My Biggest Management Challenge: Tackling Office Politics

By Jason Beans, CEO, Rising Medical Solutions, Chicago
Managing personalities and office politics is a waste of time and erodes productivity. My goal has always been to take all friction out of our business processes, and politics is pure business friction.

It was easy back in 1999 when I launched Rising Medical Solutions, a medical cost containment and healthcare management company, and we were just a two-person shop. Now we're up to nearly 200 employees. We've worked extremely hard to bring on and develop the smartest, most motivated people out there. We look to hire either former entrepreneurs or people with entrepreneurial characteristics: passion, vision and drive.

Nevertheless, the complicated social rules of the workplace often change these individuals' behavior. I have seen good people behave badly due to a miscommunication or other small issue because they're jealous, protecting their turf or simply feeling a sense of entitlement.

Unhealthy conversations breed distrust. They're also extremely disruptive. That's why I used to spend so much time -- too much, in fact -- trying to manage employee-to-employee communications. Over the years, I decided my individual efforts would never be enough. Instead, I had to create systems that reduce the unnecessary drama and conflict.

Getting rid of ego
Last year, I invited a guest speaker in to share some insights about operational execution and getting things done. He had a lot of really interesting ideas, but an employee with a similar job title felt threatened, and he jumped to the conclusion that I brought in the speaker to tell him how to do his job right.

That was never my goal. But rather than talking to me about the issue, the employee tried to sabotage the guest speaker's talk and a related two-day workshop. In a few instances, he challenged the speaker in a defensive and even unprofessional manner. Even worse, at times he stood outside the presentation room and trashed the speaker to anyone who would listen.

Creating clear boundaries
We've had similar problems when I've brought on new hires in leadership positions -- the long-standing employees have at times ostracized the new staff because they're envious of the attention the new person is getting. I admit that it takes a little trial and error for a manager to create a smooth transition for new hires, and there should be a balance between respecting the existing team and their contributions to getting us where we are today and welcoming the new members. But it should be obvious that it is nothing more than good manners to welcome new employees with open arms.

Problems also tend to arise when there are fuzzy boundaries between employees' responsibilities. But in a business culture like ours, where everyone is encouraged to contribute their ideas, it's almost impossible to avoid giving employees overlapping responsibilities. We try to keep everyone's roles and responsibilities clearly defined, but that's not always possible. Respect and the ability to cope with conflict in a positive manner are critical to our success.

Proper training helps
To reduce the problems caused by office politics, we have developed a conflict training course. It's designed to help people learn to address a problem up front and with the right person, rather than attacking another person or talking behind his or her back. Every single manager has gone through the day-long course, and it's now part of our employee-orientation package. We also run ongoing refresher courses to make sure these practices are part of our DNA.

The course covers six key components: how to raise an issue for discussion, discuss it from all sides, specify its source, identify possible solutions, reach a compromise and move forward once the issue has been resolved. It took us a while to develop it, and we're still adjusting it as needed.

We've also placed a copy of the conflict resolution guidelines in each of our conference rooms. One of our staff members has mediator training, and is on call as a resource for employees who aren't able to resolve a conflict on their own. So far, that's only happened about once a month -- and the need for mediation is dwindling even further as team members get more comfortable handling these issues on their own.

The golden rule
The training, as well as the attention we've paid to these issues, has made a noticeable difference. Just recently, I sat in on a meeting to hash out issues between two teams, and the conversation was much more open and less combative than ones I'd witnessed before we developed the training course. The solutions seemed constructive, not critical.

Conflict is a good thing if it means people are using their brains and exchanging ideas that they are passionate about. But conflict is only productive if it can be resolved in a civil and mature way, without getting personal. To that end, we build our culture and processes to drive the unproductive friction out of our workplace.

Jason Beans was inspired to work to improve the health care system after a busted nose he earned as a bouncer almost bankrupted his family.
-- As told to Peter McDougall

Resources

• Check out these 10 rules of conflict management.
• Learn how to win at office politics.
• Browse some tips on identifying a dysfunctional workplace.