The Challenge of Workplace Friction
Have you ever been in that situation where you put brilliant, highly capable people in a room, give them a crystal clear outcome for a project, and somehow they cannot seem to work together to achieve the outcome? We often blame team failures on a hosts of external factors which are visible. But if we look at what is actually happening beneath the surface, the real issues are often unmet expectations, communication breakdowns, and hidden interpersonal dynamics. It is the human element which is often invisible that we need to look at to help us relate, work and lead more effectively towards shared goals.
The Hidden Leadership Challenge
According to organizational psychologist Edgar Schein, what drives behaviour is often hidden beneath the surface. To create healthy organizations, we must look beyond what people do and seek to understand the assumptions, needs, and expectations that shape their actions.. Basically, he understood that you just cannot build a healthy organization if you are only managing visible actions. If you are only reacting to what you can physically see happening in a meeting room, you may be missing what is invisible that is actually driving the external behaviours.
Whilst Schein’s work tells us that we need to look beneath the surface, the Birkman Method helps us actually do it. It takes our incredibly complex psychology and breaks it down into understandable parts, namely Usual Behaviour, Needs,Stress Behaviours, and Interests. It takes our invisible drivers and makes them visible.
Self-Leadership
Self-Leadership has to start with understanding yourself. You really cannot lead anyone else until you do. The Birkman Method breaks this down into four key parts which we will illustrate by way of examples. Perhaps your Usual Behaviouris high on social energy. You are always the first to jump into a group brainstorming session. That is how the world sees you. But what if your hidden Need is actually quiet time to process all the competing ideas generated?
We often assume that how someone acts is what they need. But that is often not true. Because if you do not get your hidden Need met with quiet time to process repeatedly, your Stress Behaviours will kick in. Suddenly, you may find yourself “snapping” at your colleagues or just withdrawing completely. And Interests are simply those activities that naturally energize us and activities which drain us. Sometimes we expect our bosses and our colleagues to be mind-readers when it comes to helping us get our hidden Needs met or supporting us when we are feeling drained. If we do not even know our own hidden Needs or when our energies need a boost, let alone articulate them, how can we expect to have our hidden Needs met or even ask for support from our bosses or colleagues to get our hidden Needs met.
Leading Teams
Strong teams are built on understanding our deep differences, not on assuming everyone operates the exact same way. We may have a demanding colleague who we find irritating with his endless questions and requests for updates. We immediately label him a micromanager. But if we look beneath the surface, he is not really trying to be annoying. His hidden Need is just a clear, predictable structure so he can feel secure. Or think about your quiet colleague who never speaks up in meetings. She is not disinterested. She simply needs time to reflect before forming and expressing an opinion. When we uncover her hidden Need, we understand why she is usually quiet. And here is where we need to “flip the script”.
Our natural deeply human instinct when friction happens is to get frustrated and ask, “What is wrong with this person?” We judge immediately. Birkman asks us to replace that default judgment with a productive curiosity. As a leader, if you can shift your internal monologue from judgement to asking what might this person need to be successful, you will transform the dynamic in the room. You stop being this person’s adversary and you instantly become his or her ally. Try to ask yourself this exact question the next time you are in the middle of a frustrating moment. This is how you can build psychological safety and trust in real time. It means recognizing that your team members are not being deliberately difficult. They are just different. Adapting your communication to meet those different Needs can cut down on the everyday misunderstandings that can slowly erode a team’s morale.
Leading or Collaborating Across Teams
When we get to the macro level, where entire departments with completely different assumptions have to collaborate, things can get incredibly messy. Think of a high-stakes project where the Sales team has to work with the Legal team. Sales wants to close the deal as fast as humanly possible. For them, speed is success. Legal, on the other hand, wants to scrutinize every single contract clause. Risk mitigation is their success. Neither is wrong. But if they do not recognize these underlying friction points, different priorities, styles, expectations, they are just going to end up misunderstanding the other by speaking completely different languages, and assuming the other department is deliberately trying to be difficult.
So instead of demanding that other departments fit in to our way of seeing and doing things, building a truly collaborative culture starts with that curiosity mentioned earlier. First, be curious before making assumptions. That naturally leads to seeking to understand their specific needs and priorities. Once you communicate your expectations clearly and actually create space for different viewpoints, only then can you authentically focus on shared goals and outcomes that move both your interests and that of the organization forward. Think of a situation when you were exasperated with another colleague, team or department in a meeting. What assumptions were you carrying into that meeting room? Effective collaboration has to begin with understanding their underlying priorities and perspective before you can hope to reach an agreement on a productive way forward together.
The Leadership Imperative
From the above, we see that effective leadership is not about managing actions or directing people. It is about intentionally creating the conditions for mutual understanding and success. It is about building trust and relationship through inquiry rather than direction. Asking genuine questions to seek to understand the other first, builds trust.
When you find yourself reacting to or judging the visible behaviours of your colleagues viewed from your perspective, just pause, be curious, and seek to understand what may not be visible. Build trust and relationship and inquire what they need to be successful. Then work with them to create the conditions for mutual understanding and success.
Contact Us to explore working with us in Self-Leadership, Team-Development and Across-Team Leadership Development with the Birkman Method.
