All For You

In my organization, outsiders to my department have been made aware of the pain which forced my manager to start to describe why the pain exists. Because my manager’s explanation of what was causing the pain was inaccurate, his attempt to solve the problem was unsuccessful. The higher ups called in the consultants because the moral within my department seems to be getting lower.   

My manager cannot seem to be able to pin point the cause of the pain so he and others are hoping the cause of the pain can be identified by the consultants. 

The consultant role within my organization seems to be different from the consultant’s role in the Block text.  The consultant has not redefined the presenting problem, they have only tried to help us deal with the problems we seem to have as a group.  We still have no clear picture of what is causing the difficulty.  In every meeting the air in the meeting seems to grower thicker with each new meeting.

The group I am apart of within my corporation precedes my manager historically. Currently, my management is not succeeding in managing the external boundary management, survival, and growth. In the eyes of higher ups our group is not successful. On paper our group is achieving however there is no harmony within the group. Our leadership sees my immediate manager as a failure in leadership.

Because of these issues my entire department has been given a 360 survey to complete on my manager’s leadership style. This survey will assess my manager’s abilities in leadership.

For the most part there are two different groups within in my department. There is the production side of the house versus the instructors’ side of the house. Both groups are using different category systems. The entire group struggles to agree on what to do and the facts end up being twisted to benefit one group versus the other group. Both sides of the house feels like their side is more important and should be respected more that the other group.

Schien states that it is often the creators of groups who build the common category system, however in my organization the manager has left it up to the department to create common category systems. This is a problem because neither group can come to a consensus on common category systems. My department has been participating in several workshops to learn how to become a successful group. We are working on a common language and category system. In an attempt to develop a common language my department has come up with a set of group rules that must be read aloud before each meeting. This list of 18 ground rules was developed by the entire team during one of our first workshops. See list below:

1. Be here now – no computers, cell phones, etc.

2. Start on time

3. Stop on time

4. Have questioning attitude

5. Focus on session – no distractions

6. Respect each other- disagree, but be agreeable

7. Seek first to understand before being understood

8. Listen

9. One person speaking at a time

10. Seek equal participation, allow others to participate

11. Conflict – deal with directly; go to the source in a safe environment before group disclosure

12. Have objectives and meet them

13. Over 50% of staff, consisting of one individual per discipline needed for decision making

14. Determine how decisions will be made (majority, consensus or unanimity)

15. Provide an agenda in advance of meetings with built in breaks every hour

16. No retaliation

17. Tie back purpose of meeting to alignment with strategic plan

18. Recap and production of action items through meeting minutes

In class tonight, our discussion was around the ORJI cycle.

O-Observation

R-Reaction

J-Judgment

I-Intervene

Recently, I encounter a situation that involved the ORJI cycle with my counterpart at work.  In my opinion, my counterpart was of equal status even though; her title is “Senior Training Specialist. 

In a conversation with my counterpart, I was informed by her (Observation) that all of my vacations must go though her as she was not my supervisor.  Of course, this news came to a surprise for me, as this new position was never posted nor was it communicated to me from my management that she had been given such an opportunity.  At that point in time, I received the information and processed it as professional as I knew how and began to formulate how such a huge transition be possible in a well established organization.   

After returning to my desk, I started quickly on my research (Reaction) to see if, in fact, this was all true.  I first made a telephone call to my Human Resource Representative to see if there were any recent promotions within my department.  The outcome of that telephone call validated that there were no recent promotions.  My HR representative went onto encourage me to approach my manager to get clarification on the conversation I had with my counterpart.  (Judgment)

The next day I went into my manager’s office (Intervene) with my list of questions in hand along with a nice little notepad to take notes of the conversation.  My manager first appeared to be a little concern because of my disappointed face expression.  I felt let down by the manager I most admired.  How could he possibly let this chain of events happen in this way?  I have read enough books to know that good management skills were lacking from these chain of events.  I knew that any changes in my reporting structure should have been communicated by him and not from my counterpart.  My manager began to apologize for the confusion around my observation of the news my counterpart shared with me.  He assured me that she was in no way my new supervisor and that her role was to only “coordinator” vacation time.  She was not given the authority to approve or disapprove of anyone’s time away from work.  The question here is…who screwed up the ORJI cycle first?