CHAPTER 4

Are You Undermining Team Success?

Teams that regularly produce creative and innovative solutions do not rely on the talents of one person. Rather, they have the capacity to hang in when the tension and ambiguity between team members rise to uncomfortable levels. They don’t fall back on habitual coping mechanisms. Instead, they remain aware of themselves and others, and they continue to communicate openly through conflict to access innovative business solutions.

Teams that opt out during these tension-filled, ambiguous moments let all the air out of the creative balloon. They opt out in the name of efficiency, harmony, or personal comfort at the unintentional cost of effective, creative teamwork.

When you feel pressure and uncertainty, you must make a critical choice: opt in or opt out. People often choose to defuse tension through their automatic and habitual reactions. This helps them feel more in control, yet diminishes team creativity. We call these different habitual reactions opt-out styles. You’ll feel empowered when you begin to notice the opt-out patterns of yourself and of others. You may be surprised how often you choose to defuse tension while believing you are helping the team, when in reality, you are optimizing your own comfort. To find out how you tend to opt out, take our online assessment at www.Thriveinc.com/beautyofconflict/bonus.

OPT-OUT STYLES

People find myriad ways to defuse tension and ambiguity and gain the illusion of control. We have found three of those opt-out styles to be most common: Superstar, Accommodator, and Separator. Which opt-out style do you most relate to? Which one is your favorite? Do you notice people on your team who fit into these styles? Let’s look at each in detail.

Superstar

Superstars often feel impatient at work, especially in meetings. They think, “I know what we need to do. I’ll never get them to agree. I’ll just do it myself, and they’ll thank me later.”

This opt-out style involves a high focus on self, what we call the ME. If this is you, it means that when there is tension, you believe action will relieve the pressure. You feel an internal sense of urgency. You believe you already know the right answer or a good enough answer, and that getting everyone on board is an unnecessary waste of time.

Superstars are so focused on their own perspective that they can, and often do, ignore, dismiss, or even bully others. Sometimes this behavior is so unconscious that as a Superstar, you actually believe you’re doing what is best and most efficient, and that people will thank you in the end for making it all happen.

Superstar key attributes:

Observable signs of a Superstar:

Superstar blind spots:

Superstars are often unaware that they have left the other team members behind. As a result, they don’t leverage the team’s ideas or IQ. People with this opt-out style decide what is right for the team without checking in to see if people are on board or have other good ideas. The result is a suboptimal solution, limited buy-in, and usually tough implementation.

Leadership takeaway:

If you have this opt-out style, you tend to miss developing the skills and leadership abilities of the team, and that leaves you to carry the load. Your growth, and the team results, will improve when you notice your sense of urgency to do it yourself. Then, rather than acting on it, you can run your decision by the team or by someone who knows your tendency, to see if you’re in your blind spot.

Accommodator

In a meeting with conflict, an Accommodator is often uncomfortable and thinking, “This is not okay. I’ve just got to get these two people to agree on something.”

You might interject with something like, “I think what she meant to say is…” or smooth tension with, “I don’t think we need to get upset about this.”

An individual with this opt-out style has a high focus on others, or ‘the WE.’ If this is you, in the midst of tension, you focus on what others are saying, doing, wanting, and feeling. In fact, you probably do this so much that you stop being aware of what you think, feel, and want, and don’t bring your own opinion forward.

In your discomfort with disagreements, raised voices, or signs of aggressive behavior, you as an Accommodator believe that helping others get along will relieve the tension. You work to reduce tension or upset by facilitating the discussion in meetings or approaching each person individually and managing conflict with one-on-one conversations.

The Accommodator’s intense fear of conflict is the basis of this belief. You tend to think that teams and relationships are good only when everyone gets along and everything is smooth. Because of this, you focus on minimizing tension and disruptions. You come across as a peacekeeper by asking questions, facilitating the discussion, and rarely adding your own point of view.

As an Accommodator you tend to ignore yourself and can be quite out of touch with your own inner world. While you are gifted at reading the signs and cues from others, you miss yourself; meaning your opinion, gifts, feelings, and intention. You leave this out of the interaction as you busily help rebuild bridges between others.

Accommodator key attributes:

Observable signs of an Accommodator:

Accommodator blind spots:

Accommodators fail to recognize that in all their efforts to create harmony on the team, they leave out a critical ingredient: themselves. Accommodators often don’t contribute their own opinion. In the need for harmony, they short-circuit real team discussions. Accommodators over-manage the situation and get in the way of rich, real discussions that leverage the different opinions of the team members.

In the end, Accommodators often feel over-burdened and underappreciated in the attempts to manage conversations, volunteer for extra work, and take on the responsibility of settling conflict. While no one asks Accommodators to do these extra jobs, you feel compelled to volunteer because no one else is signing up.

Leadership takeaway:

When you lead as an Accommodator, you keep your real thoughts, feelings, and desires to yourself. This leads to disappointment because the team doesn’t understand what you want. The team needs and misses out on your direction, opinions and critical feedback. Your growth and the team results will improve as you learn to speak up, directly give your real opinion, and tolerate the tension of people being upset.

Separator

Separators feel detached and disengaged during conflict. They think, “I’m sure they’ll work it out at some point. In the meantime, I’ll just check my e-mail.”

This opt-out style focuses strongly on other parts of the business than the topic at hand. If you’re a Separator, in the midst of tension, you ignore or block your own opinion (the ME) and the human dynamics in the room (the WE). Instead, you tend to focus on the business, but not the current business issue causing the conflict. You are most comfortable working, so when tension arises, you disengage. You pride yourself on having the right data and the correct answer. Often, the interpersonal dynamics seem unnecessary to you and, thus, better ignored.

As a Separator you prefer calm. If you can’t get clarity on the current team problem, you’ll focus on something else entirely, right in the midst of the meeting. You’ll check e-mail or chat with the person next to you about something entirely different. You tend to think you’re efficient or autonomous: “I’ll just stay busy while they work it out.”

When you do speak up as the Separator, you are often detached, rational, and calm. You prefer to focus on the data or bring up a completely different topic than the conflict on the table. Underlying your behavior is a desire to distance yourself from the chaos and messiness of the human dynamics. The Separator finds the inner workings of a problem to be safer ground than the inner workings of people. You appear indifferent, detached, or even dismissive.

Separator key attributes:

Observable signs of a Separator:

Separator blind spots:

Separators are typically unaware how their behavior impacts the group. They essentially abandon the team, letting them work it out without engaging. They don’t realize that developing clarity depends on their contribution even amidst human chaos.

Leadership takeaway:

As you lead and opt out as a Separator, you often focus on doing your own thing and miss the insights and input from team discussions. In your preference for calm and clarity, you tend to lead a team as a group of subject matter experts rather than driving the team to work collectively. Your growth, and the team results, will improve as you notice your tendency to work alone versus engaging in team meetings and driving collective goals.

GOOD INTENTIONS, POOR EFFECTIVENESS

The three opt-out styles are simply habits. When you feel tension in the middle of a meeting, it’s easy to believe that the problem is out there, and that the triggers are external. But, it is your own internal discomfort and sense of being out of control that causes the greatest discomfort. These three opt-out styles are natural, ingrained responses to that discomfort—and they are typically remnants of coping methods learned growing up. The behaviors are usually automatic, unconscious, and repetitive. You may have a go-to opt-out choice, but you may dabble in all of them, depending on the circumstances.

Your intentions are pure. You want to do what is best for yourself, the team, and the project by opting out. Each opt-out style has an element of good intention:

Behind each of these intentions is the desire to maintain or reestablish control. The problem is, control doesn’t lead to creativity; chaos does, which we know in business is counter-cultural. None of these intentions is likely to build a strong, resilient, innovative team. These opt-out styles fail to leverage the diversity of the team members by defusing the tension and ambiguity needed to create innovative solutions. These styles undermine team success. The question we pose to you is: How do you opt-out of conflict? To find out how you tend to opt out, take our online assessment at www.Thriveinc.com/beautyofconflict/bonus.

Don’t worry, everyone opts out of conflict at times. The key is to recognize this is what you are doing and make a different choice. Here are three critical elements to support the team in using the energy of conflict:

  1. Recognize your own opt-out style tendency
  2. Realize opting out does not help the team get to innovative results
  3. Make the shift to embrace conflict

Based on your favorite opt-out style, here are things you can say to make that shift and own what you’re doing:

Superstar: “I think I have a great solution, but maybe I’m driving too fast. Let me slow down and check in with you folks.”

Accommodator: “I’m uncomfortable in conflict, so I just try to fix it. Truth is, I have a different idea all together, and frankly, I didn’t even bring it up because you guys keep arguing.”

Separator: “I realize I’m checking out, and if I were to chime in, I’d suggest the quieter folks speak up. I’m tired of the same people making the same points.”

Opting out is human. You will continue to opt out. The key is to recognize when you are optimizing your own comfort over the success of the team. That awareness allows you to make a different choice.

Once you can spot your own opt-out style, you will notice other people’s as well. For a leader, this is powerful because you can keep your eye on the prize—collective results versus individual comfort. When you as a leader opt in, you will dramatically impact your team’s success.

Let’s explore how some leaders have dramatically increased their team’s success through opting in.