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Case Study:
Domestic/International Airline Carrier
Interdepartmental Conflict:
The all too common, fault-focused practice that dissolves trust, eradicates cooperation, and results in incalculable loss of opportunity and productivity.
The Challenges:
- Creating alignment of goals and priorities.
- Replacing animosity with commitment to a common purpose.
- Capitalizing on individual departmental strengths to achieve a common objective.
This domestic in-flight services department has the responsibility of planning and delivering in-flight meals. Meals must be reproducible, storable and must conform to space and weight specifications. They depend on vendors to provide this service in a timely manner. This requires phenomenal teamwork which unfortunately was not present a short while ago. Infact, three teams constantly blamed the other two for poor performance. You could cut the tension with a knife. Essential communications that needed to take place - weren't! Vendors were catching the fallout and the quality of their service dropped even further.
"Even before the end of the first The Pathways to Leadership®
training, the turnaround was evident. Participants came
to know members of other teams on an individual basis and the
resentments quickly began to fall away. With their new leadership
skills, team members literally discovered a 'technology for
communicating' they could immediately put to work. Even before
our second session, I could see a 180-degree shift in how team
leaders treated their front line workers. Vendors who used to
be a tremendous headache, responded beautifully to our new approach.
Also, we were on the verge of losing one of our key people,
but now the comment I hear is, 'There's no place I'd rather
be working.' I have to say that the overall shift is quite amazing."
-- Manager, On Board Services
Tools and Concepts
Note: The following steps represent only a few of the key concepts and tools
applied in this case study.
Employees from each team were selected to join together
for three separate Pathways to Leadership programs.
They discovered that they had been strongly focused on everything
that wasn't working. With so much energy focused backwards,
there was very little left to solve problems in a healthy
productive way. They learned a combination of tools that would
enable them to focus on solutions.
- They discovered one of the most effective tools for turning dissension into cooperation -- the Recipe for Partnership. The tool works masterfully because the answers (and solutions) are their answers, not management's.
- At a special meeting, the three managers asked the first question of the Recipe: "What are some of the successes these three teams have created over the last year?" At first, there was silence. Then they began to identify these successes.
- The second question was, "What are some of the qualities that generated those successes?" Again, the group listed an array of virtues they shared within the department that made possible those wins.
- Rather than telling the staff what managers wanted from these teams, they asked. "What is your vision for what you want to produce together, and the way you want to treat each other in the process?"
- To really anchor the buy-in for the vision they created, the managers asked, "When you achieve this vision, what will be the benefits to you, your team members, the department and the company?"
Finally the teams were at such a point of cooperation, they could address the last question in earnest; And this guaranteed teamwork and a successful resolution.
Learn more about the Pathways to
Leadership programs.
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Poor Morale