This interview is written by MBAs for MBAs. This week, I interviewed Lisa Sansom. She’s an MBA, a leadership coach, and an expert speaker. She even facilitates the team building process for new MBA cohorts at the Queens School of Business. As a fellow student of organizational behavior, I couldn’t wait to get started.
LISA C: You’re an MBA in Organizational Behavior and an expert on interpersonal communications. Give us a tip or two for increasing our self-awareness at work.
LISA S: When you encounter a frustrating situation or conversation, the first thing to do is take a disempassioned deep breath and ask yourself “How am I contributing, intentionally or unintentionally, to this situation?” Take a minute, ponder, and then the next thing that comes out of your mouth should be a question that will honestly help you to understand the other person’s point of view – a meaningful and open inquiry. Spend some time, as Stephen Covey says, seeking first to understand the other person. Set your own ego and opinions aside – just for a moment. you don’t have to relinquish them entirely, but ask a few questions to turn on your own light bulb first.
LISA C: You’ve facilitated 360 reviews. What can be gained from participating in a 360 process?
LISA S: 360 reviews provide two very interesting opportunities – one is for you to receive feedback from other sources in an honest fashion, and the second is for you to compare your own perceptions with those around you. It is important in 360s to remember that this is all about perceptions. Often, the 360 recipient, when seeing the results, focuses on the negatives and says “What can I do differently?” I would suggest that there are two alternative questions that would enrich the 360 experience: 1. “Where are my strengths that I can leverage?” and 2. “What are the perceptions that I can change?” The second question is subtly different in that it focuses your attention on the perceptions of the other person, rather than your own actions. It may be that your actions are fine, but you are not managing the relationship well enough that the other person is clear on your actions and intentions.
LISA C: As a writer for Your Workplace magazine, you’ve touched a lot on change management and work-life balance issues. What’s your take on work-life balance? Can it be done? If so, what does success look like?
LISA S: Work-life balance is highly individual and the challenge comes when an organization decides to make this a corporate value or to impose work-life balance requirements across the board. For some, working 35 hours per week is work-life balance, preferring more “life”. For others, believe it or not, 70-80 hours per week is work-life balance, preferring to shift the emphasis to “work”. Neither of these are wrong, and it is difficult, if not impossible, for a corporate strategy to accommodate and support both. The best way to tackle work-life balance, I believe, is through individual attention. It is incumbent upon the management and leadership of a company to somehow craft a method through which managers are empowered to enable work-life balance for each individual team member. This is often not done because of the perception of unfairness – that someone who is working 35 hours is “getting off easy” compared to the person who is working 70, but if the work is getting done to high standards, and communication is clear across the team that there is organizationally-approved individual choice at play, then the discomfort with the apparent “unfairness” should be minimal.
LISA C: When a new, ‘big thing’ gets implemented in the workplace, how can we use early adopters to support change management success?
LISA S: Turn your early adopters into Change Champions. And cultivate early adopters who are the informal leaders in the organization – the people who work next to your potential change recipients, the people who are respected and recognized, the people who are good communicators and represent the organization professionally. Give those Champions training on how to be Change Champions – teach them about the project, seek their input and feedback, help them craft messages to send to the larger population.
LISA C: At the Queen’s School of Business, you facilitate the process of new MBA students becoming a team. When these teams are ‘norming’, what’s the most interesting dynamic you see?
LISA S: At the QSB, we have teams actually create norms documents – what are the guidelines or rules by which they will operate as a team in the MBA program. So, when teams are writing their norms in the MBA programs, there tends to be a great deal of harmony and alignment – most students come into the program as professionals with a certain work ethic, and so the norms creation process tends to be smooth, if a little wordy. However, what truly distinguishes the “high performing teams” from those that are just average is how the teams make use of their norms. The higher performing teams not only live their norms, but they openly and intentionally discuss the norms. They create times to actively review the norms documents that they created, and the team members intentionally refer to the team norms during debriefing sessions, working meetings and individual conversations with other team members. For these strong teams, the norms are meaningful and incorporated into the team’s DNA. For less effective teams, the norms are, at best, words on a page and, at worst, ignored entirely after their creation.
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Thank you Lisa for participating in our interview series.
