Schlegel Consulting

Evolutionary Team Effectiveness

Team Effectiveness

How To Reduce Product Returns

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In this video, I share a story about how a client used the problem-solving framework I describe in Chapter 2 in my new book Teamwork 9.0.

In Chapter 8 of the book, I use the tools to analyze this team’s dynamics in the section called “All In The Family.”

Here is a transcript of the video:

It was 2009, in the heart of the Great Recession, Allen had the perfect product for the times.  Online video content was exploding, and Allen’s company had a low-cost video production solution that enabled anyone to produce professional-looking content at a fraction of the price of commercial equipment.

Allen was a caring soul.  Responsible for operations, he wanted to deliver the best possible customer experience and bended over backwards to do that.  And, while customers loved the products and demand was soaring, the organization had reached a limit—the telltale sign? …  Product reliability suffered.  Nearly 1 in 3 products shipped out were being returned for repair.

Allen wanted to solve the problems-causing-returns, but couldn’t get the attention or resources necessary.  Everyone was too busy working on the “next thing” and too willing to blame others for the current problems. That’s when Allen thoughtfully asked for my advice.

I suggested that he form a cross-functional team and use the team-based problem-solving method that I detail in my book Teamwork 9.0. He convened a meeting and encouraged everyone to share their thoughts on the causes of product returns. 

Over the course of an hour, a transformation occurred.  The participants stopped blaming one another and started getting intensely curious about the root causes of the problems.

That spark-of-curiosity ignited a fire—the team was on a quest to identify and solve each of the underlying issues.

After that initial meeting, Allen was able to get the attention of the team members and secure the resources he needed to address all the problems. Under his leadership, return rates plummeted.

Clearly defining a problem, sparks the intense human desire to-solve-that-problem. Step ONE in problem solving is to instill your team with that intensity.

Heart@Work Interviews Author Matt Schlegel

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Grateful to Mari-Lyn Harris and Heart@Work (www.heartatworkonline.org) for the opportunity to discuss my new book Teamwork 9.0. 

About Heart@Work

The mission of Heart@Work is to bring kindness into the workplace making it more productive and profitable—a happier place to be.   Heart@Work organizes the annual Kindness Conference and presents the Kindness Hero Awards.  Heart@Work delivers consulting services for organizations based on principles of kindness that lower friction, increase cooperation, and make people happier to come to work.

The Interview

Mari-Lyn asks how I came to use the Enneagram, and I describe my journey from leading electrons to leading people.   I found that the Enneagram is a powerful tool for improving team effectiveness. I share how I  developed  a team-based problem solving framework that links each Enneagram type to a step in problem solving and give examples of how I use this methodology with my clients. This human-centric approach to problem solving is very consistent with the principles of kindness in the workplace promoted by Heart@Work. 

You can watch the interview here:

Back to Work—Creating the New Normal

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Organizations are being challenged to respond to a series of crises, not the least of which is a global pandemic.  These challenges require organizations to respond in creative ways outside of typical work patterns.  Here is a framework for organizing your team to face these challenges.

Working On the Business, Not In the Business

Organizations are designed for a purpose, to fulfill a mission.  An organization’s people, processes and products/services are all aligned to deliver on that mission, forming behavior patterns that enable the organization to become ever more efficient on that delivery. But what happens when the organization is faced with a challenge that falls outside of that mission?  Most organizations are not designed with the overheard or capacity to rethink, re-invent and rollout entirely new sets of behaviors that adapt to the challenge.  How does your organization respond when faced with a challenge that requires it to work on the business, not in the business?

Problem Solving Framework

When faced with an extraordinary challenge, your leadership can benefit from adopting a flexible problem-solving framework that serves as a guide for the team to work through the challenge.  Chapter 2 of my book Teamwork 9.0 presents a framework designed for these types of challenges. The framework consists of nine steps. Here’s how you can use it to address the challenge of working during a pandemic.

Step 1—Problems and Goals

The first step in problem solving is to list the problems that challenge your organization—reduced productivity, falling sales, distracted customers/vendors/employees, broken supply chains, broken delivery channels, new workplace regulations/guidelines, etc.  Each organization faces a unique set of problems that need to be overcome.  Remember, the problems that get listed are the problems that get solved, so be sure and capture all the important issues.

Next, envision how the world could be when the problems are solved.  Remembering the mission of your organization, what is now possible in light of this disruption? How can your organization emerge even better and stronger than before?

Step 2—Build the Team

By its very nature, the challenge of working during a pandemic affects everyone in your organization.  The team responsible for leading the organization through this challenge should have representatives for each of the organization’s constituents.  Customers can be represented with sales and customer service leaders. Your vendors can be represented with leaders from procurement.  Each department will want to participate in the initiative—operations, IT, human resources, finance, product development, etc.  With your team established, loop back to Step 1 and make sure that the problems facing each stakeholder group are listed and their visions for the future are captured. 

Step 3—Ideation

By now your team is excited to share ideas about how to solve the problems and realize the vision for the future.  During ideation, you want to capture ALL ideas—dismiss nothing.  Here is your chance to tap into the creative potential of your team, and you want to encourage everyone to participate.  Ensuring that everyone has a chance to contribute their ideas and listen to others’ ideas moves the group towards finding solutions that work for everyone. 

Step 4—Positive Ideas

Once you have a rich set of ideas to draw upon, you will want to explore a few ideas more deeply.  The team can determine the high priority ideas to pursue by deciding democratically with a vote.  Deciding in this way, the team will choose the ideas that have the most positive energy behind them, energy that the team will need as they work towards the solution.

Step 5—Analyze the Ideas

Each idea delivers a benefit with a cost. In this step, the team performs the cost/benefit analysis to arrive at the top one or two ideas that will deliver the greatest positive impact to the organization. Each stakeholder will have distinct perspectives on the pros and cons of each idea, and it’s important that every perspective is considered at this phase.  Out of this step will emerge your top candidate for a solution set along with alternatives, should they be necessary.

During this step, you also research all pertinent data related to the effort.  In the case of returning to work, examples of such resources include:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-business-response.html

https://covid19.ca.gov/pdf/guidance-office-workspaces.pdf

Clare Price’s Free Book “Make Remote Work”

Step 6—Plan for Success

Having identified the best path to the goal, the team can develop the detailed plans for getting there. In this step you determine who will do what when, laying out the timeline for implementation to solve the problems and realize the goals.  Each group in your organization will contribute to implementation, so it’s crucial to have them participate in building the plan.

Step 7—Promote the Plan

Prior to implementation, the team needs to socialize the plan with the organization.  Start with context by highlighting the current problems and presenting the vision for the future.  Then, share the details of the path forward to the “new normal.”  If all stakeholders have been well represented to this point, then the organization will embrace the proposal thereby lowering any barriers during implementation.

Step 8—Implement!

With everyone on board, your organization is now ready to implement the plan and transform the organization, creating the organizational systems, processes and behaviors that will fulfill the mission and thrive in the new environment.  While steps 1 though 7 may have taken as long as a few days each, Step 8 will often be the longest step as the team works through the plan.  If challenges arise during implementation, the team can revisit previous steps to get back on track and back to implementation.

Step 9—Debrief and Harmonize

What’s working well? What needs adjustment?  In this step you reflect on the transformation that has taken place and determine what needs smoothing out.  Referring back to the list of problems and goals from Step 1, you can score your effort. You may find that some problems are not adequately solved. Perhaps new problems arose. Rather than a line from start to finish, think of problem solving as a circle—a cycle of continuous improvement getting you ever closer to meeting all your goals.

The New Normal

There is a natural order to problem solving. When faced with a large challenge, your team will go through all nine steps listed above.  By taking the team through each step deliberately and systematically, you will arrive at a satisfactory outcome much more quickly and with much greater stakeholder buy-in.   Doing so creates effective and lasting solutions for your organization.

What methods are you using with your team to adapt to the new working environment? What’s working well? What suggestions would you make for others?

How to Build Rapport with your Enneagram Type 9 Teammates

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When a situation calls for an abundance of patience, understanding and empathy, turn to your Enneagram Type 9 teammates for guidance. Masters of de-escalation, Type 9 strives to reduce conflict. Therein lies the key to building rapport and trust with Type 9.

Two Ears, One Mouth

Enneagram Type 9s have the ability to understand everyone else’s perspective.  How do they do that?  Type 9s tend to be on the quiet side.  Rather than talking, they focus on listening.  By listening, they absorb everyone’s opinions and perspectives. Doing so gives them the ability to put themselves in other’s shoes and to intuit and predict how others will react in a given situation. 

Mirroring 9.0

As discussed in this 5/8/20 blog,  mirroring is one of the most important rapport building skills.  Enneagram Type 9 strives to minimize conflict and appreciates those that do the same. Reflecting back empathy and a consideration of others’ perspectives is an important rapport building strategy with Type 9. Though it may not be apparent, Type 9s are driven by anger.  At the core of the Enneagram intuition-anger center, Type 9s suppress anger within themselves and strive to minimize any anger in the environment so as to keep it from welling up inside.  This dynamic is the engine that drives Type 9 to ensure that everyone’s perspectives are heard and understood—a rapport building technique that the 9 uses with others and that you can reflect back to them.

The Enneagram’s Top Spot

There is a reason that Type 9 takes the top spot on the Enneagram diagram.  This spot symbolizes their ability to see everyone else’s perspective. Balanced exactly center-top, they can empathize both with the more feeling-based types on the right side of the Enneagram and the more logic-based types on the left side.  They can intuitively put themselves in everyone’s shoes specifically with a sensitivity to minimizing an anger response.

Where Do You Want to Eat?

If you ask Type 9 where they’d like to go out to eat, they will likely respond, “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?”  The 9 may know EXACTLY where they would like to eat, but rather than share that, they will put the decision on you.  Doing so avoids the possibility of a conflict arising over the choice.  Even if you push and insist the 9 choose, they will not be thinking about where they want to go; rather, they will imagine the place that you would most want to visit.  They will choose that to avoid the conflict.  When building rapport with Type 9, it’s always nice to ask where they would like to eat.  Rather than force the 9 to make the decision, you can imagine where the 9 would like to eat and choose that over your own preference. Doing so mirrors the behavior of the 9 and serves as a rapport-building technique.

Peaceful Protest

Instead of direct conflict, the 9s go-to strategy for resistance is passive aggression. If you ever need help with something and the 9 says, “Sorry, I’m busy,” they are either 1) actually too busy, or 2) they just got you good.  Often you won’t even know that they got you, but they will know, and that’s good enough. 

In light of the many protests occurring as I write this blog, I cannot help but be reminded that peaceful protest is a very Type 9 strategy.  Marching in solidarity with like-minded people and furthering the aims of the group represents Type 9 behavior at its best.  They are drawn to goals and efforts that minimize harm for the greatest number of people, and if they can achieve those goals with minimal conflict, all the better.

Competitive Physical Sports

Another way that Type 9 can vent any pent-up anger is playing physical sports.  Once on the court, the calm, quiet, complacent 9 transforms into a raging animal!  Within the confines of the mutually agreed upon boundaries and rules of the game, the 9 can act out their aggression with abandon.  Participating in physical competitive activities with Type 9 is another rapport building example.

When does rapport building take place with the Enneagram Type 9s in your life? What steps to building rapport work for you? What have you learned to avoid?

How to Build Rapport with your Enneagram Type 8 Teammates

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Get to the point.  To communicate effectively with Enneagram Type 8 you must be succinct.  If they want more details, they’ll ask.  Letting them lead the conversation will create the environment for building rapport and trust.

Time for Action

Enneagram Type 8s prefer action to talking.  To get to action, if a decision needs to be made, the 8 will be decisive.  If the decision takes you in the wrong direction, no worries—just correct course and continue moving forward.  Type 8s typically don’t fear making an incorrect decision because they can always change later if necessary.  Taking action takes precedent. 

Mirroring 9.0

As discussed in this 5/8/20 blog,  mirroring is one of the most important rapport building skills.  The Enneagram Type 8 characteristics to reflect back to your Type 8 teammates include getting to the point, being direct, and acting decisively. Demonstrating these characteristics is an excellent rapport build strategy. Type 8s are the external anger type of the Enneagram—tapping into anger makes this type the most comfortable with confrontation. They respect others with their same style and by reflecting that direct, to-the-point manner you can build rapport with your Type 8 teammates.

Operating on Intuition

Enneagram Type 8s rely on intuition to inform their decisions.  When presented with a situation, they will have a gut reaction for how to proceed, often without having to think about it.  In fact, thinking and talking may seem like a waste of time to the 8 because they will have already intuited the answer.  It is important to respect the instinctive nature of the 8 when building rapport.

Being a Type 6 myself, I want to think things through and ask lots of questions.  These behaviors frustrate and anger the 8, so in my interaction with Type 8s I work to check these tendencies. Also, my tendency is to frame my conclusions into context.  My typical conversations start with context and end with the conclusion as the punchline. When speaking with 8s, I start with the punchline and only explain the context if asked.  Often the 8 will have already intuited the context, and explaining that first is just wasting their time.  I’ve found this an important rapport building technique with my Type 8 teammates.

Fail Forward

Unlike many other Enneagram types, Type 8s have very little fear of failure.  They so trust their instincts that the possibility of failure may not even occur to them.  If at some point along the way they sense that things are going as expected, their intuition informs them of how to adjust and carry on.  They would not treat that as a wrong decision or a failure, just an adjustment along the way.

24-Hour Rule

If there is an important piece of information that you think your Type 8 teammate may be overlooking, simply tell them directly without making a big deal of it. The 8 will internalize the information and correct course if necessary, usually within a day’s time. A fellow worker dubbed this the “24-Hour Rule.”   Also, if there is any bad news, don’t hide that from your Type 8 teammate. They will be direct with you and expect you to be direct with them.

Walking and Talking

Since Type 8s so value action, I find that scheduling conversations while walking or hiking is a wonderful time to build rapport. In this rapport building example, the 8 won’t feel like they’re sitting around not getting something done. Rather, they will be moving and looking forward.  A Type 8 friend of mine says that his personal motto is acting now with an eye towards the future.  Walking and hiking are literal embodiments of that creed and walking together can create an environment conducive to building trust and rapport with your Type 8 teammates.

When does rapport building take place with the Enneagram Type 8s in your life? What steps to building rapport work for you? What have you learned to avoid?

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