Taking the Role of a Peer
Here’s how you play the role of a peer. That is, here’s how you become a colleague and not someone else’s subordinate, despite job titles, office size, and amounts vested in the retirement plan. This is, after all, a relationship business, and you work in a public or private organization, not the military. Hierarchy is not enforced by epaulettes or courts martial.
Ten Steps to Peer Relationships
1. Learn generic business terms and principles.
Most human resources people seem to have trouble reading their own company’s balance sheet, which is Accounting 101 and readily learnable. Understand what the P/E ratio means. Differentiate between earned and unearned income. Do you know what GAAP stands for, or cash vs. accrual? Are you familiar with cycle time, time-to-market, and just-in-time? Take a course or two if your company doesn’t offer this very basic skills training. You need to talk the talk before you can walk the walk.
2. Learn your organization’s business terms and principles.
Every organization has its own nomenclature and jargon. Amazingly, external consultants (at least the good ones) learn to master this quickly. Internal people should understand the terms that sales, IT, research, finance, manufacturing, and other areas use to communicate. There’s nothing worse than to sit at a meeting and suddenly have a senior vice president turn to you and ask, “So how can you help us with our ASAC needs when customers are building straw men because of their own JIT demands?” Try to tap dance around that one.
3. Never be defensive.
Accept all feedback as constructively intentioned and potentially valid unless demonstrably proven otherwise. I’ve watched an executive state matter-of-factly, “We tried to improve delegation last year only to find that people were cynical of our intent,” only to have one of the people responsible shoot back, “But that was because the senior people refused to go through the program first and we were refused the original budget request.” People who see themselves as inferiors get very defensive; people who see themselves as peers seek constructive improvement: “You’re right, and I’m concerned about that, too. I’ve developed three safeguards to prevent that from recurring, but I’d like your feedback and participation to make them most effective.”
4. When you speak, have something to say.
People who feel insecure are often made highly uncomfortable when they’re forced into silence, or haven’t been able to contribute. As a result, they often blurt out nonsense or seek to fill silences with platitudes. By no means should you be unheard, but you must be heard saying something cogent and coherent. One of the worst scenarios is attempted humor that fails to amuse. Do some homework before a meeting, and have four or five key points you want to offer. You don’t have to make them all, and one or two might be offered by someone else, since great minds think alike. But don’t count on the extemporaneous or the sudden, blinding epiphany. Prepare in advance so that when you speak, people listen.
5. Establish collaborations, not leg work.
Whenever there’s the opportunity for you to contribute, don’t just run off and come back with your class project in a week, hoping for an A. Ask to sit down and compare some ideas. Request some conversation and brainstorming time. Play to ego: Tell them that it’s not going to be very valuable if it’s the result of you isolated in an office generating theoretical models. Start to educate your line partners that this is a collaboration, not an assignment.
6. Judiciously push back.
I have to laugh when I hear an internal consultant return from a meeting and say something like, “You won’t believe what they’ve just decided to do!” Who was the consultant, an invisible fly on the wall? You must engage in what I call “push back,” which is a gentle form of devil’s advocacy. Here are the useful phrases:
- - I’m sorry, but I need to challenge that basic assumption.
- - What evidence do we have that this has ever worked at all?
- - Why do you feel that way?
- - Have you considered these risks even if we’re successful?
These are all intelligent reactions to questionable logic and faulty premises. The people who raise them are inevitably appreciated by strong buyers.
7. Don’t go changing to try to please me (with apologies to Billy Joel).
A sycophant is detectable three miles away by a stone. Sentient life is detectable even farther. Never cavil, bow, stoop, or otherwise genuflect to the management team. Don’t go along for the ride if the idea is bad, but don’t overly praise even good ideas. I actually saw a human resources guy tell the division general manager that he had better choices of shirts on casual Friday than any other man in the place. Two women in the room actually managed to role their eyes up above their eyebrows, like cartoon characters. And those two women were potential line buyers.
8. Accept the blame and share the credit.
This is what great leaders do. If something goes wrong, don’t blame a lack of support from a key manager, or poor materials purchased from the outside, or the particular phase of the moon. Simply state that you hadn’t anticipated correctly the degree of difficulty in implementing this uniformly across the field force, and here is the contingency plan you’ve developed to correct things. Conversely, when things are going well, readily share the credit (don’t abdicate the credit, which is different) with the buyer’s subordinates and peers. Demonstrate that this was a team and collegial approach.
9. Engage in lifelong learning.
While you should eschew the fads, don’t overlook the need to continually improve. For example, it was recently documented that heterogeneous teams are more productive than homogeneous teams, which makes a strong case for the utility and pragmatism of diversity (and shows why the subject belongs in the general domain of organization development). There have been even more recent studies that begin to show a clear productivity improvement as a result of executive coaching, demonstrating that it’s not a fad but rather a practical aspect of career development.
10. Superb communications skills.
Finally and most grandly, learn to command a room. Never dumb down your vocabulary. Speak with expression. Listen with discernment. Use metaphors and analogies to support your points. Include judicious humor and always have a plethora of examples ready to bolster your arguments. We’re all in the communications business these days, and we’d better get good at it. My observation is that people immediately respect others who can use the language well and colorfully. That’s a learnable skill.
Most of all, you can’t allow your self-esteem to become a roller coaster, as high as your last victory and as low as your last defeat. Your self-esteem must be constant, because you are confident about your skills and your role.
While it may seem simplistic to suggest within a half-chapter or so how you can be a peer of line management and economic buyers, think about whether you’re doing what’s suggested and avoiding what’s cautioned. Very few internal staff people fit the profile just mentioned. The ones who do stand out in a crowd or in a meeting—and look good—every time.