I am a manager, but things are not running as smoothly as I would like!

Are you a manager, board member or managing director and your team or company is not running as smoothly as you would like?

• Are employees disrupting collaboration and the focus on work with their personal issues and “emotional rucksacks”?
• Are there tensions in the team that tie up energy that you would rather use for your team, your company? Perhaps it goes as far as forming camps?
• Do you sense an uneasy feeling in the team? Low motivation, less willingness to perform?
• Maybe even notices that you don’t need right now?
• Or your customers are dissatisfied? Perhaps you are already losing orders?

What can I do as a manager in such situations?

I am regularly asked this question. Here is some food for thought for you in the form of a 6-point emergency program.

In contrast to other articles, I try to provide you with simple models and tools so that you can try out the models we use in coaching yourself, directly and easily. Quasi “do-it-yourself” leadership development. I also link to some templates for the tools, which you can simply download and use for yourself.

Summary

The starting point for this article is disruptions in the team. In other words, negative aspects of team collaboration and team performance. In the following, I present six thought-provoking ideas.

The first three thought-provoking impulses are aimed at bringing a team from the negative area of “team quality” to a neutral, functioning level. Quasi as “emergency measures”:

• Food for thought 1: What is really happening? And who else is involved? Use a systematic three-step technique that allows you to understand all relevant perspectives and levels of the disorder.
• Food for thought 2: Where do you want to go instead? Where do you want to go instead? I will give you a simple procedure with which you can easily create a clear framework to counter the disorder with an “instead” (thinking, behavior patterns, etc.).
• Food for thought 3: What is your contribution as a manager to and in the disruption? I will give you a tool to help you become aware of how much and what specifically you yourself contribute to the disruption – because you as a manager are inevitably part of every disruption. If you understand this, then you will also know what you can change about yourself.

The next three thought-provoking impulses show you which measures and tools you can use to move a team from neutral to positive. In other words, how you can create so-called high-performance teams:

• Food for thought 4: Do we trust each other? I will show you that it is all about trust at the relationship level and show you which four aspects you should take into account in your day-to-day management work in order to strengthen trust in the team.
• Food for thought 5: Can we communicate well? Can we engage in factual, passionate, tough and constructive discussions? Here I give you tips on how you can create a framework and a mindset to enable a framework and a space for efficient, focused, factual and passionate exchange and thus enable better decisions and release more energy and ownership in the team.
• Food for thought 6: How do you deal with motivation? Here I reflect on what motivation actually is and which drivers strengthen motivation in you and your team. And I’ll give you a simple analysis scheme that you can use to quickly identify which three measures will boost motivation.

First, I present the food for thought itself and the associated tools, with the aim of giving you ideas on how you as a manager can change situations yourself. At the end, I will show you what additional options there are for you to get external support (coaching, team coaching) in order to resolve problems and create a high-performance team in a focused and efficient manner.

The food for thought

Food for thought 1: What is really happening? And who else is involved?

The fault seems obvious at first. It’s the one issue, the one employee. And you have already addressed the issue. You have issued clear guidelines and taken a stand.

In fact, we tend to explain and evaluate quickly. Based on an incomplete view, based on gut feeling. We often underestimate the power of group dynamics between employees. The behavior of one employee leads to emotional reactions from other employees, creating a vicious circle. There are often substitute discussions: There is intense, sometimes aggressive arguing on a factual level, but there is actually something else behind it, such as disappointment or fear. Or people fight over processes that are actually about power, importance or recognition.

Indications that your understanding of the disorder could be more complete and differentiated are:

• The situation repeats itself. You have often set boundaries, held individual employee meetings and communicated your understanding of respectful treatment and performance orientation – but the team keeps falling back into old patterns.
• You feel an emotional, sometimes physical discomfort during discussions that only seem to be conducted on a factual level. You are burdened by these tensions yourself, you think about them even after work, at the weekend or on vacation.
• A lot of energy is lost somewhere in the team that you would rather use for your goals. There is a kind of “black hole” for energy. You haven’t found this black hole yet.
• Simple, clear things don’t work. You explain and guide on a factual level – but with little effect.

A more complete view of the situation helps you as a manager to act better and more effectively and to address the causes and not the symptoms (the disruptive behavior).

My first invitation in this article is a very simple, systematic methodology that helps you to look at disturbing situations more consciously, from different perspectives and on different levels.

At the heart of the methodology are three simple questions, often referred to as the “ladder of inference”:

It is important to ask yourself the questions in this order – and only answer the next question once you have clarified the previous question for yourself. Include all perspectives in your reflections, i.e. all potential stakeholders – customers, colleagues, partners and yourself.

This means: Only when you have given yourself time to perceive the situation neutrally – without explanation or evaluation – do you move on to the next question – the explanation. In the first step, try to consciously separate perception and explanation. What do you see, what do you feel? What do others see, what do they feel? What do you hear? What do you see (e.g. body language)? You can also use your own body feeling as a good antenna. If, for example, fear is involved, this is usually transmitted unconsciously and we feel pressure and heaviness in our bodies.

Only then go to the question of the explanation. In most cases, you have already found a concrete explanation for yourself. I invite you to take an open approach and formulate 2-3 alternative hypotheses, i.e. alternative explanations, as a thought experiment. How might the other people involved explain the situation? What explanations are there on an organizational and procedural level or on an emotional/relationship level instead of on a factual level? You don’t need one absolute truth as an explanation. It’s about getting different perspectives.

Only with these hypotheses do you consider the possible evaluations. Your own, but also those of others. Reflect on the different evaluations that the situation can evoke in your team, in you and in your employees. This is also about getting different perspectives.

You will find out: These three questions are often enough to get a different, deeper and more complete view of the situation. Perhaps this suggestion will already untie the knot for you and you will know how to approach the situation as a manager. Otherwise … read on!

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

As coaches, we typically support managers as part of executive coaching. In this step, we act as sparring partners in analyzing situations and problems, help you to ask the right questions and bring you new perspectives. We also train the proposed tool – and many other methods – with you.

We are also happy to work in the form of mediation or disruption coaching. Even then, the aim is to first understand the situation as a whole with its different levels and perspectives, to defuse it emotionally and to find solutions together. These solutions are often win-win.

Food for thought 2: Where do you want to go instead? Where do you want to go instead?

Reducing and eliminating disruptions means bringing about behavioral changes in the team. With the first food for thought, you have understood the situation in more detail, from different perspectives and at different levels.

If you really want to bring about changes in behavior, the next step is to work out a clear “instead” and implement it with the team. The reason for this is that it has been scientifically proven that people find it much easier to “do” things than to “not do” things. In other words, as a manager, you need to provide a clear, positively formulated picture (without “don’t”, “no”, “refrain from” …) of what behavior you expect and why. You need clarity about where and how. The “instead” must include the factual level as well as the organization, but also the culture – how do we deal with each other?

Indications that you are not sufficiently clear in “instead” are:

• Those involved express directly or among themselves their uncertainty and lack of clarity about what your focus, your goal is.
• There is a lack of clarity about what you decide and which decisions the team and employees are allowed to make themselves. As a result, many decisions are delegated back to you.
• Staff appraisals lead to discussions about how an employee’s work should be evaluated (I did a lot of xy), and you find it difficult to argue against this.
• You observe that employees are openly or covertly pursuing individual goals and not acting in the interests of the common goal.

So before you intervene, work out an “instead” for yourself as a manager. And then compare the unwanted behavior with the “instead”.

Here, too, I invite you to do a simple exercise: Prepare a small table with two columns. Column 1 has the heading “Instead”, column 2 the heading “Not this”.

Now just fill in the “Don’t do this” column with all the behavioral patterns that bother you and that you want to get rid of or change. Leave plenty of space between the individual lines.

In the next step, you now fill the first column of your table with the “Instead”. Let your findings from the first food for thought (all perspectives and levels) guide you. Aspects of the “instead” will be repeated in the first column. This doesn’t matter at first.

Now cut the table in two along the center line. Put the old right-hand side of the table to one side and only look at the “instead”. You are welcome to reorganize, structure and cluster the “instead” for yourself. You should now have a clear picture of the “instead” – at least in relation to the disruption – and one in positive formulations.

And now think about how you as a manager want to anchor your “instead” in the team. Please note: There is no such thing as mind reading. Your employees don’t automatically know your “instead”. You will have to communicate clearly and repeatedly. And you will have to exemplify the “instead” yourself.

Perhaps you would also like to address, sharpen and clarify the “instead” with your team? If this is the case, then I encourage you to do so. Stick to the same order at such a team meeting: first clarify the “instead”, then, if necessary, put the “not so” against it. In this way, you will develop a framework, a common direction for acting as a team. You resolve disruptions and become able to work again.

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

Here, too, we support you in individual coaching in a moderating, reflective and questioning way to develop and structure your “instead”. We prepare you for your communication to and within the team and to other stakeholders. We bring the necessary tools with us.

We often also work with those affected or even with the teams and you in the form of mediation or mediation coaching. Even then, the aim is to first understand the situation as a whole with its different levels and perspectives, to defuse it emotionally and to find solutions together. These solutions are often actually win-win.

Food for thought 3: What is your part as a manager in and in the disruption?

Why me? The employee, the colleague, are the problem?

That may be. But we are all human beings. We are “resonance beings” – we resonate with strong emotions, with disturbances. We have our own issues and fears. We may have our own guidelines and goals, our own ambitions and desires. A disturbance does something to us. What happens inside us has an effect on the disorder. Reinforces it or weakens it. What’s more, our emotions are an excellent antenna for what is happening emotionally in the team.

Indicators that it is worth looking at your own part, your own reactions and becoming more resilient as a manager are:

• You feel physical reactions in the situation or just thinking about the disorder, a heaviness in the abdominal area, pressure in the chest, warmth, heat.
• You perceive in other ways how the situation makes you feel stressed and feel that your communication and behavior are negatively influenced by this.
• Perhaps there are reactions, patterns of behavior on your part that you regret afterwards. Where you ask yourself: “Should I have reacted like that?”

If you know these indicators, I invite you to try out the following tools:

• Self-care and the pane of glass: If you sense that the situation is getting “hot”, i.e. you are also reacting emotionally, then look at yourself from the outside, so to speak, become your own observer. Imagine that there is an imaginary pane of glass between you and the situation. Observe what happens on your side of the pane of glass (your parts) and what happens on the other side (other parts). This is not yet about changing your or others’ behavior, but simply about gaining a better understanding of the patterns and your parts.
• Pattern recognition with the disturbance diary: I also invite you to write down these patterns from the “glass pane exercise” for yourself in a small disturbance or situation diary. Write them down briefly: What happened, who was involved, what was my stress level, did you also have positive feelings and what was the pattern?
• Find resources for your personal resilience: Reflect on your disruption diary at regular intervals and think about the situations in which you were less negatively affected emotionally. What were the things, reasons and thoughts that helped you to be calmer, stronger and more resilient? Use precisely these personal resources in the future to remain mindful, but not to resonate negatively in disruptions.

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

The core of our work as coaches is to help you analyze your emotional parts, your feelings in stressful situations. Of course, we practise the tools described with you, but also other methods.

However, when we work together individually, i.e. in executive coaching, we have the opportunity to delve even deeper into the causes and background of your own patterns and to resolve or change them sustainably and in the long term.

With the three thought-provoking impulses so far, your problems have been understood, addressed and perhaps even solved.

However, you may want to use the situation to develop and grow in a positive direction. From a dysfunctional team to a strong, satisfied, high-performing team. By working on the dysfunction, you have the opportunity to strengthen team cohesion (trust, communication), release more energy and motivation and pursue your goals in a more focused and successful way.

With the next three thought-provoking impulses, I would like to show you the steps to take. This food for thought is taken from our methodology for developing high-performance teams and is based on the scientifically sound and proven work of Patrick Lencioni.

Food for thought 4: Do we trust each other?

What does it mean when we talk about trust in teams, between teams and managers? In colloquial language, the word “trust” often has the meaning of trust on a substantive level (“I trust that you can do this”). This is not the point. Nor is it about forced sympathy. Instead, it’s about trust at the relationship level, about whether managers and employees know that “they won’t be wiped out”. Simon Sinek refers to this as a “circle of safety”. Trust is the emotional space in which intensive and constructive communication takes place.

What are indicators that trust should be strengthened in your teams?

• You observe tactics, politicking, maybe even intrigues in the team.
• You or your team are very much in need of harmony, you feel uncomfortable bringing challenges and issues to the table.
• Problems and errors are not addressed at first, until individual employees hide or conceal them.
• Employees are afraid to make decisions or take responsibility and are happy to delegate these back to you.

If you observe such indicators, then there is no real “safe space” for your exchange, including for constructive conflict within the team. It is difficult for you and your employees to show your weaknesses (and strengths) and therefore to collaboratively use your respective strengths to achieve your goals. Continuous mutual learning is made more difficult. Fear and anger slow you down and block you, tying up time and energy. There is a lack of self-organization and optimal solutions for your challenges are not found.

What are concrete, practicable suggestions for creating more trust? What can you as a manager do in concrete terms?

Here, too, I suggest a situation diary as a concrete tool. In combination with your individual ideas, your individual values and principles on trust and leadership. The procedure therefore has two steps:

In step A, you write down the basic principles you want to manage according to (atmosphere, processes, communication, etc.). A few suggestions for your personal, individual target image of your leadership:

• Create an atmosphere in which being strong and yet human is appreciated :
  • Show yourself as a person, with your weaknesses and strengths – and encourage your team members to do the same.
  • Allow strengths, resources and positive energy to come to the surface in the team and in yourself, encourage positive things to be acknowledged and expressed, and get away from negative images of yourself and the team and from “catastrophizing”.
  • Remain yourself and stay authentic. Artificial, forced self-congratulation will not create more trust in the team.
  • Make it clear that humanity, respect, appreciation, fairness, openness and honesty are fundamental, non-negotiable values, despite all external expectations of the team.
  • Be consistent, comprehensible and reliable in these points and messages. As a manager, you can and should be clear and tough on the matter, on processes and on quality.
• Create anappropriate, pragmatic and functioning organizational framework in which topics can be dealt with in the team:
  • Make it clear to the team what external expectations and requirements are set (e.g. quality, capacity utilization, profitability), what decisions you reserve the right to make as a manager and what the team can change and shape itself. Write this down – e.g. in a few sentences with these three headings.
  • Encourage open communication within the team and bilaterally (on procedures, decisions, improvements, challenges). Take the time to listen.
  • Create the appropriate informal and formal organization and processes for this (coordination, asynchronous communication, etc.). Here too: Write down how you will proceed. A few sentences are enough here too.
  • Be open and flexible to regularly question your organization and processes. An exuberant meeting culture is just as unhelpful as “everyone does their own thing”.
• Support behavioral changes in the team:
  • If you notice politics and intrigue in the team, then put a stop to it – through discussions within the team and bilaterally. Politics should be a no-go within your team.
  • If you notice active or passive aggression, mutual injuries or exclusion, then stop this too. And make it clear that such behavior violates the “Circle of Safety” for all employees.
  • Before you intervene, understand all perspectives of the situation (food for thought 1). Complaints about politics or aggressive behavior can themselves be manipulative in nature.
• Ensure that incentive systems are fair and transparent and cannot be used for mutual manipulation.

You can use these suggestions to develop your individual target image of “leadership” in step A and put it on paper. In step B, you make a brief note each week of the situations in which you have observed the above-mentioned indicators of a lack of trust or in which your leadership does not yet correspond to your target image of “leadership” . In step C, reflect regularly on the causes of the deviations and try to further develop trust and leadership. Note: Be patient – trust in the team is built up over longer periods of time.

Note: The classic, often dopamine-laden team-building activities (hiking, rafting, etc.) are not suitable for creating lasting trust in a professional environment. Trust is created in everyday working life. If necessary, supported by tailor-made team development measures that focus on humanity, openness and depth.

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

In the Va

Food for thought 5: Can we communicate well? Can we engage in factual, passionate, tough and constructive discussions?

Why this addition of “passionate and tough discussions”? Isn’t it better if we deal with each other harmoniously? Didn’t you say in food for thought 4 that we don’t want any intrigue, bitchiness or manipulation?

Yes, we don’t want politics and intrigue. But it has now also been scientifically proven that the idea that “the boss knows best” does not lead to good results, high performance and innovation. Quite the opposite. The traditional, hierarchical management style by order-di-mufti is detrimental to teams and companies.

Our vision of a high-performing, good team is therefore a team in which there is passionate debate at the factual level. Where solutions are found and decisions are made. And then the team members stand by these solutions and decisions and do not pursue individual agendas.

Having passionate and constructive discussions in this spirit is not at odds with building trust and requires the aforementioned safe space and circle of safety.

What are signs that you have not yet had sufficiently passionate and constructive discussions? Examples of this:

• Harmony within the team is important to you, perhaps more important than the common goals and the success of the team.
• You feel uncomfortable with mistakes and challenges – even as a manager, you are afraid to address issues and show weaknesses.
• There are informal or formal sanctions for speaking too openly, for disclosing problems and challenges.

As with the other food for thought, here are four specific steps you can take to encourage focused, fact-oriented, passionate discussion. First:

• Step 1: Clarity of vision in disputes and discussions: Always make it clear to the team what vision you are pursuing in communication: Namely, that challenges and problems must be solved for the team to be successful. And make it clear that this is the task of the entire team. Discuss passionately, constructively and objectively, then make a decision, then implement this decision.
• Step 2: Time and workable framework for arguing: Create a workable process where passionate discussion can take place and good decisions are made in a good, focused and efficient way. Make this process transparent for everyone involved. It’s about giving yourself and the team adequate time to communicate without losing focus on the work to be done. It’s also about clarifying frequency and form (formal, informal).
• Step 3: Curious, open but clear and unambiguous moderation: Moderate the communication in line with the vision for communication described above. For example, make it clear that it is about fact-oriented discussions, about getting many perspectives and weighing them up together, about the fact that communication in this room may become emotional, but that it takes place in an appreciative “circle of safety”. Encourage openness, creativity and the joy of discussion. Demonstrate the vision for communication yourself, for example through open questions, curiosity and interest in other perspectives.
• Step 4: Then make decisions: In this moderation, have the courage to do justice to your role as a leader. Respectfully tie up discussions and make decisions when all perspectives have been touched on in the communication. No decisions are usually worse than wrong decisions. Then also demand that the team stands behind the decisions – and stand by these decisions consistently and reliably yourself. Or reopen the discussion if there are new insights and experiences or if something is not working.

Incidentally, you can also use the tools from food for thought 4 here: Document your target image “communication” in writing (step A) and note down disruptions and deviations in your situation diary (step B). Analyze these regularly – change and learn (step C).

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

We also work individually in executive coaching on the topic of “communication” to develop and analyze this aspect in the “target image of leadership” and solve individual challenges in the implementation of this target image. We then act as sparring partners for the manager.

We also work in a similar way in team and organizational development in order to develop and document overarching “leadership objectives” and support their implementation by teams and companies.

Finally, we work at team level to resolve specific issues relating to communication and dealing with conflicts or – in the case of new teams or new managers – to clarify and sharpen how communication should be structured.

Food for thought 6: How do you deal with motivation?

“Why motivating must fail … and what works anyway!”

This is the provocative title of motivational researcher Susanne Fowler’s exciting book. Is she right?

First of all, what is motivation? I understand motivation to mean that managers or employees align their attitude, focus, energy and behavior with the goals of the company or team. Motivated employees are “on board”, are “committed”, stand by their tasks and promises and support others in the team in also being “on board” and aligning themselves with the common goals.

Indicators that motivation in your team (or in yourself?) can be strengthened are, for example:

• Quite obvious and also visible from the outside are genuine resignations. Employees who leave the company. Of course, resignations can also have other reasons. But it is worth taking a look at the issue of motivation.
• Internal resignation of employees, emotional and personal withdrawal or “work to rule”.
• Lack of willingness to take responsibility for tasks and results ; referring to others in the team or other areas; justifications.
• Non-compliance with agreed or specified processes; absence in coordination meetings; up to and including unconscious or deliberate sabotage of processes and agreements.

What then? Well, first of all, lack of motivation can be a symptom of an underlying disorder. Try to understand if such a disorder is present and apply the tools from the previous steps.

In order to proactively strengthen motivation and satisfaction, different schools of motivation talk about slightly different topics. Susanne Fowler, for example, focuses on autonomy (flexibility, influence), relatedness (social contacts, appreciation) and competence (recognition, being seen and further development). Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology) speaks of the PERMA framework: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Mattering and Accomplishment.

In fact, these schools are not far apart. My simple, pragmatic suggestion for you to further strengthen your team is the motivation radar.

You can use this tool as follows:

• First, reflect on the following four aspects for yourself as a manager: A: Autonomy, creative possibilities, opportunities for growth, B: Your relatedness (relationships, social network, appreciation received), C: Your competencies, their growth and their opportunities for growth, and D: The impact of your work (Mattering, Purpose).
• Download the PDF and fill in the table with A to D in the columns and the three rows “Where am I?”, “What can strengthen the aspect for me?”, “What can block or weaken the aspect?”. You are welcome to save the completed PDF locally.
• Once you have filled in the table, reflect for yourself as a manager on what the 3 most important points are that you want to change, why you want to change them and how.
• In the next step, you can do the same exercise, but with your team in mind. The lines would then be “Where are we?”, “What can strengthen the aspect for us?” and “What can block or weaken the aspect for you?”.
• Here too: Reflect on what the 3 most important aspects are that you as a manager would like to change in relation to the team.
• Try to implement these 3 + 3 aspects for 2-3 weeks and observe what happens in the team. If necessary, come back to your analysis and adjust your actions.
• Finally, I recommend that you also disclose and apply the methodology in the team itself, in a kind of team development session. Ask your employees to fill out the analysis sheet for themselves in advance. And work out the 3 aspects with the team itself, i.e. measures that they would like to implement in order to improve energy, motivation and satisfaction.

▶ Wie kann ein Coach Dich unterstützen?

As coaches, we support you as a manager in the area of motivation in the above-mentioned analysis and in the use of the tool. The individual work enables us to go deeper. For example, we then better understand the background to why certain dimensions of the framework are particularly important to you and help you to understand, work on and resolve individual issues (“rucksacks”).

In executive coaching, we also support you as a sparring partner in implementing the desired changes – in yourself and in the team.

We also often work on the topic of motivation in the form of team coaching. We moderate the analysis of the situation and help teams to develop and implement their individual solution for motivation.

And what next?

First of all, I believe that you already have good tools to develop yourself as a manager as well as your teams with the ideas you have developed so far.

But perhaps you have the desire or need for a sparring partner. In other words, you would like to be coached by me? Then get in touch with me with a challenge, a problem that you need to solve as a manager and let’s talk to find out whether executive coaching is suitable for you or team coaching for your team.

Want to learn more about leadership? Then take a look at our blog – there you will find more and deeper details about our organizational, team and leadership development services.