Dear EQ Coach,
My name is Legion, and I’m in recovery from working in a dysfunctional office.
With 50 employees, our non-profit was failing because we had an incompetent, unethical leader, aka director. (Call him ‘Alan’.) 1/3rd of us knew this. 1/3rd never interfaced directly with him, not being in the central office and basically didn’t count. And 1/3rd had been hand-picked by him (like attracts like), and that’s the real danger of a “bad” leader. That meant of the people who were involved were “against” the leader. That half knew that one day we’d treat someone with respect and dignity, or work hard to meet a deadline, or stay late to produce, and all the others would say, “What a wuss she is,” and the tide would’ve turned irreparably.
It’s its own little hell and it’s self-perpetuating. It’s also easy to pull over on a Board, because with time, the Board becomes hand-picked as well, which further weakens the non-profit. The Board members are chosen with one criterion in mind: Will not rock the boat.
So what happened?
A ‘retreat’ was proclaimed that we were all subject to, to “fix” us. “To get you straightened out,” the director actually said, adding insult to injury. It was so egregiously the wrong “solution” to “what was wrong,” it made the dissenting 1/3rd of us lose faith permanently in any avenue of redress, and we shortly thereafter started resigning. So I guess it served its purpose. For the office to remain dysfunctional, our 1/3rd had to be gotten rid of, and Alan chose just the right consultant to do this.
During the retreat, the consultant actually looked shocked at some of the things Alan said and did, even sucked in her breathe once. Her response was to call breaks, redirect the discussion, avoid contention, and sweep it under the table.
What needed doing in that situation was for someone to have the guts to call a spade a spade. Go to the Board and either get Alan fired, or oneself fired. Same difference. I tried once, judged it to be hopeless, got my resume ready, endured the Retreat and then resigned.
I have more guts now . because I discovered it’s far more stressful to keep silent, endure, and ultimately become part of the problem. It’s very wearing on one’s “self” in the long run to deny, pretend and fight passive-aggressively. It will warp your thinking; you gaslight yourself as you rationalize this, and then that. Better to go ahead and hawk it up like a fur ball and move on.
But as to really solving a problem like that – getting the situation turned around when the leader is a large part of the problem, could a coach do it? What would it take?
Signed, Legion
Turning Around a Dysfunctional Situation
The Turnaround Coach must have the Big Three: Compassion, Integrity, and Courage. Compassion (how to deliver the smackdown) and integrity (staying focused on solving the real problem, not the perceived problem, and earning your money, not having fun) must already be in place. (This is part of Emotional Intelligence.) Then you must have courage. Someone has to call a spade, a spade, and it’s going to be you.
There are infinite ways of doing it with finesse, but ultimately your job is to go to the leader and say, “You hired me to XX. I have studied the problem and have come to the conclusion that it is you, madam, who is the problem.” Of course you don’t say it that way. And of course, no one likes to realize this, but it also carries the solution within it – if you’re the problem, then you’re also the solution. The change must start at the top.
It takes a lot of ego strength to run an organization. You have to believe in yourself, and this can blind you. You can isolate yourself from any meaningful feedback. In reality, all leaders can become more effective, and some leaders can become far more effective. A rule of thumb for a coach in this situation is – don’t ask what’s the problem, ask who’s the problem.
And you might be interested to know, that most CEOs test low on the Personal Power segment of the EQ-Map. It is-beyond a shadow of a doubt-a challenging position to have.
What works? How do you do it? You’re on your own there. Or, in other terms, develop your intuition (an Emotional Intelligence competency) through consciously processing your experiences, or, more quickly, by working with a certified EQ coach. The dynamics move too fast in real life. You have to learn the rules so you know how to break them. It is what’s called “experiential learning.”
I have said to the senior partner in a law firm, angry at me, calling me an idiot and questioning whether he should continue to retain my services, “The strongest reason why you should retain me is because I’m the only person in your personal and professional life who will tell you what you need to hear, not want to hear.” In that case, he went ahead and fired me. I consider I did my job. Know what I mean?
If you are afraid of “losing” a client-individual or business-you have no business being in coaching. If you are ruled by fear you cannot think. (Take The EQ Foundation Course to learn more about this.) If you cannot think, you aren’t doing your job and you aren’t earning your money. Likewise, if your integrity, and “better judgment” can be bought, you are a prostitute.
Months or years from now, that client may remember what I said at a time when he’s ready to put himself on his growing edge and become the kind of leader and person he’d like to be, to take the next step in the never-ending project of creating oneself and one’s life. Or that may never occur. It’s out of our hands.
The Smackdown
As a coach, over time, you hone your instincts and learn a million ways to deliver the smackdown. Always from a place of love, of course, and in service of solving the problem, but the real problem, not the stated problem.
Things aren’t usually any one person’s “fault,” they’re the result of a dysfunctional system, but the leader is not just “a person,” they are the one who sets the system and determines the culture. That’s what’s meant by “primal” leadership. It’s quite a responsibility!
With any business, the goal is to straighten out the dysfunctional system so it can become profitable; a place where someone would actually want to work, and where good workers can be most productive, and will stay . isn’t it?
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