Chapter Three
How You Think Is How You Facilitate
How Unilateral Control Undermines Your Ability to Help Groups
This chapter and the next one are about the most fundamental part of your facilitative role your mindset. I contrast two mindsets and the approaches they create—unilateral control and mutual learning. In short, the unilateral control mindset undermines your effectiveness and the mutual learning mindset increases it.
In this chapter, I focus on unilateral control. I describe the values and assumptions that constitute the unilateral control mindset, the behaviors that inevitably flow from them, and the poor results you get. Altogether, I refer to the mindset, behavior, and results as the unilateral control approach.
In this chapter, we focus on how you are less effective when you use the unilateral control approach, not how the group you're working with is less effective when it uses the unilateral control approach. Of course, when you're ineffective, the group you're helping suffers too. Still, keep in mind that the unilateral control approach that undermines your effectiveness is the same approach that undermines the effectiveness of groups you're trying to help. For a detailed description of how the unilateral control approach applies to teams, see my book Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams. When you help groups become aware of their unilateral control mindset and shift to the mutual learning mindset, you're helping the group transform itself. But before you can help groups get unstuck from their unilateral control approach, you need to work on yours.
How You Think: Your Mindset as an Operating System
At the heart of this book is the premise that how you think is how you facilitate—or consult, coach, train, and mediate. Everything you do starts with your mindset. Your mindset is the way of seeing that shapes your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Your mindset is the core set of values and assumptions that drives your behavior. Your mindset is what ultimately shapes the results you get for yourself and the groups you're trying to help.
Your mindset is like a computer operating system. Every computer needs one to run, whether it's a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. A computer operating system—whether it's Windows, Macintosh, or another kind—organizes and controls your computer's hardware and software so that the computer acts in a flexible but predictable way. Without an operating system, your computer is useless.
In a similar way, you use your mindset to act and get results. Your mindset controls the decisions you make, the statements you make, and the questions you ask. Like any good operating system, your mindset enables you to take action quickly, effortlessly, and skillfully. It does this by using your core values and assumptions to design your behavior. It uses principles such as, “When I am in situation X and Y happens, I should say or do Z.” For example, “If I'm facilitating a group and one member is talking too much, I should intervene to equal out the participation.” Like any computer operating system, your mindset works very quickly so you can assess the situation and make split-second decisions without having to take time to think about them.
Just as you rarely think about your computer's operating system—unless there's a problem—you're also usually unaware of your mindset. When you're intervening to stop a group member from participating too much, you're not aware that you may be thinking, This guy doesn't get it. He doesn't see how he's dominating the conversation. You just respond, seemingly without thinking. The fact that your mindset operates out of your awareness is a good thing—until your mindset becomes the cause of problems.
To continue the computer analogy, if your mindset is like an operating system, then your behavior is like application software, which helps you accomplish a specific task. Think of the different types of applications on your computer, for example, Microsoft Office, Google Search, or iTunes.
But how well a software application works depends on the version of the operating system you're running. You know this if you've ever tried to run a new software program, like a video game, only to discover that your operating system doesn't support it. If you're trying to run the most current version of iTunes or your favorite video game and you're using the current version of your operating system, your application will probably operate fine. But try to run a new program on an out-of-date operating system like Windows 95, and you'll be out of luck.
It's the same with your mindset and behavior. If you want to adapt new behaviors, your mindset needs to be congruent with those behaviors. If your mindset doesn't support the new behaviors, ultimately your mindset will trump your behavior and you won't be able to get the results or sustain the change you want.
Two Mindsets: Unilateral Control and Mutual Learning
Throughout this book, I describe two basic mindsets: unilateral control, which undermines your effectiveness, and mutual learning, which enhances it. If you facilitate from a unilateral control mindset, you'll contribute to the ineffectiveness of the groups you're trying to help, you'll undermine your relationship with them, and your well-being will suffer. If you facilitate from a mutual learning mindset, you'll help groups get better results, you'll develop stronger relationships with the group, and your well-being will improve.
Working from a mutual learning mindset is harder than it looks. When you find yourself in challenging situations, the research shows that 98 percent of us use the ineffective unilateral control mindset.1 Challenging situations are ones in which the stakes are high, you have strong views and strong feelings, or you feel psychologically threatened, frustrated, or potentially embarrassed. In your facilitative role, there are many common and challenging situations that can lead you to operate from the unilateral control mindset. You may be working with a very important client group, working with a group for the first time, or believe that you're responsible for ensuring that the group achieves its goals. You may find yourself disagreeing with clients about how best to help their group. You may find yourself caught between what the group leader wants you to do and what other group members want you to do. Inevitably, you'll work with groups or group members who push your hot buttons. All of these situations are likely to activate your unilateral control mindset.
How You Think Is Not How You Think You Think
A second factor that makes it difficult to operate from a mutual learning mindset is your lack of awareness about your mindset. Research in psychology and economics often finds that we don't accurately describe how we make decisions to take action.2 We say we're using one set of values and assumptions to guide our behavior, but when psychologists dig deeper, they find we're using a different set. It's not simply that we have a set of values and assumptions that we are aware of but don't tell others about; it's that we ourselves are unaware of the values and assumptions that are driving our behavior.3
If you aren't aware of the values and assumptions that guide your behavior, you can't identify when you're acting inconsistently with the values and assumptions you want to follow. This makes it very difficult to change your mindset. Fortunately, others can often see you being inconsistent with the mindset you're espousing and help you become aware of what's going on.
In my experience, the mindset that facilitators say they are operating from reads like a good group-process textbook. They often espouse the need for group members to operate from a common pool of information, to understand and appreciate different perspectives, and use a decision-making process that can generate commitment to a group decision. In addition, they often espouse that the team itself has the right answers. Yet, after analyzing thousands of cases in which facilitators faced challenging situations, almost all operated from a mindset at odds with the one they espoused and believed they were using.
The CIO Team Survey Feedback Case
To see how the way we think is the way we facilitate, consider a real case. Barbara (she has chosen this pseudonym) is a member of an external consulting group helping a new chief information officer (CIO) and his leadership team address long-standing management and performance problems in his office. The CIO had asked Barbara's consulting group to conduct interviews and focus groups to generate data regarding the issue. In the meeting described below, the consulting group is presenting its findings. One of the group's main findings was that employees were waiting to see if the new CIO's team would release the results of the interviews and focus groups. Because of conflict within the CIO's team, Barbara expected that this would be a difficult conversation for the CIO team. As a member of the consulting group, she facilitated the meeting of the CIO and his team. (When Barbara assumed the role of facilitator, she created a role conflict problem for herself and the CIO team—a problem I described in Chapter 2.)
In this case, which Barbara wrote about as a participant in one of my workshops, she said her goals were “to allow the group to discuss whether to share the findings without the discussion degenerating into out-and-out warfare, and to guide the group to what we saw as the right decisions without appearing to take sides ourselves.”
Exhibit 3.1 reproduces the conversation Barbara had with the CIO (Frank) and his leadership team. It includes two columns. In the right-hand column is a difficult part of the verbatim conversation that Barbara had with the team, as best she recalled it. In the left-hand column are Barbara's thoughts and feelings—her internal conversation—that she experienced during the conversation, whether or not she expressed them. As you read the case, notice how Barbara is thinking and feeling about the situation and how she chooses to act as a result.
Exhibit 3.1 Unilateral Control Approach: The Survey Feedback Case
| Barbara's Thoughts and Feelings | The Conversation |
| Uh oh, this wasn't supposed to happen until this afternoon. I never thought they'd bring it up themselves! There goes the whole agenda. | MIKE: My God, we can't possibly let this stuff out of this room. It's dynamite. We'll look like idiots. I for one don't want to have anything to do with it! |
| Looks like it's going to get ugly real fast. This guy Joe just doesn't get it! | JOE: This just goes to show why we can never get the work done around here. The people are more interested in sitting on their butts and blaming their managers than in actually doing their jobs. |
| SANDY: Well, wait a minute; these results are so striking I don't see how we can ignore them… | |
| He's gonna be real trouble. If he doesn't have a stroke first, with those veins popping out…Time to do something so Sandy can get some support if there is any. Why isn't Frank saying something? | JOE: We don't have to let them make our decisions for us, though! (Continues with a lengthy diatribe about why people today don't have the same values and work ethic they used to.) |
| BARBARA: Okay, let's do a process check here. I think this an important conversation for you all to have, but it might take some time. You can do it now, or wait until we work on the action plan this afternoon. What's the sense of the group? | |
| SUSAN: Let's get it out there now! (Some expressions of agreement around the table.) | |
| Finally! Why'd he wait until now to speak up? Some leadership style! | FRANK: I think we need to take the time to do this now. It's pretty important. |
| This ought to flush everyone out up front so I know what we're dealing with here. I need to get this thing back under control. | BARBARA: Okay, then. Here's what I propose: let's go around the table and ask everyone for their views before we get into the discussion. |
| I wonder if I should have set a time limit for each person. This is turning into a debate, and no one is really listening to each other. | (The group does that, but it takes a lot longer than expected, and some people really hog the floor, on both sides.) |
| This ought to get some structure into the conversation and maybe tone down some of the emotional content. | BARBARA: Now that we have a sense of where you are as a group on this issue—and you're about one-third for release and two-thirds against—it's a good time to step back and look together at the pros and cons. I'll divide a flipchart into two columns, and you can brainstorm on that. Here goes… |
| No one is listening to anyone else; they're just hardening their positions. The clock is ticking, and the group really hasn't started its work yet. I wonder how much longer I should let them go? But if they can't even deal with this issue, how are they going to do any of the hard work down the road? | (The group charts the pros and cons, and although the discussion becomes more orderly, it is no less heated and no closer to a conclusion.) |
| Oh no, now they're going to move in for the kill against her. I don't want to break my neutral stance, but she's going to need some help here soon. | SANDY (near tears): I just can't believe we're even having this discussion! Who are we kidding? The employees already know what they think—who would we be hiding it from? If this group can't face up to the truth, what right do we have to be in our jobs? (Eye-rolling from Joe.) Frank, don't you agree? |
| This guy is absolutely hopeless! | FRANK: Well, I think you have a real point there, but… |
| Well, I guess this is my opening. Should I tell them what I really think? I might lose them all if I do. | MIKE: I'd like to hear from the consultants what they think. After all, they work with a lot of other organizations. What do other people do about things like this? |
| BARBARA: Thanks, Mike. I have to say that you all are not the first to face this issue, and it's always tough. But Sandy is on to something: Your people know what they think, but they don't think you do. They want to know that they've been heard, and because there's so little trust here, they want more than just your assurances on that. By responding to their request to release the results, you'd be sending them a big signal that you really mean business about changing the culture. They're handing you a big opportunity. And in our experience with other groups, you need to make a clear gesture up front to get people's attention if you want to move ahead with change. | |
| Oh, that's great. He obviously thinks I'm an idiot and doesn't want to release the stuff. | FRANK: How about a break now? I'd like us to mull this question over and revisit it this afternoon. |
Barbara's Contribution to the Team's Problems
What may be difficult to see at first reading is that Barbara contributes to the very problems she is privately complaining about. When Barbara wrote up her case, she didn't realize she was doing this. Even with the best of intentions, she was undermining her own effectiveness by operating from a unilateral control mindset. Barbara is typical of almost all the facilitators, consultants, coaches, and trainers I've worked with and taught: When they find themselves in a situation that they consider frustrating, threatening, or embarrassing in some way, they operate from a unilateral control mindset.
How do you undermine the very results that you say you're trying to create? To answer this question, I'll analyze Barbara's case through the lens of the unilateral control approach. I'll start with the mindset, then the behaviors it generates, and the results those behaviors produce.
The Unilateral Control Approach
The unilateral control approach has three parts: (1) mindset, (2) behaviors, and (3) results (see Figure 3.1). When you use the unilateral control approach,4 you try to achieve your goals by unilaterally controlling the situation: You try to get others to do what you want them to do without being influenced by them. When you apply a unilateral control mindset to working with people who see things differently from you, your essential perspective is:
- I understand the situation; you don't.
- I'm right; you're wrong.
- I will win.
Figure 3.1 The Unilateral Control Approach
Values of The Unilateral Control Mindset
The unilateral control mindset comprises a set of core values and assumptions, summarized in Figure 3.2. Core values are end-states we think are worth striving for. Core assumptions are fundamental beliefs we hold. This section expands on the values; the next will discuss the assumptions.
Figure 3.2 Core Values and Assumptions of the Unilateral Control Mindset
When you use a unilateral control mindset, you mix these values to differing degrees and unconsciously design your behavior based on them.
Win, Don't Lose
Having goals can make you more effective. But when you operate from the unilateral control mindset, achieving your goals as you have defined them becomes an end in itself. You frame the situation as a contest in which there are winners and losers; therefore, you must be one of the winners. When you watch or listen to others, you privately assess whether they're helping you achieve your goal or hindering you. You consider things that others say or do that don't support your view as getting in your way. You consider it a sign of weakness either to change your goals or not achieve them as you originally envisaged them.
In Barbara's case, she stated that one of her goals was “to guide the group to what we [the consulting team] saw as the right decisions without appearing to take sides ourselves.” She frames the meeting outcome in win/lose terms; if the CIO group adopts the solution that her consulting team has already developed, Barbara's team wins. If not, Barbara's team loses.
Be Right
Being right is a corollary of “Win, Don't Lose.” When you value being right, you take pride in showing others that your views are accurate. If you have ever taken satisfaction in thinking or saying to someone, “I told you so” or “I knew this would happen,” you know what it feels like to value being right.
Barbara's goal, “to guide the group to what we saw as the right decisions without appearing to take sides ourselves,” explicitly emphasizes this need to be right.
Minimize Expression of Negative Feelings
Minimizing expression of negative feelings means keeping unpleasant feelings—yours and everyone else's—out of the conversation. This value stems from a belief that expressing anger or frustration—or allowing others to express them—for instance, are incompetent behaviors. Expressing negative feelings may be seen as a sign of weakness or may hurt someone's feelings, both of which may make it difficult for you to accomplish your goals. In the unilateral control approach, raising negative feelings can lead to things getting out of control. In short, you believe that little good can come of people airing their feelings on a topic; it only leads to tension, wounded sensibilities, and strained working relationships.
Barbara hints at this value when she describes her strategy as allowing “the team to discuss whether to share the findings without the discussion generating into out-and-out warfare.” Preventing “out-and-out warfare” is a laudable goal. By itself, it doesn't mean Barbara wants to avoid the expression of negative feelings. However, when the CIO group starts to share its negative feelings about whether to release the findings, Barbara suggests a pros and cons approach, partly to tone down the emotional content, rather than to better understand what leads the group members to feel strongly about their views.
Act Rational
When you value acting rationally, you expect yourself and others to remain purely analytical and logical. You believe that if you simply lay out the facts, others, if they're being reasonable, will agree with you. You try to present issues as being purely objective, regardless of how you or others are feeling about them. You consider feelings as a barrier to good problem solving and decision making instead of as another source of important information. The more you value acting rational, the more you want to be seen as having thoroughly thought through the matter at hand. When you discover gaps in your thinking, you try to prevent others from recognizing those gaps.
Assumptions of the Unilateral Control Mindset
Figure 3.2 also summarizes the assumptions you make in the mindset of unilateral control.
I Understand the Situation; Those Who Disagree Don't
This assumption states that whatever information and understanding you bring to the situation is accurate and complete, and so are the conclusions you draw from them. In other words, the way you see things is the way things really are. If others hold different views, they just don't get it, are confused, misinformed, or simply clueless. If they understood what you understand, they would agree with you.
Barbara operates from this assumption explicitly when she thinks, This guy Joe just doesn't get it! She operates from this assumption implicitly when she thinks, Why'd he [Frank] wait until now to speak up? Some leadership style! and This guy is absolutely hopeless! Embedded in these thoughts are Barbara's assumptions that she understands what leadership looks like in this situation, that she fully understands what Frank is doing as a leader in this meeting, and that it doesn't measure up to effective leadership. If he really understood what leadership was, he would advocate releasing the findings.
I Am Right; Those Who Disagree Are Wrong
This assumption is an extension of the previous one. Here you assume that situations come with right and wrong answers and that your answer is, of course, the right one. People who disagree with you or see it differently are simply wrong. When you hold this assumption, it's not possible that you and the people with whom you are disagreeing can both be right.
Barbara doesn't consider that how she is making sense of the situation is based on less than a full understanding and therefore she may not be entirely right.
My Motives Are Pure; Those Who Disagree Have Questionable Motives
You consider yourself to be an earnest seeker of truth, acting in the best interests of the group and organization. At the same time, you question the motives of those who disagree with you. You assume they may be motivated by self-interest or some other inappropriate concern. Maybe they're trying to increase their power, control more resources, or even undermine your efforts.
Barbara seems to be operating from this assumption when Joe is speaking about how people today have different values and work ethics than they used to have, and she thinks, He's gonna be real trouble.
My Feelings and Behaviors Are Justified
Because others don't understand the situation as it really is (meaning, as you see it), because others are wrong, and because others may have questionable motives, you consider your feelings and behaviors justified. If you're annoyed or frustrated, if you need to act in a manner that is inconsistent with your values, or if you need to depart from your role, it's all justified. Although you may have preferred not to do these things, others' behaviors have left you no choice.
Barbara operates from this assumption when she thinks, I don't want to break my neutral stance, but she's [Sandy's] going to need some help here soon.
I Am Not Contributing to the Problem
In the unilateral control mindset, you see your feelings and the behaviors that result from them as the natural and inevitable results of others' actions toward you. You don't consider the possibility that you're contributing to the very problems you're privately complaining about. It doesn't occur to you that your thoughts and feelings may lead you to act ineffectively. In your view, all interactions go like this: Others do things that are ineffective, and you respond to their mistakes accordingly and appropriately. As a result, you see others as needing to change, not you. The only sense in which you may see yourself needing to change is that you may need to develop new ways to get others to change their ineffective behaviors.
In Barbara's case, she comes close to considering that she may have contributed to the problem when the group is listing pros and cons and she thinks, No one is listening to anyone else; they're just hardening their positions. I wonder if I should have set a time limit for each person, and later when she thinks, I wonder how much longer I should let them go on? But she stops considering her contribution to the problem when she thinks, But if they can't even deal with this issue, how are they going to do any of the hard work down the road? Barbara doesn't consider that people aren't listening to each other and hardening their positions as a result of her process for listing pros and cons. (I'll address the problem of pros and cons in Chapter 11.)
Unilateral Control Behaviors
You use the above mindset—the core values and assumptions—to design your behavior. When you work with a group and assume that you understand and are right and that those who disagree with you don't understand and are wrong, you think you need to convince others. Figure 3.3 shows eight behaviors you use to do that. Here is a brief description of each behavior and their results.
- State views without asking for others' views or vice versa. With this behavior, you either state your views without asking others what they think or you ask others questions without sharing your view. As a result, you and the group end up talking past each other and you don't reach genuine agreements. When you ask questions that aren't genuine, you often “ease in,” indirectly conveying your point of view. Easing in involves asking others questions or making statements that are designed to lead others to figure out what you're privately thinking without your having to say it. It's an indirect approach to get others to see things your way.
Barbara does state her view and ask a genuine question when she says “let's do a process check.” But she gets answers only from Sandy and Frank—both of whom agree with her privately held view—before assuming that everyone is in agreement. When Barbara proposes that the team list pros and cons, she doesn't ask team members' reactions before moving ahead.
- Withhold relevant information. Because winning is paramount, you share the information that will advance your views and withhold relevant information that won't. Barbara withholds her private thinking that the conversation has turned into a debate and that people aren't listening to each other. By withholding that information, she misses the opportunity to learn whether CIO team members are seeing the same thing and, if so, to change it. But because Barbara is operating from the value of being right, sharing that information leaves open the possibility that others will disagree with her.
- Speak in general terms and don't agree on what important words mean. When you make general statements like “I think it would be good to hear from some people who haven't spoken as much,” the group doesn't know exactly which people you're talking about. As a result, some members whom you believe have been talking too much may speak up, believing that they weren't speaking much. Facilitators, consultants, and trainers often speak in general terms because they're concerned that by naming individuals, they may create defensive reactions.
- Keep my reasoning private; don't ask others about their reasoning. You don't explain why you're saying what you're saying and asking what you're asking. Sharing your reasoning would make you vulnerable to people challenging your thinking, which could reduce the chance that your view would prevail. Asking others about their reasoning might surface information that's at odds with your views and increases the chance that they'll ask you to explain your views, both of which decrease the chance that you'll win.
Throughout the case, Barbara fails to share her reasoning and intent: She is trying to guide the CIO team to the decision that her consulting group thinks is the right one without appearing to be doing so. Of course, Barbara can't share this intent because if she did, she would reveal the very strategy she is trying to keep private. Many facilitators and consultants do the same thing. It's a major part of unilateral control, and it creates significant problems for you and the groups you're trying to help.
- Focus on positions, not interests. By focusing on a particular solution instead of the underlying needs you're trying to address, you and the group dig into your positions and fail to craft solutions that meet group members' needs and generate broad commitment.
Barbara focuses on the position of releasing the findings and attempts to get the CIO team to adopt her solution. She also encourages the CIO team to focus on positions rather than interests by having the team identify pros and cons.
- Act on untested assumptions and inferences as if they were true. Because you assume that you understand the situation and are right, there's no need to test any assumptions or inferences you're making. As a result, when your assumptions or inferences turn out to be wrong, you make poor decisions.
Barbara assumes that Sandy needs support for her position (which is the same as Barbara's position) when Barbara thinks, Time to do something so Sandy can get some support if there is any and when Sandy is near tears and Barbara thinks, Oh no, now they're going to move in for the kill against her. In neither case does she ask Sandy whether she needs support. Barbara also makes negative inferences about Joe when she thinks, This guy Joe just doesn't get it and He's gonna be real trouble, and about Frank when she thinks, Some leadership style and This guy is absolutely hopeless. Finally, she makes untested inferences when she thinks about Frank, He obviously thinks I'm an idiot and doesn't want to release the stuff.
- Control the conversation. To ensure that you win, you make sure that the conversation moves in the direction you think it should move. You make sure that people talk about topics that you consider relevant and that further your point of view. When people don't stay on topic—as you define “on topic”—you find ways to bring them back on topic. As a result, the group you're helping doesn't get all the relevant information on the table.
Barbara subtly controls the conversation by deciding that the group should talk about the issue after hearing only Susan's and Frank's view on this, even though she asked “What's the sense of the team?” She does the same thing when she answers Mike's question, “What do other people do about things like this?” even as she thinks she might lose the team if she answers the question and breaks her neutrality.
- Avoid, ease into, or save face on difficult issues. Because you want to minimize the expression of negative feelings, you don't address issues that could make the group or you uncomfortable. As a result, you don't help the group get to the root cause of issues, and the issues continue to reduce the group's and your effectiveness.
Barbara has created an undiscussable issue with the group. She believes that the group should release the findings, and she also believes that she can't say this because she is supposed to be a neutral facilitator in this meeting.
Figure 3.3 Behaviors That Arise from the Unilateral Control Mindset
Results of Unilateral Control
Mindset leads to behaviors, and those behaviors produce results. The unilateral control approach identifies three types of results: (1) performance, (2) working relationships, and (3) individual well-being. Unfortunately, the results you get from unilateral control are the very ones you've been trying hard to avoid. Instead of achieving high performance, you get lackluster performance. Instead of getting improved working relationships, you get strained relationships. Instead of developing well-being, you create stress for yourselves and others. Figure 3.4 summarizes these results.
Figure 3.4 Results of Behaviors for a Unilateral Control Mindset
Lackluster Performance
You're trying to perform well so you can better help the groups you're working with to perform well. But if you're operating with the unilateral control mindset and behaviors, you undermine your own performance.
Lower-Quality Decisions and Less Innovation
The quality of the decisions you make in your facilitative role affect how well you help groups. Even though facilitators don't offer their views on the content of a group's decisions, facilitators are continually and deeply involved in making decisions with the group about how the group and the facilitator move through the process they're engaged in. If you're a consultant providing some kind of subject matter expertise, you are also deeply involved in the content of a group's decisions.
To make high-quality decisions, you need relevant information and an accurate understanding of the situation that you and the group face. This includes understanding the different group member needs that have to be met so that you can intervene in a way that meets those needs. This requires that you be transparent with clients about what you're observing in the group and why you're making your interventions. You also need to be curious about what they're thinking, including testing inferences that you make about the group. Unfortunately, none of this is possible if you're operating from a unilateral control approach. As a result, your decisions will be compromised by inadequate information and untested inferences.
Innovation requires creating something new, original, or creative. To innovate in the course of facilitation, you need to become aware of and challenge the assumptions that have constrained your previous interventions. But if you operate from a unilateral control mindset, you'll have difficulty identifying, let alone challenging, your own assumptions. Being open to group members' ideas and concerns will also increase your ability to facilitate innovatively. However, if you're operating from the assumption, “I understand, they don't,” you'll miss these opportunities.
Longer Implementation Time
When you seek to minimize the expression of negative feelings and avoid undiscussable issues, you may help groups reach a decision faster, but you also contribute to extending the time it takes the group to effectively implement its decision. The issues that aren't addressed before the group makes a decision will rear their heads during implementation and slow the implementation process until they are resolved. Group members whose needs haven't been adequately addressed may not actively support the implementation or may even block it after the meeting.
Increased Costs
Poor decisions, reduced innovation, and longer implementation time often lead to increased costs. Longer implementation time increases costs as the group spends extra time revisiting earlier “agreements.” If you're working with the group through the implementation process, the group is also paying for your fees (directly or indirectly) for a longer time than necessary.
In Barbara's case, her own value about winning and her assumption that her position was right led to a pros and cons process in which she focused the CIO team on positions. The team members dug into their positions, each arguing for his or her own view, which prolonged the decision-making process unnecessarily and reduced the team's ability to think innovatively about how to address its challenge.
Strained Working Relationships
Working relationships is the second type of results that suffer from a unilateral control approach. It decreases commitment, reduces team learning, and also promotes inappropriate dependence on others.
Lower Commitment
People commit to decisions when they believe the decision will address their needs. Unilateral control undermines commitment by reducing the chance of meeting people's needs—including your own. You and the group focus on positions rather than on the interests underlying these positions. This leads to decisions in which you and the group are choosing between competing solutions, rather than crafting solutions that are likely to address all the identified interests. To the extent that the solution doesn't meet someone's interests, that person is likely to be less committed to the decision.
If you reach a decision with a group that doesn't meet the group members' needs, you're likely to find yourself monitoring group members to make sure they follow through on their commitment. It may be as small an issue as feeling you need to round up group members when they don't return on time from breaks or as large an issue as group members going through the motions of working with you because they have not genuinely committed to the process.
By focusing the CIO team on pros and cons, Barbara increased the chance that the team would limit its thinking to only two opposing solutions and increased the chance that some team members would not be committed to the decision.
Decreased Trust
If group members don't trust you, you simply cannot facilitate effectively. If any group member believes that you're partial to certain group members, that you're not understanding group members, that your interventions aren't helpful, or that your actions are inconsistent with the role you agreed to play, you may lose that member's trust. Operating from unilateral control increases this probability because you act on untested assumptions you make about the group and don't explain the reasoning and intent for your interventions.
Unilateral control can also lead you to distrust group members, which, in turn, can lead group members to distrust you. To the extent that you make negative attributions of group members' motives and don't test them, you generate your own mistrust of others.
By leaving her facilitator role without an agreement to do so, to share her views on whether the group should release the findings, Barbara risks losing the team's trust. She does this even as she wonders whether she will “lose them all” if she shares her view. Had Barbara been serving in a consultant role during the meeting, it would have been appropriate to share her views, but it is not appropriate as a content-neutral facilitator.
Reduced Learning, Greater Defensiveness, and Unproductive Conflict
To increase your effectiveness, you need to be able to learn with and from the group you're helping. This includes learning in the moment so that you can quickly modify your approach and meet the group's needs. Unfortunately, the unilateral control mindset undermines learning. When you assume you understand and are right and that group members who see things differently don't get it and are wrong, you have little interest in learning from them. Instead, you treat your own assumptions and inferences as facts, which adds to misunderstanding. Because you see your feelings and behaviors as justified and not contributing to the difficulty, you blame others for your mistakes and defensiveness.
Barbara's lack of curiosity about Joe's view, which she privately disagreed with, and her inferences about his being real trouble, prevented her and the team from learning more about Joe's concerns.
Similarly, the untested inferences and attributions that you make lead you to react defensively. When you tell yourself a negative story about what someone is doing and why they're doing it, it's easy to create your own defensiveness. You can see the beginning of a defensive reaction at the end of Barbara's case when Frank calls for a break and Barbara thinks, He obviously thinks I'm an idiot and doesn't want to release the stuff.
People get into conflicts when they pursue actions or solutions that are incompatible. If you operate from a unilateral control mindset, you see conflict as something to win rather than a puzzle to solve together. If you don't engage in conflict productively, you avoid it, smooth over it, or end up in battles. If you address the conflict at all, you end up with stalemates, escalating conflict, or compromises in which everyone is dissatisfied, and “losers” disengage or seek to even the score.
Barbara's pros and cons suggestion that led to a lower-quality decision and less learning also structured the conversation so that it created unproductive conflict for the team. It ensured that the conflict would escalate by asking people to frame the discussion in either/or, win-lose terms.
Inappropriate Dependence on Others
When you help a group, they are dependent on you. You have some expertise they need to become more effective. The challenge is to help groups in a way that doesn't create any more dependence on you than necessary. Ideally, as in developmental facilitation, your goal is to leave the group with greater capacity and less dependence on you. This means that group members manage their working relationships directly with each other, rather than depend on you to serve as an intermediary. When you operate from a unilateral control approach, you're less concerned about reducing dependency and more concerned about having your point of view prevail.
When Barbara moves to support Sandy's view, believing that Sandy cannot support herself in the group, Barbara subtly creates unnecessary dependence on herself. The belief that others need our help and can't be effective without our intervention stems from the unilateral control assumption that we understand the situation and the value of minimizing expression of negative feelings. In other words, we often believe that our job is to prevent group members from feeling hurt by others, rather than helping group members learn how to respond effectively to others' ineffective behavior.
Less Individual Well-Being
The third type of result is well-being, which includes a sense of satisfaction, motivation, and a lower level of stress. The unilateral control approach also reduces your well-being. Because unilateral control often leads to strained working relationships with the groups you're trying to help, the work can be less than satisfying and sometimes demotivating. It can be stressful to realize that if you share what you're thinking, you may create negative consequences. It's stressful if you make untested inferences and attributions about others that lead you and others to become defensive. Barbara shows a glimpse of this reduced well-being when she makes the untested inference that Frank thinks she is an idiot.
Give-Up-Control Approach
There is another form of unilateral control that people use, called give up control. Sometimes people use the give-up-control approach when they recognize the poor results they get from using the unilateral control approach. Unfortunately, they are simply shifting from one form of control to another.5
The core values of the give-up-control approach are (1) everyone participates in defining the purpose, (2) everyone wins and no one loses, (3) express your feelings, and (4) suppress using your intellectual reasoning.6 An assumption in the give-up-control approach that differs from the unilateral control approach is that in order for people to learn and be involved and committed, they must come to the right answer by themselves. Of course, the right answer is the one you have already come up with. When others don't see the answer that you see, you ask easing-in or leading questions to help them get the answer by themselves. This is the strategy that Barbara was using when she wrote that the goal of her meeting was “to guide the group to what we saw as the right decisions without appearing to take sides ourselves.” The results of the give-up-control approach are the same as those of the unilateral control approach: poor performance, strained working relationships, and reduced well-being.
The easing-in strategy of the give-up-control approach is often part of the unilateral control approach. I think of the give-up-control approach as a subset or variation of the basic unilateral control approach.
Facilitators and consultants often move back and forth between the unilateral control approach and the give-up-control variation. If you're working with a group and get frustrated with the group's repeated inability to stay on track, you may intervene in a unilaterally controlling manner to get them back on track. If this approach doesn't keep the group on track, you may switch to a give-up-control approach and think to yourself, They seem not to want my help. I'll just let the group continue to get off track. Eventually, they'll get frustrated with their lack of progress and figure out something's wrong.
In the unilateral control approach, you take control; in the opposite model, you give up control. But because you take control and give up control unilaterally, fundamentally both models are unilaterally controlling.
How Unilateral Control Reinforces Itself
The insidious thing about the unilateral control mindset is that it both leads to and reinforces the very results you're trying so hard to avoid. In an effort to be right and win, instead of developing high-quality decisions, you get poor decisions that others are reluctant to implement. Instead of improving working relationships with others and creating individual well-being, you create defensiveness, strain these relationships, and create stress for yourself and others.
Just as your unilateral control mindset led you to get these poor results initially, it also sends you into a reinforcing vicious cycle. As the feedback arrows bordering Figure 3.1 indicate, the frustration you feel when you get these poor results reinforces your unilateral control assumptions that others—not you—are the cause of these poor outcomes and that your feelings and unilateral behavior are justified. Instead of considering how you might be contributing to these poor results, you continue to use the same unilateral control behaviors. You believe that if you persist, you'll eventually get better results. But pushing harder—or checking out in frustration—simply leads to more of the same poor results. The harder you try, the less things improve.
Although you don't intend to create these poor results, they are predictable. As systems thinkers like to say, systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get. Your unilateral control operating system enables you to efficiently and skillfully be ineffective. To make matters more challenging, you're typically unaware of your unilateral control mindset as you're operating from it. Like a good computer operating system, it works in the background, quickly and out of your awareness.
If you do become aware that you're contributing to the poor results you're getting, you're likely to think the cause is using ineffective strategies or behaviors. So, you may try to modify them. For example, if you're trying to get a group to recognize something they're doing that's unproductive, you might begin by easing in, asking them a series of questions in the hope they'll get what you're hinting at. If you recognize that the group isn't responding to your easing-in questions, you might switch your strategy to simply telling them what you think they're doing that's unproductive. However, shifting from asking easing-in questions to telling them your views is simply substituting one unilateral control behavior for another. Both lead to the same poor results because they don't change the root cause.
The root cause is your mindset. As long as you are using a unilateral control mindset, you won't be able to consistently create the kinds of results you need for yourself and the groups you're trying to help.
How Did We Learn Unilateral Control?
If 98 percent of us use the ineffective unilateral control approach in challenging situations, how did all of us come to adopt such an ineffective approach? There are two ways.
First, almost all of us have been socialized to use unilateral control. We went to schools that used a unilateral control approach and had teachers that modeled unilateral behavior. Although we may have rebelled against it (I spent more than my share of time in the principal's office), by the time we graduated from high school, we had adopted it ourselves. By the time we took our first jobs, we were skilled in ways to indirectly push our own views, withhold information when sharing it didn't serve our needs, and guide conversations so they avoided topics we didn't want to address.
We joined organizations that were built on unilateral control and that rewarded it. Leadership and management research and practice began with trying to control behavior. That tradition continues, but today's organization uses more sophisticated language to hide it. Keep in mind, few of us consciously set out to adopt an operating system that gets poor results, but it happens nevertheless, and we learn how to apply it “better” over time.
The second way we learn unilateral control is even more deep-seated: Our brains are wired to use the unilateral control mindset in difficult situations. In short, our brain is designed to react immediately to threat before we can even think about what that threat is. I explain this further in Chapter 12, on emotions.
You might wonder why the brain is designed so that we sometimes act before we can think. The answer, from an evolutionary perspective, is that it's helped us survive. When our distant ancestors encountered what could be a large, threatening animate object, they were much more likely to survive if they could react—either flee or fight—before having to figure out exactly what the potential foe was. This makes sense from a risk management perspective. For example, if you run away from an apparent threat that turns out to be nothing, you're just out of breath. But if you fail to run away from a threat that's real, you may end up permanently out of breath. So we're programmed to err on the side of survival, whether that means fleeing or fighting. Although there are few large, literally life-threatening objects in our office environments, our brain still responds to modern-day “threatening” stimuli as though our survival were at stake.
To return to our computer analogy, you could say that we're dealing with out-of-date biological hardware that sometimes creates problems for us, but we can't replace that hardware (at least not yet, and I personally wouldn't want to be the guinea pig). Instead, we can change how we think so we can better deal with our out-of-date hardware; we can upgrade our operating system software by changing our mindset.
Moving from Unilateral Control to Mutual Learning
To improve your practice, your most challenging—and powerful—work is to rigorously think about how you are thinking. This means identifying and exploring the core values and assumptions that drive your behavior and understanding how they differ from the values and assumptions you espouse; to rigorously reflect on how the values and assumptions you use increase or decrease your effectiveness; and to develop or adopt a new set of values and assumptions to increase your effectiveness. For the Skilled Facilitator approach, the more effective set of values and assumptions is mutual learning.
Understanding how unilateral control works will also directly help you help groups get the results they need. The unilateral control approach that reduces your effectiveness is the same approach that reduces the effectiveness of the groups who are seeking your help. To the extent you're able to identify how group members' mindsets and skill sets undermine their effectiveness, you can help them create the fundamental change they seek.
In the next chapter, you'll see how the mutual learning mindset differs from the unilateral control mindset and how it enables you and the groups you work with to get better results.
Summary
How you think is how you facilitate—or consult, coach, train, or mediate. Your mindset leads to behavior, which leads to results. In challenging situations, when others hold different views, almost all of us use the same ineffective mindset—unilateral control. The essence of the unilateral control mindset is this: “I understand the situation; you don't. I'm right; you're wrong. I will win.” Unilateral control creates the very results you're trying hard to avoid: poor performance, strained working relationships, and reduced well-being. When you operate from a unilateral control mindset, you reduce your effectiveness as well as the effectiveness of the groups you're hired to help.
Simply changing your behavior is insufficient to get out of unilateral control. To move from unilateral control to the more effective mutual learning approach requires that you shift your mindset—the core values and assumptions that drive your behavior. That is the topic of the next chapter.