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Thought Leader Interview: Howard Guttman on "When Goliaths Clash - Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Team"
If you are anywhere near the top of your organization, in most companies, you will see a certain amount of conflict at the executive level, something Howard Guttman knows all too well. Guttman sat down with David Creelman to discuss how managing executive conflicts will help build better performing teams.
Howard Guttman is the Principal of Guttman Development Strategies, a management consulting firm specializing in high performance teams. He is
author of the book, "When Goliaths Clash - Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Team." If you are anywhere near the top of your organization, in most companies, you will see a certain amount of
conflict at the executive level, and that obviously is a really key issue. If the conflict is not productive, then your organization is going to run into difficulty.
Howard's company has been in existence since 1989 and has 20+ consultants in the firm. About 60% of what they do is organization development at the top. Clients include Pfizer, L'Oreal and Colgate-Palmolive.
DC: Conflict is a very important area and it is a tough area, HR is the function meant to be most sensitive to the dynamics and how you can use conflicts productively to move an organization forward, so I hope listeners take it to heart as being one of your core competencies.
HG: As an introduction, when you look at why this is really a key area, there are a few reasons. The first is that it is a complex world right now. It is a global matrix game with many of the companies that we work with. In many cases managers are trying to influence people they do not have authority over. Some of the organizations we work with are so complex that the organizational structures look like the back of a television set. A second aspect is that, when I think about all the companies we work with, the level of pressure to sustain a competitive advantage keeps increasing.
For HR to be seen as a player at that table, they need to be seen as the keeper of the culture, so they are required to become a role model. There is almost, in some cases, an unrealistic expectation of what the organization requires of HR, because they also expect them to be a change agent. So what it really says is this, "in a complex matrix
world, you are constantly influencing people that you don't have authority over and there is an expectation that to retain competitive advantage companies are going to move very quickly; HR is expected to be the role model, and in this sense the keeper of the processes to sustain best practices in the organization," and this is very difficult when you are also part of the game itself.
DC: And it is also difficult when you have a big set of administrative responsibilities, running a whole suite of processes from recruitment to training, to performance management and compensation. When we are having this kind of discussion I think as an HR leader: what should my job description look like? What should my goals look like for the coming year? I would really like to see some goals or some accountability around these kinds of issues you focus on. It's not just about making sure that training stays within budget.
HG: That is exactly right. In fact, one of the key things to think about - and this is always one of the challenges - is that, if you want to be seen as a player in an organization today, the expectation is that you are going to be challenging the status quo and moving the ball ahead.
But the reality is that every time you do that you are going to increase the likelihood that you could be creating conflicts, so the expectation in today's world is that you can challenge the status quo, push things ahead, create conflicts and still preserve the business relationship, but one of the things that you look at, when you are looking at HR, is HR needs to be seen as the model for what that level of behavioral best practice looks like, so it does require a higher level of EQ on the part of the HR folks.
In terms of the role of HR in conflict management, there are about five areas that HR is expected to handle. One is just to ensure that you have the right players on the senior team in terms of skill sets. The second is that from a behavioral standpoint, the senior team players have a picture of what good practice looks like, and you are able to hold up the mirror to the players in assessment mode. Every time we
work with senior executive teams in essence the HR person is the process keeper, they are the custodians of the team alignment process.
They have to be the principal person to support the senior executive to make sure that accountability is fostered and ultimately, they are the ones who really are the custodians of any effort.
When we do consulting work with senior teams the key for us is that we have a key client who wants to move things ahead; we have somebody in the HR role who has an ability to maintain the process; and the last point is that we have coachable players on the team itself.
DC: Would you say that most senior management teams recognize that they do need to have a custodian of team alignment? Is team alignment
something that they are alert to as an issue?
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 David Creelman is CEO of Creelman Research and a well-known writer, research and speaker on critical issues in human capital management. David’s previous work includes Chief of Content and Research for HR.com, in addition to working as a management consultant in Canada and Malaysia, most notably with the Hay Group.
David holds an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and has also taught Rewards and Performance Measures at the University of Malaya executive MBA program. David’s clients include think tanks, consultants, academics and organizations from around the globe. His current focus, in collaboration with Dave Ulrich, is on what organizations should report about human capital intangibles to the financial markets (see www.rbl.net "What the Fortune 50 Tells Wall Street").
David Creelman can be reached by email at creelmanresearch[at]gmail.com |
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Join us for our next live Thought Leader interview with
Jay Schuster and Pat Zingheim on How to Create High Performance Pay
March 12, 2007 1:00 - 2:00 p.m. ET
In this live webcast you will learn:
- How to take a step beyond the current conventional wisdom.
- Where compensation managers should focus their time.
- How to make variable pay more effective.
- Lessons from the US Postal Service.
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This upcoming webcast, and its MP3, and PowerPoint downloads are free for ALL Members of HR.com
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