Conundrum 1
Giving Feedback
You have been agitating for changes in the way some elements of your service are offered for some time now. You were, therefore, very pleased when you were asked to be a
member of a task group, established with a remit to consider all the options and the evidence, and come up with a set of recommendations.
The group includes members from a number of different teams, some from different agencies, and a wide range of different professions. The chair is a manager of a department other
than your own, with no clinical background.
Among the members is someone you have known and liked for several years, whose opinions you have often respected, and who clearly appreciates you and your views. Although not
close, you would describe her as a friend.
Over the course of the first few meetings of the group you notice that your friend is dominating the discussion on occasions, to the extent that other members are becoming hesitant
when expressing their thoughts, or are ‘clamming up’ completely. There is beginning to be some exchanging of eye contact when your friend launches into a forthright denunciation of someone
else’s comments, and some members have stopped coming. Although you often agree with your friend you realise there is a danger that the group will fragment, and the service changes you want will be
jeopardized, or that there will be lacklustre implementation of the changes if they are seen to have been rail-roaded through.
You have no formal remit as far as your friend is concerned, but want to make sure the group works together successfully.
What do you do? How will you do it? What preparation will you need to do?
Commentary 1
The questions were: What do you do?
How will you do it?
What preparation will you need to do?
You will probably find you make more of this suggested response if you do spend a minute reflecting on those first.
What do you do?
In this situation you have two concerns: the success of the task which the group is tackling – improvements to your service; and your relationship with your friend. You feel
your friend’s behaviour is jeopardising the task, the question is: should you intervene in some way? and if so, how?
You may well be worried about whether you have any right to do anything, after all you are not managing your friend, nor chairing the task group.
One option is to do nothing. In this way you maintain your relationship, but you risk the successful implementation of service improvements. If you care about your service and its users then this is not a position of integrity.
Care can be defined as :the will to engage in acts of work and/or courage in order to develop the potentials of another.
So your care about your service now requires of you an act of work – analysing the situation carefully and deciding what you need to do. It may yet need an act of courage
–saying something to your friend that she may not want to hear.
Your analysis (based on far more information than was included in the conundrum) tells you that your friend has an activist learning style; prefers shaper and resource investigator behaviours when working in a team; and has a relationship style of director.
When in disagreement with someone else she tends to adopt a competitive or win-lose stance. In contrast the quieter members of the group are theorists and reflectors in their learning style; teamworkers and implementers in their team behaviours and relaters or thinker-analysts in their relationship style. When disagreeing they tend to accommodate (lose-win)or to withdraw (lose-lose).
Thus these clashes are not surprising, they are almost inevitable.
This analysis has helped you to stop blaming your friend. But it hasn’t changed the situation - you still need to think about how to change the behaviours in the group so
there can be a productive, open, questioning discussion. You consider the options:
- You can ask the chair whether there are resources for a facilitator to help the group work through its difficulties. The trouble is you are almost certain that your friend will
see this as a waste of time and will either argue against it or not work constructively with the facilitator when they arrive.
- You can try and ‘stand up’ for the quieter members of the group during discussions. But often you don’t agree with them
- You can try to ensure they are given a fair hearing by asking for their views and checking back that any agreements reached have their support. You are not in the chair but you
can still fulfil this role.
- You can talk to your friend and try and get her to change her behaviour.
You realise this is important, but daunting: What will she say? What will she think? Will she be hurt? Will she be offended and angry? and not
want to continue the friendship?
If you care for your friend you will not want her to be hurt. Or will you? If you believe that she has the potential to behave in more
constructive ways and that she will be more effective if she does, then your care for her requires you to act with courage and try and help her to do this, even if her initial reaction is one of hurt.
If you value the friendship you won’t want her to get angry. But if you withhold information from her that could help her become more effective,
because you are worried about the unpleasantness of her being angry, what kind of friend are you? Who are you thinking of? Not her for sure.
So you decide to say something to her. How will you say it?
How will you do it?
The criticism sandwich is a good guide; something genuinely positive, the negative in just as much detail as is helpful, and then some more (different
) positive feedback. Remember that the positive feedback needs to be as specific as the negative and that the word but is banned.
There are many traps to fall into here. One is when she protests that the others are just not up to it, and that you both know what the answers should
be.
You could agree with her, point out to her that you both need their active agreement if the improvements are to be implemented and ask her to tone
down her language to help achieve this. But if you do you have sabotaged the dynamics of the group, prevented your friend from learning an important lesson, and all to save you embarrassment.
Alternatively you could use the XYZ formula. You could say: Yes, I don’t always agree with them myself, but I value their input and when you raise your voice (X) I feel anxious and embarrassed(Y), I would rather you dealt with their points respectfully(Z).
The XYZ formula is :when you say or do X I feel Y I’d rather you did Z.
Another is when she asks aggressively: ‘Who says so?’ You give a name and she responds ‘Well I’ve seen him behave very badly
in a meeting last week, I’m not taking any lessons from him.’
Here you need to remember to focus on the problem, which is her behaviour. It doesn’t matter who has said what, or what right they have to say
it, it is your own observations that have led you to intervene. So own them. Say what you observed, and how you felt as a result.
This is care. Care for your friend, and care for your service. This is what being a care professional involves.
Preparation
In order to carry this out effectively you will need to prepare for the discussion. Visualising the interaction in advance can be very helpful
here. Role playing it in your head, imagining in detail how your friend may respond, and feeling the way you will feel if that happens. When you realise that you feel nervous, defensive, or angry, practise losing
that feeling and replacing it with one of concern for your friend and for your service. Practise keeping these ends in mind as you talk and listen.
Of course no real interaction ever works out exactly the way you prepared it in advance, and this is why the work on feelings is so important.
If you can keep your feelings constructive then you will find the words you need.
More information on many of these concepts can be found in Really Managing Health Care, chapters two and six.
Please send any comments and suggestions to
conundrum@reallylearning.com
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