Accidental Work Habits That Might Be Harming Trust and Connection
Some habits seem innocent, but can be damaging
Observing team body language and behavior fascinates me, especially when a mixture of the right culture, personality types, and team ideas all collide together, creating products and solutions that customers absolutely love.
However, over the past decade or so working in small and large organizations and work teams, I’ve witnessed many actions by individuals working in implementation roles that, on the surface look rather innocent, have a far more detrimental impact than needed.
By acknowledging the habits that happen and spotting the thought patterns that may lead to them, you will be able to forge higher quality and positive relationships that result in better clout and influence, and as a byproduct, increased team collaboration, satisfaction, and happiness.
Note: the example habits witnessed below are from my observations in strategy consulting, product and project management roles in startups and large tech companies. These habits may also apply for any other role and industry that requires a high degree of team trust and buy-in.
1. Always saying “yes” and rarely say “no”
A common trait of a highly agreeable “yes” person: a person who always takes on new work, looking to please their stakeholders as much as possible. This is both external (e.g., new feature requests from clients) and internal (e.g., individual work tasks assigned to you). The risk here is that they take on too much work for their bandwidth, overload themselves, and fail to deliver.
Don’t get me wrong: everybody loves to see a highly motivated team member willing to give as much as they can; however, when that person fails to complete their work and continues to take on more, they enter a helpless spiral:
- Say “yes” to accept work and to please your stakeholders.
- Work hard to perfect the deliverable.
- Realize work is rather difficult or time-consuming but compelled to continue saying “yes” to future requests to please stakeholders.
- Work harder, but failing to deliver.
- High ‘work if progress’ (WIP) ensues. No output. Credibility lost.
‘Agreeableness’, as one of the five major dimensions of personality structure (aka. OCEAN model), is typically considered a good thing: kindness, generosity, are all great things that come at the start of team formation. But if you say yes to everything and start to fail consistently, teammates may not take your word next time.
If you find yourself in a “yes” trap, there are some simple ways to begin saying “no”. State what you are currently doing, that you could do the requested task, but you need to know what is more priority: the previous task, or this new one. Stating your position for a constructive conversation is an important skill in managing stakeholder expectations. Remember, positive collisions and constructive debate is not always a bad thing.
2. Stating opinion with no context or rationale
Nobody likes a know-it-all, especially one who never explains how they arrived at their answers. That is why we are taught well in school to show all your working for every math problem you’ve solved: to demonstrate that the student can apply a structure, a method, and articulate their reasoning.
I generally see non-fact based opinion from seasoned executives that point at their experience for justification for making bold decisions. These decisions may often be referred to as the ‘HIPPO’ — highest-paid person’s opinion (cc Richard Banfield). While there may be a correlation between a decisions effectiveness and the experience of the decision-maker, it is inappropriate to infer default causation.
There’s an extensive amount of research on the subject of experts being able to make accurate predictions. One piece of analysis I particularly enjoyed reading about was Philip Tetlock in his book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (review from West Stringfellow). Tetlock found that an average expert predicted no better than a dart-throwing chimp. He examined 300 people for whom forecasting was their primary responsibility, and found that when it comes to making predictions, they might as well have flipped a coin.
If you have a similar habit of stating facts with no evidence earlier on in your career, you are hindering your self-development in understanding how to articulate a decision and persuade others.
Bottom-line, without context and reasoning, it is difficult to gain buy-in or a following for any decision you make. Start to articulate your positions through data early on, and this will prevent you from becoming the HIPPO in future.
3. Not using any structure for framing decisions
Making investment decisions or experiments based on gut feeling and experience are great, but only if some baseline data is showing a potential problem area to be solved. With no method to the madness, gaining trust and buy-in from your immediate stakeholders will be rather challenging to achieve.
By using some lightweight prioritization method, whether it be the simple yet effective “Value vs Effort” or “Eisenhower Matrix” method or even a “MoSCoW” (Must, Should, Could, Won’t) matrix, you will be going a long way to ensure and maintain trust and credibility through logic and reason. These methods allow for a constructive conversation that can be framed in a way that invites intellectual debate and exchange.
4. Asking teammates to do things, but never offering your time in return
It’s often too easy to delegate tasks to those who have the skills and willpower to do them. It’s even easier never to return the favor in the future. If this happens, you will generally find it challenging to gain future commitment or contribution from critical team members with the same level of enthusiasm and rigour as before. You may constantly be receiving value from your team, but never giving any value back.
“Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon” — Adam Grant
Adam Grant explores this social exchange in his book “Give and Take” and defined three distinct archetypes, which translate quite well in workgroup dynamics:
- Takers: who are preoccupied with making sure they get their share
- Matches: who want everyone to have their fair share
- Givers: who lead with generosity
As Adam explains in his book, the giver will always win, by ceding away power in conversation to get others on their side. Also, givers can’t ever burn out if they see how significant their impact is to the broader team and organizational objective. They don’t take credit for other people’s achievements and are completely fine with it.
5. Not reminding the team of shared objectives and your ‘why’
We’ve all been there — being narrowly focused on deadlines and deliverables, doing everything possible to meet an often unattainable deadline. Instead of overworking to fulfill the requirements in time, you could instead miss the deadline completely for a better quality product or service that solves problems and align with the longer-term ‘why’.
If you’re stating a vision and mission without problem setting and context, you will find it harder to engage your stakeholders. These stakeholders may even accept the time slippage if the solution is higher quality and solves the longer-term shared goals and objectives.
Perhaps no greater proponent of reminding your audience of “why” is Simon Sinek, who is famous for many concepts, but his book of ‘Start with Why’ is most relevant. The core message is simple:
“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek
In what is now the 3rd most popular talk on TED, Simon dives into the quintessential example of Apple: First, Apple tells us why they’re here to shake things up. They then tell us how (e.g., easy-to-use, beautifully designed products) before addressing what goods and services they make: computers, phones, tablets, etc. Stating a strong and compelling vision that motivates, resonates and inspires your immediate stakeholders is something that all good managers should strive for, especially for managers looking to take that extra step towards becoming an authentic leader.
6. Organizing meetings, but leaning on others to drive outcomes
When soliciting feedback and ensuring people have their voices heard, one must be careful not to make decisions or create solutions that incorporate all points of views. Should this occur, you are merely becoming a ‘Consensus Administrator’ that ensures equal recognition, rather than being a ‘Driver’ that motivates and empowers action towards the right outcomes.
The ‘Consensus Administrator’ is a role that someone unknowingly takes when jotting-down all points of feedback, and then either:
- Lazily accepts a solution that takes the average of all stakeholder input to arrive at a disastrous outcome — effectively a solution that pleases the masses; or
- Allows the loudest opinion, typically a ‘HIPPO’, decide on behalf of the audience and override any creative problem-solving.
In many business scenarios, meeting all stakeholder needs is not possible. When possible, it is not the most efficient nor suitable decision to make, as competing priorities and tradeoffs are always common across teams.
The ‘Driver’ is different: instead of having a solution that includes requests and ideas in equal share from the group, the Driver puts all ideas out on the table for acceptance, feedback, and rejection. They then decide on behalf of the group what solution best addresses customer pain points. This may mean that some stakeholders will not get what they seek individually, but that’s OK, so long as people understand their shared purpose and objectives.
Ways to prevent accidental bad habits
First, recognize that these are simply just some accidental habits — in the end, we intend and mean well, but often don’t realize the impacts they have on us and the people around us.
Habits are indeed hard to change, but all it takes is some gentle tweaks in actions aided by some gentle reminders:
- For the highly agreeable “yes” person: start to say “no” more often and state your position for a constructive conversation.
- For the expert that doesn’t show their workings: explain how you arrived at your answer to respect the intellect of your fellow workers.
- For the unstructured decision-maker: use lightweight frameworks as a way to reason with your team and provide a discussion guide to constructive conversations.
- For the endless taker / non-giver: start to offer your time to solve your team member’s lingering challenges.
- For the tunnel visioner: begin stating the vision and direction by answering the question of ‘why’ before describing the ‘what’.
- For the lazy ‘consensus administrator’: start to become a driver of the conversation by inviting ideas but confidently deciding on a solution that meets the shared purpose, not the needs of each individual in your team.
If you change your behavior slightly to adopt one or more of the above, you will go a long way to not only maintaining your credibility but also bolstering their trust in you, not only as a co-worker but also as an empathetic fellow human being.