Lowering the Team-Level Resistance to the Human Work

One of the most ironic things about the much-needed people work is that it’s hard for everyone to get started and there’s a lot of “human resistance” to doing it. We talk a lot about ways to reduce some of the HumanDebt?and how, on a quest to do so, most enterprises have to overcome immense amounts of resistance.

Most of this resistance is organisational - an effect of the HumanDebt itself, it’s hard for any organisation to see themselves from the helicopter view that is needed to rightfully remark on all the convoluted elements that have led it to a place of a toxic culture and quiet discontent but some of this resistance, as we said before, is at the teams level. Team-level human resistance. It’s one that dismays the Superheroes the most.

Typically, by the time they get to us at PeopleNotTech, they would have fought the good battle for so long and have advocated for their people’s need to have enough respect, support and resources to do the human work for aeons and so when they bring a tool to facilitate this work such as ours they feel as if they have at long last arrived and are delivering their colleagues from their long-suffering so they are stunned to see them not always jumping for joy.?

Don’t get me wrong, many do. Most teams will have 2-3 people who will immediately sense that the time to do something about the human work has come at long last and this will mean a better work-life so they take to the work with gusto. They are the ones answering many (and at times too many) questions, they are the ones enjoying the team actions and asking for the next occasions when the team is together so they do more, and they spend time pouring over the data in the dashboard and they change behaviours extraordinarily fast. It’s a joy to see them take to the human work.?

Then, for the most part, the teams consist of those on the fence about doing the human work. They’re approaching it tentatively and with caution and frankly, that’s a very normal and understandable reaction when they’ve spent most of their professional lives doing none of it. Never have they previously been called to be amateur psychologists, never has their EQ been seen as needed and helpful, and never have they been asked to think of their own emotions leave alone those of others and the interaction that results. What they believed the norm was, the so-called “professionalism” that covered us all as an armour keeping us safe from having to do any of the thinking and feeling around emotions and humanity is no longer valued and we are instead telling them that what we need them to do is the opposite: be human, have emotions, express them, care about themselves and others and spend time bettering habits, and improving their team dynamics.

It’s an eerie task for most and one that can easily be seen as a fad or a whim that the enterprise asks of them and then will drop but not before it was disruptive to their work or worse, not before they’ve come to believe it and depend on it. These are the same employees who have been subjected to multiple sterile, unactionable and often-times irrelevant yearly employee surveys or even frequent NPS checks and the same people who find their emotions and needs are never discussed or welcomed so why would they truly believe a new era has come? That said, they’re open and hopeful, they read the science and know that this work will make them more performant and productive and more able to bring their best selves and do good work and they want that so they give the work an honest shot.?

And then there are the team detractors. They’re my favourite in a way. People who have been through the absolute mill. Many of them lapsed Superheroes with cape fatigue. Many of them had been intentionally or unintentionally mistreated, maybe even laughed at and certainly shunned when they were asking for what they needed or bringing up what they saw as wrong. They are typically labelled as “difficult” or “disruptive”. Negative nellies that always find something to complain about. From their perspective, most of the time they came off that way they were showing care and passion for the work or for their team. Their sense of justice and their investment in the product or the team or even the organisation often compels them to put opposing points of view forward and play devil’s advocate. Most of the time (and that can sadly change once they have been embittered enough) they do it out of passion and it’s an act of love. It isn’t seen as that though. It’s seen as obstructive, unwelcome, eye-roll and heavy sighs fodder.

They’re boat-rockers. They’re not “professional”. They "make it harder for everyone to just get on with their days". And in time, their once purpose-driven remarks and moments of dissent become their trademark and part of their identity and they can easily transform into who they never wanted to be, ill-intentioned and disruptive for the sake of it. The longer they’ve spent in their misunderstood-covert-Superhero role, the more times their micro-acts-of-courage that embolden them to speak truths others shy away from or be willing to disagree or offer opposing points of view are misunderstood and shunned, the more they erode their reserves of goodwill and team spirit and the more likely it is they’ll find themselves into “I hate everything here” mode where they will involuntarily become saboteurs. Actively disengaged.?

These are the people who will look at our software and see that it provides the space for the human work and they will fight it. Instead of embracing it as a forum to at long last hold those conversations that they’ve been so desperate for, and instead of thinking of it as a vehicle to bring everyone on their journey, they immediately object. And poke holes. Bring up and even create objections. Make it near impossible for the well-intentioned Superhero team lead to walk them through this. Take a vehemently negative view of their efforts and the efforts of the 2-3 that take an instant shine to it.?

Can we blame them? Years and years of repressed opinions. Resentment. Hurtful rejection. Both from the organisation and their teammates and peers. They’ve been preaching exactly this openness and focus on human patterns and emotions all along. They’ve been asking for complete honesty. They’ve been counting on a bedrock of Psychological Safety - it is after all what has initially emboldened them to be true and open- only to then feel it didn’t really exist when their teammates made them feel guilty for raising their points or made them feel like they need to tone it down to be “professional” and “corporate”.?

So they are, ironically, the last to take to the human work and provide most of the human resistance but if we understand their psyche and why they feel the way they do we can speed this up as team leaders.

To do so the consistency of the work is critical. Everyone needs to feel this is true new work habit creation and not an enterprise whim. That this will become a great part of their work. That WIP will make room for it. That it will matter, it is highly valued and it is here to stay. Then they can begin to trust it and then they can start using the tools already inbuilt in the software designed to provoke focused storming moments to ensure people have a space to empty their bag of complaints, ailments, wronged feelings and hurt. That there is a place and a time for celebrating the detractors, the disruptors, the politically incorrect and that the team can join them at the same level of honesty and trust and together they can make magic.?

Having all these different types of reactions from the people in the team is the team manager’s (or scrum master’s or product owner’s) first foray into having to consider the different psychological makeups and states of mine of their teammates and bringing them on the journey of doing the human work will mean that they can quickly ramp up their EQ enough to help them navigate this well-justified team level resistance.?Why? Because once we can get through the resistance we can finally get to the good stuff. The high performance. The passion. The flow. The sheer joy of working together while growing, learning and achieving.

As ever, we are trying to help so we’re working on a “Team Leader’s Guide to Handling Team Level Human Resistance to the?People Work”. In it - some of the exploration above and some of our suggestions of approaches, tips and specific helpful plays. If you’re a client already it will be sent to you as soon as it’s ready and if you have any coaching sessions with PeopleNotTech someone will walk you through it but if you’re not a client yet and if you don’t have an enterprise smart enough to use us or a piece of software like ours as a platform for the human work but are instead trying to do it “pen and paper” then we would advise you also spend time trying to emulate some of that advice and in tomorrow’s video we’ll offer a few more tips on how you can do that.?

Everyone can and should come on the journey of doing the people work eventually and even in the absence of this intentional work they would but taking this considerate and intentional approach will get you there faster and start chipping away at the Human Debt.?

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