Training Through Tribalism
July 21, 2008
Employee conflict is nothing new, but with a more diverse workforce than ever before, you may find your sparring employees divided into age-related, departmental, and countless other factions
By Kevin and Jackie Freiberg
Whether it's departmental, hierarchical, generational, geographical, categorical, or gender-specific, "tribes" are formed in organizations every day.
The old-timers resent Gens X and Y for being fickle and disloyal, while the young people impatiently throw their arms up in frustration because they can't dislodge the organization from its dinosaur ways. The creatives resent the suits, and the suits can't believe they have to put up with people who think "business casual" means cargo shorts and flip-flops.
Call it what you like—tribalism, silo-building, turf-protection, or finger-pointing—it chews up physical and emotional energy that distracts people from their jobs, wastes resources, disconnects people, and stops the flow of information, severely weakening your organization’s ability to compete.
In a complex business environment where organizations are made up of more and more specialists, a great value is placed on training that can bring diverse groups together. Because of their contact with many departments, trainers are in a unique position to facilitate cross-departmental collaboration.
Consider using the following five strategies in conjunction with your next training initiative to help banish tribalism and lay the groundwork for cross-departmental collaboration:
• Promote cross-departmental training events. This is the most obvious step to take from a development standpoint. Something positive happens when people meet together face-to-face. Thinking and brainstorming together, problem solving together, celebrating together and assuming collective responsibility for the organization's success is a powerful catalyst for building trust and making collaboration a way of life. Departments that train together will be more likely to assemble joint task forces comprised of people from different disciplines with different backgrounds, further promoting a culture of collaboration. Information specific to departments or job role can be delivered via follow-up coaching or breakout sessions.
• Create a clear, compelling, and urgent cause. In the book "Boom!: 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual," it is noted that firefighters, police forces and special units teams rarely get caught up in tribalistic behavior because the mission at hand is laser-clear and the consequences of mission accomplishment are compelling and urgent—often a matter of life and death. Make your cause exciting, build a solid business case for the initiative you’re championing, and inspire the people involved to care as much as you do. People find all kinds of reasons not to work together when they are unclear about or indifferent to the cause.
• Recognize, reward, and celebrate collaborative behavior. The legends of athletic dynasties consist of incredible collaborative efforts. Players sit in locker rooms and clubhouses reminiscing about the key play "when it all came together." Whether told through video, newsletter, podcast, annual report, or webinar, stories of great collaboration break down the walls of tribalism and honor collective accomplishments. Attaching performance metrics and bonuses to collaborative efforts sends a very strong message to everyone about what values are driving the business.
• Make innovation a preeminent focus for initiatives related to performance improvement. Creativity and innovation by necessity require different people with diverse perspectives and expertise to "cross-pollinate" the organization with fresh ideas. When the bar for innovation is set extremely high, and creative breakthroughs are an expected part of the culture, people have no choice but to start silo-busting.
• Encourage the different groups within your organization to ask the tough questions of each other. They can put a small ad hoc team together, then go to the functional areas that receive the output of their work and ask the following questions: What are the top ten things we do to make it difficult for you to do your jobs? If you were running our department or business unit, what would you do differently? How can we make the "handoff" to you more seamless? If we were easy to do business with, what would that look like? Have the teams convey the answers to the rest of their department, and begin making changes.
Dr. Kevin and Dr. Jackie Freiberg are international speakers, consultants, and authors of the bestseller, "NUTS! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success" and its sequel, "GUTS!" Their new book, "Boom!: 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual," is in bookstores now. For more tips and resources about how to jettison tribalism, visit freibergs.com/boom and enter "Tribe" in the BOOM! box.
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