When Its Open Warfare Within Your Management Team

Not too long ago, I got a call from the head of HR for a midwestern manufacturer with plants in the US and Mexico. She was concerned that the discord among her company’s management team had gotten so bad they openly admitted to hating each other, couldn’t stand to be in the same room.

So I called my friends, Alicia Fortinberry and Bob Murray. Their company, Fortinberry Murray, is expert at helping people learn and gain practical skills to build their organizations, communities, families and relationships “compatible with our design specs” – get to a point of being healthy and fulfilled. Alicia is a globally recognized psychologist, author and executive coach. Bob pairs his expertise in clinical psychology with behavioral neurogenetics – which means that every time I ask him about some quirk in human behavior, I’m going to learn something new, grounded in the fundamentals of how we’re all wired.

I asked them whether the stress of leading a company inevitably leads to discord among members of the leadership team. Seems obvious to me…I mean we’re all under stress, right?

No, they said.

Rather, it’s the result of a breakdown in the culture of the company. “It's not human. In other words, they're not creating a culture that enables collaboration,” they said.

They likened it to a hunter-gatherer tribe at the dawn of time. The tribe had a set of rules, roles, and rituals they all adhered to. Anyone who didn’t was excluded from the tribe.

Likewise, they said, companies need a set of rules, roles and rituals they agree to and the leaders observe and model. And we’re not talking about how the company is run. We’re talking about how they relate to one another as humans. Do they greet everyone with a hearty “good morning!” each day? Do they have lunch together weekly just to build a personal connection?

It's those kinds of human interactions that build the relationships we need to collaborate in the workplace. And it’s that collaboration that leads to productivity and profitability.

I asked Bob and Alicia whether it’s possible to get a company back to a more human culture and they said it is. But it’s not the job of the human resources department.

That culture-building has to start at the top, with the CEO. “The important thing is the day-to-day, grinding it out. Very few organizations actually do that. They outsource it to HR or they outsource it to us and that's not the way it has to work." they said. "We can help, but if the company leaders don't focus on that, you get a management team that wants to kill each other.”

The bottom line: Companies need a culture based on collaboration and a commonality in which co-workers say, “Sitting down with you guys for a sandwich is so pleasing to me. Why would I want to kill you?”

You can read my full interview with Bob and Alicia online at InterimExecs .

And here’s how important the reality of tribe and community and culture became for us at InterimExecs.

Ten years ago we had a pretty good concept for what we did and the value we provided. Seems pretty obvious. But it was just so much blah, blah, blah. Endless talk - until we launched the RED Team.

That was the turning point. Led to all of our success around the world matchmaking between amazing organizations and brilliant leadership.

RED Team is a tribe, grounded in roles, rules, rituals and responsibilities. Bob Murray helped us understand what it means to build a tribe and community, how you can’t be successful unless you’re starting with a shared understanding and if you’re missing one of these elements, whether its roles, rules, rituals or responsibilities – you don’t have a chance at a cohesive tribe. We’d come at that organically at the start, but with Bob and Alicia’s help it all clicked into place.

If you need help working through conflict within your management team, let me know – we’re happy to brainstorm ways to make your company more human (and productive and profitable).