2) Understand how to communicate effectively with colleagues
2.1 Explain the importance of balancing the needs of tasks and people
Getting work done with other people is tricky. It's tricky because it forces us to strike a subtle balance between our tasks and our relationships. Engagement is what brings tasks and relationships together.
Engagement is the process of building relationships with people and putting those relationships to work to accomplish some goal. Relationships that are disconnected from tasks are not engagement, but they're still important.
Friends can have wonderful relationships based purely on being there for one another without a care in the world for accomplishing tasks or getting work done together. These relationships are part of what makes us human; they're essential to our happiness, but they are not engagement because they're not about connecting relationships in order to accomplish some form of work.
Tasks that are disconnected from relationships are not engagement, they're transactions, and transactions are important too. Sometimes we don't want a relationship; we just need to get something done. I don't need a relationship with a guy who tears my ticket on my way into a movie, or when I'm asking directions to the park where my son's football game is starting in 3 minutes.
These transactions are not engagement because there's no real relationship there. You know pretty quickly when you're working with someone who's all tasks and no relationship. These no-nonsense individuals see connections with people as just a means of getting things done. With them, it's nothing personal - just business.
People who are all relationship and no task often struggle when it comes to working with others to get things done in pursuit of some goal. For these people, it's not so much an issue of avoiding difficult work, it's more that they're hesitant to strain their relationships by asking them to take on difficult tasks.
Organisations can be just like people, skewing one way or another in emphasising relationships and tasks. Organisations that are "all relationship" invest lots of resources in building relationships that never convert into real world input. Organisations that are "all task" chronically under-invest in relationships in ways that undermine their ability to fully tap people outside of their staff (in fact, they often can't even fully tap their own staff for many of the same reasons).
The art of engagement centres on knowing when to invest in relationship building and when to tap relationships to get work done.
Engagement is about bringing task and relationship together to create something bigger and more powerful. The more devious aspect of task/relationship synergy is how deepening my relationship with someone enables me to ask them to take on more and more difficult or risky tasks.
2.2 Explain the importance of sharing information with colleagues
INFORMATION SHARING is one of those rare technology terms that actually sounds like what it means. Information sharing is the process of exchanging data amongst various computer networks, usually operated by separate organisations. Sounds like what happened when the first computer network was invented decades ago; but the phrase has evolved to a broader, more complex, and at times, cultural meaning.
In the case of federal government, it's loaded with plenty of the first concept (information) and the latter (sharing). Whilst the idea of information sharing has been around for years, the federal government didn't really begin to consider it as a wholly separate business process worthy of being pursued as a manageable goal until the late 1990s. That's when managers started to focus on just how vulnerable federal computer networks were, which presented an obstacle to consolidating systems and sharing information to create efficiencies.
WHY SHOULD I CARE? Information sharing moved to the top of the management agenda for many agencies after September 11th 2001. The 9/11 commission, which congress formed to find the causes of the terrorist attacks and to provide recommendations to prevent future assaults, concluding in its reports, released in July 2004, that a failure to share intelligence information was one of the leading causes of the United States' inability to stop the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, an the loss of United Flight 93.
Sharing knowledge with colleagues allows for sharing others' ideas and experiences. This will provide you with additional tools to provide solutions to your questions. Certain nutrients added to the soil can provide for a healthier plant, so if an employee at a garden centre discovers this, he/she can share their find with their co-workers in their own garden centre, as well as garden centres across the country.
2.5 Describe how to resolve conflict situations or dissatisfaction
1) REALIZE THAT CONFLICTS ARE INEVITABLE - Whenever people are engaged, committed and fired up, conflict and disagreement are bound to happen. This doesn't mean you have to revel in conflict or create trouble just for the hell of it, but it does mean that when conflict happens, it's not the end of the world, but can be the beginning of an interesting learning process. The very best workplaces are not those without conflict, but those who handle conflicts constructively.
2) HANDLE CONFLICT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER - Do it now! It's very tempting to wait for a conflict to blow over by itself, but it rarely does - in most cases it gets worse over time. 90% of conflicts at work do not come from something that was said, but from something that wasn't said. It's tempting to try and smooth things over and pretend everything is normal. Don't. That's the most common reason why conflicts at work escalate. Nobody does anything. It may be unpleasant to tackle the issue here and now, but it gets even more unpleasant after the conflict has stewed for a while.
3) ASK! - In the early stages of a conflict, the most powerful tool to resolve it is simple: ask! If someone has done something that made you angry, if you don't understand their viewpoint, if you don't understand their actions - ask! do it nicely. "Say, I was wondering why you did x yesterday" or "I've noticed you often do y. Why is that?" are good examples. "Why the hell do you always have to do z?!" is a less constructive way to ask. Sometimes, there's a perfectly good reason why that person does what they do, ad potential conflict evaporates there and then.
4) GIRAFFE LANGUAGE - For more entrenched conflicts that have been going on a while, use giraffe language. It's the best tool around for constructively conveying criticism and solving conflict. There's an invitation and six steps to it. Invite the other person to talk about the situation. Select an undisturbed location, as a hurried conversation at your desk between e-mails and phone calls won't solve anything.
> Observation. Identify what you see in neutral, objective terms. Describe the facts of the situation as objectively as possible. What is happening? When and how is it happening? What are they doing? What are you doing? Do not assume or guess. You can say "I've noticed you're always criticising me at meetings," because that's fact. You can't say "I've noticed you've stopped respecting my ideas," because that's an assumption.
> Apologize. If you're totally 100% and utterly without fault in the conflict, skip this step. That doesn't happen too often. Don't accept the entire blame, just accept responsibility for your contribution to the situation.
> Appreciate. Praise the other party. Tell them why it's worth it to you to solve the conflict. This can be difficult. Few people find it easy to praise and appreciate a person they seemingly disagree with, but it's a great way to move forwards.
> Consequences. What has the conflict led to for you and the company? Why is it a problem? Outline the consequences of the conflict to show why it is necessary to resolve it.
> Objective. What would be a good outcome? Set a goal for both parties.
> Request. Ask for specific actions that can be implemented immediately.
Standard giraffe language has four steps and is formatted slightly differently. This is a business world adaptation.
5) GET MEDIATION - Some conflicts are so entrenched, they cannot be solved by participants alone; outside help is needed in the form of conflict mediation. This involves finding a third party trusted by the people in the conflict; and trusting that person to help find a solution. The mediator can be a manager, HR employee, business coach, a co-worker etc. You can still speed up the mediation process by preparing for it by using Giraffe Language.
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