Leading Effectively e-Newsletter - October 2009

Irreconcilable Differences? Think Again

In theory, diverse people and views are a powerful advantage for organizations. In practice, those differences are difficult to bridge.

"Look no further than today's business headlines — energy sustainability, healthcare reform, weathering the global recession." says CCL's Chris Ernst. "Barriers between groups can be so rigid and problems so entrenched that unyielding differences get in the way of tackling larger, shared goals.

To bridge these divides, Ernst and colleagues at CCL are helping executives and managers to develop collaborative, boundary-spanning leadership capabilities.

"The most important and complex business challenges require leaders to span organizational and cultural boundaries, vertical and horizontal structures, as well as diverse stakeholder, demographic and geographic groups," says Ernst. "Managers know this, but many are unsure of how to lead in this new way."

One strategy is to become a boundary mediator. Recently, Ernst interviewed Mark Gerzon, author of Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences Into Opportunities, to uncover strategies for leading groups that have irreconcilable differences and entrenched conflict.

• Get the right groups in the room. When reconciling differences, you need to bring the entire system and all stakeholders together. Only then can you be assured that all points of view can be heard. "If you don't get the full range of the right people in the room, you could be the world's greatest facilitator and you won't make the progress you hoped for," says Gerzon.

• How you frame the issue is the first act of leadership. The way you set up issues or points of debate is critically important. If your framing is perceived to advantage one group over another, you will be stuck before you start. The way the issue is framed, explains Gerzon, needs to be inviting and respectful to all groups. For example, when organizing a high-profile event several years ago, Gerzon made a point of referring to it as a "transpartisan retreat on climate change and energy security."

  "I kept stressing climate change and energy security because that was the only way to get all the right people in the room," he says. "If we had called it just "climate change," many of the people would not have come because it would have sounded as though the issue had already been settled."

• Allow all groups to confirm core values. Everybody needs the chance to say: "This is a core value I hold. I'm glad to be here, but I'm not changing my mind. When I leave, this is still going to be my core value." This simultaneously helps people to feel more grounded and secure and it allows people to realize that different groups have decent and principled values that may even overlap.

  But, says Gerzon, the focus must stay on essentials. "It's very important that when people start speaking, they're speaking about core values, not positions. Because if they start speaking about positions before you've built an environment amenable to negotiation, then they're stuck on those positions."

• Create a channel for both positive and negative energy to flow. As a mediator, you have to balance and create movement for both positive, constructive energy and negative, potentially destructive energy. Gerzon describes this as creating a "consensus strand" and a "conflict strand" around which to work.

  "The conflict strand is where people across the spectrum come together and identify areas where they think they just won't be able to work together. The consensus strand is where people work to find areas where they might be able to work together. And we'll make a list of each strand ... And I honor both of them," Gerzon explains. "So with the two channels the groups can say: "In the morning we're going to have small groups where we're looking at areas of consensus. And, in the afternoon we're going to have debates around issues A, B and C that clearly are areas where we disagree."

  Where you find areas of agreement, you want to create a channel that moves that agreement toward resolution, decision-making and concrete action steps. Where you find areas of disagreement, however, you want to create a channel that allows those differences to be discussed, but contained in such a way so as not to destroy the movement created in the positive channel.

• Don't allow yourself to become the focus. The mediator role requires you to keep the focus of attention on the groups themselves rather than on yourself. As an organizational leader, you have roles, opinions and responsibilities, too — but a mediator cannot jump in and take control of the situation, pull rank or impose a solution. Find ways to manage your physical, emotional and mental energy to withstand the strains of the mediator role.

By simultaneously drawing attention to both uniqueness and belonging, both common ground and difference, mediators create an environment where boundaries begin to shift. Groups are able to think and act as barriers soften and new knowledge, expertise and experience are created.

"It is the intersection of difference and similarity where new ideas and opportunities are created," says Ernst. "And, in the process, ironically, differences become the source for finding common ground."