December Fast Company Article Kari Fruechte

Open Mouth, Close Career?, by Michael Warshaw, Dec. 1998. This article explored a subject Ive always had a hard time with - bringing up conflicts or concerns in your company or organization that deal directly with staff. The author used an example of an employee that was hired by a rather large company as vice president of people development. When she figured out that the companys main roadblock toward progressing was that employees werent being given open, honest feedback, she had to decide how and if she would call attention to the problem. The article described her success and the approach she used. Several ideas from another author, Dan Oestreich, were used by this employee. He identifies four steps to practice to be sure you present an organizational problem in the correct way and with enough courage. The first step is to deliver the message to yourself. You need to make sure you can identify the problem clearly and explain your motivation for bringing it up. People tend to get defensive, which is why I dread bringing up problems. Oestreich claims they need to know that you do not have selfish reasons for your actions, but are opening up the message for the good of the whole group. Second, Oestreich says you need to face your fear - and get over it. Easier said than done, I think! This is where I often choose the shut up instead of speak up method of dealing with problems. I related mostly to my own office setting when I chose to read this article. Maybe I have decided the current problems there are not worth the risk of making them public, which is the next step Oestreich talks about. But, that is a choice of methods to use. In our small office setting, I tend to know the personalities of the people I work with, and I feel very strongly that some of the concerns I have would only cause enough animosity that the person I need to confront would retaliate against me. I wanted the article to give me more ideas on dealing with specific personalities, especially people who tend to be manipulative and internalize any constructive criticism of their work. Oestreichs last step is to keep the conversation going. I can think of a few examples of problems that have been brought up and staff started to deal with them. But after a time, things went back to the old ways because the conversation stopped. Its tough to do this step without feeling like a nag. I think you need to go back to step one and be sure your message is phrased in the correct language and that you have a strategy planned for the conversation. Another tough aspect to office situations is how to make the problem belong to the entire office, not just direct the blame toward one person. I liked the suggestion in the article about listening longer than necessary. Giving the person you are confronting time to come up with a solution to the problem should be helpful in moving ownership of the problem from you to them. I think if a large enough problem did arise in my office or organizational setting, these suggestions would be very valuable. We have confronted some situations with success, but it took a person other than me to begin the process. I hope as I gain experience and confidence as an employee myself, I will become more skilled in addressing concerns in the workplace. In discussing this article with one coworker, he shared a situation he worked in where they did confront an employee, and problems got worse for everyone. The employee became very bitter and took small jabs at her coworkers that initiated the concern. He described the office setting as very unpleasant. He ended up taking a new position before the problem was resolved. Keeping in touch with former coworkers he has since learned that the employee that was confronted was finally asked to leave. That whole situation has made him a believer that unless the problem is really affecting the work being done, it probably is not worth confronting. The other coworker I talked with has a very different view. She is very skilled in conflict resolution and believes strongly in addressing concerns right away before they get worse. She is the one who led any discussion our office every had with staff concerns. She is no longer working in our office, so the rest of us need to become more courageous! She seemed to use techniques that, like those in the article made the confrontation less threatening and led the employees toward finding constructive solutions.

-- Anonymous, December 21, 1998

Answers

Kari Fruechte,

You may want to read Kia Harries discussion on this same article, "Open Mouth, Close Career?" We all find ourselves in situations where we have to ensure that we are politically correct especially in dealing with the boss. Very well written. Please break your text into paragraphs.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 1999