Fuze Publishing is excited to share with you an excerpt of Trust: Short-Circuit the Hardwiring by Carl Moore. To read more from Mr. Moore, purchase your own copy of Trust!

Foreword

TRUST: The End of Difficult People in the Workplace
There is a genre of books and speakers who tell us how to deal with difficult people in our lives. They typically have labels for “difficult people” such as whiners, screamers, manipulators, bullies, aggressives, passives, gossipy, obnoxious, negatives, morale busters, snipers, fault-finders, egotists, problem employees . . . and the list goes on and on.

There are three problems with these approaches to dealing with so-called “difficult people.” First, it feeds into our normal human tendency to put people into pigeon holes. This in turn reinforces our deep subconscious belief that the problem is “the other.”

Second, it fails to recognize that many times “the other’s” behavior or attitude is a reaction to something I am doing. Finally, I frankly find it challenging to learn all these categories of people, place my colleagues into the correct category, and then try to take the recommended approach to dealing with this “type” of person.

What I have found to be far more effective is to obliterate the idea of “difficult people” from my mind. There are no “difficult people!” There are only “difficult situations!”

This is not my theory alone. In fact, there is an entire approach to conflict management that is built on the concept that we have to learn to “separate the person from the problem.”

That’s a whole lot harder than it sounds. It is contrary to our human nature. We almost always see “the other” as “the problem;” which is what the above-referenced genre of books reinforces.

Once we develop a deep understanding for the meaning of the phrase – “separate the person from the problem” – we are well on our way to being a master of relationships both in and out of the workplace.

This book is dedicated to improving workplace relationships for everyone. Individuals who are fully engaged in their work and with their colleagues, clients and customers are more productive and are having more fun!

For more than 25 years, I represented management, employees, and unions in employment litigation. I also served as a neutral in employment disputes (an arbitrator, mediator, and investigator of workplace disputes). I was head of a union; chief employment counsel for one of the largest employers in the nation; and general counsel for an employee appeals board in the federal government.

For the last dozen years, I have been designing and delivering training on a broad range of workplace issues; coaching managers, supervisors and employees in workplace issues; and delivering key note addresses on employment issues.

Why “TRUST”?
For many years, my training was focused on teaching skills that would help managers, supervisors and employees to actually build trust in the workplace in order to resolve disputes without resorting to litigation. In 2005, during work with a major federal agency on a nationwide training program for all their managers and supervisors, I developed a course for managers that focused on teaching skills for building trust in the workplace.

Then in February 2007, the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) issued a report to Congress that was based on a survey of thousands of employees throughout the federal government. This report emphasized the importance of building trust in the workplace. The MSPB boldly stated:

[W]e believe that strengthening the trust, and therefore the working relationship, between employees and their supervisors is likely to be the most effective strategy for increasing an agency’s ability to accomplish its mission.”

In my experience, this statement applies equally to the private and public sectors. This book is devoted to providing managers, supervisors and employees with the tools they need to achieve that end!

In order to explore how to create powerful, trusting relationships in the workplace, we will use the lessons of failed workplace relationships (actual court cases) to see what goes wrong and we will explore both the art and the science behind creating trusting relationships. We will learn how to repair damaged relationships and make them “good” relationships; and how to make “good” relationships “great!” And, along the way, don’t be surprised if you see ways to use the lessons to improve your relationships with family, friends and neighbors!

Introduction

We open this book with two stories. They are both stories dealing with extreme conflict in the workplace. Not all workplace conflict erupts this way. Workplace conflict presents itself in many different ways. These examples simply represent the extreme that can, and often does, happen. They are both true stories. The secrets hidden in each of these two stories provide the foundation on which this book is based. Master the skills that are hidden in these two stories and you will be in control of conflict in your workplace – and in your life!

Situation #1: “Volatile Feedback on Performance!”
A supervisor in a federal agency hired an employee into the agency. A couple of months later, the supervisor received a promotion into another federal agency. About a year later, the supervisor had a vacancy in the new agency. Some of the people who worked for the supervisor applied for the vacancy and the supervisor eventually hired the same employee the supervisor had hired before leaving the first agency.

After about three or four months, the employee produced a draft document for the supervisor. Keep in mind that this is the first product that this employee has produced for this supervisor; even though the supervisor has now hired this employee twice in less than 18 months!

The supervisor was not happy with the draft product. It had two major problems. First, there were simple writing problems. It did not look as if the employee had even proof-read the document. There were incomplete sentences, spelling errors, subjects and verbs that were not in agreement, and other similar simple errors. Second, there was a technical problem with the writing. It was not major, but it was a mistake that a professional at this level should not have made.

So the supervisor prepared to walk down the hall to discuss these oversights with the employee. It should be emphasized at this point that this supervisor had never had a course in supervisory skills; much less a course in performance management or performance feedback. What this supervisor knew about performance feedback had been learned from Mary Poppins!

Yes! You guessed it! It was Mary Poppins who said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” So the supervisor went to the employee’s office with the best intentions of delivering this negative news in a positive way.

Within 10 minutes of starting their conversation, they were in a shouting match! The supervisor stormed out of the employee’s office! The supervisor sat thinking about this encounter saying, “This is not like me. I don’t yell at people. I don’t yell at other employees; at my spouse; at my children; at my neighbors. This was an aberration. It won’t happen again. I have no idea why it happened this time, but it won’t happen again.”

With that resolution firm, the supervisor returned to the employee’s office and resumed the feedback session. Within minutes, they were yelling at each other again!

This time the supervisor walked out of the employee’s office, down the hall, down the stairs, out of the building, and around the block – four times! Then the supervisor came back into the building, up the stairs, down the hall and back into the employee’s office. The supervisor sat down and said, “I’m not very happy with the way I have conducted myself in this conversation. I have gotten angry with you. I’ve yelled at you. And I am going to try not to do that again.”

With that said, the employee relaxed a little and said, “I’m not very happy with how I have conducted myself in this conversation either. I’ve gotten angry with you and I’ve yelled at you and I am going to try very hard not to do that again.”

With that said, they both continued with the feedback session. It was occasionally tense, but no one yelled at anyone and no one stomped out of the meeting. They finished the conversation and within a matter of days, the product was completed and out of the office.

Then the supervisor returned to the employee’s office, sat down and said, “We can’t afford to have this kind of shouting match every time I need to give you feedback on something. So let’s have a conversation about why we each got so upset with one another and see if we can prevent this from happening again.”

That began a very long conversation. That day, it went on for the better part of an hour. And the conversation continued over a few weeks. The more each of them thought about their own role in the shouting match, the more insights they came to and they shared those insights with one another.

What they learned from this experience
In considering what they learned from their introspection and discussion should begin with something I have been keeping from you in re-telling this story. I avoided using pronouns. So you have no idea the gender of these two individuals. I also did not mention anything about race or national origin or religion or any other central dimension of our individual diversity as human beings. Let me share that now.

The supervisor was a male and the employee was a female. Ah! That means this could all boil down to simple sex discrimination! The supervisor was white and the employee was black. Ah! That means this could also be race discrimination!

I mention these factors of individual diversity because, as human beings, when we have an obvious difference in our diversity with another person and we get into conflict with that person, one of our natural tendencies is to assume that the source of our conflict is whatever that obvious difference is between us. In this case, these two individuals specialized in equal employment opportunity issues in the workplace. So it certainly dawned on both of them that this could be discrimination.

From the employee’s point of view, she would have a good case. She could easily show that this supervisor never yelled at anyone in the office, except the one professional, Black employee in the office.

From the supervisor’s point of view, he could show that twice in less than 18 months he had hired this employee. And the courts regard hiring someone twice in a short period of time as a clear indication that you are not discriminating against that person.

I mention this mostly to emphasize that in their lengthy discussion of the causes of their emotionally charged conflict, neither of them identified anything dealing with sex or race. What they both identified were failures in communication.

We’ll return to what they each learned from this experience later. For now, suffice it to say that they continued to work together for more than a decade and, while they had many professional disagreements, they never had an emotionally charged shouting match again. In fact, they became good friends and stayed in touch even after their careers took them in different directions a decade later.

Situation #2: “A Job Done Completely Wrong!”
This story happened while I was training at a site in the south on a lovely spring morning a few years ago. A participant in my class shared this story since it related directly to what we were working on in the class that day.

My class participant had arrived at the training center early that morning. As I said, it was a glorious spring morning in the south. The birds were out singing and the sun was bright and warm. She arrived with her cup of coffee and morning paper. Parked outside the training facility, rolled her sunroof back and her windows down, and began to enjoy her newspaper and her morning coffee.

Shortly thereafter, a crew of grounds keepers arrived and began to mow the lawn around the training facility. After a few minutes, an ATV sped up and a man jumped off and called one of the grounds crew members over. She said they were near her car as they approached each other and their first words were angry and loud. Here is the story she got from the shouting match she overheard.

The man on the ATV was the supervisor. The day before he had come to the grounds crewman and asked him to go to a particular building and do a particular job. The employee had replied apparently that he did not understand exactly what the supervisor wanted him to do. He asked the supervisor to go with him to the building and show him what he wanted done. The supervisor’s response was apparently that he was already late for a meeting and did not have time to do that. He apparently told the employee that this was really not very difficult and that once he got over to the building, he was sure the employee could figure it out. He apparently emphasized that he really wanted it done today. The argument came about apparently because the supervisor had been over to that building this morning and his desired result was not even close.

So the supervisor was yelling at the employee and telling him he “totally messed up” and that “an entire day was now wasted because he messed up and it would have to be completely re-done!”

Likewise, the employee was yelling back at him that “it’s not my fault. I told you I didn’t understand and I asked for help and you didn’t have time to help so it’s entirely your fault!”

My class participant said that she heard every word because they were next to her vehicle and they were yelling at each other. Then, she said, the employee began to do something that changed the entire conversation.

Suddenly, the employee stopped yelling at the supervisor. The employee took a really deep breath and in a very soft and quiet voice – so quiet that she almost could not hear him – the employee began to say, “You are the best supervisor I have ever had. I have never worked for anyone as good as you are. I have been offered jobs at other places for more money and I’ve turned them down because I know when I get there, I will be working for someone who is not nearly as good as you are. And I don’t want to work for anyone else other than you, because you are, without a doubt, the best supervisor I have ever worked for.”

My participant said that about half-way through that soft, controlled speech by the employee, the supervisor simply stopped yelling at the employee and just stood there looking dumbly at the employee; no doubt thinking to himself, “What is he talking about?!”

Once the supervisor stopped yelling, the employee then took another deep breath and began to say, still in a soft and controlled manner, “You’re right. You asked me to go over to that building and do something yesterday and, at the time, I really did not understand what it was that you wanted me to do. I asked if you could go over and show me, but you were late for a meeting and told me to just go over and figure it out and do the best I could. When I got over there, it still was not clear what you wanted me to do. But I also knew I was supposed to do something. So I did the best I could with what I understood, but as I was doing it, I figured I would have to go back today and do it again; because I really did not know what you wanted. And I am sorry for not getting it right.”

The supervisor then took a deep breath and softly said, “You know, what we have here is a failure to communicate. Let’s go over to that building and I’ll show you what I want done. And I am sure that you will be able to do it perfectly!”

And with that they both got on the ATV and rode off.

Lessons for resolving conflict & building trust!
We have all seen conflicts such as these two. Sometimes we are an observer and sometimes we are in the middle of it. It is also important to note that conflict in the workplace does not always mean “shouting matches” such as we saw in these two stories. Often conflict means that people are just being somewhat sarcastic or cynical with one another; sometimes it means that people are not talking to one another at all; sometimes it means people are talking behind one another’s backs. All of it is conflict though.

So to one degree or another, we have all experienced these conflicts. What happened to turn each of these situations around is what is possible in every conflict or potential conflict – if, in these two situations, one or the other of the participants knows how to do it. And there’s the rub!

Dealing with conflict is extremely difficult for virtually all of us. It is extremely difficult because, as human beings, we are all hardwired to respond to any conflict in exactly the wrong ways! Think about how unusual and even unreal the resolution to both of these stories seems to most of us. The shouting match (or the reluctance to talk to one another or the back stabbing or the other forms of conflict that we all have experienced) is easy for us to imagine. The resolution, however, is almost impossible for many of us to imagine. This book is designed to make the alternatives equally real for you.

The purpose of this book is to use real life examples that have resulted in lawsuits in order to teach some fundamentals of employment law; to identify typical mistakes – “pitfalls” – that supervisors and employees fall into that then lead them into the battles that often result in grievances, complaints, tense working relationships, lowered productivity, and lawsuits. We will also use these case studies to help us understand the principles of building trust in the workplace.

The focus of this book is on those moments when our emotions engage and we say and do things that damage our relationship with the other person or someone else does or says things that damage their relationship with us. What if you already have a negative relationship with a boss, an employee, or a colleague and you cannot imagine how to improve or repair that relationship? In the last chapter, we will address those issues. However, it is important to understand how you got to that negative relationship in the first place. So don’t skip to the end for that lesson. It is important that you learn the cause of the negative relationship so that you can recognize and avoid the pitfall in the future.

As you go through this book, you will immediately begin to see that the principles being explored here apply well beyond the workplace. You will be able to take these principles and improve relationships in your personal life as well as in your work life. To that end, I have provided reference material in the appendix that will give you other sources to continue your journey into a more effective way to address conflict wherever it may arise in your life.

But first, let’s begin to deal with it in the workplace – so that going to work is fun and challenging in all the positive ways, rather than draining and challenging in all the negative ways!