Building capacity: Navigating organizational opportunities as if they were a subway system

8th Annual NW Diversity Learning Series (2006)

Session Six: November 8, 2006:
Recovering from taking a wrong exit: Turning negative feedback (failure), or loss of face into a positive, capacity-building outcome.

Session Summary

It is often difficult to get back on your feet and move ahead in the face of negative feedback from a manager or co-worker. Sometimes negative feedback or a wrong turn can be debilitating. How can an employee take negative feedback and turn it into a mobilizing factor in order to get back in the game as quickly as possible?

Michael Hyter was the presenter for this session. He is the president and CEO of Boston-based Novations Group Inc., a global consulting and training organization. Michael took us through the steps of what to do, as employees, to stay in the game, and how managers can mobilize employees so negative feedback isn't debilitating.

The session objectives were as follows:

Recognize the two different mindsets used to assess individuals' capacity for learning and their implications for developing employees.

Know how to translate "effective effort" into behaviors and actions to manage your learning capacity and feelings in response to failure, setbacks, loss of face, or other difficulties on the job.

For employees: Learn tools and strategies to respond effectively to failure or difficulty and to "stay in the game."

For managers: Develop mobilizing skills for coaching employees toward "effective effort" after experiencing failure or difficulties on the job.

Hyter opened the session first with a broad overview of development: definitions and the four principles involved. Basically development is the expansion of skills and capabilities in at least three areas: intellectual, political/influential and social.

Hyter emphasized that development is learnable through a process called effective effort. He also emphasized that there are obstacles in the way to development, especially for women and people of color. These obstacles may be external/interpersonal or institutional, or they may be internal/physiological. These obstacles can be handled and the development process can be managed.

Role-Play

To demonstrate the models, Hyter simulated a role-play between himself, as a manager and two participants playing the roles of two employees. One employee represented the Caste-In-Concrete Model and the other represented the Capacity-Building Model. The way in which Hyter approached the two employees set them up for either limitless capacity or a fixed potential.

Models

To understand the development process, Hyter explained the two different mindsets people have when approaching learning capacity and development: Castes-In-Concrete or Capacity Building.

Castes-In-Concrete

This position assumes that "some have it, and some don't." Hyter says this is the dominant belief system in our culture.

In the Castes-In-Concrete mindset, human characteristics are:

• Believed to be innate endowments;
• Fixed at birth;
• Distributed unequally among the population and among different population groups.

These characteristics include intelligence, character and leadership.

The implications of judging with Castes-In-Concrete are that ability is fixed and not subject to further development. There is little control in the outcomes, and futility in continued effort.

Capacity Building

This position takes the stance that everyone has limitless potential, and characteristics like intelligence, character and leadership are subject to development throughout life.

These assumptions are the basis for continuous learning and professional development throughout life and are the foundations for organizational practices that support development.

The implications for thinking in terms of Capacity Building are that capabilities can be developed, people have more control of their development, and failure or difficulty can be mobilized into effective effort.

Effective Effort

The purpose of an effective effort framework is to manage learning capacity and positively respond to failure and difficulty.

Effective effort is based on tenacious engagement, an intense focus on data and feedback and an ongoing strategy formulation based on feedback.

Hyter asked audience members to throw out conditions that result in debilitated effort, things like lack of support, poor reactions to difficulty, etc. He then asked people to throw out conditions that result in effective effort, things like strong support and adaptive reactions to difficulty.

• When an individual is debilitated he/she
• Gives up easily in the face of difficulty,
• Tends to be limited in the responsibilities he/she will undertake,
• Makes limited use of available resources to help solve problems,
• Fails to complete tasks and,
• Is non-responsive to feedback and repeats mistakes.

• When an individual is mobilized he/she
• Takes the initiative to get the job done,
• Modifies behavior and skills based on feedback,
• Exhibits greater determination in the face of negative feedback,
• Takes a problem-solving approach to challenges
• Actively seeks out and takes advantage of resources to meet objectives

Hyter asked the question, "What role do leaders and managers play in keeping people's effort mobilized?" leading to the discussion on the Moderate Risk Zone (MRZ).

Moderate Risk Zone (MRZ)

The MRZ is the zone in which employees are at their most effective. If managers can find this zone, then they will play a large role in the development of employees.

On either sides of the MRZ are zones that are not challenging enough, and too challenging. When an employee is not challenged enough, the risk of failure is so low that employees don't care enough to really put effort into the assignment. There are no real possibilities for visibility from completing assignments that are too menial, so feedback, positive or negative is somewhat meaningless.

When an employee is too challenged, the same phenomenon occurs: although the chance for visibility is higher, an employee doesn't care enough to put much effort into something that has a high chance of failing.

The zone that results in the most effective effort is the moderate risk zone, where employees have a moderate risk of failure, feedback is relevant and important and the reward is good to excellent.

Case Study

Hyter presented a case study to present a variety of reactions to receiving negative feedback. After breaking into small discussion groups, the large group decided that the way an employee is treated previous to receiving negative feedback greatly affects how positively he/she reacts.

This case study was valuable to both employers and employees because it provided a real-life example of how the treatment of individual employees changes the way they perceive their value to the organization.

Data/Feedback/Strategy

Because everyone encounters difficulty on the job, every employee and manager can benefit from having a tool to handle any difficult situation.

The Data/Feedback/Strategy method is the tool for handling difficulty and failure. Following is how to apply the D/S/F strategy:

In this exercise, you will apply the D/F/S method to a current situation.

1. Identify a project or assignment where you are experiencing significant difficulty or failure.
2. Describe the situation in detail:
3. Describe your emotions about the situation and the emotions of others who might be involved:

1. Identify the DATA

What is the standard for success? How are you doing compared to that standard?

2. Give yourself FEEDBACK

What are you doing well? (Think about it. There has to be at least some things you are doing well.)

Where do you think your actions are falling short? Identify as many aspects or elements as you can of the situation, or yourself, that may be contributing to your difficulties.

What must you work on to improve? What are the key, strategic drivers for improvement?

What must you do differently or better? What knowledge or skills can you add that will substantially improve your prospects for turning the situation around now, or the next time you try something similar?

What emotions, in yourself or others, do you need to manage to get a better outcome next time?

3. Develop a STRATEGY.

Using the feedback you identified in #2, develop a plan to achieve a better outcome.

Define your general approach for improvement. What will you actually do to achieve a better outcome?

If new knowledge or better skills are needed, how will you go about acquiring them?

What obstacles might you encounter? How would you manage them?

Conclusions

Everyone, at some point in a career, encounters negative feedback or makes a wrong turn. While this can be debilitating, it can work just as strongly toward mobilization. When an employee is regarded with potential, negative feedback is processed like any other data. This type of employee can recover and move forward. When an employee has been placed with potential limits, negative feedback can move them out of the game.

It is critical for managers and employees to be aware of how they are regarding and treating the potential of others so that every employee can produce the most effective and productive effort.

Michael Hyter, President and CEO of Novations Group, Boston, MA, was the presenter for the November 8, 2006 session of the Northwest Diversity Learning Series in Seattle, Washington on the topic of turning negative feedback (failure), or loss of face into a positive, capacity-building outcome.

The 2006 NW Diversity Learning Series (now in its 9th year) focused on the theme, Building Capacity: Navigating organizational opportunities as if they were a subway system.

Using the metaphor of a subway system, each of the six-bi-monthly morning seminars explored some of the ways that access to organizational opportunities and career development are hidden and therefore more difficult for women and people of color, as well as people who speak English as a second language, to utilize. The purpose of this Series was for everyone to become more aware of organizational culture and how it impacts building people's capacity, and for everyone, managers and employees, to become better at navigating these cultural obstacles along career paths.

For more information about the NW Diversity Learning Series, please visit the Series section of our website.

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