Using Mutual Learning to Diagnose and Intervene on Other Processes

When a group is trying to use mutual learning and other processes, you can focus your interventions on both elements. A group can reduce its effectiveness because it is using a process poorly, because it's not using some element of mutual learning, or both. There are four ways that a group can reduce its effectiveness when using a process:

1. The group is using the process inconsistently with how it is supposed to be used.
2. The group is acting consistently with the process, but because the process is designed incongruently with mutual learning, the group is acting incongruently with mutual learning.
3. The group is using a process that is designed congruently with mutual learning, but the group is acting incongruently with mutual learning.
4. The group is using a process that espouses elements of mutual learning, but the group is not acting congruently with mutual learning.

To diagnose whether a group is facing any of these situations, you use the mutual learning cycle, as I described in Chapter 6. The box labeled “Insert Group's Models Here” on the far left side of Figure 11.1 shows that you use the models, processes, and techniques that the group is using along with mutual learning as the basis of your diagnosis.

In steps 1 and 2 of the cycle, you look for behaviors that lead you to infer incongruent use of the process or incongruence with mutual learning. If you infer that the group is acting incongruently with mutual learning, it's necessary to identify the cause. Is the group acting incongruently with mutual learning behavior caused by using the process, is the group simply acting incongruently with mutual learning, or both?

Each of these situations requires a different intervention. To decide which interventions to make (which is step 3 of the mutual learning cycle), you can answer the questions in the flowchart shown in Figure 11.2. By answering the questions, you will be able to intervene on the root causes that are reducing the group's effectiveness.

Based on your answers to these questions, you're ready to intervene using the cycle. In step 4 of the cycle, you state the behavior you observe and test for different views. In step 5, you state the inference you've made—one of the three conditions above—and test for different views. In step 6, you jointly design the next step with the group.

In previous chapters, I've explained how to diagnose and intervene when the group is acting incongruently with mutual learning—situation 3 above. In this chapter, I provide examples of how to diagnose and intervene in the other three situations.

Diagnosing and Intervening When Groups Are Using a Process Ineffectively

Whether groups are using a process you provided them, one of their own, or one from their organization, it's important to intervene when they are using it ineffectively. Next, I identify several ways that groups predictably use processes ineffectively and how to intervene on them.

The Group Uses Part of the Process Incorrectly. If the group is using a process you introduced to it, you should have a detailed understanding of how the process works and how groups are likely to use it incorrectly. For example, when I introduce groups to the process of solving problems by focusing on interests rather than positions, I know that groups are likely to make certain mistakes: They state their interests in the form of positions; they use short phrases instead of complete sentences, which makes it difficult for them to agree on what the phrases mean; and they shift from developing a list of interests to lists of pros and cons for each potential position.

When you understand in advance how groups may use a process incorrectly, you can help them avoid these mistakes and quickly help correct misuses when they occur. Even if you're helping the group use one of its processes, it's important to know it well enough to understand how groups may use it incorrectly.

Group Members Follow Steps Out of Order or Focus on Different Steps. Many processes include a number of steps that are designed to be used in a particular order. Some processes are designed for groups to move through the steps iteratively. In both cases, group members sometimes skip steps, usually jumping prematurely to developing or even selecting solutions. Here, your intervention is straightforward: Tell the team or individual members where you see them getting off track, check for their views, and jointly decide what step the team focuses on next.

The Group Engages the Process Superficially. If you've used a particular process or technique with different groups, you know that some groups get more out of the process than others. Some groups deeply reflect on and challenge their assumptions, look at situations from a wide number of perspectives, and develop innovative solutions. Other groups get less value from the same process.

This is a more difficult intervention to make because groups naturally bring different levels of skill and energy to the same task. That said, when you infer that the group has more energy, skill, or creativity to bring to the process, it's important to share your inference and ask for the group's reaction. This may lead the group to invest more in the process and you to receive a commensurate return.

Diagnosing and Intervening on Processes That Are Incongruent with Mutual Learning

If you've been facilitating for a while, you've probably collected a figurative bag of tools, techniques, and processes for helping groups with different situations. If you're a new facilitator, you're probably looking to fill your bag. For every tool you have or are thinking of adding to your toolkit, there's an essential first question to ask yourself: Can it be used so that it is congruent with the mutual learning mindset and behaviors? You should answer this question before introducing a process to a group.

Facilitators often contribute to a group's ineffectiveness by recommending processes that are incongruent with mutual learning. If you facilitate using a process that's incongruent with mutual learning, you increase the chance of creating defensiveness, unproductive conflict, decreased trust, reduced learning, reduced commitment, or lower-quality decisions.

Some processes are inherently incongruent with mutual learning. If you try to redesign them to be congruent, you fundamentally change the purpose of the process. However, there are many processes that are incongruent with some element of mutual learning but that can be easily redesigned to be congruent and still maintain their purpose and effectiveness. Below I provide examples of commonly used processes that are incongruent with elements of mutual learning. For those approaches that are not inherently incongruent with mutual learning, I explain how to redesign them.

Next, I distinguish between processes you choose to use with the group and processes that are part of the organization's methods (for example, a team feedback system) that the group is asking you to facilitate. Of course, assuming that the process is not inherently incongruent with mutual learning, it's easier to redesign a process that you choose to use with the group compared with one that the group is using as part of its organizational methods.

Processes That Are Part of the Organization

As a facilitator or consultant, you may be asked to facilitate meetings in which the team is using a process that is part of its or the larger organization's methods. When elements of those methods are incongruent with mutual learning, a potential conflict arises. If the group is trying to use mutual learning as a team, members are now faced with a mismatch between their team values and assumptions and a method that they may be required to use. Groups are often quick to see these incongruences. Even if they don't aspire to using mutual learning as their basis for working as a team, you are now helping a team use a process—which is the team's process, not yours—that is incongruent with your approach.

So, what do you do? Ideally, you assess whether the processes that the group plans to use are congruent with mutual learning during the planning stage of the facilitation. But it's not always possible to learn about all of the processes that a group uses, especially if you will be working with them over a period of time.

If the group is trying to use mutual learning, you raise the incongruence and ask how members see the situation. You do this even if you're a neutral facilitator because, as I discussed in Chapter 2, facilitators using mutual learning cannot be neutral about team processes that are incongruent with mutual learning. If members share your view about the incongruence, then you can ask them what actions, if any, they want to take. If they're interested in eliminating the incongruence, you can help them identify ways to modify the method to be congruent with mutual learning and still be acceptable to the organization. Keep in mind that making these modifications often involves challenging deeply held unilateral control values and assumptions held by the larger organization, or at least by those who designed the process.

Team Feedback

You're a facilitator, consultant, or team coach, teams may call on you to facilitate a team feedback process. In most of these processes, team members complete an online survey about their view of the team and/or you interview team members individually. You provide the results to the team in the form of a presentation and/or report and facilitate a team discussion about what the results mean and what, if anything, the team wants to do differently, given the results.

As I explained in Chapter 3 in the section on information, including feedback, most team feedback processes are incongruent with the core values of transparency, informed choice, accountability, and curiosity because the individual team member data are anonymous. If the data are quantitative for any given result, such as degree of trust in the group, team members see only an average group score with a standard deviation or the distribution of scores. They don't see which team member gave which score. This same anonymity occurs in 360-degree feedback processes, in which a team member receives feedback from his or her peers, direct reports, customers, and manager. In this case, the person's manager is usually identified because the results are grouped by category and a person often has only one manager. This incongruence undermines the very results that the feedback is designed to help teams achieve, including increased understanding and trust, accountability, and performance.

Fortunately, you and the team can redesign team feedback processes, including 360-degree feedback processes, to be congruent with mutual learning. If the team is using a survey tool, see if you can select the option to identify each member's responses, an increasingly available option. (If you're choosing the tool, select one with that option.) In the Team Effectiveness Survey that Roger Schwarz & Associates designed and uses with its clients, the feedback results identify each team member. Figure 11.3 shows a feedback slide from a real leadership team that was one of my clients. If you are familiar with the TV show The Office, you will recognize that I have replaced the leadership team members' real names with the names of characters from the show. This particular slide shows each team member's view of how interdependent he or she believes team members need to be with each other for the team to be effective. On a scale of 1 to 5, a score of 5 means that team members believe they need to be very interdependent to be effective.

Notice that you can quickly identify which team member gave which response. This quickly enables team members to become curious and ask each other the reasoning that led to their responses. In my feedback session with this leadership team, the formal team leader, identified in the figure as Michael Scott, began a conversation with his team about why people didn't think they needed to be as interdependent as he believed they did. It turned out to be an important conversation that identified some root causes of the team's reduced effectiveness. It's unlikely that the team could have had this conversation, or could have had it as efficiently as it did, without having team members' responses identified.

For these feedback conversations to be productive, the team needs to be transparent and curious with each other. That means introducing the team to mutual learning before the feedback so members understand the value of transparency and curiosity, and asking if they are willing to receive the feedback with each team member's results identified.

Performance Management Processes

Most large organizations have a process for assessing each individual's performance and having the manager and direct report meet to discuss the direct report's performance. You may be asked to be involved in this process as a trainer, consultant, facilitator, or coach.

These processes are often incongruent with the mutual learning core values of transparency, curiosity, informed choice, and accountability. In a number of organizations I have worked with, the method prohibits managers from telling their direct reports the sources of the data they are using to evaluate the direct report. If the direct report asks, “Where did you hear that?” the manager is supposed to respond, “That's not important” or “I can't say.” But if direct reports can't know the source and the context of the data that are being used to evaluate them, they can't independently assess the data's validity and are more likely to dismiss them if they disagree with them. In addition, if they want to learn more about the situation so they can improve, the anonymity of the sources prevents it.

The performance management meeting also limits the managers' curiosity. One organization that asked me to help it integrate its performance management process with mutual learning, espoused the need for managers to be curious about their direct reports' views but had designed a meeting template that led to the opposite results. There was no time identified or allocated for managers to ask the direct reports' reactions to the evaluation.

The structure also made it difficult for managers to be curious. Before holding a meeting with a direct report, the manager's manager needed to approve the rating that the manager planned to give the direct report. The operating assumption was that the meeting would not—and should not—lead to a change in the direct report's rating. But, in order for this assumption to be valid, the manager had to have all the relevant information about the employee's performance before having the performance conversation with the employee. The purpose of the conversation was for the employee to learn but not necessarily for the manager to learn. If during the conversation between the manager and direct report, the manager was curious and learned some information that might lead her to want to increase the employee's rating, she had to make a case for the change.

If you encounter these incongruences, you can make the same kind of interventions that you might make in the case of team feedback above. If you believe that the process the team is asking you to train, consult on, or facilitate is significantly at odds with the values you use in working with groups, then you have to decide whether and how you will work with the group on this project.

Leadership Training

You may be working with groups that use behaviors or techniques they have learned in leadership training sessions provided by the organization, delivered either by internal or external consultants. It's common for me to find that leaders have been taught some element of leadership that is incongruent with mutual learning. One example is the sandwich approach to giving negative feedback that I described in Chapter 5. Another is speaking last so you won't inappropriately influence your direct reports' views on a topic.

Here, too, your responsibility is to point out the incongruences you see, ask for the group's thoughts, and enable it to make an informed choice about how it wants to proceed.

Sometimes clients who are trying to create a mutual learning organization ask me to review with them their organization's training programs. They want to determine how they are congruent or incongruent with the mutual learning approach. They recognize that it creates problems when people are unaware that two or more training courses are not only different but also incongruent. People feel that the organization is giving them a mixed message about how to lead. Worse, if people don't recognize the inconsistencies and try to apply techniques from two incongruent approaches, they can be ineffective and create conflict rather than improve the situation.

Diagnosing and Intervening on Processes That Espouse Mutual Learning: Lean and Other Continuous Improvement Approaches

Some processes espouse a mindset and behaviors that are congruent with mutual learning, but groups using the processes don't exhibit it. This is often the case with Lean, Six Sigma, and similar approaches to continuous improvement. Lean teams focus on continuously improving some operational process by applying a set of technical problem-solving skills.

Even though the two pillars of the Lean approach are continuous improvement and respect for people, teams that use Lean tend to focus considerably more on the technical aspects. Some Lean experts have found that many Lean practitioners don't understand what respect for people looks like in Lean practice and describe respect for people as the missing piece of Lean.³ At least one expert has explained that it's very difficult to define respect for people in the Lean context.⁴

That Lean teams often pay relatively little attention to effective group process—the foundation that enables them to solve continuous improvement problems—isn't surprising. Continuous improvement approaches are based significantly on engineering principles, and continuous improvement consultants often have an engineering or technical background.

In my consulting with organizations over the years, I've noticed a pattern with organizations that are engaged in some form of continuous process improvement. The consultants helping these organizations, both internal and external, often tell me that the approach works at first or works with what people call low-hanging fruit—the issues that are easy to address. But frequently, the teams have increasing difficulty in designing process improvements when it requires them to address challenging, often undiscussable, issues in the team.⁵ One Lean expert has advocated for what he calls Lean behaviors, noting that Lean teams perpetuate ineffective group process that would be considered waste by Lean standards.⁶

Given that Lean is designed to solve problems by addressing the root causes of those problems, it's ironic when Lean teams are less effective because their group process hinders their ability to use Lean as effectively as possible. For example, Lean processes work better in teams where all team members consider it their responsibility to find and correct quality problems.⁷ In mutual learning terms, this reflects the shift from a one-leader-in-the room culture to a lead-from-every-chair culture.

This is where mutual learning makes Lean and other continuous improvement processes more effective. Mutual learning describes the specific mindset and skill set needed to raise and address challenging issues in way that embodies respect for people. In short, just as Lean improves quality and reduces waste in operational processes, mutual learning improves quality and reduces waste in group process.

You can help Lean teams use mutual learning to put the respect for people pillar into practice throughout the 14 Lean principles that James Womack and his colleagues developed and organized into four categories.⁸ Here are some examples:

• The first category of Lean principles is having a long-term philosophy that drives a long-term approach to building a learning organization.⁹ At the heart of a learning organization are teams in which members use mutual learning to reflect on their own situation and behavior, identify the assumptions they hold that limit their effectiveness, and change their assumptions and behaviors to design more effective teams and organizations.
• The second category of Lean principles is that “the right process will produce the right results.” The Team Effectiveness Model, which includes the mutual learning mindset and behaviors, describes both effective team process and team design, which shapes team process.
• The fifth principle—build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time—is reflected in the mutual learning principle “go slow to go fast,” which is adopted from the field of systems thinking.
• The seventh principle—use visual controls so no problems are hidden—is a way to call attention to problems that people might otherwise miss and to encourage them to respond. The analog in mutual learning is to “discuss undiscussable issues.” Like production processes, group processes do have observable behaviors, but unlike production processes, there is no easy way to convert them into visual controls. The task of calling attention to otherwise unnoticed or unaddressed issues becomes shared by all team members.
• The ninth principle—grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others—occurs through the mutual learning behaviors, “state views and ask genuine questions,” “explain reasoning and intent,” and “test assumptions and inferences.” By using these behaviors, leaders come to better understand the work themselves and to better help others understand it.
• The eleventh principle—respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve—occurs in part through the mutual learning behavior “test assumptions and inferences.” By identifying any inaccurate or unnecessary assumptions that partners and suppliers are making, the organization helps them improve. Notice that the Lean approach frames challenging others as a sign of respect. This is consistent with the mutual learning mindset of being simultaneously transparent, curious, accountable, and compassionate.
• The twelfth principle—go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation—is consistent with the mutual learning value of informed choice and operationalized partly by the mutual learning behavior, “use specific examples and agree on what important words mean.”
• The thirteenth principle—make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly—also reflects the mutual learning principle, “go slow to go fast.” Mutual learning includes consensus (defined as unanimous support) as one possible decision rule. The emphasis is on being certain that everyone is committed to implementing decisions. It accomplishes this by ensuring that team members share all relevant information, including their assumptions and interests, and jointly design solutions that meet these interests. Where team members have different views, they use mutual learning to jointly design tests to ensure the proposed solutions meet the needs of the process and the people involved, which is the eighth Lean principle.

Of course, with Lean, just as with mutual learning, how you think is how you lead. As many organizations have learned the hard way, you can't create a Lean organization by adopting Lean behaviors without understanding and living the underlying Lean philosophy. Because Lean's “respect for people” principle and mutual learning are very congruent, helping Lean teams develop a mutual learning mindset will increase their ability to implement the Lean principles.

Summary

In this chapter, I have described how you use mutual learning to help groups increase the effectiveness of any process they are using. By using groups' processes as the basis for observing and making meaning in the mutual learning cycle, you can intervene to help them improve. By ensuring that the processes you select to use with groups are congruent with mutual learning, you avoid reducing the group's effectiveness.

I provided examples of how groups decrease their effectiveness when using a process incorrectly, when there is incongruence between mutual learning and a process, and when a process espouses mutual learning but the group does not manifest the mutual learning mindset or behaviors.

In the next chapter, I will describe the interventions you can make to address emotions in the group.