadership. And it's one of those things where again, it's something that can be something that again, doesn't happen intentionally. No one is like, you know what? I'm not sure what to do. So I'm just gonn to make fights and then fix them. It's usually just something that kind of happens a bit, kind of subconsciously and a bit organically. But it's again, that clinging to power and clinging to relevance can be a major cause of why strongholds exist.[JAMES]: Yeah. And I think that the last, last thing that I want to say about the leadership piece, if you're looking at how do I deal with this, these behaviors, how Do I deal with leaders who may be creating strongholds? It's really important to remember that everyone's the hero in their own story. Nobody's going into this as the villain in their mind. And these behaviors tend to stem from a place of they think that they're doing something right. So I encourage you to just keep that in mind and extend a bit of grace even in situations that can be incredibly frustrating to address. Right. All right, so let's jump into how do we fix this?
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So again I want to keep in mind we're going to give you some, hopefully some really helpful tips. But again, these are not going to be silver bullets one time fixes. Just do this, problem solved. These are going to be things that will provide hopefully some context and some help. but mostly it's going to be providing insight and getting your head around where to start. Because again we want to help you address the sickness, not just chase the symptoms.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And the, the hostility, the competitiveness is a symptom. That's what we'are seeing. That's the outflow of this. So the first thing that you have to do is actually get to the cause of it. You need to do some sort of investigation. And this is why we always, I mean not a surprise considering the name of this podcast is Diagnosing the Workplace, that we're going to look at some sort of diagnostic. Some sort of getting beyond getting beyond just the competitive and hostility to how do we actually, what is actually driving those, elements. And so as you've said, Coby, job dissatisfaction is where the root of these are going to be, situated. So understanding the seven by three rule, understanding the distinction between what do we mean when we're looking at things of whether they, when they need to be competitive, sufficient and equitable. How do those three expectations really play out in the workplace? I mean we've done a good job today talking about the distinction between equality and equitability, which is a really good distinction to get into and to understand. But seven, knowing those factors, investigating those factors through the lens of the three expectations is going to be where we need to largely start.
[COBY]:Yeah. And I think that, you know, if you're like, okay, well seven factors, expectation sounds like a lot. Yeah. And that's fair. But like where probably the actions that you implement once. So once you understand the reality of your workplace, which is what the diagnostic is for.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:That probably the two areas, the two things that we mentioned earlier on are going to be probably where the biggest piece is going to be around consistency. Yes, it's going to be around equity. and because again, it's those pieces where we need to understand about how rules are being applied consistently, how leaders are managing consistently, but also how people are how equity is provided amongst the field teams and the office teams and the, you know, the, this location, in that location, the satellite offices and the main offices, whatever it is, the boats and the, you know, whatever it is.
[JAMES]:Right. Also includes equity. Equitable access to resources. Yeah, ablute this. If you're, if you're dealing with competitive, with a very competitive mindset. Equitable access to resources is probably where a lot of this is coming from. Equitable access to something. If there's a group that has something that you don't and you're fighting for that. That and that competitive piece is coming up. You're probably talking about an equity issue.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. So then, then we should talk about institutional betrayal. So again, one of the things that you're going to want to do again the tool in the toolbox that we suggest when it comes to institution betrayal is the three steps we say is identify, understand and resolve. So as leaders and managers, you know, identify and understand what the past actions of betrayal have been, what have we done, where have we screwed up, what's something that people are, have been mad at and are still mad at. Because the thing is, is that it's really important for you to acknowledge past mistakes because here's the thing. If you actually are successful in addressing job of satisfaction and people are actually becoming less, you know, hostile and competitive towards each other, but you haven't addressed institutional betrayal, then they're going to stop turning on each other and they're gonna start turning on the company. Yeah. So, so you need to say, okay, we haven't been perfect, we screwed up. Maybe we use you know, policies as weapons. And this is something that was, you know, was mist on our part. And you know, we are going to try and fix, fix these issues and we're going to try to be more intentional and more strategic and more compassionate in the way that we address problems as they arise. Those types of acknowledgements are going to be really, really important to do, but you're really gonna need to make sure that you identify and understand what happened and why it happened before you're going to be able to resolve it.
[JAMES]:Institutional betrayal comes from a breach of trust.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:At some point. Trust has been broken and trust, once broken is a very Delicate piece to try to rebuild. And it doesn't matter what relationship we're talking about. I mean right now we're focused obviously on employment relationships. But trust in any situation, once it's gone, it's very like it's a long road back. And you cannot rebuild trust in any relationship if you're unwilling to acknowledge the actions that broke the trust in the first place.
[COBY]:Absolutely. And then the last one we talked about was kind of cleaning the power and cleaning the relevance. And I think that one thing that's gonna be really important is if this is a leadership issue, you need to understand what a toxic leader looks like and sometimes how we shelter toxic leaders. So we had an episode, this is when I actually wrote down season three, episode seven. We talked both, you know, are we sheltering toxic leaders? That's a great episode to listen to if you're thinking about the cleaning to power cleaner relevance as being caused for your competitiveness and hostile teams. But one of the biggest things that we always say is train your managers, train your managers, promote them, then train them. and again, and if you're a manager and you're thinking maybe I do some of this stuff, I do kind of cling to power, or maybe I do protect my team at the expense of every other team, then maybe it's a matter of thinking a little bit critically about your actions, about your choices, your decision making process. Maybe it's start to upskill yourself. And if you want a little bit of help with that, another episode you can listen to of ours, which is their episode, which is last episode we talked about leadership tips. Hopefully those episodes will give you some insight and some help to allow you to be able to kind of think critically, upskill yourself, think of these things more, you know, more holistically and allow you to actually bring a better leadership presence to your job and ideally be part of the solution to solve avoiding fixing competitiveness in hostile team cultures.
[JAMES]:It's funny, I mean, I guess it's when you do 26 podcasts a year for three years, there's a lot of reference callbacks that we can make. Yeah, I do want to reiterate, if you are a, in a leadership position, if you are a director or executive level and you see these types of behaviors happening among the teams that you are responsible for and you're going to address it with your leadership, recognize that nine times out of 10 it's not coming from a place of willfully trying to one up somebody else or like it's generally not stemming from a vindictive or a negative attitude. That could be the case. And if it is, you need to address that. And with restating your expectations and, you know, rolling that into some sort of coaching or, performance framework, people rarely like just at any level, we're talking about people, right? And people want to do the right thing by and large, right? They want to do right by their teams, they want to do right by the organization. They want to be successful in their roles, recognize the role that the organization has played in creating some of this competitiveness or creating some of this hostility, and just recognize that people are the heroes in their own stories. They think that they are doing something right. If they have been going down this road, then they think that there's probably a reason why and it could very well be that they see this as their job is to protect their team. So if it's competitiveness for specific perks or resources, they're going toa get it because their teams going to be the one that benefits.
[COBY]:yeah, no, you're right, actually, I think that's a good point to end on. So, yeah. All right. that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast, and that's just the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, where you'll get to see my new glasses, visit Roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
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