The Power of Hearing Someone Out: Turning Around the Office Villain

We have all seen the effect a demoralized worker brings to a workplace.  In their increasing unhappiness, they quickly become the office villain by bringing down the morale of the entire workplace with their difficult attitude.

I am often brought in to workplaces as a last resort against the office villain.  By the point they are speaking to me, they are often entrenched in their own bad attitude, certain that they will always be miserable here and that no one cares about them, so why should they even bother to try and make things better?

When I see their tight body language and furrowed brow, I know I am in for a tough conversation.  But this is actually the ultimate opportunity for me, a chance for me to dig a little deeper into the motivations of the office villain.  I ask the office villain to tell me how they got here, and then I engage my active listening skills.  And over the course of our conversation, I see the body language relax, the brow un-furrow.  Often, I see the entire personality of the so-called villain shift, and that is where the transformation becomes possible.

When people begin to feel unheard in the workplace, they also begin to feel undervalued, which quickly leads to them feeling disrespected.  This starts them down a spiral which ends with them assuming the worst of everyone in their workplace.  The way to begin to turn that around is to stop them from spiraling and give them an opportunity to be heard.  This is exactly what mediation provides: a successful mediator creates space and opportunity for the office villain to feel heard, to express exactly why their needs are not being met, and to think about what could happen differently to allow them to move forward in a way that no longer creates conflict for the rest of the office. 

Simply giving someone the opportunity to be heard is the first step in taking someone from a destructive spiral to a much more productive path.  It can shake a person out of their narrow, entrenched mindset and help them to explore different ways of doing things.  Suddenly, the office villain sees different and more productive ways for them to move forward, and you can have the conversation about what they can do differently, a conversation that seemed so impossible before.

Any comic book series or summer blockbuster will tell you that all villains have a backstory; they were not born that way, but created by choices they made to circumstances their life presented.  The office villain is no different, and mediation allows us to get to those root causes, address the underlying problems and give that former villain a chance to change their office identity.

Getting the Most Out of Mediation: Help Your Mediator Help Your Client

I am often asked by my litigator friends and colleagues about how they can make the most of mediation for their clients.  With cases increasingly moving towards pretrial resolution, and methods of alternative dispute resolution increasingly popular to parties in conflict, developing tools to make yourself a more successful advocate in mediation should be at the top of every litigators list.

There is one critical mistake that I see advocates in mediation make, and it is very easily avoided: understand the importance of working with the mediator.  A mediator’s job is to help you settle your case, come to an agreement, help you find resolution to your conflicts.  But the key word there is “help,” the mediator cannot just settle your case for you.  The most successful advocates in mediation understand this, and they come prepared to work with the mediator to ensure that the mediator has all the information she needs to fully understand and explain the party’s position.

It begins with your mediation statement.  While it should be persuasive, the purpose of your statement is not to convince the mediator of the righteousness of your case.  Remember, the mediator is a neutral, and she is not the ultimate decision maker regarding who is right or wrong.  Instead, a successful mediation statement should serve to illustrate all the reasons behind your client’s position.  That way, you are providing the mediator with the information she needs to explain your position to the other side and to help facilitate the negotiations.

Throughout the mediation, both in the opening joint session and in separate sessions, be prepared with additional key pieces of information that help support your client’s bargaining positions.  Again, now is not the time for you to grandstand or to try and convince the mediator that your client is a saint who is being perpetually wronged by the other side.  Now is the time for you to share the key information supporting your client’s position throughout the mediation process in order to help the mediator help explain that position to the other side.  Each proposal and counter-proposal you present to the mediator should be supported by information about your client’s case.  

Simply emphasizing your position is never enough; you need to be able to make sure the mediator understands where you are coming from.  That means you need to have a clear idea of where your client is coming from.  This preparation is crucial; after all, if you cannot explain your client’s position convincingly to the mediator, you probably have a tough road ahead of you with a judge and jury. 

There are times when the parties are getting close to a deal, but still have to make the final leap or two to get there.  This is usually later in the day; people are getting hungry, tired, and increasingly ready to let this conflict go.  At this point, one side will usually say something to me along the lines of, “Can’t you just go over to the other room and make them agree on X?”

The short answer to that is, “No.”  No, not if you want to keep them in the other room, working towards a resolution.  Not if you want to land this deal.

The full answer is, “No, but I can do something better.  Give me your best reasons as to why X is your ideal solution.  Give me something to go over there with.  Let me hit them with your best shot, and let’s see how far that gets us.”  And then watch the magic of conflict resolution unfold.

Help your mediator help your client.  Arm them with your evidence and theories, along with your questions and objections.  Help the mediator flesh out to the other side why your proposal makes sense.  Then the mediator can most effectively help you land the deal you need to resolve your client’s issue.

Reaping the Benefits of the Modern Era of Diversity and Inclusion: How to Ensure You Have the Best People for Your Workplace

Earlier, I wrote a post about Google’s Project Aristotle and how its results show how the modern era of diversity and inclusion in the workplace helps to create and maintain high functioning groups.  The value a diverse and inclusive workforce brings cannot be overstated.  As I discussed in my prior post:

The value of diversity and inclusion efforts has been recognized and reinforced by current research.  For example, a 2015 Bersin by Deloitte study found that companies that link diversity and inclusion efforts to business goals statistically outperform their peers.  And Millennials, the up and coming labor force, place a high value on working for companies with a strong focus on diversity initiatives and inclusive environments.  Simply put, diversity and inclusion make for successful workplaces, both in the present moment and looking towards the future.

Given the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, what steps can you take to ensure you are making the most of your employee base?  How can you make sure you have the best group of diverse thinkers and problems solvers to maximize the functionality of your team?  What are some steps you can take in order to ensure your workplace is making the most of this modern era of diversity and inclusion?

As with most things in life, including preparing for a mediation, getting clear on what your goals are is the first step.  In the case of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, are you concerned with addressing an existing lack of diversity, addressing challenges a diverse workforce presents to group functionality, or both?

If a lack of existing diversity is your primary concern, begin by taking a clear look at your workplace in order to identify any “diversity lapses,” and then determine the changes you want to make to address these lapses.  For example, is there a significant gender imbalance in your workplace, or a dearth of employees of color?  Do you want your workplace to have wider range of ages of your employees to better leverage different life experiences?  How about different educational backgrounds in order to encourage different ways to think about the problems your workplace is designed to address?  This analysis will tell you what your diversity and inclusion goals are.

Once you have your goals in mind, then you can start to implement ways to achieve that diversity goal in your workplace.  Take a look at your pipeline, where are your employees coming from?  If all of your hiring is done through your management’s LinkedIn network, then you may end up with a homogeneous applicant pool.  Think of ways you can redesign your hiring procedure to broaden your applicant pool.  Can you recruit more extensively geographically, can you deliberately try to broaden your management’s networks, can you actively post job openings directed at applicants from different academic backgrounds?  There are many possibilities for broadening your pipeline of talented applicants to ensure greater diversity and all the benefits that brings to your workplace.

On a related note, if your workplace shows diversity at entry level positions, but looks increasingly homogeneous as you move up through the ranks, you can use the same process as revising your hiring and recruitment techniques in order to make your internal promotion processes more effective for increasing diversity throughout the workplace.  A great example of this also comes to us from Google.  An analysis of their promotion program showed what in order to be promoted, employees had to volunteer to be considered.  For a whole host of societal reasons, it was much easier for men to volunteer than women, thus leading to a severe gender imbalance in applications for promotion management.  When Google realized the problem, the requirement to volunteer was replaced with a direct reminder to all employees to apply.  This simple change yielded a dramatic uptick in women applicants for management positions.

What if your workplace analysis shows that while the workforce is diverse in gender, race, thought, background, age, etc., the issue is bringing people together to successfully work in groups?  In that case, your workplace analysis should begin with a workplace audit.  Check in with all the employees to get a full understanding of the issues at hand.  Is there lack of clarity regarding goals, objectives or responsibilities?  Is everyone on the same page regarding decision making?  Do people feel trusted, valued and safe to bring their whole self to the table?  Once you have identified any challenges, you can then work with management and employees to think about new ways to promote more effective workplace relationships.  This can take the form of coaching, the creation or redesign of policies and systems, or training about effective communication.  And these are all things that a qualified workplace mediator can help you deal with.

When you are dealing with diversity and inclusion in the workplace, the key lesson from Google’s Project Aristotle remains this: do people feel valued for everything they have to bring to the workplace?  If not, what steps can we take to make that the new office norm?