Take a Cooperative Approach to Conflict Resolution

Many in my fields of competitive intelligence and research have lost their jobs in this tough economy.  While cooperative intelligence skills of leadership, connection and communication don’t guarantee job security, they will help you stand out since many people have lower emotional intelligence: that is they have weak people skills.

I like the cooperative approach shared in Hot Buttons to solve conflicts with colleagues as it’s objective, focuses on constructive communication, and not “who dunnit?:

How did our conflict start? What hot buttons were pressed? Yours? Mine?

Which of your needs are not being met? What are your goals?

What do I need?

What am I doing, saying or not saying that is preventing your goals>

What is the cost of not solving this problem? Specifically…

What are the benefits of resolving the problem? What can I do?

How can we start?

At the heart of any organization is the connection between manager and reporting employees.  To improve the relationship and demonstrate cooperative leadership and promote loyalty consider the following 4 attributes:

Trust – is a two-way street.  Managers and employees need to express confidence in each other.

Respect – recognize your employee’s competence. Show thanks and appreciation for your employee’s work, in a note, a conversation…

Inclusion – include employee’s opinions and welfare in decisions that affect him/her.

Fairness – give all an equal opportunity to be successful. Be even handed, impartial and objective.

Another pet peeve I have is that many managers don’t give good feedback to their employees during their quarterly or annual review process.  Lousy feedback, lack of feedback or the destructive delivery of feedback is a form of disrespect and maddens people.

I had a difficult employee who I had to provide feedback to outside of the annual review process.  She wasn’t pulling her weight, and was certain that her contribution–based on her straight A’s in a decent college–was excellent.  I was at my wit’s end to get her to produce.  How could I cool my heels and get through to this woman?  I started with her place of strength: I complimented her on her wonderful grades and high IQ which caused her to relax and smile.

Then I asked her for the date to get her to realize she was now out of school and while the grades got her this job, production would be the key to keeping it since her co-workers completed their projects in less time.  I also implored her sense of fairness since the other workers had to stay late to finish work that she wasn’t, and she knew she didn’t want that.

We turned it around since we started with her strong point and built on it, and I knew she had a strong sense of fairness towards her co-workers.  She started to produce great work once she had time to digest that I valued her intelligence, and wanted her to apply it at work.

What stories do you have where you turned around a difficult situation?

Conflict Resolution: Know Your Hot Buttons & Be Aware of Other’s!

I’m still visiting my folks in VA and my Dad is failing. As I ponder his life, I recall what a great attorney he was, and how he could chew right through conflict. Case in point: he started his legal career defending Japanese war criminals after WWII.

I had the good fortune to read Hot Buttons: How to Resolve Conflict and Cool Everyone Down by Sybil Evans and Sherry Suib Cohen.

The mind and the body are twins. Poet Algernon Swinburne

What happens in your mind and spirit gets to your stomach and your heart.

A Hot Button is an emotional trigger and when someone pushes one of your hot buttons, you know it since it make you a little crazy. Self awareness of what makes you crazy and an awareness of others’ hot buttons—is very useful in business. It is important to know your conflict style. Before you can diffuse your hot buttons you must be clear about what inflames them. This sounds a lot like emotional intelligence to me!

The book describes 5 conflict styles:

Avoider – Make “it go away” is the goal when conflict intrudes your life

Slash-and-Burn – Tough guy who is “in-your-face”

Peace at all Costs – Harmony is the goal here

Problem Solver – No problem is insurmountable if you work at it

Exploder – Into high drama, emotional and demonstrative

This bleeds right into cooperative intelligence’s leadership, connection and communication.

Leadership – Good leaders are self-aware and observant enough to notice what triggers other’s hot buttons.

Connection – This sensitivity helps develop trusting and lasting relationships.

Communication – Hot button awareness helps us be better observers, listeners and communicators.

So how do you resolve conflicts which stem from Hot Buttons? The book outlines 5 steps:

1. Watch the Play – as though you’re the audience, not a participant. “Watch & play” creates a mental attitude of detachment and objectivity.

2. Confirm – the validity of the other person’s anger. You let them know you’re ready to listen.

3. Get more Info – by asking open-ended Questions.

4. Assert your own interests and needs. Note: this is step 4 after you have calmed down and listened to the other guy’s point of view. Now he is likely to listen to you.

5. Find common ground – for a solution with a problem-solving approach.

There are several tippers from this book that I practice to avoid conflicts:

1. People’s beliefs are not always what you assume they are. When people make wrong assumptions, it can push hot buttons.

2. Empathy is a great hot button diffuser since it acknowledges the other person’s feelings, and takes your mind off your own feelings and allows you to creep into someone else’s. This is calming during a conflict.

3. Ask questions – Questions help you learn more information about the other guy’s feelings, and give you time to cool down, if you’re angry

4. Paraphrase – By restating I can make sure I heard exactly what my partner meant me to hear. Paraphrasing also lets the other guy know I am listening, a key ingredient to conflict resolution.

Here are two books I recommend which are in a similar vein:

Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler and Stephen R. Covey (my comments)

The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes by Bill Ury

Presenting at SCIP’s 2009 Annual Conference, April 22 – 25, Chicago, IL

Whew, I just finished creating two presentations for SCIP’s (Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) Annual Conference in Chicago from April 21 – 24. The first talk is “Build a Sustainable Early Warning Process through Cooperative Connection” and the second is “Capture Competitive Intelligence from Sales and Customers for Lucrative Product Development.”

scip-09-chicago

Early warning is one of the key processes behind a successful competitive intelligence operation. I notice that it is often developed almost “robotically,” and the importance of connecting with individuals is underestimated in favor of the easy way out through electronic monitoring, which while essential will never replace the information exchange and connection you will gain from people in dialog!

The talk on capturing CI from sales and customers to develop better products comes from a case study with a European client. Product developers were going nuts as they read sales reps’ customer reports because they could just see that the customer would have been willing to share so much information with sales, but somehow sales hadn’t asked for it. Sales had no idea what key information product developers were looking for. In fact I found that product developers had a hard time getting me to understand their precise information needs. I put together a workshop to teach sales and marketing people competitive intelligence skills like elicitation and reading body language. We had a discussion to clarify the product developer’s 10 key questions, and to consider how a customer might be motivated to answer these questions. Participants role played around each of these questions to test drive their newly developed elicitation skills. Sales is great at elicitation since they are spontaneous, own the customer relationship, and can be flexible if a customer doesn’t respond in the way sales had hoped they would. In addition to learning how to collect competitive information, Sales also benefited by improving their industry expertise and closing more deals!

In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, here are some more details on SCIP’s annual conference in Chicago from April 21 – 24. It takes place at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.

The educational sessions are organized into the following 5 tracks:

– CI Offense/Defense
– Professional Effectiveness
– Critical Skills
– Innovation in CI
– Active Dialog

Here is the list of educational sessions which take place on April 23 & 24, and a more detailed description with speakers and times. SCIP also offers pre-conference workshops on April 21 & 22.

Take advantage of the special Early Bird Reduced rate, a $200+ savings until April 12th, 2009.  All that is required is that my name, Ellen Naylor, be mentioned on the attached form which should be faxed to 703-739-2524.

I hope to see you at SCIP’s annual conference! Feel free to ask any questions on this blog post and I’ll find answers for you.

Trick or Tweet: 13 Ways to Alienate Twitter Followers

This is a follow-up to “Netiquette on LinkedIn.” In the spirit of cooperative intelligence, I will illustrate how to be cooperative by sharing examples of bad Twitter communication practices.
Here 13 ways to alienate your Followers on Twitter:
1. Advertise your blog posts and everything about your business with every Tweet. It’s OK to send a person to your blogs as you publish, but it is tacky to repeat and/or re-tweet (repeat your Tweets) about your business continuously. I like the 80:20 rule–80% of my Tweets are about others; 20% about me.
2. Don’t share anything about yourself in your profile. That’s a way to discourage people from following you. People are curious about who you are: tell them and be human about it. I include a link to my LinkedIn profile, and got that idea by looking at a colleague’s profile.
3. Don’t have a picture or brand by your name. That’s an opportunity lost for branding. It’s so much more interesting to see someone’s picture next to their Tweet rather than the ugly, brown default space.

4. Don’t use your Tweets as a chat room. Some people are really just Tweeting to each other. Send that person a direct Tweet. The rest of us feel left out and don’t want to be a part of your personal conversation.

5. Don’t publicly berate anyone in your Tweets. Remember your manners.

6. Twitter is not a megaphone for one way communication. Engage your followers by sharing information you think they will appreciate and ask them questions.

7. Set up a robot to send a standard message thanking people for following you on Twitter. I find this insulting. I would rather get no message than a robotic one.

8. Mass following everyone so you can inflate your numbers, and then use that success metric for influence. Some people will “Brag Tweet” that they just got over 100 followers in a 24 hour period. We followers don’t care! Think about how this makes your followers feel–not very special.

9. Some people argue that you should automatically follow everyone who follows you on Twitter. I think it depends on your goals. I am not in Twitter for the numbers game. I would like to get to know the people who follow me, gradually. For example I am not a huge sports fan or into pumping iron, but somehow I am being followed by these types. BTW, Tweet Deck lets you organize those who follow you in categories that you create. For example, I create separate columns for Tweets from my personal friends, my research and competitive intelligence colleagues, friends in my state of Colorado, and frequent Tweeters.

10. Some people Tweet so often that they fill up their followers’ screens with their Tweets. It’s obvious they’re using software  to send out Tweets periodically 24/7. I’m not knocking the use of technology: just don’t use it to abuse us! I think it’s better to send out occasional Tweets that are relevant to your social networking goals and the brand you are portraying. For example, I mostly report on competitive intelligence, research, marketing, and cooperative intelligence’s traits of leadership, connection and communication.

11. Some people Tweet the mundane details about their life which we really don’t care about like, “I just baked a loaf of bread. I’m waiting for my flight at Denver airport.” This is boring! Is this how you want to be remembered?

12. There are some people who have 1000s of followers, but who follow no one. This is rude and insinuates that you are a taker. The only exception to this rule might be news stations like CNN, but even they want to follow a certain number of people to stay up with the news.

13. Some people just Tweet a link and don’t tell us why we should want to visit it. This takes very little time to include. It’s a real turnoff just to provide a link and makes people think you’re lazy.

So what do you find aggravating about practices on Twitter?

Check out The Dark Side of Twitter: What Businesses Need to Know.

In closing, when communicating on social networks, as with in-person networking you have to decide what works best for you based on your objectives for social networking, your ethics and philosophy, and recognize that everyone you connect with has their own standards which might be different from yours. It takes time to build a successful social networking presence just like it does the old fashioned way through meetings and phone calls. Relationships take time to develop, and the best way to nourish them is through continual, consistent communication, asking questions and listening.

Next Generation Competitive Intelligence Deliverables: SCIP Webinar

This promises to be a great webinar which coincidentally illustrates cooperative intelligence practices, both cooperative communication and cooperative connection. The material Marty Palka covers will also be useful outside of the competitive intelligence profession. Anyone who provides a service will benefit from his ideas.

This Webinar is sponsored by SCIP.
“Next Generation Competitive Intelligence Deliverables ”
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. USA EST; Feb. 18, 2009
Fee: Member $95*  Non-member $195*
*A site is one computer used to view the Webinar
Register Here.   scip-webinar-archives

Next generation companies will be more collaborative with far more interactions among their customers, suppliers, employees and partners. This will mandate that competitive intelligence professionals incorporate next generation technology when creating competitive intelligence deliverables.

Through his experience at Cisco, Marty will tell you how to communicate more effectively by adding Web 2.0 technology to your communication arsenal.  He will talk about how to truly connect with people, and how to rate and assess the connection.  Through social networks, you connect with so many more people that you need to stand back and re-assess your connections periodically to concentrate on the most valuable, and to reach out to people in areas where you might be weak, such as innovation.  I like that Marty will share ideas on the other end of connection: how people assess you and your deliverables as a competitive intelligence professional.  It will be the best of both worlds: traditional and Web 2.0 connecting and communicating!

Here are key points that Marty will cover:

1) The Virtual Competitive Intelligence Professional: Locate, rank and rate experts within your organization.
2) Video: Change the process to take advantage of video’s unique attributes to deliver competitive intelligence.
3) Global: Go where the expertise is 24 hours a day.
4) Green: Right for the world and right for your business.
Metrics measure the success of Cisco’s competitive intelligence deliverables.
Quantitative: Number of hits, listeners, viewers, interactions, and actions taken. Qualitative: Recommendations, Revenue, Profitability, Setting the Industry Agenda.

Marty Palka is Chief Intelligence Analyst, (CIA), Investor Relations for Cisco Systems. He has contributed to Cisco Systems’ strategic and tactical intelligence initiatives since joining the company in 1995. Previously he was a Director and Principal Analyst at Dataquest. He has also worked at SGI, Prime Computer, and Data General. He earned his M.B.A and B.S. from Boston University.

Questions:
Contact Registration: memberservices@scip.org
Program content & logistics: Sandy Skipper at +1.703.739.0696 x110, sskipper@scip.org
Robyn Reals at +1.703.739.0696 X107, rreals@scip.org

Learn about more SCIP events.

Learn about SCIP’s annual conference here.scip-09-chicago

Take advantage of the special Early Bird Reduced rate until the close of registration, April 12th, 2009.  All that is required is that my name, Ellen Naylor, be mentioned on the attached form which should be faxed to 703-739-2524.

Build Cooperative Trust: Learn from Millard Fuller, Habitat for Humanity Visionary

creativitycentralmariacharlie1I just had the privilege to attend my friends, Maria and Charlie Girsch’s 40th wedding anniversary celebration which started with a renewal of their vows.  Maria and Charlie are toy inventors who lead Creativity Central where they teach people how to be creative based on their 25 years of creativity with toys.  Their list of toy inventions numbers over 200!

Their celebration service was led by The Very Reverend Peter Eaton of Saint John’s Cathedral in Denver, Colorado.   He gave a stirring homily as he recounted the life of Millard Fuller, the visionary whose ideas and tireless work created Habitat for Humanity in 1976 who died on Feb. 3, 2009. How fortunate for Millard Fuller that President Jimmy Carter publicly supported Habitat in its early days which gave the organize a huge PR boost!  He has been an active volunteer in building Habitat homes and endorsing Habitat.

By Habitat’s 25th anniversary, tens of thousands of people were volunteering with Habitat and more than 500,000 people were living in Habitat homes.  “Millard Fuller’s drive and relentless commitment to affordable housing captured people’s imagination and changed lives around the world,” said J. Ronald Terwilliger, chair of Habitat’s International Board of Directors. “His inspiration lives on in Habitat’s work and through its employees, volunteers, partner families and supporters.”

Today more than a million people live in Habitat built, reconstructed or revamped homes, which are in more than 100 countries. Former President Jimmy Carter said: “He (Fuller) was an inspiration to me, other members of our family and an untold number of volunteers who worked side by side under his leadership.” Former President Bill Clinton has also volunteered on Habitat projects. When he presented Fuller the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, Clinton said, “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Millard Fuller has literally revolutionized the concept of philanthropy.”

Millard Fuller’s leadership of Habitat for Humanity is an example of cooperative intelligence in the non-profit world, which continues to thrive.  It is a hugely successful cooperative effort by many people to restore or build homes for the less fortunate around the globe.

In our tough economic times, leadership needs to engage in cooperative intelligence and build support systems among employees, customers and suppliers like Miller Fuller did for Habitat. Many employees feel fear, and that they’re beaten up by their company’s management to do more with less.  How will companies foster a cooperative spirit when they are struggling to survive? It is more important than ever that the remaining employees in companies feel valued and are motivated to work hard, not just to keep their jobs, but because they want to.

What steps can you take to build up your company’s cooperative intelligence “trust” fund?

Sharpen Your Emotional Intelligence Skills

Emotional Intelligence is a important component of cooperative intelligence. Referred to as EI, often measured as an Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), it is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power of emotions to facilitate high levels of collaboration and productivity. (Cooper & Sawaf 1998, Executive IQ, New York: Perigee)

According to Daniel Goleman, the father and author of Emotional Intelligence, there are 5 skills that enable EI:

1. Self awareness – knowing your moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others

2. Self regulation – the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting

3. Motivation – a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status and a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

4. Empathy – understanding other people’s emotional makeup and the skill to treat people according to their emotional reactions

5. Social skill – an ability to find common ground and build rapport. Skill in managing relationships and building networks

In my field of competitive intelligence a high EQ is helpful since we’re often delivering people bad news like, “Competitor A is getting ready to launch a disruptive technology,” or “We need to get this product to market before Competitor A or does else we’ll lose X% market share.” We are being paid to “tell the truth” and we cause stress since often “they” don’t want to hear bad news or threats to the business even if it is the truth. We have to stay strong to deliver bad news, and also be sensitive as to how “they” are going to take the news and not spring surprises, for example. I found one way not to be regarded as Darth Vader is to present management with opportunities as well.

What’s neat about EI versus IQ is that we can learn and be coached to improve our EI skills, whereas we’re born with a certain IQ. In this vein, I am studying to be a certified mentor for a company called EQmentor founded by the genius of Izzy Justice.

What’s really neat about EQmentor is it’s all on-line and there is total anonymity between mentors and mentees. I think their timing is really right as about 70% of communication is electronic, an indication of its high acceptance. When I formed The Business Intelligence Source  in 1993, my phone rang all day. Now it’s email, Twitter Tweets, LinkedIn and Facebook communication that talk to me 24/7.

EQmentor provides an incredible repository of information that mentors and mentees have access to in addition to members of the EQmentor community. The company carefully matches mentors and mentees and the relationship is a 6 month engagement, long enough to make a change in a person’s life. I know the price is right compared to traditional coaching so it will be affordable to more people.

What do you think about this concept at EQmentor? How do you use emotional intelligence in your profession?

Win/Loss Analysis book gives you a process to learn why you’re losing business and how to keep more of it!

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Diplomat Dennis Ross: Cooperative Leader & Active Listener

I was inspired by Kit Cooper’s  interview with Dennis Ross, one of the most skilled diplomats in the world who was appointed by President Obama to serve as the chief envoy for Iran.

“I tell people that work with me that one of the most important skills in negotiations is active listening. I believe in not always asking questions with the purpose of getting the other side to reveal things. There is immense, untapped benefit to getting a deep understanding of what drives them and you certainly build good will with such an approach. “Why is that issue important to you? I want to understand it the way you understand it. I don’t want to have a false impression. Explain to me why that matters so much to you. Where does it come from? Why does it create an imperative?” You can’t find the underlying sources of behavior and issues unless you ask questions in this way. When people see that I am curious by being an active listener, they get a message of respect from me. And of course you have the benefit of actually learning something.”

Mr. Ross’s actions and attitude are that of a cooperative leader. Cooperative leadership is more a state of mind than a position within a company or in politics. Leaders are uncomfortable with the status quo, and live uncertain, risk filled lives and yet have a sense of belonging to the human race. They are life long learners who often serve and contribute to others. Thus people who work for them or connect with them in everyday life are uplifted and feel free. A cooperative leader really values and trusts the interdependence of relationships. Active listening is a leading characteristic of a cooperative leader and crosses all job functions. I think executives who are cooperative leaders give their companies a tremendous competitive advantage since they are open to listening and learning so are less likely to be blind sided by surprise market developments, new technology or an emerging competitor.

BTW if you want to gain great insight into Dennis Ross, check out his book, Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World.

Win Loss Analysis is more than Competitive Intelligence

Win loss analysis is my favorite tactical cooperative intelligence practice as it offers the best ROI of any sales intelligence tool. You gain intelligence by interviewing your customers shortly after the sales event to find out why they chose to do business with you or decided on a competitor. The data gathered combines knowledge from sales, customers, competitors, and your marketplace.

Consider these points to develop a cooperative B to B win loss process:

  • Clearly identify objectives for conducting win loss
  • Invest the time to develop the questions you want answered
  • Include Sales
  • Maintain professionalism throughout the process
  • Don’t just “survey” your customers
  • Don’t just interview losses; include wins
  • Communicate findings broadly within your company

I’ve conducted win/loss interviews and analysis for years, and enjoyed reading Ford Harding’s post, “Learning from Loss,” where he shared findings from Ken Sawka of Outward Insights about what can be obtained from conducting win loss interviews.

What I found most interesting was Ford’s experience in professional services firms where partners do the work and make or lose the sale so there isn’t a dedicated sales force.  Ford’s focus isn’t competitive intelligence so his perspective is valuable to those of us with our heads in the competitive intelligence sandbox.  He is the author of Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field.  A rain maker is an employee who creates a significant amount of new business to a company. Rain Making uncovers how professional services are marketed successfully in terrific detail.  I decided to buy the book to gain the perspective of selling in professional services as I sold in the retail and telecommunications arenas. BTW Rain Making gets very good reviews on Amazon.

As a competitive intelligence professional, you will be more successful in capturing competitive data from sales if you build your emotional intelligence by gaining an understanding and empathy for the challenges and joys of their job. You will most certainly acquire this from Rain Making.  You might even give your company’s sales and PR folks some tippers from this book.

For more reading on win loss analysis consider this article, “Increasing Sales through Win Loss Analysis.”

Do you conduct win loss interviews at your company?  If so, how have you used the findings to improve your business?

Be notified when our book, Win/Loss Analysis: How to Clinch and Keep the Business You Want is published.

Don’t be a verbal pack rat!

This is inspired by Seth Godin’s post entitled, “Sorry we’re out of time.”

Here is the part which spoke to me:

“I often hear presenters who always manage to need just two more minutes than the time allows. So, instead of exiting gracefully when there’s ten seconds left on the clock, they either steal time from the next person or try to rush through six slides and their conclusion.

What a waste.

Do you save the most important part of the meeting for the end, when everyone is already standing?

Plan for the end.”

OK I am guilty as charged as I always have more than enough material to cover in a presentation right up to the end.  Why do I do this?  I am a researcher at heart and I want to impart as much information as I can so my audience gets their money’s worth.  That is what I appreciate in a speaker, lots of information flying at me.  I am a verbal pack rat, just like “ahem” the electronic and paper files that are overflowing in my office.

But does my audience really get their money’s worth from this verbal pack rat? Is it really respectful for me to barrage them with more information than they can process in the time allotted?

Thank you Seth. Verbal pack rats are often guilty of one-way communication. I never really thought about it this way. I am going to shorten my presentation material into more easily digestible bites, and think about the end, since the ending comments are often the longest lasting with audiences.  I will also leave some time for questions and interaction with the audience, which is also respectful.

This really epitomizes cooperative communication. Consider how every audience wants to be addressed with respect. Give them enough time to process the information you present and the opportunity to get answers to their questions.

Think about the end. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  ~ Dr. Maya Angelou