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Team building issues:
"Undiscussable"
interactions/mistrust kills learning
opportunities
"Should we fire Serge?"
My boss, the director of the Brussels office of
Arthur D. Little - a global management
consulting company -, his boss - the European
Managing Partner -, and two other office
directors were discussing this question on a
January 1993 evening in the bar of the Grand
Hotel in Montreux.
And I was there, 15 meters away, a recently
promoted successful Associate Director,
discussing with my colleagues and wondering
perhaps what the bosses were discussing at
their table.
How was it possible that I was so totally
unaware of my professional reality?
Earlier that day, I participated to a team
session on the company European strategy. In
the presence of 3 European office managers, I
critiqued strongly the senior management of the
company for having no vision and poor HR
policies. And I was not aware that my
interactions were very ineffective: hammering
high level judgments without supporting facts,
closing my statements to inquiry from the
others...
The normal consequences were serious, and
justified, mistrust from the senior managers
present. But we could not create the
opportunity to discuss the root causes and the
consequences of my judgments. So we learned
nothing: their mistrust led to their discussion
about firing me.
And I remained unaware of the consequences of
my words and unaware of the urgent need for me
to learn to pass difficult messages more
effectively.
They did not fire me. And when my boss told me
the whole story 3 years later, I understood I
had something important and urgent to
learn.
Serge
Pegoff
Key
lessons
Return
from a team
building issues story toteam building
stories
Return from a team building issues
story to team building
results
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