Be patient with resistance
Employee resistance to working with each other usually isn’t anything personal. Fee says it’s more often a result of an employee feeling the need to focus more intently on their own to-do list.
“I don’t think people don’t want to come together and talk,” Fee says. “Everybody just gets caught up in their own world and thinks, ‘I have to get my job done.’”
But whether it’s pa
ssive or more obvious, it’s still resistance. And it’s something you often need to overcome in trying to maintain open dialogue between different departments in your organization.
“There are certainly times during our management meetings where two departments are going back and forth across the table about whatever, an issue or a challenge or something to help the business grow,” Fee says. “And another department is saying, ‘This has nothing to do with me.’”
You need to approach those situations directly, but with an open mind — at least at first.
“I give every college effort to make sure that person knows that they are just not fitting in to what it is we are looking to accomplish,” Fee says. “It’s not done that quickly, it’s over a long period of time of saying, ‘Here’s what we need your department to do and here’s what we want you to do.’ If there is failure along the way, it’s showing them that, ‘You failed, but that’s OK. Let’s try to pick you up and give you another chance.’”
You can often make inroads by reinforcing the larger goals that can be achieved through collaboration with everyone in the company. If there is a disagreement on a particular issue, show your willingness to hear various opinions. Give them a chance to state their case.
“Maybe my vision is one thing and somebody like that comes in and says, ‘Well, I kind of see it a little differently and I see it this way,’” Fee says. “Maybe I don’t see it that way at all, but I say, ‘Hmm, maybe if I take this part of what you were thinking and add it to what I’m thinking, it could be even better.’ So you really do have to be open to change yourself. You make that person feel like they are part of it.”
Fee says she’s lucky to have not encountered severe resistance along the way to implementing a more collaborative culture at Cruise Planners. But when things aren’t so smooth, you need to know when it’s time to move past the debate.
“That person has to learn to come along and buy in to your vision or the vision of what the rest of the staff members believe,” Fee says. “You have to have a cohesive team. You can’t have one member dictating how they feel it should be run if it’s not what the whole team feels.
“You can’t have one person standing on the sidelines when the rest of the team is playing really well together. Everybody has to be part of it. Along the way, I’ve learned that sometimes you might keep someone on too long and they are not willing to change. So the company is going in this direction and they are standing there.”
When someone is starting to become a cancer in your organization, it’s usually pretty obvious to other employees.
“Everybody knows who that John Doe person is,” Fee says. “You just have to know when that one person is holding back the rest of the company. And guess what? All the other managers know who that person is, as well. Some of it is hard. I’m not going to say it’s an easy thing being an executive. But sometimes you have to make hard decisions.”
That often requires that you take a blunt approach.
“It’s like, ‘I’ve given you every advantage,” Fee says. “‘We’ve had multiple sit-downs. Our vision is this and the rest of the company is moving in that direction and you’re just holding us back.’
“If you have employees that are sitting there saying, ‘I’m only here for the paycheck,’ you need to look for new employees. Everybody should have that common goal, and the common goal is to make sure the company continues to grow in a positive direction. And if you have somebody that is sitting there that couldn’t care less about anything but what they are doing, then they are not part of a team.”
How to reach: Cruise Planners Inc., (800) 683-0206 or www.cruiseplanners.com
