The Silent Ones in Your Workforce (And how to start listening to them)
/Excerpted from Forbes Coaches Council article by Mark Batson Baril, Aug. 4, 2020
A little over three percent of an organization’s population used the Office of the Ombuds as a resource to resolve a variety of conflict issues, according to a recent internal study of 164 ombuds offices in the U.S. and Canada.
What are the implications of this finding to your organization?
Without an ombuds or similar structure in place to address conflict, 3.2% of most organizations’ employees believe they have nowhere to turn to resolve issues they have within their workplace. If you have 100 people in your organization, it’s likely that three of them are dealing with something right now at work that is troubling them, and that could potentially create a negative ripple effect throughout the organization.
Who are the Silent Ones?
There is no segment of an organization, job description, profession, or industry that characterizes the 3% who seek help. From the C-suite to the production line to vendors and customers, I work as a conflict advisor with all kinds of people who need a knowledgeable, confidential, impartial listening ear and workable solutions to resolve their troubling conflict issues.
Case study: The disruptive team member
My office received a call from Rachel, a midlevel manager in a 200-person startup, who wanted to talk about getting help with a situation in her department. One of her new reports was a young man, Joe, whose creativity and productivity were outweighed by his disruptive and, at times, abrasive behavior within the team.
Two other employees had made verbal complaints about him. Over the course of several months, Rachel had worked to influence Joe’s behavior to fit her vision of an ideal team member. Those attempts had failed, and at her wit’s end, she came to us for help.
Why did she seek an outside source for help? New to her position, Rachel shared that she didn't want to appear incompetent by asking her manager for support. And her HR department was known for bringing this type of thing to upper management, so this was not an option for her either, at least not yet.
Over the course of one month and three sessions, I worked with Rachel to explore what she’d been going through and what her options were, both on the behavioral side and the company policy side. I helped her think through what the next moves could be to deal with this situation most effectively. She made some uncomfortable decisions and set out to try some new ideas.
A month later, the situation was on a better track. Three months after that, I learned during our follow-up call that Joe was now in line with Rachel’s needs. He was no longer a disruptive influence on the team and, in fact, was more creative than ever. All of this was accomplished with no one but Rachel and me knowing that she had sought outside support.
She is one of the 3%.
Her experience is not uncommon, as many of the sticky conflict situations that occur in the workplace stem from disruptive behavior by an individual. People are often, and understandably, reluctant to pursue the issue through the usual organizational channels...so they decide stay silent. Happily in this case, Rachel sought help.
Why should we concern ourselves with the 3%?
1.It is an ethical and moral imperative to provide a means for every voice to be heard. It's the responsibility of the employer to maintain a workplace environment that ensures its people feel safe, respected, and heard. And it's a wise business decision to create an organizational culture that takes care of its people, encouraging engagement, cohesiveness and retention.
2. The issues raised by the aggrieved 3% often arise from a systemic problem in the organization. Conflict left unattended can become uncontained. Time after time we see that negative outcomes from a dispute between two people expand to involve more team members, an entire team or, in extreme circumstances, the whole company. These conflicts can expose deeper organizational and business issues. If a few speak up (or even one person), you can be sure others are experiencing the same issue or negative fallout from that issue.
3. When conflict issues escalate, everyone is affected. What happens when a workplace begins to see behaviors such as requests to shift departments to get away from a disruptive situation, higher levels of absenteeism from stress or lack of safety, repeatedly heated conversations in team or department meetings, or employees (even a few) leaving the company under mysterious circumstances? Morale, engagement, and productivity take a hit.
Walk down the halls or production floor or attend video meetings and get curious about who may be dealing with difficult issues all by themselves. Most of those issues will blow over, and life will go on. However, some of them will not simply go away by themselves and, if left to fester, may cost your organization in a variety of significant ways.
How will you prepare your organization to hear every voice?
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.